The Cybernetic Revolution and the Crisis of Capitalism (page 10 of 11)
By Jerry Harris and Carl Davidson
The Chicago Third Wave Study Group

In America there are two growing class strata that need close attention. These are the new knowledge workers and the rapidly expanding contingent labor force. Contingent labor includes part-time and temporary workers and home workers. Today temp agencies are the largest employers in the U.S. This sector, while holding some highly skilled workers, mainly consists of low paid, low skilled labor. Knowledge workers are on the other end of the third wave revolution; they are generally highly paid and in demand. Technical occupations and professionals will be the largest job category by year 2000, representing close to 20% of the labor force. (Tribune, 11-7-93) But even among knowledge workers, there exists rapid turnover and layoffs.

Contingent workers, as the most abused sector of labor, contain the potential for a militant anticapitalist movement. But new methods of organizing, different from traditional trade unions, need to be created to match the ways contingent workers experience their oppression. These will include combining community-based organizing with workplace organizing. Social demands like guaranteed annual income, lifelong education, and universal health care need to be combined with the traditional economic demands of the union contract.

Knowledge workers today are in the position of the old industrial proletariat. They are key to the enhanced production of surplus value. Just as blue-collar workers contained two sides--the conservative labor aristocracy as well as the most progressive sector of labor supportive of democracy and socialism--knowledge workers will divided into two as well. One sector will form the social base for the defense of information capitalism regardless of its excesses. Others will deeply understand the potential the new technology has for creating and sustaining a new social order. This progressive side also is born from the conditions of its own labor, which are enmeshed in the most advanced forms of capital.

This was Marx's argument for the importance of the industrial proletariat. Not just that they were exploited, but they were organized in the most modern and important section of capital. Therefore they encompassed the most advanced forms of political and economic organization. The economic organization of knowledge workers emphasizes less hierarchy, less bureaucracy, more information about and control of the job process, and greater participation or empowerment at the site of work. This lays the basis for socialist norms of labor, and blurs the lines between mental and manual work, which is the historic division between management and employee. The political voice of these strata has already emerged in today's battles for democratic use and control of information technologies.

Lastly the new social movements need to be understood in their relationship to the crisis in the conditions of production. The movement of feminists, ecologists, and community-based organizations correspond to the reproduction of labor power, the exploitation of nature, and the pressure on urban space. Just as the labor movement was born from the first contradiction of capitalism, these struggles arise from the second contradiction.

The feminist concerns over the control of a women's body, health care, child care; the struggle of young people for education and culture; the green movement's battles against pollution, global warming and deforestation; community struggles over housing, industrial location, and drugs; all reflect the cost of capital externalization and a tightening circle of available resources. Since the state controls and regulates the conditions of production, the focus of these struggles is with local, state and federal government. Traditional Marxists who view point of production organizing as the most valid form of struggle need to rethink long held beliefs. The immediate struggle against capital grows from both economic and social grounds.