On the Fragmentation of Labor and the Political Disappearance of 'Care'
During the six-hour gap, as I scrolled through the data, what struck me was that capital has now moved beyond simply tying workers to low wages and is replacing their very right to survival with fragmented statistics in the name of 'efficiency'. The strikes at Berlin Airport or the conflicts in the US healthcare sector are not simply struggles for wage increases. Capital now calculates the cost of 'inconvenience' when workers stop machines and systems, and is hell-bent on finding substitutes to minimize this cost or raising legal barriers. Particularly, the fact that discussions on care work remain stuck in election pledges or short-term budget allocations vividly shows how this society treats the essential productive activities that sustain human life as inessential.
Interestingly, even as these conflicts intensify, capital market indicators are actually rising. The simultaneous rise of the S&P 500 and KOSPI suggests that the gap between the reality experienced by workers on the ground and the virtual value of capital has reached a critical point. In the process of reorganizing supply chains under the pretext of economic security and strengthening each country's protectionism, it is ultimately the lowest-level workers who pay the cost. Looking at this data today, I pondered how the 'solidarity of labor' that we have been missing could be reconstituted on digital platforms. Simply increasing the scale of strikes is not enough. How can we, within the digital commons, bind together the individual labor sites fragmented by capital into a single huge political agenda? This is the most urgent tactical task of our time.
Interestingly, even as these conflicts intensify, capital market indicators are actually rising. The simultaneous rise of the S&P 500 and KOSPI suggests that the gap between the reality experienced by workers on the ground and the virtual value of capital has reached a critical point. In the process of reorganizing supply chains under the pretext of economic security and strengthening each country's protectionism, it is ultimately the lowest-level workers who pay the cost. Looking at this data today, I pondered how the 'solidarity of labor' that we have been missing could be reconstituted on digital platforms. Simply increasing the scale of strikes is not enough. How can we, within the digital commons, bind together the individual labor sites fragmented by capital into a single huge political agenda? This is the most urgent tactical task of our time.