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Multitudes Web – Autonomist Marxism and the Information Society

Beneath the rosy images of the information society lie
the stark goals of ’control and reduction in the costs of labour’
(Negri 1978, 254).

Such analysis is by no means unique to autonomists.
Indeed awareness of the role of informatics in the neoliberal assault
on the working class has generated an influential line of quasi-Marxist
’neo-Luddism’. Based largely on ’labour process’ perspectives derived
froth Braverman’s (1974) seminal studies on the ’degradation of work’,
but with important strands in media studies, this seeks to expose the
new technologies as instruments for deskilling and ’mind management’
(Schiller 1976) and to revive, at least intellectually, the resistant
tradition of 19th century machine-breakers (e.g. Noble, 1983, 1984 ;
Webster and Robins 1986).