Untitled - socium.ge

26 Manuel Castellsclassical political economy – namely, “what is value?” has no definite answerin the network society. Value is what is processed in every dominant networkat every moment in every space according to the hierarchy programmed intothe network by the actors acting upon the network. Capitalism has not disappeared,but it is not – against ideologically inspired perception – the onlysource of value in the global town.Work, Labor, and Class: The Network Enterprise and the New SocialDivision of LaborThis helps us understand the new division of labor, and therefore work,productivity, and exploitation. People work, they always have. In fact, peoplework more (in terms of total working hours in a given society) than they everhave, since most of women’s work was previously not counted as sociallyrecognized (paid) work (Guillemard, 2003). The crucial matter has alwaysbeen how this work is organized and compensated. The division of labor was,and still is, a measure of what is valued and what is not in labor contribution.This judgment is organized in a particular form in the process of production,and is assigned a position in the sharing of the product, determining differentialconsumption and social stratification.The most fundamental divide in the network society is what I have conceptualized,schematically, as “self-programmable labor” and “generic labor.”Self-programmable labor has the autonomous capacity to focus on the goalassigned to it in the process of production, find the relevant information,recombine it into knowledge, using the available knowledge stock, and applyit in the form of tasks oriented toward the goals of the process. The more ourinformation systems are complex, and interactively connected to databasesand information sources, the more labor needs the ability to use this searchingand recombining capacity. This requires appropriate training, not in terms ofskills, but in terms of creative capacity, and the ability to evolve with organizationsand with the addition of knowledge in society.On the other hand, tasks that are not valued are assigned to “generic labor,”eventually being replaced by machines or decentralized to low-cost productionsites, depending on a dynamic cost–benefit analysis. The overwhelming massof working people on the planet, and still the majority in advanced countries,are generic labor. They are disposable, except if they assert their right to existas humans and citizens through their collective action. But in terms of valuemaking (in finance, in manufacturing, in research, in sports, in military action,or in political capital) it is the self-programmable worker that counts for anyorganization in control of the resources. Thus, labor organization in thenetwork society also acts on a binary logic, dividing self-programmable laborfrom generic labor. Furthermore, the flexibility and adaptability of both kinds