"Nate Bolt - The Binary Proletariat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bolt Nate)
The Binary Proletariat
In the endless quest to transform itself, capitalism has spawned a new
working class. The proletariat was an essential product of the industrial
revolution, and the lighter, more efficient capitalism of the digital
revolution has created the Binary Proletariat.
Capitalists, armed with deregulated communication networks, have finally
achieved the Victorian goal of State abolition [1]. Digital
capitalism, as author Dan Schiller calls it, has circumvented the geopolitical
boundaries of the industrial era and given new life to the "liberal economic
policy of Victorian Britain" [2].
In the endless quest to transform itself, capitalism has spawned a new
working class. The proletariat was an essential product of the industrial
revolution. The lighter, more efficient capitalism of the digital revolution
has created the Binary Proletariat. This new proletariat is made up of the
working class employees of digital companies worldwide. Those who face the
endless glow of a screen from within the confines of cubicled subjugation make
up this new, but as of yet unrecognized, Binary Proletariat. Nation-states
that once accommodated varying levels of wealth are converging on a two-class
society. Although capitalist domination has not given way, there are other
ways by which "everything solid melts into air" [3]. Fixed
capital, domestic corporations, and government regulation have melted into air
as a result of the digital telecommunications revolution.
Class-consciousness, as Marx defined it, might have been threatened by the
progression of industrial society, but it has been dissected and dispersed by
the new digital global economy. And Marx defined class-consciousness, as Lenin
quotes him in the Granat Dictionary written in 1914 and published in
1915, [4]
"Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
thinks of himself, so we cannot judge of such a period of transformation by
its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained
rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
between the social productive forces and the relations of production ... .
[5]
So, Marx argued that as long as one is not controlling the means of
production, they are proletarian. And if one's labour is being exploited, they
are proletarian. The advanced industrial Proletarian worker might have been
fooled into thinking they were a member of the petit-bourgeoisie because,
among other things, they lacked exposure to the rest of their class. But with
the ephemeral, casual, and de-centralized world of digital employment, each
binary proletarian worker often defines the means of production (juggling
temporary contracts and multiple clients). One also might have direct contact
with the market (stock options or direct distribution). While the Binary
Proletariat may defy Marx and Engels' primary definition of
class-consciousness, it fits right in to their strictly bifurcated models of
class division.
For example, there is a similarity between the fact that "the misery of the
working class in the years 1848-1864 [had] not lessened, in spite of the
unexampled development of industry and growth of trade during this period,"
[6] and
current economic trends. Unsurprisingly, the economic growth that accompanied
capitalism's global permeation only profited the upper echelons of society. As
Thomas Friedman points out, the political systems that distributed wealth have
been dismantled by capitalism's sheer ability to generate wealth [7]. A
sandwich vendor in Bangkok said it best, "Communism fails, socialism fails, so
now there is only Capitalism" [8]. So we're
left with an economic climate very similar to that which Marx describes
between 1848 and 1864. The "average U.S. CEO made 209 times the pay of factory
workers in 1996 - up from 42 times as much in 1980" [9] because
the pay of factory workers is no longer the economy or public's main
concern.
With the ten hour workday law, "Marx pointed out the triumph of the
principle of government interference in economic relations over the old ideas"
[10]. To
what extent are programmers and systems support members of the Proletariat?
This is a domain where an eight-hour workday does not exist. It is true that
programmers and technicians in any part of the world are far from the
malnourished factory workers of 19th century Great Britain. But I can attest
to situations where digital companies regularly extract twelve and
fifteen-hour workdays from fleets of willing programmers. Liquid compensation
rarely follows such marathon compiling. Instead, the payoff might be time
after work to play Quake on the company local area network, or the right to
download and burn software on the company T1. I am not drawing a parallel
between the exploitation of industrial labour and the lavish benefits accorded
young programmers. But there is a widespread presumption that "because the
Internet reduces the cost of producing and distributing ... to almost zero, it
is likely to make 1 Local Area Network decentralization the rule." [11]. While
this scenario was perhaps possible, I believe the "cost of producing and
distributing" have taken on new forms, not evaporated. And capitalists have
adapted to exploit labour based on the new models of production and
distribution.
The Binary Proletariat is binary in two senses. First, it is a by-product
of the information revolution and deals exclusively with a production system
structured on the zeroes and ones of digital networks. Friedman, Schiller, and
the Annual Review of the Institute for Information Studies all agree that
massive digital communications are directly responsible for the global
transformation of our economy. Second, there are two opposite poles of workers
united by their involvement with digital capitalism. Transnational
corporations that have permeated the globe indirectly employ the first
contingent, mostly third world workers living in astounding poverty. The
second faction is usually directly involved with some aspect of digital
telecommunications, earning comfortable wages (for now) and living in the
first world. Both groups are part of the Binary Proletariat, but there is a
polar opposition between the laborers directly involved with digital
technology (well-paid and living in developed countries) and laborers who are
indirectly involved (workers in shoe factories).
The second side of the Binary Proletariat is much less visible, as they are
hiding out in the lucrative Web design positions of the late 20th century. The
call centers of 2,000 telemarketers who sell the drone of their authentic
human voices make up the Binary Proletariat [12]. The
cubicled floor space of start-ups turned agglomerates make up the Binary
Proletariat. The 3,500 temporary workers at Microsoft, subject to the
slightest change in the new global market, are part of the Binary Proletariat
[13].
As long as wages remained high enough to satiate our desire to consume, it
appeared that the Binary Proletariat was a delightful byproduct of digital
capitalism. However, as the complex technological system of distributed
computing has evolved, the liberalized free markets have started to stream
towards the cheapest labour. One way this has taken place is by increased
vocational training in public school curricula, as long as the vocations are
digital. Relational database programming, for example, may be taught in a
for-profit high school, instead of at a four-year university. Like in the
California's San Bernardino County School District, where they have partnered
"with Cox Cable Company, a multimedia sponsor, to assist them in creating a
Web based institute" [14].
This private partnership undeniably benefits underprivileged children who
would not otherwise have access to the technology. But even in California, a
worldwide leader in the computer industry, the effects of academic
commodification have not trickled down to the lower and middle class children.
"One in three ninth-graders in California public schools in 1994 failed to
receive a [high school] diploma four years later" [15], the
bastion of digital technology does have one of the highest dropout rates in
the country [16]. An
interesting relationship has developed between the technology that is driving
the digital economy, and the educational framework that creates laborers. At
the same time that graduation rates are decreasing, "statewide school
information system that will allow [us to keep better track of students" [17]. What
has happened is a simultaneous influx of corporate sponsorship into some
schools, and decrease in government funds. The result is that the mythical [18] American
class mobility has turned into a binary opposition; you may grow very rich, or
you may grow very poor.
Thomas Friedman calls this system the "golden straitjacket", and it is
supposed to be the global garb of a free market economy. It brings instant
fortune at the cost of having a middle-class. Friedman believes "If your
country has not been fitted for one, it will be soon" [19]. Being
"fitted" for a golden straitjacket requires the government to de-regulate and
shrink itself as much as possible. Once that happens, private industry
commences generating wealth. For some, the ability to generate instant income
in under-developed countries is one of the best features of the global free
market economy [20]. But the
free market is much better at the generation of income than the distribution
of income (which comes close to not occurring). Consequently, the lower
classes have remained at the level they achieved after the initial flux in
income, while the transnational corporations indefinitely accelerate profits.
Alternative political systems that attempt to do both simply can not compete.
As both Schiller and Friedman point out "The corporate-led market system no
longer confronts a significant socialist adversary anywhere on the planet" [21].
Eventually all governments have done away with programs to distribute wealth
in favor of the more immediately stimulating policy that generation of wealth.
My point is, mechanisms for the distribution of wealth are being dismantled by
a consensus that the new global market should not be regulated. Digital
globalization then completely bifurcates existing socio-economic
gradients.
But long before the first microscopic transistors were etched onto silicon
in the 1950s, Marx decided that the we would eventually live in a society
where "all that is solid melts into air." Although Marx was thinking in the
abstract, his theory has now taken on an entirely tangible meaning [22]
Digital technology has enabled the transformation of physical interactions
into binary estimations, and the their subsequent transmission through the air
on a global scale. Just as part of the agricultural population was "constantly
on the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing proletariat," part
of the remaining industrial proletariat is constantly on the verge of passing
into the Binary Proletariat [23]. The
Chinese politician who demanded fiber optic cables for his northeastern
Chinese village desperately wanted his people to become part of the Binary
Proletariat, and reap the rewards of global digital capitalism [24].
About the Author
Nate Bolt is Information Architect for Clear Ink.
E-mail: [email protected]
Notes
1. Engels, 1880.
2. Schiller, 1999; p. 1.
3. Marx quoted by Berman, 1982; p. 23.
4. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jul/granat/index.htm
5. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jul/granat/ch02.htm
6. Marx, quoted in Riazanov, 1927; ch. 6.
7. Friedman, 1999; p. 82.
8. Friedman, 1999; p. 84.
9. Schiller, 1999.
10. Riazanov, 1927; ch. 6.
11. Institute for Information Studies, 1998; p. 9.
12. Schiller, 1999.
13. Or perhaps the Lumpenproletariat, but I
hesitate to label temporary workers as the "scum of the decaying elements of
all classes" (Engels, 1850; preface). Also, see Schiller, 1999.
14. Fresno County Office of Education, 1998. "Minutes
from the Education Council for Technology in Learning," February 23-24.
15. I realize this statistic is probably more false than
true, but it represents the overall dismal state of public education in
California.
16. Associated Press; June 6, 1998.
17. Associated Press; June 8, 1999.
18. "Ain't No Makin' It" in 1991 illustrated that
American class mobility was approximately equivalent to feudal England.
19. Friedman, 1999; p. 84.
20. Op.cit.
21. Schiller, 1999; p. 203.
22. Marx, quoted by Berman, 1982; p. 23.
23. Marx, 1867. Das Capital, volume I, p.
668.
24. Friedman, 1999.
Bibliography
Marshall Berman, 1982. All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience
of Modernity. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Frederick Engels, 1880. Socialism: Utopian And Scientific at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1880-SUS/sus1.html
Frederick Engels, 1850. The Peasant War In Germany (Engels' Preface
To the second edition) at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1850-PWG/pwg0a.html
Fresno County Office of Education, 1998. "Minutes from the Education
Council for Technology in Learning," February 23-24.
Thomas Friedman, 1999. The Lexus and The Olive Tree. New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Institute for Information Studies, 1998. The Emerging Internet.
(Annual Review of the Institute for Information Studies; 1998). Queenstown,
Md.: Institute for Information Studies.
Karl Marx, 1867. Das Capital, volume 1: The Process of Production of
Capital, at http://marxists.firetrail.com/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm
David Riazanov, 1927. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: An Introduction to
Their Lives and Work. at http://marxists.firetrail.com/archive/riazanov/works/1927-ma/index.htm
Dan Schiller, 1999. Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market
System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Editorial history
Paper received 22 March 2000; accepted 18 April 2000.
 
Copyright ©2000, First
Monday
The Binary Proletariat by Nate Bolt
First Monday, volume 5, number 5
(May 2000),
URL:
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_5/bolt/index.html
The Binary Proletariat
In the endless quest to transform itself, capitalism has spawned a new
working class. The proletariat was an essential product of the industrial
revolution, and the lighter, more efficient capitalism of the digital
revolution has created the Binary Proletariat.
Capitalists, armed with deregulated communication networks, have finally
achieved the Victorian goal of State abolition [1]. Digital
capitalism, as author Dan Schiller calls it, has circumvented the geopolitical
boundaries of the industrial era and given new life to the "liberal economic
policy of Victorian Britain" [2].
In the endless quest to transform itself, capitalism has spawned a new
working class. The proletariat was an essential product of the industrial
revolution. The lighter, more efficient capitalism of the digital revolution
has created the Binary Proletariat. This new proletariat is made up of the
working class employees of digital companies worldwide. Those who face the
endless glow of a screen from within the confines of cubicled subjugation make
up this new, but as of yet unrecognized, Binary Proletariat. Nation-states
that once accommodated varying levels of wealth are converging on a two-class
society. Although capitalist domination has not given way, there are other
ways by which "everything solid melts into air" [3]. Fixed
capital, domestic corporations, and government regulation have melted into air
as a result of the digital telecommunications revolution.
Class-consciousness, as Marx defined it, might have been threatened by the
progression of industrial society, but it has been dissected and dispersed by
the new digital global economy. And Marx defined class-consciousness, as Lenin
quotes him in the Granat Dictionary written in 1914 and published in
1915, [4]
"Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
thinks of himself, so we cannot judge of such a period of transformation by
its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained
rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
between the social productive forces and the relations of production ... .
[5]
So, Marx argued that as long as one is not controlling the means of
production, they are proletarian. And if one's labour is being exploited, they
are proletarian. The advanced industrial Proletarian worker might have been
fooled into thinking they were a member of the petit-bourgeoisie because,
among other things, they lacked exposure to the rest of their class. But with
the ephemeral, casual, and de-centralized world of digital employment, each
binary proletarian worker often defines the means of production (juggling
temporary contracts and multiple clients). One also might have direct contact
with the market (stock options or direct distribution). While the Binary
Proletariat may defy Marx and Engels' primary definition of
class-consciousness, it fits right in to their strictly bifurcated models of
class division.
For example, there is a similarity between the fact that "the misery of the
working class in the years 1848-1864 [had] not lessened, in spite of the
unexampled development of industry and growth of trade during this period,"
[6] and
current economic trends. Unsurprisingly, the economic growth that accompanied
capitalism's global permeation only profited the upper echelons of society. As
Thomas Friedman points out, the political systems that distributed wealth have
been dismantled by capitalism's sheer ability to generate wealth [7]. A
sandwich vendor in Bangkok said it best, "Communism fails, socialism fails, so
now there is only Capitalism" [8]. So we're
left with an economic climate very similar to that which Marx describes
between 1848 and 1864. The "average U.S. CEO made 209 times the pay of factory
workers in 1996 - up from 42 times as much in 1980" [9] because
the pay of factory workers is no longer the economy or public's main
concern.
With the ten hour workday law, "Marx pointed out the triumph of the
principle of government interference in economic relations over the old ideas"
[10]. To
what extent are programmers and systems support members of the Proletariat?
This is a domain where an eight-hour workday does not exist. It is true that
programmers and technicians in any part of the world are far from the
malnourished factory workers of 19th century Great Britain. But I can attest
to situations where digital companies regularly extract twelve and
fifteen-hour workdays from fleets of willing programmers. Liquid compensation
rarely follows such marathon compiling. Instead, the payoff might be time
after work to play Quake on the company local area network, or the right to
download and burn software on the company T1. I am not drawing a parallel
between the exploitation of industrial labour and the lavish benefits accorded
young programmers. But there is a widespread presumption that "because the
Internet reduces the cost of producing and distributing ... to almost zero, it
is likely to make 1 Local Area Network decentralization the rule." [11]. While
this scenario was perhaps possible, I believe the "cost of producing and
distributing" have taken on new forms, not evaporated. And capitalists have
adapted to exploit labour based on the new models of production and
distribution.
The Binary Proletariat is binary in two senses. First, it is a by-product
of the information revolution and deals exclusively with a production system
structured on the zeroes and ones of digital networks. Friedman, Schiller, and
the Annual Review of the Institute for Information Studies all agree that
massive digital communications are directly responsible for the global
transformation of our economy. Second, there are two opposite poles of workers
united by their involvement with digital capitalism. Transnational
corporations that have permeated the globe indirectly employ the first
contingent, mostly third world workers living in astounding poverty. The
second faction is usually directly involved with some aspect of digital
telecommunications, earning comfortable wages (for now) and living in the
first world. Both groups are part of the Binary Proletariat, but there is a
polar opposition between the laborers directly involved with digital
technology (well-paid and living in developed countries) and laborers who are
indirectly involved (workers in shoe factories).
The second side of the Binary Proletariat is much less visible, as they are
hiding out in the lucrative Web design positions of the late 20th century. The
call centers of 2,000 telemarketers who sell the drone of their authentic
human voices make up the Binary Proletariat [12]. The
cubicled floor space of start-ups turned agglomerates make up the Binary
Proletariat. The 3,500 temporary workers at Microsoft, subject to the
slightest change in the new global market, are part of the Binary Proletariat
[13].
As long as wages remained high enough to satiate our desire to consume, it
appeared that the Binary Proletariat was a delightful byproduct of digital
capitalism. However, as the complex technological system of distributed
computing has evolved, the liberalized free markets have started to stream
towards the cheapest labour. One way this has taken place is by increased
vocational training in public school curricula, as long as the vocations are
digital. Relational database programming, for example, may be taught in a
for-profit high school, instead of at a four-year university. Like in the
California's San Bernardino County School District, where they have partnered
"with Cox Cable Company, a multimedia sponsor, to assist them in creating a
Web based institute" [14].
This private partnership undeniably benefits underprivileged children who
would not otherwise have access to the technology. But even in California, a
worldwide leader in the computer industry, the effects of academic
commodification have not trickled down to the lower and middle class children.
"One in three ninth-graders in California public schools in 1994 failed to
receive a [high school] diploma four years later" [15], the
bastion of digital technology does have one of the highest dropout rates in
the country [16]. An
interesting relationship has developed between the technology that is driving
the digital economy, and the educational framework that creates laborers. At
the same time that graduation rates are decreasing, "statewide school
information system that will allow [us to keep better track of students" [17]. What
has happened is a simultaneous influx of corporate sponsorship into some
schools, and decrease in government funds. The result is that the mythical [18] American
class mobility has turned into a binary opposition; you may grow very rich, or
you may grow very poor.
Thomas Friedman calls this system the "golden straitjacket", and it is
supposed to be the global garb of a free market economy. It brings instant
fortune at the cost of having a middle-class. Friedman believes "If your
country has not been fitted for one, it will be soon" [19]. Being
"fitted" for a golden straitjacket requires the government to de-regulate and
shrink itself as much as possible. Once that happens, private industry
commences generating wealth. For some, the ability to generate instant income
in under-developed countries is one of the best features of the global free
market economy [20]. But the
free market is much better at the generation of income than the distribution
of income (which comes close to not occurring). Consequently, the lower
classes have remained at the level they achieved after the initial flux in
income, while the transnational corporations indefinitely accelerate profits.
Alternative political systems that attempt to do both simply can not compete.
As both Schiller and Friedman point out "The corporate-led market system no
longer confronts a significant socialist adversary anywhere on the planet" [21].
Eventually all governments have done away with programs to distribute wealth
in favor of the more immediately stimulating policy that generation of wealth.
My point is, mechanisms for the distribution of wealth are being dismantled by
a consensus that the new global market should not be regulated. Digital
globalization then completely bifurcates existing socio-economic
gradients.
But long before the first microscopic transistors were etched onto silicon
in the 1950s, Marx decided that the we would eventually live in a society
where "all that is solid melts into air." Although Marx was thinking in the
abstract, his theory has now taken on an entirely tangible meaning [22]
Digital technology has enabled the transformation of physical interactions
into binary estimations, and the their subsequent transmission through the air
on a global scale. Just as part of the agricultural population was "constantly
on the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing proletariat," part
of the remaining industrial proletariat is constantly on the verge of passing
into the Binary Proletariat [23]. The
Chinese politician who demanded fiber optic cables for his northeastern
Chinese village desperately wanted his people to become part of the Binary
Proletariat, and reap the rewards of global digital capitalism [24].
About the Author
Nate Bolt is Information Architect for Clear Ink.
E-mail: [email protected]
Notes
1. Engels, 1880.
2. Schiller, 1999; p. 1.
3. Marx quoted by Berman, 1982; p. 23.
4. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jul/granat/index.htm
5. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jul/granat/ch02.htm
6. Marx, quoted in Riazanov, 1927; ch. 6.
7. Friedman, 1999; p. 82.
8. Friedman, 1999; p. 84.
9. Schiller, 1999.
10. Riazanov, 1927; ch. 6.
11. Institute for Information Studies, 1998; p. 9.
12. Schiller, 1999.
13. Or perhaps the Lumpenproletariat, but I
hesitate to label temporary workers as the "scum of the decaying elements of
all classes" (Engels, 1850; preface). Also, see Schiller, 1999.
14. Fresno County Office of Education, 1998. "Minutes
from the Education Council for Technology in Learning," February 23-24.
15. I realize this statistic is probably more false than
true, but it represents the overall dismal state of public education in
California.
16. Associated Press; June 6, 1998.
17. Associated Press; June 8, 1999.
18. "Ain't No Makin' It" in 1991 illustrated that
American class mobility was approximately equivalent to feudal England.
19. Friedman, 1999; p. 84.
20. Op.cit.
21. Schiller, 1999; p. 203.
22. Marx, quoted by Berman, 1982; p. 23.
23. Marx, 1867. Das Capital, volume I, p.
668.
24. Friedman, 1999.
Bibliography
Marshall Berman, 1982. All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience
of Modernity. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Frederick Engels, 1880. Socialism: Utopian And Scientific at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1880-SUS/sus1.html
Frederick Engels, 1850. The Peasant War In Germany (Engels' Preface
To the second edition) at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1850-PWG/pwg0a.html
Fresno County Office of Education, 1998. "Minutes from the Education
Council for Technology in Learning," February 23-24.
Thomas Friedman, 1999. The Lexus and The Olive Tree. New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Institute for Information Studies, 1998. The Emerging Internet.
(Annual Review of the Institute for Information Studies; 1998). Queenstown,
Md.: Institute for Information Studies.
Karl Marx, 1867. Das Capital, volume 1: The Process of Production of
Capital, at http://marxists.firetrail.com/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm
David Riazanov, 1927. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: An Introduction to
Their Lives and Work. at http://marxists.firetrail.com/archive/riazanov/works/1927-ma/index.htm
Dan Schiller, 1999. Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market
System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Editorial history
Paper received 22 March 2000; accepted 18 April 2000.
Copyright ©2000, First
Monday
The Binary Proletariat by Nate Bolt
First Monday, volume 5, number 5
(May 2000),
URL:
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_5/bolt/index.html
|