New Criticals


At a certain point in an information economy, the computer has become a conflation of all three questions and a response to them, declaring all together what is made, how it is made, and (slightly more complex) who makes it. Digitization won’t reverse itself. In addition to the material facets of production are the immaterial social and affective dimensions: “instruments of labor not only supply a standard of the degree of development which human labor has attained, but they also indicate the social relations within which men work.” [6] Work still retains a productive social character in spite of capitalism. There lies potential value in labor within the aspect of co-operation inherent in most work, which relates most particularly to the factory: “when a worker co-operates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.” [7] A factory’s moral value arises from the requisite co-operation of workers under one roof, an incidental but important character of factory labor. The role that social interaction plays in the labor process never relents. At one time, the most valuable and most dangerous move was to bring workers together under one roof. Now, recreational socialization itself is capitalized.