Disaffection in the Post-Fordist Workplace: Figurations of ‘Immaterial Labour’ in Recent French Theory and Literature

Abstract

Between them, André Gorz and Yann Moulier Boutang have offered some of the most persuasive theorisations of what is at stake in the shift from a Fordist to a Post-Fordist regime of accumulation. Despite the various theoretical and political differences between Gorz and Moulier Boutang, both share the assumption that the affective, cognitive, and immaterial forms of labour on which Post-Fordism depends constitute, by their very nature, a fundamental challenge to the labour theory of value and hence may yet herald the advent of a new era of genuinely cooperative and creative labour. This article seeks to question that shared assumption. In the first instance, it focuses on a corpus of recent French representations of the realities of Post-Fordist labour to suggest that the dominant experience of affective, cognitive, and immaterial labour, far from being one of creative cooperation, is one of disaffection and refusal. Secondly, the article moves on to question the theoretical assumptions behind Gorz's and Moulier Boutang's accounts. It proposes that rather than being taken to be natural, inherently human characteristics, external and hence resistant to the workings of the market, the cooperative, affective capacities exploited under Post-Fordism might be better understood as the products of that economic conjuncture, the expressions of the specific mode of subjectivity Post-Fordism works to produce.

Les écrits d'André Gorz et de Yann Moulier Boutang nous fournissent des analyses théoriques extrêmement riches quand il s'agit de comprendre ce qui est en jeu dans la transition d'un régime d'accumulation fordiste à un régime d'accumulation postfordiste. Malgré les nombreuses différences théoriques et politiques qui les séparent, Gorz et Moulier Boutang partagent la conviction que les formes de travail affectif, cognitif, et immatériel, dont le postfordisme dépend, constituent, par leur nature propre, un défi fondamental pour la théorie de la valeur-travail et donc présagent l'avènement d'une nouvelle ère de travail réellement créateur et coopératif. Cet article cherche à mettre cette conviction en question. D'abord, il examine un corpus de représentations récentes des réalités du travail postfordiste en France pour proposer que, loin d'être caractérisé par la créativité et la coopération, le travail postfordiste provoque, surtout, des sentiments de désaffection et de refus. Deuxièmement, l'article analyse les présupposés théoriques des écrits récents de Gorz et de Moulier Boutang. Il conclut que, plutôt que de correspondre à des caractéristiques naturelles et intrinsèques à chaque être humain, donc externes et hétérogènes par rapport au fonctionnement du marché, les capacités affectives et coopératives exploitées par le postfordisme devraient être appréhendées en tant que produits de ce régime économique spécifique et de la forme de subjectivité qu'il vise à produire.

Notes

[1] The theoretical material I had in mind here was as follows: Baudrillard (1982); Bourdieu (1984); Foucault (1975).

[2] Moulier Boutang discusses these theoretical affiliations both in Le Capitalisme cognitif (Moulier Boutang 2007, p. 29) and in his fascinating and immensely detailed study of the shift from slavery to salaried labour, De l'esclavage au salariat (Moulier Boutang 1998). One of the most vibrant and stimulating expressions of this current of thought is the journal Multitudes, of which Moulier Boutang is chief editor (see Moulier Boutang, ed. 2007).

[3] For a more detailed account of the affinities and differences between Gorz and Moulier Boutang, see Moulier Boutang, ed. (2007, pp. 535–542). For reasons of space, it will not be possible in this article to tease out the precise theoretical lineages of either Gorz or Moulier Boutang, their respective debts and allegiances to Marxist sociologists such as Henri Lefebvre and Georges Friedmann, in the case of Gorz, or to Louis Althusser, in the case of Moulier Boutang.

[4] For the details of these suicides, see Kim Wilsher, ‘Heading for a Breakdown’, The Guardian, 10 Mar. 2007, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/10/careers.workplacestress/, and ‘Trois suicides chez PSA Peugeot-Citroën en mai’, Le Monde, 4 June 2007, available at: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/0,40-0@2-3234,50-918531,0.html.

[5] Slavoj Zizek has recently criticised the autonomist school's emphasis on the ability of the products of immaterial labour to escape capitalist calculation in terms which might complement my critique of Moulier Boutang's work (see Zizek 2009).