[ICTs-and-Society] statement of alternative informatics about gezi park and social media

[Matze Schmidt]

Hi,

and thanks Sean for the hint that may lead to the crisis of capital and
alienated resp. recuperated vs. retrieved information-production.

> The contradiction arises because capital today needs free labour

I only would add:
Is so called "Free labour"--Facebook's value chain is the common
example--remaining unfree as the 'prosumer' (Alvin Toffler) has to
give his (life)time and enriches the value of items saved and stocked in
the whole storage-and-display system (data and mass of attention) under
the brand (not the brand itself as there is nothing like this--only in
idealism) to the advertisement-grabbing machine? Only the 'prosumer' has
not a job there. But Facebook is paid with revenues although the ways of
realising the value here seems to be uninteresting. Productive labour, in
terms of capital, and nonproductive labour is a difference for a crisis.
Nonproductive labour can be shut down (see Greece, the whole social
affairs).

To name 'free time activity' dashed with pro-market value activity time
(standing on the 'slave-market' waiting--unpaid--for the customer to
come) 'unpaid labour' is may be incorrect as Facebook seems to perform
on the levels of Circulation of Commodities not in the fields of
production.
An extended concept of labour (nowadays often called "duty" according to
proto-fascist notions of neo-liberalism) dealing with the aspect of the
unpaid work as characteristic has to take into account wage labour and
the direct production of surplus that make the chain data->rent
possible. And within the commodities-circulation labour is
nonproductive, the focus of this circulation is trade. Social space and
its 'inhabitants' as a ware.

Arguments like the audience itself (users) would feed/produce the value
bring nothing new for this architecture of profit. Studio 54 was working
like this. Ford's biz model had the same loop: workers produced and
bought the items of exchange-value, or the other way round. Workers were
driving and Ford was selling more cars when traffic was runnig nice.
When consuming and producing are short-circuited it reminds of the
telephone book with ads, back when profit was made with 'my' telephone
number.
Is surplus-work (for the surplus of the value) with this "change within
labour (as value productive activity)"** done?

So it seems there is nothing really new going on in the _primitive
"primitive accumulation"_ (also named previous accumulation or original
accumulation, urspruengliche Akkumulation = one could even call it
wellspring accumulation).

One could see a subversive shift in the item's character within social
nets, e.g. information for a riot at Gezi in the environment of a
exchange-value producing system. But this information functions as
use-value--like a car (Ford, VW, etc.) being used to get to the
political demonstration.

One practical option for rebels on a stage that prevents looting the
supermarkets and occupying factories*: burn the car/the information and
stop the exchange-value and the alienated use-value. Another: Use the
use-value.
_________________________
* The SI was actually writing about "some who wanted to loot and most
  workers simply got back to work after some days." (my mail to Andrew
  Feenberg, July 9, 2013, 2:51:15 PM). See "Enragés and Situationists
  in the Occupations Movement" in many copies online.
** http://academia.edu/1571230/The_Value_of_Marx_Free_Labour_Rent_and_Primitive_Accumulation_in_Facebook
   Here the authors claim a "'free labour' model, which takes place
   outside of the employment relationship but nevertheless really does
   produce value, is accompanied by a new system of profiteering and
   accumulation not based in labour and value production, but in the
   realization of 'rents' based on enclosure and appropriation." But
   what is and was the production of surplus if not "enclosure and
   appropriation" of production itself?