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Towards A New Theory of Work - Developing Theoretical Perspectives For Work And Employment Regulation in A Post-Industrial Society
Paper presented at the International Labour Process Conference,Edinburgh,6-8 April 2009
George Tsogas
Cass Business School, City University London
Prologue
The world of work needs a new paradigm. Traditional employment regulation systems involve governments, employers, and trade unions (wherever they exist) or other forms of employee representation. But, in the 21st century, states and governments are unable, incapable or hostile towards establishing effective and meaningful state-based legal frameworks to regulate activities of companies which very often span well-beyond the boundaries of one state. The traditional, tripartite, 20th century model of state-bound welfare capitalism has now been bypassed by a globalised and informatised capitalism (Castells, 1998).
A. Why current paradigms of work regulation are inadequate for the 21st century
“The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the capitalist class over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere,” wrote Marx in The Communist Manifesto (1848). More than 160 years after publication of this pamphlet[1] that was aimed at changing the world, we undertake an ambitious project to show that the world has indeed changed – not necessarily in the way the followers of Marx would have wished and fought for – but in a way that means that the idea expressed in the quoted phrase still remains valid. But nowadays, the industrial model of production and organisation of work that Marx analysed - and its later Fordist and “just-in-time” versions improved - has given lead to a post-industrial, post-Fordist, past-“just-in-time” model of work. In this model immaterial labour is the new hegemonic form of production and the contemporary motor for future transformations (Hardt and Negri, 2005). However, in spite of the wide recognition that “it is not business as usual” there are very few suggestions as to what can be done, and even more crucially how the “labour movement” could react, adapt to new realities and find new meaning and purpose. It is in that direction we aim to shed some light by attempting a first approach for some theoretical and methodological issues and their policy implications.
Our starting point is the (obvious to us) assumption that we do live in the era of cognitive capitalism, knowledge-based work and network economy and society.[2] Even though these words are mentioned widely around the globe, there is often confusion as to what they actually entail and what implications they have for our understanding of a changing society. In some circles, there is wide spread nostalgia for a past world; a world more organised, that made better sense, where people had defined roles and lived their lives in (imagined) harmony.[3]
Our second assumption is that the institutional arrangements and social contracts that were set up for the (Fordist) world of work in the 20th century cannot function anymore and need either, at best, substantial modification or, at worst, complete abandonment and replacement by new forms of work organization, representation, and regulation.[4] These new forms should reflect the following social conditions: 1) The hegemonic role of immaterial over industrial labour; 2) The vastness, persistence, and complexity of informal labour markets in both developing and developed countries; and 3) The transnationalisation of resistance and access to justice.
However, behind these simply phrased propositions some extremely complicated and difficult issues are hidden: What is, first of all, “work” in the 21st century; how can it be regulated, for what purposes and by whom? What is the role of the “state” in this regulatory process, either in the form of a national sovereign government or in the form of a regional integration scheme (such as the EU) or – the more traditional - local forms of government? What is “organized labour” and how does it interlink and react with the rest of the society? How does the “working class” (if there is still one) fit with the rest of society, as well as with “organised” and “un-organised” labour? These are some of the big questions that seek an answer in the 21st century. Here we aim to make a first attempt to address some of them.
B. What is “work” in the 21st century?
At the basis of our arguments for a new theoretical paradigm lays the notion that “work” in our era is different that any other time in human history. An in-depth analysis of the meaning and purpose of work in post-industrial societies is long overdue. Here we attempt to highlight some theoretical issues and policy implications, leaving for elsewhere the in-depth analysis it fully deserves.
B1. From factory work and modernity to immaterial labour and affectionate networks
Throughout the 20th century and the late part of 19th century, work that created booming industries, generated wealth and consumption, shaped political agendas, and reached into every aspect of daily life and human experience was industrial work. Its iconic temple was the factory. Industrial work was shaped by Taylorism, fortified by mass-production through Fordism, slim-lined by just-in-time production, and finally it unfolded its global reach through subcontracting and supply chains. But in the late 20th and early 21st century a new phase of cognitive capitalism is emerging. In this new era, immaterial labour, not industrial work, is the locomotive for change in both the spheres of work and society (Lazzarato, 1996; Hardt and Negri, 2000: 280-300).
The French political economist Jean-BaptisteSay (1762-1832), in criticizing Adam Smith, introduced “immaterial products” – by using the examples of the advice given by of a physician or that of an orchestra playing music – as products/services where “the consumption and the production were simultaneous” (Say, 1832: I.XIII.2-3). Hence, they cannot be accumulated, nor their production can increase without simultaneous increase of their consumption. Even though he uses the term “product”, what he actually describes is the immaterial labour (process) of certain occupations (i.e. physicians, lawyers, civil servant, musicians, artists, domestic servants and prostitutes) who produce value that is consumed at the moment of production.
More recently, the concept of immaterial labour has been (re)introduced in contemporary thinking, through the philosophical works of Michael Hardt and Toni Negri. In its contemporary use, immaterial labour creates immaterial products, such as knowledge, information, communication, and relationships or emotional responses (affective labour). Hardt and Negri (2005: 108) - following Lazzarato’s (1996) - depict immaterial labour in two principal forms. The first refers to problem solving, symbolic and analytical tasks, and linguistic expressions. This kind of immaterial labour is the well-known and widely understood “intellectual work”. Apart from its more traditional fields (such as academia, management, and scientific work) modern forms of intellectual work include media production, web design, and many aspects of culture and creative industries. The second principal form of immaterial labour is “affective labour”. Derived primarily from Spinoza’s notion of affect, Hardt and Negri (2005: 108) describe affective labour as “labour that produces or manipulates affects such as feeling of easy, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion”. Historically, affective labour has had a strong gender bias; it has been “women’s work”, at times unpaid. Flight attendants, (up-market) waitresses (Dowling, 2006), fashion models (Wissinger, 2007), and vast segments of the adult entertainment industry, and of course all sex workers are engaged in affective work (Arvidsson, 2007: 70-72).[5]
B1a. A point of departure
Here, we would like to depart from the current debates of immaterial labour and attempt to complement these by placing at centre stage not the worker, but instead the “commodities”, the products or services that he/she produces. Instead of analysing the content of an individual’s work and trying to show the dominant position of immaterial over manual or industrial labour – the approach typically taken in the immaterial labour literature to date – we will analyse the immaterial content of particular commodities (products as well as services) that hundreds or thousands of individuals bring to life on a daily basis. Therefore, our unit of analysis is the product or service rather than the individual worker.
This new (re)focus on subjects of enquiry will be instrumental in providing a radical new perspective of work in contemporary, cognitive capitalism. In addition, we will be moving away from the sterile criticisms on Negri’s assertion of the hegemonic role of immaterial over industrial labour, in terms of the number of workers that can be classified as either “immaterial” or “industrial”.[6] In our new perspective, immaterial labour is indeed hegemonic over industrial labour, regardless of the number of individual workers that can be found to perform “immaterial” work. All work in our era has some element of immateriality: from the teamwork, and quality improvement suggestions that an industrial worker is asked to contribute, and the smile a MacDonald’s worker is obliged to greet customers with[7], to the work of a marketer, and advertiser, or a computer games developer, immaterial (and affective) labour is everywhere! But, above all – and this is precisely what we wish to draw attention to – immaterial labour, in contrast to industrial labour, can add substantially higher value in the products and services into which it is integrated.[8]
Let us, for example, focus at an iconic product of our times, such as a pair of “cool” sport shoes, like those that Nike, or Adidas, or Puma, etc are bringing to life. Some interesting features emerge. Each pair, when it reaches the consumer has travelled through an extensive and complicated value chain. At the bottom of this value chain – both in terms of costs of production, as well valued-added to the finished product – is the industrial labour that is used in the manufacturing process. Labour costs are an insignificant and miniscule amount of the total value of the product that a customer would pay. That fact might seem to be a paradox considering that a pair of shoes could be made up of more than one hundred different components that are produced in various locations, and then brought together for final assembly. An (almost) ordinary product - such as a pair of shoes – has its own global supply chain. Yet, for a pair of any “cool” fashionable trainers - a “must” for any self-respecting teenager in London or Paris – that might sell for £100 or more, the total labour cost could be about £1.
We can call this the “China effect”. What that means is that in our contemporary capitalism - thanks to the Communist Party of the most populous country on Earth - enormous amounts of anything we could ever desire, from simple umbrellas and designer handbags (both “genuine” and high-quality fakes) to electronics, mobile phones, and satellite TV boxes can be produced at any quality level we desire and at minimal, insignificant cost.
So, where does the remaining £99 (or even more) go from the value of a pair of “cool” trainers and what actually does the buyer buy when she/he makes such a purchase? What a customer primarily buys – lets say in this case a fashion-conscious teenager – is the image, the “coolness”, and the hype factor that the product itself and the brand associated with that product carries through. Subsequently, that is exactly what the price tag reflects; certainly not how much hard work (and indeed a lot of hard work by very poor people) goes into making that product.
The “coolness” factor is created by the design of the specific product, its advertising, by the brand image, and “fashionality” of the company, and the feelings that these convey to the consumer. We call all these immaterial qualities the social value of a commodity.
A high social value could often be the result of branding, but also of reputation and clustering. Haute couture in Paris, watch making in Switzerland, or banking services in London carry a reassuring reputation and an “image” built over centuries. Branding is the product of immaterial workers: the designers, the advertising people, those who assess fashion trends, the marketers, even those who design shop layouts. How much value each particular group of immaterial workers’ group would add to the finished product is not easy to quantify. But what is a fact, and what really matters is that in the vast majority of goods and services that surround us the higher value-added content comes from immaterial workers; the value of industrial labour is miniscule and often totally insignificant.
Another good example is a cup of coffee, drunk at a “gourmet” coffee shop, such as the trend-setting Starbucks. With a mark-up value of more than 300%, for a £2.50 latte, brewed with ten beans of coffee, the cost of production, including roasting and transportation, would be around 7 pence.[9]
B1b. The irrelevancy of industrial costs
That brings us to another feature of cognitive capitalism that emerges through such analysis of immaterial labour on value chains. For many products and services, there is a complete disassociation between costs of production (of which labour costs are only one factor) and its final exchange value. Even dramatic changes in the costs of raw materials (caused for example in the case of coffee by severe weather conditions and significant drops in volumes of coffee available in world markets) would have no impact at all on the price paid by consumers. Most of the clothing and footwear products we purchase are another good example of that disassociation.
In all these cases, what we really buy is not just a product (a cup of coffee, a tee-shirt or a pair of trainers purely for their utilitarian value), but a proposition for a life-style, a fashion trend, a “cool” image, a piece of happiness, moments of idealised relaxation with a splendid cup of coffee, or an individualistic portrayal of self in a mass society; all immaterial qualities that the work of hundreds or even thousands of people have amassed in something as simple as a cup of coffee, or a single piece of clothing. Immaterial labour can indeed become very expensive when it is channelled through fashion and ephemeral consumer tastes.
We can highlight this order of added values to a commodity by the following simple diagram:
[graph 1 here]
Through the perspective of a commodity, industrial labour in terms of value is at the bottom of the pyramid, producing the lowest value work, followed by the immaterial and (the higher value added forms of) affective labour at the top, even though there can often be no clear distinction between immaterial and affective labour.[10]
Further empirical research could shed light into the disassociation between costs of production (and labour costs in particular) and final value of a commodity, but our suggestion here is that this disassociation takes place in commodities (products and services) where a high content of immaterial labour is integrated into the final product. That happens especially in products and services with a strong element of (ephemeral) fashion that is accompanied by a strong brand image.
This analysis leads us to the observation of the dual character of immaterial labour. Commodities that can be associated with a (fashionable) brand name are of higher value and contain a high(er) proportion of (often) highly paid immaterial labour. On the other hand, any other commodity that does not carry a brand name is usually of lower value and contains a low(er) proportion of immaterial labour or none at all. This dual character that depends largely on branding could have a dramatic effect on the value of a product, as well as in the livelihoods of those involved in producing it. Even if we take two identical products their final value could be dramatically different if one carries a brand name and a recognised logo while the other does not. Let us return to the example we used earlier about coffee and consider two identical sacks of coffee beans that leave the same field together. If one goes into the open market it could be turned into some anonymous supermarket coffee at a bargain price, while the other if it carries a label, such as “organic” or “fair trade”, it would be marketed as a high-value premium product.[11] Similarly, two identical t-shirts leaving a Chinese factory would have enormously different price tags if one has a “trendy” label and the other has none. Branding, in that respect, is the dominant and differentiating factor in categorising commodities in either the higher-value, higher immaterial labour content or low-value, low immaterial labour content echelons.
B1c. “Fakes” as an inversion of “genuines”
The significance of a brand name can also be demonstrated by the skyrocketing production of counterfeit products. High quality “fakes” - manufactured mostly in China – are the by-products of the manufacturing and licensing agreements that many western companies hastily set up in China in the 1990s, with – what proved to be - unscrupulous local companies. Once the technology and the know-how were transferred excellent imitations sprung up to satisfy the insatiable appetite of consumers for a fashionable, status-defining accessory, piece of clothing, or a life-style product (see graph 3). The trade of fakes has reached epidemic proportions, reaching now in significant numbers even medical products. Certainly, if brand logos did not mean as much to consumers there would not have been such an exposition in the counterfeit market.