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.  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.  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.  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.  Best, Orsan
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