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Cognitive capitalism and the rat race: how capital measures
ideas and affects
by Massimo De Angelis and David
Harvie
Summary: One hundred years ago, Frederick Taylor and
the pioneers of scientific management went into battle on US factory floors.
Armed with stopwatches and clipboards, they were fighting a war over measure.
A century on and capitalist production has spread far beyond the factory walls
and the confines of 'national economies'. Although capitalism increasingly
seems to rely on 'cognitive' and 'immaterial' forms of labour and social
cooperation, the war over measure continues. Armies of economists,
statisticians, management scientists, information specialists, accountants and
others are engaged in a struggle to connect heterogeneous concrete human
activities on the basis of equal quantities of human labour in the abstract,
that is, to link work and capitalist value.
In this paper, we discuss contemporary
capital’s attempt to (re)impose the 'law of value' and thus measure ideas and
affects, which many consider 'beyond' or 'outside measure' . We discuss both
the diachronic process, from which are emerging socially necessary labour times
of 'immaterial' doing, and the synchronic relationships, which make
commensurable heterogeneous concrete activities. We problematise this process
of biopolitical measurement of social co-production as a clash among measures
and values, thus producing subjectivities within a highly heterogeneous
planetary class composition.
CVs:
David Harvie lives in Leeds and works at University
of Leicester Management Centre. He is a member of Leeds May Day Group/The Free
Association and was part of the editorial collective for Shut Them Down! The
G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements (Leeds: Dissent!, 2005)..
Massimo De Angelis works at the University
of East London. He is editor of The Commoner web journal (http://www.thecommoner.org).
E-mails:
Massimo De Angelis [email protected]
David Harvie [email protected]