Cultural Studies and Capitalism

Proletarianization of the Digital Age I'd like to look into the method in which the proletarianization of the digital age, through capital, affects our collective and personal humanity through shifting physical and social influences. The world is changing and continues to change. The Digital Age is upon us, and constantly influencing our day-to-day events regardless of our awareness of the fact. French philosopher Bernard Stiegler refers to these influencers as "psycho-technologies" where he says, "psychopower is the systematic organization of the capture of attention made possible by pyschotechnologies" (Stiegler 2010). The "capture of our attention" and its effects upon us is our, and Stiegler's, primary consideration here. Stiegler uses an expanded idea of Marx's proletarianization, which he developed via Simondon. Stiegler says that, "Attention is the reality of individuation" as defined by Simondon (Stiegler 2010). In other words, the realization of our individuation is in question when our attention is in question. We are in danger of losing ourselves when our attention is at stake. The destruction of our brains availability "is both the destruction of the psychical apparatus and the destruction of the social apparatus" (Stiegler 2010). It stands to reason that our brain's attention is valuable real estate. This value, in the Marxist definition of the word, is the commodity for which we battle with capital and our own alleged proletarianization. In Capital, Marx introduces the idea of proletarianization in which a formerly unemployed person becomes employed via wage labor through capital. This is the process by which an individual becomes a proletariat. In "The Communist Manifesto" Marx describes the proletariats thusly, "A class of laborer, who live only so long as they find work, and find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market (Marx and Engels 2000:8). To better understand the process of proletarianization of the worker, and its transition into the digital age, we must first take a deeper look into the mechanism that produces it, capital. I. The Capital Proletariat The proletarian stems from the initial capital ideals of value, commodity, and surplus that displace them. A products use value, or commodity, is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another (Marx 1977:26). We create a commodity via our needs and wants, Marx isnt concerned by which one it is. A commodity offers two perspective characters, an exchange value and use value. The exchange value offers a measurement, whereas the use value offers us the usefulness of a commodity, after consumption (Marx 1977:28). Labor, according to Marx, possesses the same twofold nature; for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use values (Marx 1977:29). To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond as many different kinds of useful labor, classified according to the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in the social division of labor. This division of labor is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labor (Marx 1977:30).

On the one hand all labor is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labor power, and in its character of identical abstract human labor, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labor is the expenditure of human labor power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labor, it produces use values (Marx 1977:32). Therefore, we see that a commodity is dependent upon labor for its usefulness, however labor is not dependent upon a commodity in this same way. This is important to understanding and seeing the connection and interaction of commodities and labor respectively. A commodity offers a use value enabled by labor; otherwise it is essentially an exchange value. Therefore, labor is a direct influencer of a commoditys use-value, and as such a vital and crucial piece in the development of capital and eventually the proletarianization of the worker, via the introduction of surplus value, and then wage, as the worker and capitalist become dependent upon it for subsistence. Later, Marx shows us how we become a commodity for the capitalist, via surplus value, and then further, a commodity for ourselves, via wage labor. We allow this via our own fetishism, forgetting that an idea, capital, is a human product, originated by us. Surplus value is the excess of a commodities exchange value, produced via labor. With surplus value, the capitalist is able to make a profit. This makes the workers use value labor, and the capitalists end goal the use of that labor for surplus value. Marx says, Our capitalist has two objects in view: in the first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold, commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the commodities used in its production, that is, of the means of production and the labor-power, that he purchased with his good money in the open market. His aim is to produce not only a use-value, but a commodity also; not only usevalue, but value; not only value, but at the same time surplus value (Marx 1977:128-129). Here enters the exploitation of the worker. If the capitalist only makes a profit through the greater sell of his commodity, and the commodity does not profit from exchange value alone, the capitalist must employ his means of production and labor to increase his profit. Now we know that the capitalist divides his capital into two parts. One part he lays out in means of production. This is the constant part of his capital. The other part he lays out in living labor-power. This part forms his variable capital. On the basis of the same mode of social production, the division of capital into constant and variable differs in different branches of production, and within the same branch of production, too, this relation changes with changes in the technical conditions and in the social combinations of the processes of production (Marx 1977: 212). The worker is the variable with which the capitalist is able to manipulate. As machines are introduced, to increase productivity, the worker becomes the drone, and the machine eventually works the worker, further disassociating himself. The worker is worked, and ultimately becomes the commodity himself via wages. Wages are the value the laborer receives from his labor; they provide his subsistence and, as such, keep him in his right place. Wage labor is the foundation for proletarianization. Through the mechanics of capital we see the worker proletarianized, stolen of his individuation, his wider opportunity, and enslaved to the system he helped create. Similarly we can begin to draw comparisons between the capital proletarinization of the worker and the digital proletarinization of the worker via machines, and ultimately capital.

II. Digital Proletarianization According to Stiegler, proletarianization is the process through which an individual or collective knowledge, being formalized through a technique, a machine, or an apparatus, can escape the individual who thus loses this knowledge which was until then his knowledge (AI Manifesto 2010). Steigler sees our proletarianization as, primarily, our disindividuation, an idea that he derives from Simdondon (Steigler 2011:59). For Stiegler, the lack of individuation we encounter from machines is a direct result of the attention gap it creates. Again Stiegler argues that our attention is the reality of our individuation, our intellectual capital, and with its loss we are losing ourselves. Attention, which is the mental faculty of concentrating on an object, that is, of giving oneself an object, is also the social faculty of taking care of this object as of another, or as the representative of another, as the object of the other This is why the destruction of attention is both the destruction of the psychical apparatus and the destruction of the social apparatus (formed by collective individuation) to the extent that the later constitutes of system of care, given that to pay attention is also to take care. The major stake of attention deficit disorder and of everything stemming from the destructive effects of the exploitation of attention by psycho-power is therefore the fragilisation of the infantile psychic apparatus and of sociability founded on philia (Stiegler 2010). Our stolen attention is, therefore, the complete exploitation of capital upon the individual. It is no longer masked, nor seen, it becomes a fetishism, a creation of our own doing, forgotten by our unintentional distancing, enslaving us to our own creation. This is proletarianization in both Marxs and Stieglers terms, the losing of our-selves to our own destructive effects. Stiegler assesses that this is what destroys the industrial capitalism of investment: the organ of psychopower is marketing as the arm of a financialised capitalism become essentially speculative (Stiegler 2010). Psycho-power, the systematic capture of attention via psycho-technologies, is the new deception of speculative capitalism. In Marxs Capital, wage based labor is the primary step towards the workers proletarianization. The worker moves, or rather is forced, into the system of wage labor in order to provide his own subsistence. He can become the capitalist or remain the proletariat. In the digital age our individuation, or lack thereof, as signified by our unity with machines, psycho-powers, is Stieglers primary concern. Stiegler faults Marx with his inability to see the machine as anything other than a means, by which we survive (Stiegler 2011:58). However, the machine in Marxs view might also be translated as a psycho-power, in that, the machine works the worker (Hutnyk 2011). Marx writes in the Daily Tribune in 1861, the progressive division of labor has, to a certain extent, emasculated the general intellect of the middle-class men [and women] by the circumscription of all their energies and mental faculties within the narrow spheres of their mercantile, industrial and professional concerns (Marx 1861). Marx is acknowledging that a general intellect exists, and this general intellect is at risk to manipulation due to the progressive division of labor. In 1861, this references the increasing use of machines and their beginning cognitive effects upon the worker. On the other hand, Stiegler refers to an Intellectual Capital the value of our intellectual being, as being the mind-matter at risk in progressive capitalism. Stiegler differentiates intellectual capital from Marxs idea of general intellect as reliant upon and/or juxtaposed against retentional psycho-technologies, unforeseen by Marx. He says, In the 20th century, it was consumers who lost their savoir-vivrereplaced by apparatus, such as the television set, which kept children occupied, and by services, such as the television network, which kept children occupied through the apparatus

for televisual reception, but in such a way as to create available brain time. This loss led to a deprivation of recognition, sociability, and finally existence, generating the suffering of the consumer become miserable. But the intellectual workers of cognitive capitalism, the functions of which are increasingly confined within the parameters of information systems the principles of which they are unable to modifyfrequently because they are unaware of themare subjected as well to a proletarianization of higher cognitive functions where what is lost is that which constitutes the life of the spirit as a critical, that is, rational, authority, capable of theoretical self-formalizing and as such of being self-critical (AI Manifesto 2010). In a recent essay in entitled Proletarianizaiton, John Hutnyk says this, Marx says the machine works the worker, many times throughout his later work, it is clear General Intellect is both a continuation of the deskilling entailed in the industrial division of labor, but extending also to bourgeois ideas and ruling class circles more generally (Hutnyk 2011). I dont think Stiegler intends to particularly discredit the idea of Marxist proletarianization as much as extend it, in agreement. However, I think he might fail to recognize the general intellect regarded by Marx is a broad envisioning viewpoint. We must concede that Marx would not foresee every detail of our digital proletarianization, but Im not sure its fair to speculate that his ideas do not particularly translate, at least in part. In this case, Marxs general intellect carries a wider vision than Stiegler might perceive, yet naturally cannot foresee the futurist particulars of intellectual cognitive capitalism (i.e. psycho-technologies) that we are now circumspect with. As such, I dont particularly see Marx as short sighted, or Stiegler as especially heavy handed, in their thoughts. The real risk in all of this is our distraction, mass distraction, or cretinization this is the losing of our-selves within the system of capitalism and the collective general intellect. In Proletarianization, Hutnyk says, We have been made to un-think by separations, dissociation, grammar. This might be reformulated in Marxist phrasing as the machines think us the General Intellect becomes an oppressive collective will, alienated from us (Hutnyk 2011). Marx quotes the capitalist Adam Smith from The Wealth of Nations, a foundation of capitalist literature, The understandings of the greater part of men, are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations ... has no occasion to exert his understanding... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind... It corrupts even the activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigor and perseverance in any other employments than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall (Smith 2005: 637). This is particularly disturbing for two reasons: 1. It is written for and by capitalists. 2. It finds the same verdict that the naysayer has towards the cretinization of the laborer, but passes his stupidity off as necessary for the greater good (Smith 1995:110). Stiegler talks of a similar stupidity, instead referring to stupidity as the phenomenon of generalized proletarianization, that is, by a general loss of knowledge (replaced by information) which affects designers and consumers as well as producers (AI Manifesto 2010). This is the kind of loss of knowledge that cretinizes our fragile libidinal economy into a mass misery of mush consistently enslaved

to our manufactured system of disassociation and consumer manipulation, reduced to infantile behaviors making us unaware of our circumstance, and unable to remedy the situation. We must take care of our innate individuality and resources in defense of the proletarianization of the worker via the machines that works us. Our psychical and social apparatuses are laid vulnerable to the tools of the digital age. III. The Effects of Psycho-Technologies Psycho-technologies have developed with the radio (1920), with television (1950) and with digital technologies (1990), spreading all over the planet through various forms of networks, and resulting in a constant industrial canalization of attention which has provoked recently a massive phenomenon of the destruction of this attention that American nosologists call attention deficit disorder (Stiegler 2010). Stieglers definition of psycho-technologies is governed by the idea of an all encompassing psycho-power, or sway, they hold over us. The radio, then TV, and now the digital era fight for our attention and selves in a numbing paralysation of our senses. As Marx would say the machine works the worker, the machine now, is the worker, the worker is an appendage. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labor proceed from him; here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage (Marx 1977:281). Instead of a physical representation of enslavement, it becomes an artificial representation, the capitalists capitalist, and machines to govern the machine. Productivity, as described by Marx, replaces itself the machine replaces the human and fetishism occurs, we forget that we are not machines and that we once created them. The machine is the individual and collective, who developed and innovated the technical milieu of their work, tools and systems. The creative agents of the milieu become the subjects of it, even objects. Within a system of tools and knowledges, workers become machinery with a cost, including cost of maintenance, repair and scrapping, that is separated from any self-constituting grasp (Hutnyk 2011). This is especially concerning for those we know as Digital Natives those born after the introduction of the digital age. They have no recollect to draw from concerning their humanity and individuation before the digital (Prensky 2001). This is how the Digital differs from television, radio, and possibly the worker as represented in Capital. Similar to and yet more captured than the proletariat worker, who also is born within a system, the Digital Natives born system is oppressively defunct of the ability to escape his psycho-powered environment that psychotechnologies have created, which he now sees as reality, not a manufactured reality. Not only is he not able to escape, he is unaware of this need; it is his reality, as his intellectual capital is, all the while, stolen without his knowledge. This destruction of attention is a particular case, and especially serious one, of the destruction of libidinal energy whereby the capitalist libidinal economy self-destructs Now, this precocious liquidation of libidinal economy is also what destroys the industrial capitalism of investment: the organ of psycho-power is marketing as the arm of a financialised capitalism become essentially speculative (Stiegler 2010).

This is digital proletarianization, and the masked trick of capitalism today. It invades our available brain space, and replaces our long circuit thinking for short circuit bursts, taking our libidinal energy and inherent individuation with it. Leaving us with a sort of systemic stupidity or beastliness, unable to process depths of knowledge, only snippets of information. Our transindividuation the collective individuation following the individuals individuation, is at stake without the ability to first free our-selves. Stiegler talks here of short and long circuit thinking: The formalisation of transindividuation here appears to constitute the ultimate and perfect concretisation of what I have elsewhere described as the destruction of the associatedmilieu, which are the symbolic milieu, by the formation of dissociated milieu that short-circuit the transitional instances of transindividuation, which form circuits of transindividuation which are too long for the rhythms of evolution of industrial society. And yet, I also believe that the formalisation of transindividuation constitutes an altogether unheard-of possibility for the reconstitution of the long circuits of transindivuation. Here is where the stakes show up in concentrated form as a crossroads for a planet having become globally hyperindustrial (Stiegler 2010). As Marx said in regard to our capitalist liberation, the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all (Marx 2000). We are unable to reach the collective development of all, transindividuation, without first developing our-selves. The short-circuiting of our individuation is the destruction of long circuit free development for all. In his book Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Marc Prensky gives a staggering statistic towards the mental welfare of recent college graduates Todays average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV) (Prensky 2001:1). He merely looks at as a natural changing of our brains, and our need to adapt. But, like Stiegler, I think there is something fundamentally at stake here when we move from the traditional linear long circuit mode of thought we have been cultivating through centuries to a rather abrupt halt of short circuit jabs at information. From his book The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains, Journalist Nicolas Carr says this, Greater access to knowledge is not the same as greater knowledge. An ever-increasing plethora of facts and data is not the same as wisdom. The breadth of knowledge is not the same as depth of knowledge. Multitasking is not the same as complexity (Carr 2011:22). We lose perspective, we lose balance, and we risk the deeper gains we have made in humanity. Like Capital, we lose our-selves in the system weve created, and the system owns us, in our forgetfulness, however, unlike Capital, we also loose certain particular cognitive assets that are swallowed by the psycho-power of psycho-technologies: The intellectual workers of cognitive capitalism, the functions of which are increasingly confined within the parameters of information systems the principles of which they are unable to modifyfrequently because they are unaware of themare subjected as well to a proletarianization of higher cognitive functions where what is lost is that which constitutes the life of the spirit (AI Manifesto 2010). In Capital, Marx talks of brain labour, he says, a schoolmaster is a productive laborer when, in addition to belaboring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation (Marx 1977: 354). In context, Marx is talking about the laborers production of surplus value, regardless of the labor:

Hence the notion of a productive laborer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between laborer and product of labor, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the laborer as the direct means of creating surplus value (Marx 1977: 354-355). He seems to be saying that the work a laborer does does not matter, or, alter the wage laborer model. Head labor and hand labor arent particularly different, with regards to the production of surplus value. However, it is my view, that Marx draws no equation between the differences of psychosis impact. He is merely referring to their role in the production of surplus value as per their particular division of labor entails, which is not different. The two are equal distributers of capitalist surplus value. This is an important distinction. I dont believe Marx is particularly talking about the psychosis involved in each division of labor, so much as the surplus value that division of labor creates. With this distinction we can begin to draw conclusions between the differences of Marxs capital proletarian and Stieglers digital extension. In fact, it seems that Marx might actually draw, or at least predict, these differences himself. Again the quote from his writing in the New York Daily Tribune in 1861, the progressive division of labor has, to a certain extent, emasculated the general intellect of the middle-class men [and women] by the circumscription of all their energies and mental faculties within the narrow spheres of their mercantile, industrial and professional concerns (Marx 1861). In relation to the bourgeoisie classes he is talking about, it appears as if he is forecasting the relationship between progressive labor and the emasculation of mental intellect, thereby agreeing, at least in part, with Stieglers view of attention loss and depravation. As such, the mental capacities exhausted in constant mental engagement, psycho-technologies that encompass us daily, effect our being rather differently than the manual tasks of the early proletariat. Our knowledge is lost in the knowledge of the machine, collectively and individually; we are merely appendages. The laborer does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the laborer (Marx 1977: 445). The brain, which the machine now works, is stolen from us, and because of this, our entirety is controlled by it. Controlling our psycho-power is the contemporary arm of capitalist production (Stiegler 2010). Marx says, As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand (Marx 1977: 432).

IV. Digitization Faced with the unheard of possibilities opened up by digitalization, the whole world proclaims, through names such as the knowledge society or the knowledge economy, the advent of a new age. But the digital, which is a pharmakon, can increase generalized proletarianization as well as bring it to an end (Stiegler 2010). There is no easy or likely reverse in the collective participation of digitalisation within the globalized hierarchy of hyperindustrial capitalism. However, there is hope in the individuals choice and ability to take care of their intellectual capital, and, as a result, hope in the collective individuation towards operation of the fully effective socialization of the psychical (Stiegler 2010). I also believe that the formalisation of transindividuation constitutes an altogether unheard-of possibility for the reconstitution of the long circuits of transindivuation. Here is where the stakes show up in concentrated form as a crossroads for a planet having become globally hyperindustrial (Stiegler 2010). Digitization is not all bad, and like most things requires appropriate attention and thoughtful balance. The system within which it operates is the actual culprit here, no different than as in

Marxs time, and it is important to remember this, lest we lose site even further of our creation. The key point here is that it is not the fetishized, digital convergence of things that matters so much as the convergence as proletarianIzed labor powers of people (Hutnyk 2011). It is the same old trick and toil of capital to steal our energies. As Jameson says of Marxs impossible presentation of capital We are, somehow, to lift our minds to a point at which it is possible to understand that capitalism is at one and the same time the best thing that has ever happened to the human race, and the worst (Jameson 1991:86). Its contributions and simultaneous destruction are the difficult uneasiness with which society must navigate daily within the context of ideals and reality. In an ever-increasing digital engagement, in which we are constantly surrounded and unable to completely escape, the Digital Native embraces this engagement as the norm, they see no need to escape or provide balance, as this is the world theyve been born into. Men make their own history, but they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past (Marx 1976, 11:103). For the care of our collective well-being, we must endeavour to care for the individuals balance and boundaries. Education and ethics are important in the awareness, and distinction of, psychical and social boundaries of technical/digital life for the next generations. To pay attention is to care (Stiegler 2010).

Bibliography Ars Industrialis. (2010). Manifesto 2010, http://arsindustrialis.org/manifesto-2010, accessed 31 October 2010. Carr, Nicholas G. (2010). The Shallows, What the internet is doing to our brains, W.W. Norton Company, New York, NY. Hutnyk, J. (2010). "Proletarianization", http://commsmustwrite.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/chapter-3-proletarianization. Jameson, F. (1991). "Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism", Duke University Press. Marx, K. (1861). The New-York Daily Tribune, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/21.html, 21 October 1861. Marx, K. (1959). "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844", Trans. Martin Mulligan, Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR. Marx, K. (1976). Collected Works, 40 vols., New York, NY: International Publishers, 11:103. Marx, K. (1977). "Capital Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy", Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Edited by Frederick Engels, Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (2000). The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Trans. Samuel Moore and Friedrich Engels, Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org). Prensky, M. (2001). "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", MCB University Press, Vol. 9, No. 5. Smith, A. (2005). "The Wealth of Nations", Penn State. Stiegler, B. (2010). "Within the limits of capitalism, economizing means taking care", Ars Indsutrailis, http://arsindustrialis.org/node/2922. Stiegler, B. (2011). "The Decadence of Industrial Democracies", Trans. Daniel Ross, Polity Press, Cambridge.

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