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::: immaterial labour

> the general interest on the concept of 'immaterial work'

The critic of ' Instrumental Materialism' arises from the earlier theories of work, expressed currently widened with the assertion of the crescent importance of the concept of immaterial work. Concerning the conflicting appraisal of the importance of this definition, it has to be considered that with it the job of the intellectuals receives a meaning that it would have to correspond to that one of the ' workers of the symbol'. It is also an issue of self revaluation of critical intelligence and the related political power, that at the same time would aim to renew the sphere of the symbols and the Arts.

This interest against which nothing should be contended, is obviously particular. The only critic is that this theory is proposed like result of the development of the society, in a generalized manner, and not like a particular case.

> immaterial commutation of work 1: example 'language'

Nowadays 'Immaterial work' does not only want to affirm the symbol of the euphoria of the technology of the digital information, but also declares itself as a force of post-fordistic production. Indeed, it wishes to represent a critical alternative - at the same time- against Capitalism, alienation and imperialism. It directs at a criticism of the past theories of instrumental work. Surely it misjudges the fact that Marx - from the 'German ideology' in various measure over the 'Grundrisse' up to ' The Capital' - maintained, that the language and the interaction are not secondary or reflection effects, but rather primary force of the work itself. The immaterial productivity is therefore the forming structure of every material job, also from the point of view of Marx. Theoretically it steps as distinction of productive forces and every day production conditions. Interaction conditions mediate themselves in the work and as work. To call around an example - this has been observed in all clarity by the theoretically most precise exponent of the German student revolt, Hans Juergen Krahl, who contended against the separation between work and interaction asserted by Juergen Habermas at the end years 60.

> formal subjectivity subject is literally, a 'subjecting'

To the contrary, subjectivity tries to redefine with the notion of 'control' what is, at the same time, in continuous modification, ability to penetration and impotence. Also the proletarian subject, as the history of the civil constitution has demonstrated, derives its origin -in completely various way from the political activity- by the revolutionary action of an absolute Ethos; a form, of a risky, occasionally fatal setting of ' higher right '. Subjectivity therefore turns out to be - not only with Derrida and the rest of the constructionalism - as the place of trespass. 'Subjectivity' as a norm reproduces ineffective myths of a 'self-sufficient productivity.

Sovereignty against it remains function of the self overcoming of the subject: it wins effect in mass of a risky art of waste, to spend as the shape of a radical economics, destroying the terror of the productivity and concomitantly the Pathos of the subjectivity.

> radical criticism of the immaterial work

The vanishing line of radical criticism in the field of the immaterial work can not be the revaluation of the symbol processing, but only the abolishment of work at all - both as term as a condition of necessity. Behind the machinery of the past work and the masquerading of the immaterial control of the symbol, a possibility of autonomous self organization appears: Not progress through Maschinisierung, but anarchic self setting.

New cooperation result therefore no longer from the social switching of subjectivity, but by act of self appropriation, self setting without warranties. Break through from rule, for which no historical figure of mediation supplies a sense, which remains for the time being still hidden, linear, accumulating.

> paradoxes of the immaterial work

In the past capitalistic system immaterial work appears as paradox. It is valuable because it produces no material value. We know that the system has meanwhile changed, ordered on these new shapes of appraisal and creation of the value, resetting obligatorily all the automatisms.

The economy of the assets produced materially does not interest anymore. Productivity is manufactured over symbolic obligation conditions. The political criticism of the immaterial work runs therefore the risk to be understood as a revaluation of the symbolic work of the artists and intellectuals ones, who wish to draw profit, for their part, from the crescent value attributed to the control of the symbol. A position, in former times, considered revisionist with particular interests.

> epistemology of the 'immaterial work'

'Immaterial work ' refers to two quite different areas of thought: a socio-economic and a methodical epistemologiscal one. The latter reminds, whether conscious or not, that in the work theory of Marx's co-operation was always already regarded as a global negotiation of the social one. The concept of the Immateriality was regarded structurally, since the beginning of the Marxist tradition, Ontologie of the work term for this tradition as load-carrying and conditionally. What changed since that time, are only the degree of the systemic of economic processes and the set of criteria for its appraisal. The postulate of the immaterial work, to presuppose an immense social substance behind the process of Maschinisierung of the work, does not supply some fundamental new insights. The material force of this type of productivity is symbolic. It argues about acknowledgment and perception. It reminds the not restricted shapes of the violent process of the original accumulation and the dictations of the instrumental reason in the design of 'Maschinisierung' for the use of the productive forces.

> social economics of the 'immaterial work'

'Immaterial work ' refers to two quite different areas of thought: a socio-economic and a methodical epistemologiscal one. For the first area the contemporary glossary word of the ' immaterial work ' marks the strategy of a revaluation. Shadow work, unpaid work, communication, solidarity, black work, self organization, switching, survival fight, cultural symbols that will not be anymore dealt like preliminary requirement of the reproduction or pressing disturbances, which can be neglected or even ignored by the capitalistic system because of their unpaidness. They are to become code categories of newly evaluated work and replace bad economics values. Their political intention hangs therefore of the historical Pathos of the work term off - independently of how their manifestations and the change of their moments are evaluated.

text by Hans-Ulrich Reck

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