Co-Creative Prosumer Labor, Financial Knowledge Capitalism, Andmarxist Value Theory

Co-creative Prosumer Labor, Financial Knowledge Capitalism, andMarxist Value Theory

RUNNING HEAD: Prosumer Labor and Marxism

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John Michael Roberts, Department of Sociology and Communications, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, United Kingdom

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Published in The Information Society vol. 32, no. 1, 2016

Abstract

Some argue that the ‘co-creative labor’ of ‘prosumers’, whooften work for free on social media sites, represent new types of exploitation insofar that they provide novel ways for capitalists to accumulate surplus value. For others, however,prosumers illustrate how capitalism is now dominated by commercial and non-commercial informational networks that build brand value in new innovative ways, especially through ‘immaterial’ relations of communication and information. This paper argues that each perspective has limitations. By workingfrom an alternative Marxist perspective the paper outlines some of these limitations andthen argues that co-creative labor andprosumers are best explored as representing unproductive labor that helps transfer, but not produce, already generated surplus value from the productive to unproductive spheres of the global economy. Through their free labour, prosumers thus have the potential to cut costs for new media companies in the unproductive sphere of the economy. The paper further suggests that the ‘unproductive’ actions of prosumers arecompatible with a financialized form of knowledge capitalism.

Keywords: co-creativeprosumers; financialization; Marxism; social media; unproductive labor; value relations

Introduction

In The Third Wave Alvin Toffler claimsthat mass production and standardized consumption has given way to ‘prosumption’ based on a ‘do-it-yourself’ ethic in whichconsumers take on a more active role in the production of certain goods (Toffler 1980). Shoe stores, supermarkets, banking, and so on, rely less on the skills of support workers, salespeople, or advisers and more on the customer performing tasks that were once the remit of professional employees (Toffler 1980).Nevertheless, and as Bruns (2008) notes, Tofflerstill essentially sees producers and consumers as distinct groups with separate roles to play society. Our digital age has however fundamentally altered this relationship.Value chains are no longer beholden to distinctions between production, distribution, and consumption, and users now enjoy the opportunity to act‘incrementally as content producers by gradually extending and improving the information present in the information commons’ (Bruns2008, 21). Peer production networks and the digital commons are important in this respect because they encourage users to freelydistribute digital products amongst themselves to help improve the product in question (Banks and Deuze 2009; Herman et al. 2006). In turn, owners of digital products encourage co-creative practices because they gain value from this activity.

One issue of controversy about these practices concerns the extent to which co-creative labor and the actions of prosumers might also be associated with new modes of exploitation. Scholz (2008) for example argues that Web 2.0 media platforms are owned and controlled by a small number of media companies like NewsCorp who profit from the free labor and co-creativity of users. A form of labor exploitation therefore occurs, albeit one based on voluntary and non-coerced acts of labor. Banks and Humphreys (2008), on the other hand, understand these processes in a different light. They argueinstead that co-creative labor and peer production networks form a hybrid organization that generate a variety of products, ‘which are an uneasy and at times messy mix of the commercial and non-commercial,markets and non-markets, the proprietary and the non-proprietary’ (Banks and Humphreys 2008, 406). Co-creative labor can therefore alsoengage ‘in creative problem solving, drawing on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems’ (Florida 2002, 69).

The Information Society has been actively involved in this ongoing debate. Drawing on Marxism, Christian Fuchs for example published an article in thejournal which argues that prosumers are indeed an exploited class. Social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook or MySpace encourage users to generate and produce content for the sites in question. Users are thus productive laborersbecause they create new content for multinational companies who own and control social media sites.As these companies attract more users theyare able toattract third party advertisers to their respective sites.‘While no product is sold to the users, the users themselves are sold as a commodity to advertisers’ (Fuchs 2010, 191). Fuchs therefore insists that SNSs are illustrative of how all of social life and not just production relations have become sites of exploitation. ‘Thus, it is necessary to go beyond the traditional class concept that considers only wage labor as productive and exploited because there are also many unpaid laborers who are necessary for...capital accumulation’ (Fuchs 2010,192).

In their replyalso published in The Information Society,Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) criticize Fuchs’s portrayal of contemporary capitalism on two main grounds.First, they dispute the claim that Marx’s value theory of exploitation can be applied to make sense of contemporary capitalism. Marx was a theorist of industrial capitalism who sought to measure the contribution of labor in production in terms of quantifiable units of time so that he could then push forward his argument that workers produce more for capitalists than they receive in wages. However, the industrial era has given way to a digital, informational and social media era. As such, ‘value creation on social media platforms is poorly related to quanta of productive time’ (Arvidsson and Colleoni 2012,136). Marx’s labor theory of value therefore no longer holds as much importance as it once did. Instead, Arvidsson and Colleoni claim it makes more sense to analyse value creation in relation to the ability of social media platforms to produce ‘affective bonds’ between users that bring them together in a community. Creatingvalue, for instance,no longer occurs ‘through direct commodity exchange where market prices correspond to necessary labor time’ but now takes place through ‘reputation, brand, and value conventions that are supported by public affective investments intervene to distort, obscure, and mediate this relationship’ (Arvidsson and Colleoni 2012,142; original emphasis).Second, Arvidsson and Colleoni suggest that social media platformsare foundedon affectual and immaterial relations between prosumers as well as that of financial valuations by different global corporation and financial markets (Arvidsson and Colleoni 2012).Accumulation thusarisesoutside the remit of capitalist production – through the work of prosumers for example – and these various networks are increasingly subject to financial evaluations.

The aim of this paper is to critically assess both viewpoints and then offer up an alternative Marxist perspectiveonco-creative labor and prosumers. Accordingly, the next section deals first with some of Fuchs’s arguments. Even though he works from a defence of a Marxist theory of exploitation in trying to make sense of digital media, this paper argues that Fuchs tends to misread Marx’s labor theory of value. This is seen most graphically in his adherence to an analytical Marxist distributional theory of exploitation.Questionably, this perspective focuses on rational decisions made by individualsin exchange relations at the expense of investigatingthe historically specific abstract relations of domination which Marx argues are unique only to capitalism. As a result it puts forward a rather general theory of exploitation that fails to fully distinguish productive from unproductive labor.This distinction is crucial in ascertaining the capitalist form of prosumer activity. As this paper shows, ‘prosumers’ do not in fact generate surplus value primarily because they are not productive labor. Instead, prosumers are best seen as helping to create profits for unproductive capital in the sphere of circulation.

The subsequent sectionexplores some key points in Arvidsson and Colleoni’s argument. It shows that they similarly misinterpret Marx but on slightly different grounds. They mistakenly suggest, or at least imply, that Marx works with what is termed as an embodied theory of value based on the accumulation of quantitative units ofphysiological labor. According toArvidsson and Colleoni, this theory of value was a prominent feature of industrial capitalism but has since been surpassed by new financial forms and by peer production. Problematically, however, Arvidsson and Colleonitend to overstate the nature of this transition andmuch of what they claim to be ‘new’ about this informational and financial form can in fact be accommodated in Marxist theory.

By setting out these critical observations the paper then briefly puts forward an alternative Marxist explanation of co-creative labor and prosumers. It does this by firstly advancing a Marxist account of the emergence of financial capitalism and its relationship to knowledge and information. Prosumers are shown to operate primarily in this ‘non-productive’ sphere of circulation. At the same time, the paper argues that in one important respect prosumers reproduce a distinctive ideology compatible with financial neoliberalism. The paper then makes some concluding observations. We begin first by critically exploring Fuchs’s Marxist theory of the immaterial labor of prosumers.

Marxist Value Theory and the Creative Labor of Prosumers: Productive and Unproductive Theories of Exploitation

Many have been critical about the rise of co-creative labor and prosumers. Working from a non-Marxist perspective Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) voice a common concern that Web 2.0 sites actively encourage users to co-create partsof these sites, yet ultimate ownership of profits remains in the hands of a few individuals(Ritzer and Jurgenson2010). From a Marxist viewpoint, Fisher argues that the ‘free’ labor given by prosumers presents capital with new outlets for accumulation, ‘particularly the production of information through communication and sociability’ (Fisher 2012, 179). Some post-Marxists espouse a similar view to the extent that they argue thatprosumption represents ‘free labor’ in the sense that people seem to volunteer to freely channeltheir desires, aspirations, wishes, narratives directly into the production of goods (Terranova 2000). Commodity production is therefore no longer only concerned with embodied skills but is also based on the exploitation of ‘immaterial labor’; those ‘affective’ personable traits such as ‘feelings of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement or passion’ (Hardt and Negri 2000,293; see alsoDeuze 2007).

Christian Fuchs develops his own Marxist account of prosumers and exploitation which also draws in part on other critical approaches. For Marxists exploitation is normally associated with the extraction of surplus value from labor – surplus value being the greater sum of value created by labor in the production process than is paid out by capitalists in the form of wages and the purchase of new means of production. According to Fuchs, however, the Marxist theory of exploitation needs to be rethought to take account of new forms of labor in contemporary informational capitalism.To elaborate on this claimFuchs selectively borrows from Erik Olin Wright’s theory of social class as basedon relationships of exploitation (Wright 1985, 1989, 2005).[1] For Wright,individuals are economically exploited if they do not own or control productive resources and are thus denied the full fruits of their labor (Wright 1985). These people are excluded from gaining access to specific productive assets and resources and therefore are materially deprived of these assets and resources by those who own and control them.

Wright outlines two further types of exploitation. First, he saysthat increases in productivity are gained in part by how the technical division of labor is shaped. ‘Theway the production process is organized is a productive resource independent of the expenditure of labor power, the use of the means of production, or the skills of the producer’ (Wright 1989, 16). Wright further insists that the organization of the labor process is a productive asset and is subsequently also a form of exploitation, although in this case it is exploitation through resources of expert authority and/or exploitation through organizational assets (for example, exploitation through managerial control of an organization).

Second, Wrightclaims that exploitation alsooccurs through assets associated with the skills one possesses. Those who possess certain skills which are also valued by particular capitalists often can and do command greater wages than those who do not possess these skills. To maintain their higher wages these workers therefore have an incentive to protect their skill base by restricting their supply through a system of credentials. A skilled worker can thenbe paid a price for his or her skills which is above that of those who do not possess these skills. Exploitation thus transpires through wage differentials between workers based on skills and knowledge (Wright 1985). ‘For skill to become the basis of exploitation, therefore, it has to be in some sense scarce relative to its demand, and there must be a mechanism through which individual owners of scarce skills are able to translate that scarcity into higher incomes’ (Wright 1989, 21). From his discussion of exploitation Wright then proceeds to outline twelve distinct class locations associated with the ownership of the means of production, organization assets, and skills assets (Wright 1985).

By drawing on selective elements of Wright’s work, Fuchs similarly argues that capitalist exploitation isfounded on ‘the existenceof an exploiting class that deprives at least one exploitedclass of its resources, excludes it from ownership, and appropriatesresources produced by the exploited…’ (Fuchs 2010, 186). Fuchs thus expands and widens Marx’s labor theory of value to incorporate labor outside of the immediate process of productionand therebyincludesdifferent types of knowledge work. Two general categories of knowledge work are important in this respect. Direct knowledge workers are those in direct wage labor or those who are self-employed who produce knowledge goods and services through their skilled labor. Software developers, data consultants, statisticians, musicians, and filmmakers are typical examples. Indirect knowledge workerson the other hand are usuallyunpaid or low paidlabor and have no or little organizational assets. Included in this category are home workers, students, the unemployed, migrants, underpaid temporary workers, and so on. For all of these reasons Fuchs can argue that prosumers areproductive laborers because they produce new content for multinational companies for free. As a result,‘the production of surplus value and hence exploitation is not limited to wage-labor, but reaches society as a whole’ insofar that it is located in the direct and indirect labor of ‘the multitude in common’ (Fuchs 2010, 188-89).

In employing elements of Wright’s class theory, however,Fuchs’s fails to mention that Wright’s inspiration for his ideas on social class stem in partfromJohn Roemer’s analytical defence of a Marxist theory of exploitation(see Wright1989).According to Roemer (1982, 1986), people are ‘rational actors’ with different resources who make judgements about their best interests when involved in strategic ‘games’ with others, such as strategic ‘games’ of power between individuals. Exploitationis associated with those moments when individuals with different interests and resources engage in strategic decision-making over unequal distribution of physical assetsthat in turn leads to unfair outcomes between individuals; for example, an unfair distribution of income.Exploitation can be shown to have occurred in these circumstances if a coalition of individuals ‘receives goods that can be dominated by some distribution that it could achieve after withdrawing with its own assets’ (Roemer 1986,104). Exploitation is further demonstrated if this coalition of individuals can think of a ‘conditionally feasible alternative under which its members would be better off’ (Roemer 1986, 103, original emphasis).

Nevertheless, while Roemer may seem to present a reasonable description of exploitation some of his most trenchant critics have been Marxists.Wood (1989), for example, observes that Roemer effectively outlines a distributional theory of exploitation which rejects Marx’s labor theory of value.Certainly, Roemer (1986) is clear that he wants to jettisonMarxistvalue theory because he thinks itfocuses on only one element of labor, namely abstract labor. According to Roemer this cannotaccount for the heterogeneous types of labor that exist in any capitalist society, whereas adistributional theory of assets ownership is indeed broad enough to include many different types of laborwithin its analytical framework.For Wood, however, a distributional approach is fundamentally flawed, at least on Marxist grounds, because it weakens a fully developed analysis of thesocial relations of production peculiar only to capitalism. As Marx observes, capitalism thrives through a daily indirect coercion that compels each person to sell their labor power to capital without the need to force them to do so through intimidation and violence by state and political apparatuses. At the end of the day if one refuses to sell their labor they will most probably starve or be forced to live in rather grim conditions. This ‘silent compulsion’ of economic relations is thus part and parcel of how capitalism operates irrespective of individual ‘rational’ action (see Marx 1988, 899). It is also historical in the sense that no other previous social relations, such as feudal social relations, exhibit this compulsion.

In following some of the main themes of Roemer’s account, Wright tooexploresexploitationin relation to the ownership of assets (Carchedi1989). From a Marxist perspective this presents problems. For example, many of Wright’seight intermediate classes such as expert managers, expert supervisors, and semi-credential managers seem very similarto what one finds in Weberian classtheory. As a result, Wright sees these classes as‘distributional and occupational groups with only a pale resemblance to Marx’s original categories’ (Carchedi 1989, 114).By drawing on Wright’s theory,though, Fuchssimilarly argues that exploitation is related in part to the assets owned by different workers, especially in respect to levels of skill assets possessed by different knowledge workers. Highly skilled knowledge workers for example can use their skills to increase their incomes aboveskilled individuals. Yet this approach to exploitation leads to boththeoretical and practical problems in Fuchs’s analysis.

Theoretically, Fuchs tends to misread Marx’s theory of exploitation and its association with the extraction of surplus value. Marx states that only productive labor creates surplus value. ‘The only worker who is productive is the one who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, or in other words contributes towards the self-valorization of capital’ (Marx 1988, 644).Clearly, then, at least for Marx’s understanding, unproductive labor, and here we can include prosumers,does not directly create surplus value. This is not to deny that unproductive workers are exploited. However, unproductive labor createssurplus labor, not surplus value(Carter 1985, 61).For instance, unproductive labor can be found in the sphere of circulation and include occupational roles such as ‘sales and purchasing, accounting, advertising, finance, banking, securities exchange, insurance, real estate, etc.’ (Moseley 1988, 100). These allmight very well provide a service to productive capital through their surplus labor but they do not create surplus valuebecause they do not add new value in the production process to an initial outlay of money-capital and productive capital. Only productive labor creates commodity-capital, whichis then sold for a greater sum of money-capital than originally invested. For this reason, productive labor generates exchange-value and thus surplus value (Mohun1996).Labor thatproduces surplus labor but not surplus value is therefore unproductive. As a consequence, ‘(e)very productive worker is a wage-laborer, but not every wage-laborer is a productive worker’ (Marx 1988, 1041).