Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

NETWORK SOCIETY
Touraine and Daniel Bell get little more than passing mention), it is clear that his
views are consonant with a good deal of recent writing. More specifically,
Castells’s emphasis on a profoundly changed stratification system, especially his
concern with the centrality of well-educated informational labour, and his stress
on new forms of political mobilisation that transcend former class divisions,
encapsulates a spectrum of beliefs that ‘new times’ are upon us.
The demise of the working class
Castells foresees the end of the traditional working class in two ways. First of all,
this class, once the anchor of all radical political movements, is numerically in
decline and being replaced by a non-manual, increasingly female workforce.
Second, its contribution to society has been taken away: the labour theory of
value should be replaced with an information (or knowledge) theory of value. In
Castells’s (1997a) words, ‘knowledge and information are the essential materials
of the new production process, and education is the key quality of labour, [so]
the new producers of informational capitalism are those knowledge generators
and information processors whose contribution is most valuable to the . . .
economy’ (p. 345).
While in the past the working class was subordinate to the owners of capital,
it was widely accepted that it was still indispensable. After all, miners, factory
operatives and farm workers were needed if coal was to be won, assembly lines
to run and food produced. This essential contribution of the working class is what
underlies the labour theory of value and the strong theme of ‘inheritor’ politics
in socialism – the idea that ‘the working class create the wealth and one day they
will reap their just rewards’. Nowadays, however, this is not so. A new class –
informational labour – has emerged which makes the old working class disposable.
Informational labour acts on generic labour in ways that make abundantly
clear who is more important to society. It does this in diverse ways, perhaps by
automating generic labour out of existence (by using computerised technologies)
or by transferring production to other parts of the world (readily done by planners
with access to high technology) or by creating a new product towards which
generic labour, being fixed and rigid, is incapable of adjusting.
In the new world, informational labour is the prime creator of wealth, while
the working class is in terminal decline because it cannot change fast enough to
keep pace. In current parlance, it lacks ‘flexibility’. As a result, politics is shifting
away from class (which was, anyway, hopelessly mired in the nation state, another
reason why the working class is impotent in a globalised world) towards social
movements such as feminism, ethnicity and environmentalism. These movements
reach far beyond traditional class allegiances and appeal to the lifestyles and identities
of supporters. They, too, are noticeably infiltrated by information labour of
one sort or another. Consider, for example, Amnesty International, Greenpeace
or Friends of the Earth, each with global reach, computerised membership lists
and extensive networks of highly educated, scientifically trained and mediaconscious
staff and supporters.
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