tripleC 12(2): 599–619, 2014 http://www.triple-c.at Digital Labour and the Use-value of Human Work. On the Importance of Labouring Capacity for Understanding Digital Capitalism1 Sabine Pfeiffer University of Hohenheim and ISF Munich, Germany, www.sabine-pfeiffer.de Abstract: On the face of its virtual and immaterial appearance, digital labour often is seen as a phe- nomenon of abstract work. Contrary to that common understanding, in Marx’s theory the abstraction of labour derives from its historical development into a commodity, splitting human work as all commodi- ties into use-value and exchange-value. Thus the process of abstraction is of economical logic, and not to be explained or characterized by the virtual and immaterial quality that is typical for the means and objects of digital labour. In his early work Marx differentiates between living labouring capacity (Arbeitsvermögen) as the use-value of human work and labour power as its objectified form to be ex- changed. In the tradition of Marx’s Grundrisse Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge in Geschichte und Eigensinn pointed to the dialectical relationship between the use-value and exchange-value of labour, revealing how labour on its use-value side ‟contains and reproduces capacities and energies that ex- ceed its realisation in/as commodity”, extending the model of labour power ‟to a whole range of physi- ological, sexual, social, and national relations” (Negt and Kluge 1993a, xxxiii). While these qualitative and material as well as corporeal aspects of human work are still visible in industrial production pro- cesses, they seem to be vanished in virtual work environments. But, digital capitalism not only opens up exploitation to higher levels and new forms (e.g. Fuchs 2012; Scholz 2012), the relevance of hu- man work and its use-value for capitalism becomes more concealed to the same degree as it be- comes more significant. The article develops an analytical conception relying on Marx’s dialectical distinction between the use-value (labouring capacity) and the exchange-value (labour power), and transforming it into an operationalized model that could be and has been successfully used for empiri- cal studies of digital labour. Labouring capacity has three levels of phenomena: subjectifying corporeal working action, material means and objects of work (even in virtual environments), and the socially and physically experienceable face of globalised work organisation. This analytical concept of labour- ing capacity (Arbeitsvermögen; Pfeiffer 2004) is especially helpful to reveal the dialectics in digital work and its sources of value creation (Pfeiffer 2013). The article unfolds the theoretical foundations of the concept, and elaborates its potential to analyse digital labour. Keywords: digital work, labouring capacity, dialectic, subjectifying work action, corporeality, and materiality. Acknowledgement: The conceptual work on this paper is originated in the context of the COST Action ‘Dynam- ics of Virtual Work’ (IS1202) and was continued in the research project ‘RAKOON—Innovation by active collabo- ration in open organisations’ (Ref. no. 01FK13045); jointly funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) and supervised by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Thanks to both anonymous reviewers and their critical thus supportive thoughts that helped to strengthen my argumentation and to improve this paper. 1. Introduction The debate on digital labour/digital work seems to have reached a new all-time high as it is recently discussed broadly in social sciences (cf. Scholz 2012; Fuchs and Sevignani 2013; Huws 2014). Despite minor differences in the lines of argumentation, we see a consensus 1 The term digital capitalism used heuristically here does not refer to one sphere of production, e.g. ICT, nor does it claim that all material resources or forms of labour and production are of no economical importance. For a ty- pology on definitions of digital or informational society see Fuchs (2013) or Schmiede (2006), fostering the con- clusion that we are confronted with a “unity of diversity of capitalism(s)” today. Schiller, who coined the term digital capitalism in adversary to the then popular New Economy emphasis (2000), stresses that capital stays at the “center of the political economy even as the market system was restructured to accept a profitable information– intensive orientation” (Schiller 2011). CC: Creative Commons License, 2014. 600 Sabine Pfeiffer that work and labour are analytical terms of sustaining importance. Human labour remains the actual source of value creation in the Internet economy. The vivid debate though, points to a peculiar movement: while labour at its core is becoming more important as a source of value creation, on the manifestation level it seems to be fading from view (Pfeiffer 2013, 30): “Human labour remains quantitatively and qualitatively relevant for value creation in the In- ternet economy: On the one hand, its commodification takes on expanded forms; whilst on the other, more options open up for labour input beyond employment and exchange relation- ships or to use its results as commons.” Fuchs and Sevignani (2013, 237) stress the importance of Marxian labour theory and ar- gue that the difference between labour and work still matters. For them labour is rendered as the valorisation dimension of digital work. The authors revisit the economically driven pro- cess of abstractification that Marx developed as the most important characteristic for all capi- talistic labour. Fuchs and Sevignani deserve the credit for demonstrating how vital Marx’s concept of work and labour still is: how work as an essential category is necessary labour, producing use-value in a concrete labour process; and, how many layers of abstraction are necessary to transform it into abstract labour as commodity, with a quantifiable exchange- value (2013, 248). Thus far, there seems to be no need for analysing digital work differently than Marx would have done it, and in that respect I totally agree with Fuchs and Sevignani (and many others as well): The double character of work/labour that Marx unfolded is “alive and kicking”, be capitalism digital or not. There is no need for re-inventing well serving ana- lytical categories if we want to understand the economic function and movements that are specific for capitalism; there may are new options for and means of exploitation in a digital and therefore more globally organized capitalism, but the underlying logic seems steadfast. Fuchs and Sevignani also look into digital work, which they understand, mostly as bare of material manifestations, be it body or be it objects. The digital quality in their definition comes out of a special form of organizing experiences, derived from brain, speech, and digital me- dia. Following their further line of argumentation reveals three “dialectically connected” di- mensions: cognitive work, communicative work, and co-operative work (Fuchs and Sevignani 2013, 252). The subjects of these three working dimensions are single humans or groups of humans, their objects of work are experiences, thoughts or meaning; and their instruments of work are described as brain, or brain with mouth and ears; or a brain with mouth, ears and body. Finally, the products of work in their presented table also show relations ordered in an upward manner: cognitive work transforms experiences into thoughts, communicative work produces meaning out of thoughts, and in turn these meanings can be shared in co-operative work (Fuchs and Sevignani 2013, 252). The provided heuristic on digital work helps me to clarify the dimensions I think should be analytically elaborated further, and to specify the questions in due course that have to be asked and should be answered. First of all, and again, I agree with Fuchs and Sevignani upon the feeling that work in digi- tal times needs to be re-considered, although its use-value producing quality has not changed. Besides that consensus, the fact alone that some means, objects and processes of labour and/or work are more virtualized, digitised, or informatised than a couple of years be- fore, does not convincingly justify to reinvent work as an analytical category. A pinch of un- ease creeps in here, that is best expressed by Ursula Huws, who criticised the emerging consensus “that the world as we know it is becoming quite dematerialised (or, as Marx put it, ‘all that is solid melts into air’)”, and it became “taken for granted that ‘knowledge’ is the only source of value, […] and any assertion of the physical claims of the human body in the here- and-now is hopelessly old-fashioned” (Huws 1999, 30). In that sense, I will follow Ursula Huws on her path into what she named the challenge of “re-embody cyberspace”, making “visible the material components of this virtual world” (1999, 30). In its core, this objective is tantamount to a dialectical endeavour. Hence, the second chapter challenges the too often to be seen approach of a dualism that is labelled as dialec- tic. As an example the concept of Scott Lash is critically discussed, which claims that in times of informationalisation, dualism comes to its end. This notion stands for common debates that non-analytically propose all theoretical terms of the past to be obsolete in the face of the shining brand new phenomenon of the Web. No better could the aim of the second chapter CC: Creative Commons License, 2014. tripleC 12(2): 599–619, 2014 601 be characterized than in the words of Lefebvre: “But to define ‘the new’ by sifting out every- thing that distinguishes it from the old is not as easy as the dogmatists with their lack of dia- lectic used to believe. Our era is truly an era of transition; everything about it is transitory, everything, right down to men and their lives. The informed observer will be as struck as much by similarities as by differences, as much by the unity within contradiction as by contra- diction itself.