The Sad Fate of the Productive Worker
In this section of Workers and Capital , Mario Tronti returns to one of Marx’s most unsettling claims: that to be a productive worker under capitalism is not a fortunate condition but a “sad fate.” Productive labour is not defined by its usefulness, its skill, its social necessity, or its contribution to human flourishing. It is defined by its relation to capital. Productive labour is labour that produces surplus-value, and therefore labour that produces capital itself. To be productive, in this precise capitalist sense, is to participate in the reproduction of the social relation that dominates you. This is where Tronti’s argument opens onto the problem of the “social worker.” The worker is not simply an individual located in the factory, nor merely a seller of labour-power standing before the capitalist. Capitalist development increasingly socialises labour, drawing more and more forms of cooperation, knowledge, reproduction, circulation, and communication into its process of valoris...