数字时代的阶级基础 —— 生活，劳动与价值

　　二十一世纪的阶级结构

　　我们生活在一个资本高度集中的社会，大多数的商品生产由公司进行，而这些企业的命运主要掌握在金融投资者手上。公司所生产的商品，无论是物质的还是非物质的，都通过复杂的价值链条经由全球市场提供给我们，在这一价值链条的运作下，我们作为消费者的无偿劳动越来越多地受到牵连。信息和通信技术对劳动的空间和时间边界的影响如此之大，以至于对我们很多人来说，工作和私人生活之间的界限已经变得模糊不清，鲜有社会关系能够不受这些技术变革影响。在这样的情况下，本文所做的种种划分似乎颇为吹毛求疵——我们是否应该承认，我们所有人都在某种程度上成为了巨大的无差别劳动力的一部分，为一个无差别的资本生产无差

　　别的价值?

　　我认为这种见解并不可取。资本主义是一种社会关系，在这种关系中，工人在特定的商品生产中扮演特定角色。而维持这种关系的有赖于工人的同意。如果我们不能理解这种关系的特殊之处，我们就不能找到那些在生产和分销过程中的关键节点，在这些关键节点上，工人组织可以通过一些措施取得成效。假若我们没有识别这些关键节点，工人就不能理解他们实际上所拥有的同意或是拒绝向资方提供劳动力交易的能力，这将不利于工人对交易条款进行重新谈判——而这是他们改善处境的唯一选择。不仅如此，如果没有这种知识，我们也无法知晓哪些工人群体有着共同的利益，工人们如何能够发现这种共同利益，以及工人们的劳动究竟是怎样彼此紧密联系在一起的。

　　上述的每一种不同形式的无偿劳动都会对有偿劳动产生影响，可能在工人阶级内部制造张力与断裂。实习生为了争取就业而不计回报，削弱了从事同样工作的有偿劳动者的谈判地位。引入无偿消费劳动会降低整体就业水平，并通过实施标准化和泰勒化增加工作强度，导致服务业工人的工作条件恶化。一些人在互联网上无偿撰写维基百科词条、博客，无偿发布视频片段或照片，这些工作没有学术工资或其他来源的补贴，仅仅依靠参与者的创造性工作来提供收入，却同时威胁到了记者、研究人员或其他创造性工作者的生计。在许多情况下，同一个人在不同的身份中同时扮演着这些有偿或无偿的角色。更通常来讲，像是共处在同一个家庭里的不同成员往往就是如此。当然，认为无酬工人正在侵害有酬工人的观点过于简单化，忽视了产生两种劳动形式的背后推动力，也忽视了两种劳动形式中都存在着剥削，区别仅在于程度不同。但是，如果因此就认为普遍的剥削与剩余价值的生产彼此难解难分，并把所有这些独立的立场折叠成一个普遍的集体身份，即所谓“诸众”，那我们就无法确认“扭结”的核心所在，在这个关键节点之上，工人有能力挑战资本。

　　从详细分析价值链条的构造开始，我们能够勾勒出未来数年间可能需要面对的阶级结构的轮廓。不过，在此需要谨慎行事，因为正如前面论证过的那样，许多人同时或连续从事多种不同形式的劳动，与资本产生不尽相同的关系，或是生活在有着更为多种多样劳动形式的家庭里。

　　撇开少量仍靠自己在土地上的直接劳动维生的农村人口不谈，在这种新兴的劳动格局中，最大的、也是迄今为止增长最快的群体仍然是“纽结内”工人，即那些受雇于生产物质或非物质商品的资本主义企业的工人。他们中的许多人较为晚近才被直接吸纳进入资本主义劳动关系之中来的，主要是来自农村或其他国家的移民，许多原先受雇于公共部门，还有许多曾经从事商品小生产。这些工人并非全都具有长期雇员身份，很多人是按件计酬、或临时雇用的。尽管他们是生产性工人，直接生产剩余价值，但他们在劳动过程中的关联难以察觉。

　　像智能手机这样的产品包含着矿工、装配工人、化学工人、设计师、工程师、呼叫中心工作人员、发票管理员、清洁工等等职业工人的劳动成果。这些工人分散在不同的国家，具有不同的职业和社会身份，他们可能认为自己没有任何共同点。事实上，他们甚至可能认为彼此之间利益对立。不过他们仍然可能基于技能、职业或他们工作的企业组织在一起，也可能是基于共同的区域、语言或文化身份、共同的政治历史或对相似的歧视的反应组织起来。从这些组织形式中可能产生什么样的团结或共同意识仍然有待观察。

　　另一个悬而未决的问题是，这些价值链中的管理、专业和技术工人在多大程度上认同其他工人而不是雇主。这些人组成了一个不稳定的群体，技术变革和经济结构调整的加速为他们提供了成为管理者的新机会，但同时也使他们的许多劳动过程经历着标准化和去技能化。一方面，他们的雇主想把他们培养成创新的源泉;另一方面，雇主又想降低劳动力价格，提高生产率。夹在这两个矛盾的命令之间，这些中间工人必须咽下苦果接受管理需求，否则他们就需要从工作岗位上离开，或者寻找个人主义的解决方案，但他们也可能选择与其他工人一起共命运同抗争。

　　伴随着资本主义“扭结内部”的工人群体的爆炸性增长，其他较少直接参与资本主义社会关系群体的数量也有所增长。后者包括了通过商品小生产，小规模的出租或贸易来谋生的人，马克思认为这个阶级会趋于消亡。尽管这种工作很难为大量人口提供可持续的生计，但互联网似乎为其赋予了新的生命力。在许多情况下，这种通常由几种不同的经济活动拼凑而成的谋生方式是已经离开正规劳动力市场或尚未进入正规劳动力市场的人所采用的过渡手段。这种情况在历史上也不是新现象，工人阶级的传记中这类例子随处可见，总有人靠收留房客、照看孩子、饲养宠物或制作小商品出售来维持生计。但我们不能想当然地认为，所有这些人都一定会将自己的利益与“扭结内”工人的利益等同起来。

　　“扭结外”群体还包括从事有偿再生产工作的人：在日益萎缩的公共部门领域中如常提供服务的工人;家庭佣人;以及不直接参与市场的其他形式的服务工作者(例如志愿部门的工作)。当然，他们的工作对于资本主义的再生产是必要的，但是根据我先前的定义这些工作全部是“扭结外”的。同样，这些群体涵盖了多种多样的社会身份，他们可能不认为彼此之间或与“扭结内”工人之间具有共同的利益。

　　除此之外，还有许多人不是受薪工人，但他们也生产价值，要么以再生产的形式，如无报酬的儿童保育或家务劳动，要么以消费工作(转包)的形式生产。从事这些工作的许多人是妇女，她们的无薪地位可能使她们处于对受薪工人或国家的依附之中。在历史中，我们能够发现许多再生产工人与相关生产性工人同舟共济的例子(例如，在20世纪80年代英国煤矿工人罢工中的矿工妻子组织)，或是消费工人与生产工人团结一致的例子(例如，以消费者为基础的“清洁成衣运动”联盟为了改善服装工人的工作条件而组织请愿和抵制)。[46]

　　上述种种类别的劳动群体分布广泛。为了预测我们在21世纪面临的全球阶级结构，有必要对这些群体的组成及其相互关系进行更详细的描述。尽管解开复杂的全球价值链条并以此定位我们的劳动过程可能是项枯燥乏味的工作。但如果我们想要了解如何通过集体行动改变这，并开始想象可能的替代方案，这又是一项必不可缺的任务。

　　参考文献　　

　　[1] M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire , New York: Penguin, 2004; G. Standing, Precariat: The New Dangerous Class , London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2011.

　　[2] Hardt and Negri, Multitude ; T. Terranova, ‘Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy’, Social Text , 18(2), 2000, pp. 33-58.

　　[3] See for instance, M. Andrejevic, ‘Exploiting YouTube: Contradictions of User-Generated Labor’, in P. Snickers and P. Vonderau, eds., The YouTube Reader , Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009; A. Arvidsson and E. Colleoni, ‘Value in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet’, The Information Society, 28(3), 2012, pp. 135-50; J. Banks and S. Humphreys, ‘The Labor of User Co-Creators’, Convergence, 14(4), 2008, pp. 401-18; C. Fuchs, ‘Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet’, The Information Society , 26(3), 2010, pp. 179-96; C. Fuchs, ‘With or Without Marx? With or Without Capitalism? A Rejoinder to Adam Arvidsson and Eleanor Colleoni’, Triple C , 10(2), 2012, pp. 633-45; D. Hesmondhalgh, ‘User-Generated Content, Free Labour and the Cultural Industries’, Ephemera , 10(3/4), 2011, pp. 267-84; A. Ross, ‘On the Digital Labour Question’, in T. Scholz, ed., The Internet as Playground and Factory , New York: Routledge, 2012; and Terranova, ‘Free Labor,’ in Scholz, Internet as Playground and Factory .

　　[4] J. Kücklich, ‘Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry’, The Fibreculture Journal , Issue 5, 2005.

　　[5] Alvin Toffler coined this term in his 1980 book The Third Wave , published by Bantam Books. It has since been taken up by a number of other writers working in a Marxist framework, including Christian Fuchs and Ed Comer.

　　[6] Banks and Humphreys, ‘The Labour of User Co-creators’, using a term derived from C.K. Prahalad and V. Ramaswamy, ‘Co-Opting Customer Competence’, Harvard Business Review , (January/February), 2000.

　　[7] A term coined by Tiziana Terranova in her influential article, ‘Free Labor’.

　　[8] U. Huws, ‘Crisis as Capitalist Opportunity: The New Accumulation through Public Service Commodification’, Socialist Register 2012 , Pontypool: Merlin, 2011, pp. 64-84.

　　[9] U. Huws, ‘Domestic Technology: Liberator or Enslaver?’, in U. Huws, The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World , New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003, pp. 35-41.

　　[10] U. Huws, ‘Material World: The Myth of the Weightless Economy’, Socialist Register , 1999, pp. 29-56.

　　[11] UNCTAD, World Investment Report , Geneva, 2008.

　　[12] According to UNCTAD, 60 per cent of manufacturing TNCs were planning to increase their FDI in the next year, compared with 45 per cent of firms in the primary sector and 43 per cent of those in services. See World Investment Report , 2012, p. 19.

　　[13] Karl Marx, Grundrisse , ‘Chapter on Money’ Part II, available at http://www. marxists.org.

　　[14] D. W. Smythe, ‘Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism’, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory , 1(3), 1977, pp. 1-27.

　　[15] C. Fuchs, ‘Dallas Smythe Today – The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory. Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value’, Triple C , 10(2), 2012, pp. 692-740.

　　[16] D. W. Smythe, ‘On the Audience Commodity and its Work’, in M.G. Duncan and D.M. Kellner, eds., Media and Cultural Studies , Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1981, p. 233.

　　[17] A. Hearn, ‘Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, Online Ranking and Rating, and the Digital “Reputation” Economy’, Ephemera , 10(3/4), 2010, pp. 421-38.

　　[18] C. Morini and A. Fumagalli, ‘Life Put to Work: Towards a Life Theory of Value’, Ephemera , 10(3/4), 2010, pp. 234-52.

　　[19] K. Marx, Capital , Chapter 1, available at http://www.marxists.org.

　　[20] Huws, Making of a Cybertariat , p. 17.

　　[21] This point is made a little differently in a discussion of the distinction between productive and unproductive labour by Marx in Capital , Chapter 4.

　　[22] Except in some special circumstances, such as when workers are paid to go on Facebook and click ‘like’ on commercial websites in the ‘pay per click’ model. But here they are not employed by Facebook but by companies linked to these commercial websites which have some commodity to sell, so they should more accurately be regarded as belonging to the value chain of these commodity-producing companies.

　　[23] Arvidsson and Colleoni, ‘Value in Informational Capitalism’.

　　[24] Arvidsson and Colleoni, unpublished manuscript.

　　[25] ‘All Eyes on the Sharing Economy’, The Economist , 9 March 2013.

　　[26] I am indebted to Kaire Holts for drawing my attention to this explanation of the business model of reCAPTCHA by its originator, who also founded Duolingo , available at http://www.willhambly.com. See also the related video, available at http://www.inmyinnovation.com.

　　[27] I have discussed the concept of the ‘business function’ and its relation to Marxist analysis in several publications. See for instance, U. Huws, ‘The Restructuring of Global Value Chains and the Creation of a Cybertariat’, in Christopher May, ed., Global Corporate Power: (Re)integrating Companies into International Political Economy (International Political Economy Yearbook Volume 15), Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006, pp. 65-84; and U. Huws, ‘The Emergence of EMERGENCE: The Challenge of Designing Research on the New International Division of Labour’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 1(2), 2007, pp. 20-35.

　　[28] I have analysed the relationship of creative labour to capital elsewhere. See, for instance, U. Huws, ‘Expression and Expropriation: The Dialectics of Autonomy and Control in Creative Labour’, Ephemera , Volume 10(3/4), 2010.

　　[29] Kittur et al., ‘The Future of Crowd Work’, 2013, available at http://hci. stanford.edu.

　　[30] K. Holts, ‘Towards a Taxonomy of Virtual Work’, Hertfordshire Business School Working Paper, 2013.

　　[31] Marx, Grundrisse , Notebook V. It should be noted that this interpretation of this passage is disputed. Marx is often considered to be making a special exception of transport workers (perhaps because they were a group with strong potential trade union organisation – a potential that was more-than-realised in the twentieth century when transport workers played a key role in industrial action). It is my view that his argument applies equally to other forms of labour involved in getting products to market, many of which were inconceivable at the time when he was writing.

　　[32] Terranova, ‘Free Labor’.

　　[33] B. Weinbaum and A. Bridges, ‘The Other Side of the Paycheck: Monopoly Capital and the Structure of Consumption’, Monthly Review , 28(3), 1976.

　　[34] See for instance, Huws, ‘Domestic Technology’.

　　[35] See K. Marx, Economic Manuscripts , Chapter 4, available at http://www. marxists.org.

　　[36] I use the term ‘externalising’ here to refer to the ways in which employers increase the productivity of paid staff by transferring some or all of their unpaid tasks to unpaid consumers in the form of self-service, whether through the operation of machines such as ATMs or self-service supermarket or online activities such as booking tickets, filling in tax returns or ordering goods.

　　[37] Marx, Economic Manuscripts , Chapter 2.

　　[38] A. Ross, ‘In Search of the Lost Paycheck’, in Scholz, Internet as Playground and Factory , p. 15.

　　[39] I have anatomised these in greater detail in Huws, ‘Expression and Expropriation’, pp. 504-21.

　　[40] Marx, Economic Manuscripts , ‘Productive and Unproductive Labour’.

　　[41] See, for instance, R. Perlin, Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy , London: Verso, 2011.

　　[42] I have written more extensively about this in U. Huws, ‘The Reproduction of Difference: Gender and the Global Division of Labour’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 6(1), 2012, pp. 1-10.

　　[43] K. Marx, ‘Division of Labour and Forms of Property – Tribal, Ancient, Feudal’, Part 1, A, The German Ideology , 1845, available at http://www.marxists.org.

　　[44] F. Engels, On Marx’s Capital , Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1956 [1877], p. 89.

　　[45] For more on this, see my blog post on ‘Hunger in a Supermarketocracy’, available at http://ursulahuws.wordpress.com. In the UK, according to HM Revenue and Customs, ‘the numbers of families without children receiving Working Tax Credits-only has risen over time, almost doubling from 235,000 in April 2004 to around 455,000 in April 2009 and now at just over 580,000 in April 2012’ and ‘the numbers of families benefiting from the childcare element has consistently risen over time, from 318,000 in April 2004 to around 493,000 in April 2011’. By this date, tax credits (paid to workers in employment) already accounted for 27 per cent of all benefit spending – by far the largest single component. By comparison, Job-seekers Allowance (paid to the unemployed) accounted for only 4 per cent. In the USA, similarly, many large companies rely on government-provided benefits, such as food stamps and Medicaid, to subsidise below-subsistence wages. For instance, Wal-Mart employees are estimated to receive $2.66 billion in government assistance every year, or about $420,000 per store. See HM Revenue and Customs, Child and Working Tax Credits Statistics , Office of National Statistics, 2012; and P. Ryan, ‘Walmart: America’s Real “Welfare Queen”’, Daily Kos , 2012, available at http://www. dailykos.com.

　　[46] See http://www.cleanclothes.org.