{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","uuid":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","normalized_title":"digitallabortheinternetasplaygroundandfactory","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","isbns":["9780415896948","9780415896955","9780203145791"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":267,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/DIGITAL%20LABOR%20THE%20INTERNET%20AS%20PLAYGROUND%20AND%20FACTORY","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/search"},"page":{"printed_page":26,"pdf_page":33,"physical_index":33,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d57f33e1b8475060d16b4050e3a635d3991d6f1d4c9523ad1e24c6e08fee9fad"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"One of the salient questions at The Internet asPlayground and Factory conference was whether the Marxist labor theory of value is still applicable to the new modes of capital accumulation exemplified by Facebook. The new profile of gladsome work—sometimes referredto as play-labor or “playbor\"20—does not seem to fit neatly into Marx's classic analysis of how surplus value is generated from socially necessary, waged labor. On the other hand, some commentators in the Italian school have suggested that Marx, in a few prescient passages in the Grundrisse, predicted the increasing dependence of capitalism on the “general intellect” or \"social brain\"—the vast network of cooperative knowledge that is the source and agent of the cognitive mode of production.21 On the face of it, this theory does seem capable of accommodating or explaining the exploitative use of donated or passionate effort that is part and parcel of immaterial labor.\n\nIn response tothe firstdebate about the relevance of Marx, it is worth noting that waged labor is not the only, or the best, lens through which to view work under capitalist conditions. Michael Denning has argued that, for Marx, the accumulation of labor was just as significant a feature of capitalism as the accumulation of capital.²2 In that regard, the proliferation of unwaged (and thus less measurable) work may be a better analytical standpoint for understanding global economic life. After all, the template of the bounded, waged workday (and five-day workweek), with its formal wraparound of mutually observed rules, obligations, and expectations, wasa highlyartificial product ofbargaining in the advanced economies during the temporary postwar truce between capital and labor. Though it was adoptedand referred to as standard employment in those decades, there was nothing natural about its norms, and it applied almost exclusively to the primary employment of unionized male industrialworkers. Indeed, this closely contested arrangement floated upon an ocean of unpaid work in the home, and it coexisted with casualized work in the secondary employment sector and wageless work in the informal sector, both of which have swelled in the last quarter century.\n\nIn addition, and this hardly goes without saying, the vast majority of human labor, historically and to this day, is wageless—only7% of India's workforce, for example, enjoys regular wages and salaries, and that number is on the decrease. The chances are that waged labor in a legally limited workday may soon come to be seen as the short-lived norm for a small minority, and most of them employed in the world's increasingly besieged public sectors.23 The upsurge of precarious work in theprivate sector—whether in low-wage services orin the high-wage knowledge and creative industries, where a self-employed or gig-based profile is more and more normative—may be seen as the degradation of the formal model, but it is viewed quite differently by those who were excluded from standard employment in the first place. The under-40 workforce, who have known nothing but precarious underemployment, have their own understanding of what counts as fair or unfair labor, and it is highly contextual and subject to continual readjustment.\n\n26\n\nTheShifting Sites of Labor Markets","previous_page":25,"next_page":27}