The Concept Of Immaterial Labor Analysis

The concept of‘immaterial labor' is a new category created and used by the Italian Autonomist Marxism,which was proposed by Maurizio Lazzarato,then developed and perfected by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt in the works of Empire and Multitude,and so on,and finally formed a relatively complete immaterial labor theory.This concept is also defined as‘the labor that produces the information and cultural content of the commodity,and the service and affective,which not only refers to the production of a commodity,but also a capital relationship'.This concept has led to the intensive discussion and thinking of Chinese and western scholars since it was proposed.Some people think that‘immaterial labor' is of great significance to further study the new situation of Marxist political economy in the development of contemporary social economy,as well as the new changes of capitalist exploitation and value production,and point out that Marx's labor theory of value is already out of date.While others criticize that although they have found the fundamental change in the labor paradigm since the post-fordism society,but it is clear that the concept of‘immaterial labor' is not helpful in understanding this fundamental change,since it does not really jump out of Marx's ‘productive labor' category.This paper makes a critical analysis on the concept of ‘immaterial labor' based on the context of Marx's ‘labor theory of value',so will analyze and criticize the concept of immaterial labor in the following three aspects: first,immaterial labor is an organic part of productive labor,and it has dismembered labor.Immaterial labor,as a concrete labor,only creates the use of value.Second,immaterial labor only creates material wealth,is a kind of concrete labor.Negri and others regarded immaterial labor as the abstract labor of creating value,and believed that since the post-fordism society,immaterial labor was the main source of value,and Marx's labor theory of value have been out of date.The author will combine Marx's criticism of the classical school labor theory of value and the creation process of Marx's scientific labor theory ofvalue to criticize the fact that immaterial labor confuses concrete labor and abstract labor.Finally,it is concluded that immaterial labor does not change the nature of capitalist exploitation,nor does it falsify Marx's labor theory of value.