User:Daniel Sz's Annotation of Maurizio Lazzarato - Immaterial Labor

Maurizio Lazzarato – Immaterial Labor

Maurizio Lazzarato in his essay titled Immaterial Labor presents his philosophical theory of how the nature of the term 'work' has been dramatically changed in our post-modern society compared to modern society.
He meant under the the term immaterial labor the class of society whom work involve intellectual and manual labors in the same time, such as advertising, audiovisual products, fashion design, softwares, arts etc.

Regarding to his opinion he writes that this shift began in the 1970's (due to the technical innovations such as computerized robotic factories – my annotation.) This process lead to previously manual workers to start filling positions that could have been describe as more intellectual tasks. The class of intellectual labors widened significantly. What previously has not been titled as manual work is slowly disappearing.
'What has happened is that a new "mass intellectuality" has come into being, created out of a combination of the demands of capitalist production and the forms of "self-valorization" that the struggle against work.' - quoted from the essay itself.

The big turn
What used to be a 'backoffice' task in the 'Fordist' factory model become the most important: the relationship and communication with the consumers. Today's major goal of the companies is to win the consumer attraction to choose our product or service, and the way to achieve this goal strengthen the relationship between the company or brand and the client via communication. The workers within the post-modern capitalist system become only a piece in a bigger communication system, which is the organization, the company itself. The foremost important skill is to be able to communicate, to help the information float.
Regarding to Lazzarato this new workflow is even more threatening than the previous divided model (manual sector = execution and intellectual sector = concept) because this new system type annexes the personality of the individual worker.

Personal annotation, summary, question
What happened? A really romantic twee answer could be that the previous term of being 'manual labor' what meant being a slave of a capitalist company, someone who only does what the command is asks him to do, now this class transformed into 'labor of control, communicator, of handling information, into a decision-making capacity that involves the investment of subjectivity'. Is this shift should be interpreted as a frightening phenomena? Personally, I am not sure. This situation is not worse, not in every meaning.

My very last profane, banal, personal experience was standing next to two glass repairer men in my rented apartment and struggling to speak with them, because unfortunately they can not speak English at all and who came on my call from the this service company. Beforehand the communication via phone with the call centrist went super smooth, but not with the men who are actually responsible for the service I have ordered.