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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Transformation of Work in Modern Capitalism

"We have no future because our present is too volatile. The only possibility that remains is the management of risk. The spinning top of the scenarios of the present moment." (W. Gibson: Pattern recognition, tr. It. L'accademia dei sogni)

In the 1970s the energy crisis, the consequent economic recession and finally the substitution of work with numerical machines resulted in the formation of a large number of people with no guarantees.
Since then the question of the precarity became central to social analysis, but also in the ambitions of the movement.
We began by proposing to struggle for forms of guaranteed income, uncoupled from work, in order to face the fact that a large part of the young population had no prospect of guaranteed employment.
The situation has changed since then, because what seemed a marginal and temporary condition has no w become the prevalent form of labour relations. Precariousness is no longer a marginal and provisional characteristic, but it is the general form of the labour relation in a productive, digitalized sphere, reticular and recombinative.

"The arrow of time is broken: in an economy under constant restructuring that is based on the short-term and hates routine, definite trajectories no longer exist. People miss stable human relations and long term objectives." (R. Sennett: The corrosion of character)

If we analyse the first aspect, i.e. the technical transformations introduced by the digitalisation of the productive cycle, we see that the essential point is not the becoming precarious of the labour relation (which, after all, has always been precarious), but the dissolution of the person as active productive agent, as labour power. We have to look at the cyberspace of global production as an immense expanse of depersonalised human time."

And we have to look at a new future where the individual has the chance to drive the "machines" instead of being driven by them.
And since the machines have got a lot smarter, it is essential that in this future the man is smarter than them.

The main problem of our society is that laziness has driven us at the point where we are.
Before the 70s, man (of US and Europe) was used to have a "sure job" that mostly meant just a "sure salary" and so political forces have based their strength in the assurance of this.

People mostly voted for the one who promised the "Forever legalized salary" in spite of production, in spite of revenues.

But Economy follows other patterns.
If you do not produce, you do not have revenues, and if you do not have revenues there is somebody who can produce revenues and HE will steal your job.

No political force can guarantee "The Status quo", no political force can guarantee a salary when you do not produce revenues.

And this is NOT the Chineses' fault, it is just mathematics.
 
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