Theories of immaterial labor: A critical reflection from Marx

Abstract

Which concepts of work, value and social class the theses that consider the immaterial labor as the central productive force in contemporary societies refer to? The aim of this article is to answer that question. In order to do it, we will undergo a brief incursion in the central theses of the “economy of knowledge” to confront the interpretation of the concepts of work, value and social class performed by them to an alternative interpretation that we think tries to develop the more general precepts of the Marxian theory. We conclude, at the end of the text, that there exists a sort of analytical reductionism in the “economy of knowledge “scholars, especially when they reduce “work” to the physical work performed in the factory, the value to an arithmetically measurable expression of manual labor exploitation and the working class or proletariat to the labor class.