Cognitive capitalism...

[MindMover]

Knowledge Work Under Cognitive Capitalism

What do the Austrian-born, self-styled "social ecologist" and management theorist Peter Drucker and the Italian autonomist Marxist scholar Paolo Virno have in common? At first blush, little beyond their Continental birthplaces. Steeped in different philosophical traditions and lifestyle habits, Drucker was vehemently anti-Marxist and accustomed to a comfortable middle-class existence, while Virno - together with other autonomists, the most famous of which is Antonio Negri - did hard jail time due to their political activities.[1] Drucker's consultancy occurred within the corporation's confines, while Negri, Virno and their associates directed their praxis at the street level, engaging with Italian workers. Yet this workerist movement was no less theorized, precisely from the "inside," than Drucker's own efforts to understand management's role in a reconstituted form of capitalism. Negri, Virno, Mario Tronti and other autonomist theorists talked of "immaterial" and "social" labor - thus extending the Marxist concept of labor to discuss a form of capitalism based on the "general intellect," a term adopted from Marx himself.[2]

Here, then, is the connection: Drucker and the autonomists simultaneously tried to pinpoint certain deep-seated and structurally transformative tendencies in Western capitalism, society and modernity to move to a form of postindustrial economy that focuses on the production and consumption of knowledge and symbolic goods as a higher-order economic activity that encompasses and affects the entire social fabric. Drucker used the label "post-capitalist society," but his depiction of this new social formation's contours strikingly parallels key tenets of cognitive capitalism. In this new capitalist phase, social knowledge, embodied in the general intellect and diffused throughout the workforce, is the key productive force (Virno 2004). In this paper, we argue that Drucker not only presages the autonomist notion of immaterial labor at cognitive capitalism's heart; his work also points toward, but never fully develops, a theory of self-organized knowledge labor. This is the very thing that autonomists, including Negri himself, call for: the self-management of society's intellectual resources.

Before we continue, we would like to offer the following parameters for what we mean when we speak of "cognitive capitalism," a term sometimes used differently by different thinkers. From Michael A. Peters' 2011 book, "Cognitive Capitalism, Education and the Question of Digital Labor":

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9035-knowledge-work-under-cognitive-capitalism

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. "the key productive force". Uh Oh.

Last edited Sat May 19, 2012, 08:01 AM - Edit history (1)

"social knowledge, embodied in the general intellect and diffused throughout the workforce, is the key productive force" -This

"Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." -Mao. (China)

"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning" -Shannon (American father of information age.)

Powerful forces deal in fundamentals: Who is producing the food? Who has the guns? Does the message get from point A to point B? Does the machine run without our product? (oil) social knowledge is useful and powerful, but not the fundamental productive force. Energy is the fundamental productive force. Energy guided in optimal paths through information.

Our eye is off the ball. Its a common conceptual mistake, confusing the potential to do a thing with the thing itself. During the dotcom boom, many investors confused having a site with the potential for millions of visitors ready to buy with actually HAVING millions of visitors ready to buy, so they invested hundreds of thousands in sites nobody came to. Social networks have the POTENTIAL to manage fundamental forces, but that doesn't mean they do. And when they don't, they are worthless, which is more often than not the case.

Leftist analysis needs to return to looking at fundamentals quantitatively, IMHO.

[zazen]

2. you make great points (& succinctly too) n/t

[tama]

3. Qualitative holistic analysis

A community's social knowledge (e.g. tribe living in natural communism/anarchism) needs to know collectively what is edible and what is not, where and how to satisfy material needs in sustainable way, how to manage webs of social and environmental relations etc. Tribes without number theory can and do live well, obsession with quantitative analysis goes together with materialistic metaphysics of control mania.

Ownership is an immaterial cognitive and qualitative relation, to begin with. As is belonging.

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. When you look at world history, that 'control mania' seems pretty effective.

There is, unfortunately no master shrink to these people away. The communists were - philosophically - materialists, looking at industry and grain production (hammer and sickle) and at one point, they controlled about half the world. Capitalism as well focuses on these worldly matters of investment and production. And now it controls well more than half of the world.

What I'm saying is that a pragmatic focus pays off. I don't want to downplay the philosophy of Gandhi (for instance), but with him it had a consistency: He cultivated a mindset where he wasn't afraid to die, to let go of life, because he abstained from all its pleasures. He earned his right to preach what he did. I on the other hand enjoy many of these earthly pleasures, such as this beer in my hand. And it is in my hand because of a company, operating in a capitalist system that focuses on these pragmatic matters of material production. So I owe this pleasure to many people paying attention to these mundane fundamentals. Without paying attention to them myself, I must either become like Gandhi, renouncing worldly pleasures in favor or eternal ones, or become a deluded slave to those who do pay attention to these fundamental facts of life.

In the century before the last, in 1875 (where Republican minds still are) the European left was defined by Communism, and the Maxim "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." defined it. Much has changed since then, but "to each according to his need" is a universal part of the left in all times, including us, the American left. The opposite of our beliefs: "from each according to his ability TO HIS OWN DAMN SELF" is espoused by the right, but leaves children, the disabled and elderly, none of which can work, dying in the gutter. So our divine moral cause remains to see to it that those who need help but cannot help themselves receive it. This requires a practical, worldly focus: Do they have food? Medicine? Shelter and the rest? These material interests, and the spiritual progress given to those who commit themselves to providing them are our core cause, and if we've turned from them, we've lost the core of who we are.

[tama]

5. Materialism

First, I agree that pragmatic focus is important, and that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, though not perfect, is a good rough guideline. But as for materialism, there is big difference between Marx' pragmatic and ethical dialectical materialism and the metaphysical mechanistic materialism of positivism/naive physicalism - which is not pragmatic ethical philosophy but a metaphysical ideology which fetishizes measurability and countability ("control mania&quot by process of historical dialectics. It seems obvious that there is close connection between metaphysical materialism and commodity fetish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism).

Needless to say also the Communist party elites have constantly fallen into the trap of metaphysical materialism and technocratic and bureaucratic control mania of commodity fetishism, which may be seemingly effective as destructive imperialistic force, but only because it is self-destructive as a cancer tumour is. And yes I believe there is "master shrink" for all of us, called Mother Nature and the process of evolutionary adaptation - coherent and cooperative participating relation in larger inclusive wholes (e.g local ecosystems and biosphere as whole).

Heart and soul of Marx' thought and pragmatic communism in general is consistent with deep ecology, but not with commodity fetishism of metaphysical mechanistically materialistic idealism, domination of things and fetishized measurability and countability.

[napoleon_in_rags]

6. I think you're mis-characterizing measurability and countability

At least insofar as what I believe, I can tell you for a fact you are.

My philosophy is subtle - but I can contrast it to physicalism as follows:

A physicalist assumes the existence of the physical word as real, and seeks to explore it in terms of measurable physical qualities.
I do not assume anything but the measurements, the interaction between observer and observation are real. Therefore unlike the physicalist who lives in a purely physical world, I live in a world that exists exclusively as information, with all mind states, from the hard scientific to the theological, as tools I have to explore and interact with my information universe.

I am not a commodity fetishist. I actually find the spiritual states create more happiness. But I am a hardcore believer in good, hard information, and the search for it. The search for truth. Nothing is communicated to me from mysticism, from vague terms, without me first seeing the multiplicity of possible interpretations for vague terms, and consciously choosing to take run and proceed as if it were true. Information is how you and I connect, so that, to me, is what's most real.

And as for quantitative thinking and ecological living, I would just remind you of this: Einstein rode a bike:
http://www.urbansimplicity.com/2009/05/albert-einstein-rode-bike.html