"Vivendo no mundo imaterial": serviços, trabalho e conhecimento no capitalismo em metamorfoses permanentes

Abstract

The decline of the Fordist model of organizing production and labor, coupled with the rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the popularization of the use of associated technologies such as the Internet, microcomputers, and smartphones, culminated in a series of elaborations that sought to understand the diversity of phenomena that were emerging. In this process, one topic gained prominence: services. The debate envolving the concept of services has shown itself capable of bringing together a series of discussions ranging from the productive structure of the economy to perceptions about the role of labor and how it has been modified by new technologies. This dissertation was prepared in an attempt to contribute to the understanding of phenomena arising from new types of technology and transformations in production that are in some way related to the provision of services. In this way, it sought to answer the following question: how have the changes in services allowed us to understand the transformations in the organization of production and in the labor process since the 1970s in light of the social forms of the production process? This research problem seeks to meet the main objective of demonstrating the relevance of the analysis of the social form of production as a way of understanding the technological-informational-digital changes that have intensified in recent decades, better understanding their internal nexuses, processuality, multiplicity of meanings, and consequences. Consideration beyond the technical-material aspect of economic characteristics is necessary under the perception that there is a union of the technical-material process and its social forms that characterize the relationship between people in the capitalist economy. From this, it becomes possible to observe how the labor process and technical progress are shaped by the basic forms and functions of the capitalist economy. There is a multiplication of forms of real subsumption of labor under capital, as well as new poles of value extraction, with new commodities and new forms of control over labor processes, made possible mainly by ICTs and their use in platforms from Uber to Industry 4.0, or Amazon Web Services. This has led to the diversification of these applications to forms of cheapening and saving the use of constant capital, inserted in a constant dynamic of searches for extra profits. In this sense, strategies arise to ensure this position of advantage, with the use of intellectual property protection mechanisms that guarantee the extraction of "knowledge" rent from commodities through monopolies gaining prominence.