The Informatized Worker

I think it is helpful to compare the different histories of capitalism outlined by D-W and Robins and Webster. The cycles of struggle (professional worker - mass worker - socialized worker) tend to roughly correspond to the periodic mobilizations referenced by Robins and Webster. I think it's valuable to note how D-W's distinctions are framed by his narrative of working class struggle against monolithic capital whereas Robins and Webster seem to regard changes in capitalism in terms of changing power relations. Whereas D-W portrays a Fordist/post-Fordist narrative, Robins and Webster seem to believe that late capitalism is a continuation of processes of administration and control articulated by Taylorism.

This distinction may seem irrelevant, but it helps me when thinking about the socialized worker’s reskilling. At first I thought D-W and Robins and Webster were at odds. Robins and Webster maintain, “Technological domination becomes extensively and systematically used in spheres far beyond the workplace. This transformation represents an intensification and reconfiguration of Fordism as a way of life...this shift represents a restructuring and reorganization of relations of power” (114). On the other hand, D-W explains that “technological envelopment does not necessarily result in a subjugation of social labor...Although initiated by capital for purposes of control and command, as the system grows it becomes for the socialized worker something else entirely, an ecology of machines” (163).

However, upon reading a bit closer, it seems that the two are much more aligned; D-W just seems more optimistic about the possibility for reappropriation of power and countemobilization (fitting given his narrative of cycles of struggle).

It seems that when drawing a distinction between information and communication, D-W coincides with Robins and Webster. “By informating production, capital seems to augment its powers of control. But it simultaneously stimulates capacities that threaten to escape its command and overspill into rivulets irrelevant to, or even subversive of, profit” (166).

After all that, I guess all I want to say is that I think the socialized worker is not reskilled, but rather informatized, with the centralized, vertical, hierarchic connotations described by D-W (166). Apologies - it's 3 A.M.