Cybernetic proletarianization: Spirals of devaluation and conflict in digitalized production

Abstract

Drawing on a case study of algorithmically controlled manual labour in German manufacturing and delivery logistics, this article develops the concept of cybernetic proletarianization. It does so by joining an empirical analysis of labour processes with theoretical class analysis. Thus, it reconstructs Marx’s understanding of technical proletarianization as a dialectic between expulsion and reintegration of living labour in production processes. In the cases researched here, a qualitative and quantitative expulsion of living labour could be observed in different forms: First, deskilled flexibilization via digital instructions on working steps; second, a cybernetic mode of work intensification that is based on a permanent digital evaluation of the labour process; third, data-based automation, which builds on the data collected from the labour processes. This expulsion is counterweighted by a process of reintegration of devaluated living labour due to new highly labour-intensive forms of production and distribution, which are enabled by algorithmic work control. However, these processes are highly conflictual, resulting in different ‘technopolitics from below’, in which workers influence or even disrupt the processes of cybernetic proletarianization.