Ãrsan Åenalp on Wed, 1 Apr 2015 14:21:59 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> How much labour required to peer produce the largest man made


   The net, is probably the largest and the most unique planetary
   infra-structure (wo)mankind has ever build. If we were putting the same
   effort in a same way, into the produiction of a masive interstellar
   space-ship robably we had have build something larger that the
   Enterprise by now. The production of net has vacuumed a mass amount
   manual and intellectual labour power that has been exploited both on
   hard and software production lines. Probably, logically, a large part
   of it has been exploited in form of high or low waged slavery
   contracted, sub-contracted, outsourced, etc. in the internationally
   networked production processes within the formal and informal labour
   markets. However, one could guess (or may be couldn't), the amount of
   free and voluntary labour power poured by millions of coders,
   programmers, developers, hackers into the peer development and
   production of the larger part of the Internet as we know it today.
   Though what made Internet the Net we now all depend on, the use value
   of it, has created by an over-self-socialised labour, a global
   net-worker, working on a global production assemblage. Massive amount
   of manual and intellectual labour power has harvested by the capital
   and the state elite over last two decades. Â
   Since the private capture of the peer produced value, that was added by
   the Internet workers' participation in the labour process, has happened
   out side the market and the contract relationships that were regulated
   by the state, it can not be seen and treated as the appropriation and
   capture of other externalities like legal or technical ones provided
   and maintained by the state power, as in process called 'primative
   accumulation' at national level. The case is clearly different in
   terms of the Internet. What happens, is interestingly more similar to
   the indirect capture of social power within the bourgeoisie
   nation-state form, designed as super structure in the capitalist mode
   of production by the organic intellectuals. The creation of the meta
   use value of Internet however, as its production processes has been
   transnational as it was informational, and the capture of the added
   value has been realised out side the national circuits of capital
   accumulation, serving directly to the rise of a first truly global and
   transnational sovereign agency of capital. This phenomenon can be seen
   as the emergence ofa  global primative (or advanced) accumulation for
   the first time, in which ageny of capital enjoyed first time the direct
   exploitation of the globally networked working class. One could argue
   that this has been the true base of the emerging global worker, and its
   agency, global working class. Â
   In order to re-think the labour rights of these people, or the form of
   their class war, to link it to industrial labour force captured in
   national forms of state and accumulation circuits, and embed this
   rethinking in the discussion over net neutrality (but also in order to
   be able to generate healthy politics on tax justice, environmental
   justice, so on), and to mindfully judge the guilt's of national
   regional and global corporations and political elite -who are looting
   citizens labour and suckin out their lives at an unprecedented level,
   we need to have a sort of calculation of the labour power and the use
   value added by these people in the peer production of the Internet. Â
   Therefore liked to ask a favour from those in these lists; would much
   appreciate if anyone could share title or link to any work, in any
   language, that tried to or succeed to appropriately calculate the
   amount of the labour power that has been exploited in the production of
   the Internet since the beginning of its ongoing and growing networked
   production process, and / or theorises this problematic. Â
   Best, Orsan

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