Unsourcing: good for companies but bad for capitalism?

In a very interesting discusison on the implications of ‘free labor’ for the current political economy, Aaron Peters defines ‘Unsourcing” as “unpaid, P2P mediated work that replaces previously renumerated work”. It is used more and more frequently by companies under the moniker of crowdsourcing and while it may benefit the efficiency and bottom-line of individual companies, it also creates a systemic problem for the system as a whole, since non-wage earners can no longer buy the goods that are produced by these self-same companies.

Read the article in full here. For background, see also our own take on it, i.e. our articles on the ‘crisis of value’ generated by the emergence of peer production.

Excerpted from the conclusion:

“Robert Schiller recently claimed that any stimulus package shouldn’t have a short-term increase in economic GDP as it’s primary objective but should instead focus on the creation of ‘jobs’ directly in sectors of high intensity labour like education, social care, the arts and scientific research. Of particular interest was his idea to renumerate those activities that for the most part are already performed but that are currently unwaged (Virno’s and Marazzi’s post-Fordist ‘Free Labour’ as well as care work and so on) or activities whose positive externalities, in particular to the environment, aren’t immediately translated into GDP growth in any classic cost-benefit analysis.

One would imagine that within such a framework Schiller would argue that those workers who engage in non-renumerated labour as a consequence of ‘unsourcing’ should instead be paid for their work. The renumeration of such work might even take the form of a guaranteed minimum income. Indeed it may only be through measures such as the GMI that the issue of the secular crisis can be resolved while upholding a market-based economic system. This is certainly not something not touched upon in the ‘Babbage’ article and is anathema to other obsequious accounts of the coming ‘third industrial revolution’ that can be found elsewhere.

One imagines Robert Schiller to be a better student of capitalism than the writers of the ‘Babbage’ column whose technological utopianism is conjoined with the now desiccated thinking of neo-liberal ideology. There are serious ramifications for the changes proposed by ‘unsourcing’ as well as other phenomenon within late capitalism that will increasingly minimise people’s ability to engage in waged labour and thus reproduce their lives under the existing economic system. While profits may be expanded by these paths social fracture and antagonism may well become increasingly amplified as a consequence. While it is true that Wired magazine and the ‘Californian Ideologues’ of a decade and a half ago had an uncritical position on technological change that bordered on utopian – the increased pervasion of a similar strain of utopianism on the behalf of ‘The Economist’ that regards this same change as being PURELY beneficial for profits without any negative ramifications seems equally myopic. Such a lack of pragmatic foresight in such quarters is a rare thing. One can only assume that such a lack, four years into the great recession, is indicative of a heightened desperation.”

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