Capital vs. Digital Labor in the Post-industrial Information Age: A Marxist Analysis

Change in Concept of “Class”

First, the nature of the change in the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat from the industrial era to the post-industrial information era is analyzed. In the post-industrial information age, the concept of class has changed from the industrial age. The industrial notion of “Class” was based on division of labor, but now it is based on distribution of tasks and hence the notion of class becomes more fluid.

More importantly, the Marxist definition of class was premised on the ownership or the lack of ownership of the means of production or capital. But in the information age, this definition may not fully hold. There are highly paid professionals like investment bankers or top managers in MNCs who may not have the ownership over the means of production or capital but may have the financial status comparable with that of the bourgeoisie. According to the Marxist definition, a software engineer will be classified as a part of the proletariat class, but he or she may be earning a huge salary vis-à-vis the industrial proletariat or the workers in the unorganized sector. Hence, conflating the software engineer with the other lowly paid workers may not be scientific.

Hence, it would be reductionist to reduce the current class contradiction between capital and labor to the classic Marxist class contradiction between the capitalist class owning the means of production and capital and the proletariat class which is bereft of that ownership. In the information age, the capital-labor dialectic needs to be reframed as the dialectic between an elite class which is proximate to capital and a plebian class which is located farther away from capital and hence suffers from that disadvantage. In the information age, class as a concept gets differentiated. Hence, there are multiple classes depending on their proximity or distance from capital. This tendency was present even in the industrial age but has qualitatively enhanced in the post-industrial information age.

Automation and the Capital–Labor Dialectic

Second, the effect of automation on the relation between capital and labor is analyzed as follows. Earlier, the process of writing software was purely creative. The discipline of software engineering Taylorized it to some extent by dividing that work into a set of components. Now, through automation, it is possible to automate the different process and do away with human labor. Hence, labor can be subsumed under capital in the form of knowledge (Marx, 1990). But nevertheless, there is a need for human effort to automate the processes and hence the Marxist tenet that labor is the source of all value remains relevant. But this work of automating the software needs only a lesser number of high-end software engineers.

Also, from software engineering comes the concept of methodologies which provides frameworks within which software programmers are supposed to work within. While this can create alienation for the software engineer, the overall creativity and control over the process are held by the manager (Glass, 2005; Kraft, 1979). So, in the information age, the effect of automation on the relationship between capital and labor is such that there is a danger of many low-end information workers losing their jobs and even if they have jobs, those jobs will be ones that foster alienation. Jobs which foster creativity will be cornered by an elite group of high-end engineers and managers. Thus, the information age has created two sets of information workers: one a set of workers engaging with information and doing low-end routine work and another set of knowledge workers who engage in high-end work which involves creativity.

Management theorists like Peter Drucker claim that in the information age dominated by knowledge, knowledge itself has become a means of production. Hence, workers who work with their knowledge will own the means of production, namely their own knowledge. And the most important knowledge in the knowledge economy is “Tacit knowledge,” which is difficult to disseminate and can be monopolized by a few. So, though on an overall basis, all labor force faces insecurity in the information age, a minority of information professionals are able to relatively benefit more from capitalism of the information age while the majority finds that their position has become very vulnerable.

Location of Consumer in the Capital–Labor Dialectic

Third, the location of the consumer in the relation between capital and labor is analyzed as follows. ICT is a revolutionary GPT which can aid both production and consumption in equal measure. The corporate business model is changing because of an important change in the labor market and the way consumers were normally understood. And this change is that the distinction between consumers and producers is getting lesser. Capital shifts some of the burden of work from the workers to the end consumers. For example, users of social media who create content also become a part of the workforce of social media companies. Another example is customers booking train tickets over an app or portal.

This was prophesized by futurists like Toffler (1981) using the term “prosumer” which stands for the union of both consumer and producer. The rise of the prosumer is an extension of earlier marketing concepts like viral marketing which tried to make the consumer play the role of the producer. Hence, a similar dialectic equation as that between capital and labor also extends partially between capital and consumers also.

Peer Production and the Capital–Labor Dialectic

Fourth, the relationship between capital and labor in peer production process in general and FOSS in particular is analyzed as follows. A prominent aspect of the information age is that it is characterized by the “sharing economy” in which an ICT-based platform enables production by workers in the same category, that is, “peers,” and this can be characterized as “peer production” (e.g., Uber, Ola). In addition, private companies try to integrate “crowdsourcing” and social innovation mechanisms in their own operations and thus try to benefit from the peer production model. Those private firms which don’t do so will lag behind. However, these ICT-based platforms are owned by private players, and hence, they would be able exercise overall control over these processes.

As it is known in Marxist political economy, a commodity has use value as well as exchange value. In the peer production of FOSS, in an ideal sense, only “use value” is supposed to be created by self-motivated, unalienated engineers. In this case, exchange value is not supposed to be created. However, FOSS needs implementation, support, and maintenance. So, a business ecosystem is needed around it. Hence, many ICT-based multinational corporations have understood the importance of FOSS and have started engaging with it. For example, IBM has tied up with FOSS vendor Apache because of the superior quality of open source software. Also, in an ironic manner, FOSS enables the usage of the value that it creates for the for-profit companies; for example, the General Public License (GPL) of the FSF allows this (Bauwens, 2009). The nonprofit institutions that manage the FOSS mode of production are also having a relation with the for-profit institutions. For instance, Mozilla Foundation has a relation with Mozilla corporation.

Hence, FOSS also becomes an indirect part of the capitalist system and hence exchange value also gets created by FOSS in an indirect sense. The exchange value associated with FOSS gives rise to a set of paid software engineers engaging in FOSS. Capital encourages FOSS communities which operate with a high degree of autonomy. Engaging in FOSS enables software engineers to develop their skills which can be sold in the marketplace. A significant proportion of software engineers who develop proprietary software as part of profit-oriented companies are also engaged in developing FOSS. The fallacy of “Reification” makes the relationship between people appear like a relationship between things (Lukács, 1968). A subset of reification is the Marxist concept of “Commodity Fetishism” wherein the relationship between people appears as the relationship between commodities. Over and above these concepts now workers may become their own commodities and they are responsible for their own skilling and employment (Moore & Taylor, 2009). This is being seen in the case of engineers who work on FOSS.

The paradox of a commercial logic operating within a peer production framework can be understood by understanding the emergence of a new kind of capitalism, namely “Netarchical Capitalism” (Bauwens, 2009). Netarchical Capitalism enables the participation of a wider section of the labor force in the production process, but this also attempts to gain economic benefit by controlling the process. FOSS is based on making the use of digital property commonly available through a new common property regime. This is a third mode of ownership different from private property or state property (Bauwens, 2005).

Hence, the relation between capital and labor vis-à-vis peer production in general and FOSS in specific is that over here capital does not exercise totalistic control over labor but allows labor to partake in the fruits of the capital accumulation process but nevertheless exercises control over it.

Telework and the Capital–Labor Dialectic

Fifth, the effect of telework and related concepts on the relation between capital and labor is analyzed as follows. In the information age, through telework and flexible work timing kind of concepts, more time of the worker can come under the control of capital. This results in absolute surplus production (Fuchs, 2017). This also affects the quality of the leisure time of the worker. In the post-industrial age, the nature of work has changed to include performance linked pay, and contracts which don’t specify working hours. This means the coercive power of capital gets internalized by the worker (Huws, 2004). Through telework, if the home of the worker gets configured as the workspace, then production gets shifted from capital to labor.

Because of telework and flexible work timing, instead of the worker coming under the sway of capital, there is a possibility that the entire human being coming under the sway of capital on a 24/7 basis. Hardt and Negri (2000) claim that the term “human capital” is an ontologically new concept that converts the entire human being into a kind of capital. So, it can also be argued that telework and related concepts like flexible work timing contribute to this process of conversion of the entire human being into “human capital”.

The Site of the Capital–Labor Dialectic

Sixth, the site in which the relation between capital and labor plays out in the information age is analyzed as follows. Harry Braverman (1974) had prophesized that authoritarianism of the factory that characterized the industrial age would change into authoritarianism of the office (Braverman, 1974). With the factory itself changing into one managed by computerized controls, the distinction between the factory and the office is also vanishing. In the information age, the tertiary service sector of the economy becomes bigger and ipso facto, the office gets more importance while the factory located in the secondary sector becomes relatively less important. Hence, the site in which the capital-labor dialectic plays out has changed in a substantial sense from the factory to the office in the information age.

Original Marxism does not define the office worker as “proletariat” because he or she does not produce surplus value (Huws, 2004). Marxism needs to be reinterpreted to interpret the changed reality of the information age and accordingly the office worker has to be understood as very much a part of the proletariat class. At a higher level of abstraction, it can be argued that a virtual “office” that spans across the entire globe becomes the point of contestation between capital and labor.

Capital–Labor Dialectic

The following points about the capital-labor dialectic are observed in the information age:

The capital-labor dialectic cannot be simplistically reduced to the capitalist-proletariat dialectic and operates at a higher level of abstraction.

Autonomist Marxists claim that in the current post-Fordist information age, capital is in the form of “Total Social Capital,” that is, a form wherein the “social” has been completely subsumed by capital (Hardt & Negri, 2000, 2004). But this kind of conceptualization of capital does not allow for any agency for human beings in general and for human labor in particular. Thus, it cannot be accepted.

But when the above six points are seen in conjunction, then it can be posited that currently capital has assumed an all-pervasive character and can be understood as the sum of individual human capital understood not as an arithmetic sum but as the sum of its complex social interconnectedness. And this capital is global in its scope. And a labor force which is also global in scope is posited against this capital. This labor force is not a monolithic labor force but has a dichotomy in terms of being divided into a high-end knowledge worker class and a low-end information worker class.

Technology—Emancipatory Role

Lenin’s dictum that “Socialism equals Electrification added to Soviet power” had been paraphrased by Žižek (2002) as “Socialism equals internet access added to Soviet power.” So, in principle it has to be accepted that digital technologies have enormous potential for reordering society on a more equitable basis. For example, internet and new technologies like block-chain are organized on a horizontal, decentralized mode and have the potential to counter the hierarchy of societal structures. Utopian notions of “cybercommunism” and “libertarianism” are predicated on the interlink between networks and hierarchies (Karatzogianni & Michaelides, 2009).

But overemphasizing the role of technology would be falling into the trap of technological determinism. Unless sociopolitical institutions ensure that digital technology helps the cause of social equity, it can lead to widening of societal disparity conceptualized as the “digital divide” (Kumar, 2007).

Digital Class-in-Itself and Class-for-Itself

In the information age, capital does not control the workers’ life in its totality. Capital gives some “responsible autonomy” to the workers (Friedman, 1977). For example, the Indian company Infosys allows its employees free access to the gym during office hours. So, there is a definite space available for digital labor to exercise its powers of human agency vis-à-vis capital and also strive to expand that space.

There is a claim that there is a decisive movement from industrial mass society where class was amenable to clear-cut classifications such as bourgeoisie and proletariat to a post-industrial society in which class has been fragmented and reconfigured at a community level (Hardt & Negri, 1994; Rose, 1996). But this post-modernist kind of explanation does not preclude the possibility that these communities across the globe may have many similarities which may enable them to rally around common causes. A “community” is defined by “we” feeling and cyberspace enables the formation of virtual communities based on a virtual “we” feeling based on common interests.

In the globalized information age, the means of production are increasingly getting globalized and common. It is the same set of MNCs that control the means of production all across the globe. The working conditions of a large proportion of global digital proletariat are increasingly getting similar because they are determined either directly or indirectly by the same MNCs. Then, there arises a possibility of a new model of organizing digital labor based on the common ownership of the means of production (Dafermos & Söderberg, 2009). Hence, there might be a common basis on which the global digital workers might be able to unite. It might not be an exaggeration to say that this is in line with Marx’s injunction at the end of the Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the world unite!”

Thus, the global digital proletariat has the characteristics of a class-in-itself and has the potential to become a class-for-itself. There are examples of labor unions formed by software engineers in Latin America and India. Cab drivers associated with the Indian online transportation aggregator Ola had recently mobilized themselves to demand higher financial commission and better working conditions from Ola. Though these kinds of examples are few in number as of now, they show that there is potential for such kind of digital labor mobilization.

There are two challenges that might limit the process of transformation of the global labor force from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself. The first is that in the gig economy, since ICT workers will be trying to constantly reskill themselves and may be changing occupations frequently, then it might become difficult to organize them on the basis of stable group identities. Another challenge is that right-wing populist and ultranationalist political forces might be able to convince the workers of different nations that their exploitation is by “foreign” imperialists and blunt their understanding that this is actually the exploitation of labor by global capital.

FOSS, Peer Production and Labor Emancipation

The limitations of FOSS with regard to labor emancipation are first discussed as follows:

FOSS as a concept may not be able to completely replace regimes based on intellectual property. For example, Red Hat is profitable only because the production cost of Microsoft based on intellectual property is higher (Dafermos & Söderberg, 2009).

But FOSS in specific and peer production in general also has the following potential for labor emancipation:

FOSS ideology is based in a seemingly contradictory fusion of libertarianism and socialism, but it can be broadly classified as a part of the left-libertarian or left-liberal space and thus has a progressive ideological orientation.

Capital vs. Labor: The Problem of Measurement

Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri (2000, 2004) claim that since in the current post-Fordist age, capital is in a form wherein the “social” has been completely subsumed by capital, this means that labor is “beyond measure.” But this claim is not scientific. Measuring labor is very much possible in the current times. The discipline of information systems has a sub-area called “metrics,” which strives to precisely measure different aspects of information systems which in turn can measure labor. Only if it is possible to measure labor, then the extent of exploitation can be gauged, and remedial measures can be taken. And this is very much possible.

Role of Media

Corporate media based on ICT can serve the purpose of depoliticization of the workforce. It helps to spread the ethos of capitalist consumerism, and in the process, the rational faculties of the worker get blunted so that her capacity for social understanding gets reduced. It can also breed passivity. Corporate mass media may offer a partial or prejudiced understanding of reality which may create problems like fostering dislike and fear of migrant workers.

ICT-based social media offers a powerful antidote to the effects of corporate media. The notion of “public sphere” as enunciated by Jurgen Habermas means a place where citizens interact and one that provides an operating platform for democratic communication systems. The citizenry and workers can access virtual public spheres through social media. Through Web 1.0 technology which was based on a one-way flow of information from the web to the users, there was a possibility of converting labor into a captive, obedient, receptive consumer for lapping up tailor-made news, views, and commodities manufactured at centralized locations across the globe. But through Web 2.0 technology, this can be challenged as this technology allows for two-way communication between the users and the web.

Role of Social Movements

In the information age, the traditional kind of social movements based on anti-colonial ideology or old school Marxist movements based on class mobilization are not relevant. In the current age, “New Social Movements” are relevant. These movements are based on issues like ecological issues, identity politics, or labor issues. These movements to do with labor issues may deal with class mobilization but on a more limited basis and will not involve a radical political revolution. New Social Movements have a measure of reflexivity as they are engaging with information and feedback (Melucci, 1989). ICT helps to enhance this reflexivity of these new social movements.

In social movements, role of social media is given primary importance by techno-deterministic perspectives while social deterministic perspectives give primary role to the social movements over social media. But within social movements, there is dialectic between direct interaction and interaction through social media (Fuchs, 2014b). Hence, both social movements and social media have a dialectic relationship with each other which reinforces each other. Leninism depends on a centralized mode of mobilizing people for sociopolitical change and social media are antithetical to this kind of centralization. Hence, social media based social mobilization avoids the autocratic pitfalls of Leninist centralization as had been seen historically and even in current communist parties.