tragicoptimist

by Giorgio Griziotti

Courtesy of Opendemocracy.net

There is still a solid social cushion in France if we compare it to other European countries. But the pressure for work-hour productivity – one of the highest in the world – oppresses generations of digital cognitive workers.

Network labour remains central in the sector of new information and communication technologies (NICTs), but has invaded a much more extensive area, expanding to every sector of production under corporate control. Beginning in the ‘70s and ‘80s, corporations introduced ERP business application packages (Enterprise Resource Planning), developed by large companies like the German SAP or the American Oracle, in order to restructure and automatize organization in the search for profit. Once the internal machine was fine-tuned, beginning in the ‘90s, these programmes were directed toward the outside through CRM (Customer Relationship Management) packages. CRMs are the first instance of an interactivity with the multitude understood as “client consumers” and it is these that launch the era of the “client producer” (i.e. crowdsourcing), thus contributing to the age of economic rent. ^↑

More recently, over the course of the last decade, we have moved towards a strengthening of the ability to capture and control the multitude integrating the web 2.0’s “collaborative” procedures and the pervasiveness of “always connected” mobile devices into ERPs and CRMs. Initially experimented on in companies tied to NICTs – like services in technological engineering, large digital publishing and the giants of the web 2.0  – the methods and the procedures that integrate planned management with network labour tools have multiplied in proportion to NICT’s expansion into all other sectors. This expansion was not only into digital management, but also into the daily production of the media, financial, industrial and commercial sectors.

Consequently, the presumed dichotomy between digital and traditional capitalism collapses, with the emergence of a growing number of activities piloted using these applications and infrastructures, even in the companies most representative of the ‘old’ industrial system. In the constellation of cognitive capitalism, multinational corporations are the giant stars and, at the same time, the black holes that swallow up living labour and common production. The network is the driving force and central tool of this reorganization. » Read more «

by Toni Negri
courtesy of Uninomade 2.0

Let’s identify, first of all, a few not entirely useless base elements to begin evaluating the first round of the presidential elections in France. Given the proportional character of the first round, the relations between the political forces are clearer here than what happens in the second, majority standoff between the two leading candidates. Even more so because abstention was less significant than had been predicted. Now, it’s Marine Le Pen’s 20% that is most striking – better yet, it best represents the most dramatic and probably most transformative element (of the French constitutional structures) since this result will soon (in the next few years) be reflected in the legislative and administrative elections. At the moment, it doesn’t look like the Front National wants to negotiate with Sarkozy: the rightwing will recompose sooner or later but, according to the Le Pens – both father and daughter – this will only happen on their terms. Let it be clear that FN’s affirmation isn’t simply due to a “little white” support base of reactionaries and racists, but is now also beginning to represent ample layers of a non-Gaullist but simply liberal, nationalist and anti-European right. It non longer represents a peripheral France, a France found in the rural world, outside of big cities and in deindustrialized middle-sized cities, but has now broken through to the heart of power. » Read more «

1. There was no need for Mario Draghi’s words to understand that the crisis has already reached an irreversible threshold in Europe. A crisis of “systemic dimensions” was what Jean-Claude Trichet said a couple of months ago. Now Draghi, his successor at the European Central Bank, tells us that “the situation has worsened” (January 16th). It is difficult to understand what the worsening of a crisis of “systemic dimensions” might mean.

What is certain is that the scenarios for the coming months are quite dark, not only for those who have already been paying for the crisis for years and the medicine that aliments it – austerity or, more “soberly”, economic rigor. Even consistent sectors of capital and European ruling classes are starting to doubt that, in the gigantic process of global readjustment of the equilibrium of power underway, they risk becoming one of the losers. The specter of “decline”, even if it hasn’t stopped haunting American metropolises, has started showing up in Europe’s squares more persistently – or at least in entire European regions. And there is no lack of pundits that foresee military reasoning behind the actions of rating agencies, the first maneuvers in a “global debt war” where the goal of saving the dollar as the sovereign currency on a global level (consequently maintaining the current command centers of financial markets) can justify disintegrating the Euro. In the background, the news coming from the Strait of Hormuz reminds us that, facing a crisis of this profundity and length, war can always be an attemptable “solution” not only through finance and “sovereign” debt. » Read more «

“Internationally young”. Saturday morning, Tunisians read this title in the headlines of La Presse. This newspaper is the French voice of the old regime and only until a few months ago was never published without a large photo of Ben Ali. Yesterday, however, despite pre-electoral political tensions, it decided to give ample space to the first Transnational Meeting of Tunis, which concludes today. Last fall this would have been science fiction, but after the Tunisian movement’s extraordinary struggle of last winter and spring, it is a reality: “We, students, precarious workers, unemployed and activists of the world call for a transnational meeting in Tunisia to share and build strategies for common struggles”. This call out – sent by the promoting committee together with other networks of struggles like KLF and NoBorder – worked, with Thursday’s plenary assembly seeing more than 400 participants, from international delegates to numerous collectives and organizations from the Tunisian movement.

» Read more «