Can't Get No Satisfaction; The Work of Best Buy's Buy Back Program

            It is inevitable that each time a new product is released into the market, it supplements, improves on, or (in the most extreme cases) completely replaces an existing commodity, rendering what has come before it obsolete. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the realm of technology, where advances in hardware seem to come as often as the weather changes. In light of this process, Best Buy’s Buy Back Program, in which consumers “buy it now [and Best Buy will] buy it back when the new thing comes out,” attempts to capitalize on consumers’ constantly shifting desires for new commodities. However, by focusing on the commodities themselves and the service role that the company takes in facilitating transactions, the commercial effectively ignores the ways in which modes of labor are shifting and the implications of an entirely information/service-driven economy should traditional labor be displaced by technology.

            In order to advertise the Buy Back Program, the commercial directly appeals to consumers’ feelings of frustration and distress over the constant cycle of newly-released products. The first five seconds of the advert exaggerates (perhaps rightly so) the notion of the rapid pace of technological innovation that renders “everything else… obsolete” (0:04). Additionally, the text cards proclaiming “Technology moves fast” (0:08) and “We feel your pain” (0:15) showcase a (perhaps spurious) sense of understanding and sympathy towards the consumer’s plight. It is only in the last five seconds that the commercial makes any note of the company or program itself. That is to say, almost the entirety of the traditional thirty-second commercial is focused on appealing to the viewer’s reservations about technology and consumption. The rhetoric here seems to be that it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to desire the new “thing”, whatever it may be, and the Buy Back Program is a route that enables the consumer to literally “buy into” the incessant demand for novelty, and, as a result, the continuation of the consumption process essential to the capitalist system.

            The incessant cycling between the old and the new is a major factor in what Morris-Suzuki calls the “perpetual innovation economy,” one that “pour[s] increasing amounts of capital and labor into the development of better software, new techniques, different products” (18). In light of contemporary application, this statement may seem problematic as in the past fifteen years, “labor”, as a productive, human activity in the Marxist sense of the word, is being increasingly and systematically replaced by automation and robotics technology. However, Morris-Suzuki does go on to note that “many jobs – particularly jobs involving personal services – continue to be relatively unmechanized” (24). This outlook more closely fits with the shift from “productive” to “non-productive” jobs, or what Mandel sees as the division between “manual and intellectual labor” (21). A Best Buy employee fits into the category of the “non-productive” or “service” labor because he/she is not responsible directly for creating or producing the commodities, but rather acts as the middle ground between the various technological companies and the consumer(s). In this vein, the commercial for the Buy Back Program works to situate the corporation as an important component of the “perpetual innovation economy,” and vital to the continuation of the capitalist system. According to the commercial, it appears that without the Buy Back Program, consumers would be left with their obsolete, and thus ostensibly useless, technology.

            Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the “exchange of the ability to work (that is, labor power) for wages, and wages for necessities” is actually at the core of the capitalist system (Davis, et al. 7). Without human labor to generate surplus value for the various commodities, profits decline. Hirshl argues that the vast, continuous cycles of technological innovation are “a catalyst for revolutionary change,” the sort of social change Marx called for (158). Thus, the “cyclic process… [that] increases unemployment, heightens realization crises, and thereby sets the competitive conditions encouraging another round of technological adoption” actually signals the “end” of capitalism, rather than it being an important facet to continuing the economic structure (164). With technology getting smaller, more precise, and increasingly sophisticated with each generation, as it is show in the Best Buy commercial, it is not hard to imagine fully automated production processes devoid of human labor. In a perhaps slightly less apocalyptic or revolutionary attitude than Hirshl, Jones also rejects technological advances as somehow creating a new or sustainable form of capitalism. Jones’s view takes into account the idea that “information jobs are themselves highly susceptible to labor displacement,” meaning that as technology renders productive jobs obsolete, service and information workers will be affected as well (qtd. in Hirshl 160). That is to say, as technology displaces human labor at the level of “‘local’ system dynamics [it will] generate ‘emergent’ or ‘global’ dynamics” (162). Without productive labor, regardless of the site of production (domestic or foreign), the information/service worker would be out of a job.

            In the end, Best Buy, and subsequently its Buy Back Program, can only exist if commodities are made with surplus value. Hirshl raises an important issue when he questions what sort of jobs will be available in “information capitalism” as “electronics technology replaces labor” (160). Despite Best Buy’s optimistic stance on the “perpetual innovation economy” and its role in that system, the future of the capitalist system as Marx outlined remains uncertain as technology continues to displace human labor in favor of automation. Therefore, it may not matter where the jobs will be in an “information capitalism,” as there may not be jobs (at least in the traditional, capitalist sense) to begin with.

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Davis, Jim, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack, eds. Cutting Edge. London: Verso, 1997. Print.

Hirschl, Thomas. “Structural Unemployment and the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism.” Cutting Edge. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London: Verso, 1997. 157-174. Print. 

lordbaenre. “Best Buy ‘Buy Back’ Commercial – Technology moves fast.” YouTube. 19 May 2011. Web. 30 October 2012. 

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Robots and Capitalism.” Cutting Edge. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London: Verso, 1997. 13-27. Print.

Something New? No, Rather Something Old, Something Borrowed (and Something Blue); Technology as a Tool of the Capitalist

“The perpetual motion was to produce work inexhaustibly without corresponding consumption, that is to say, out of nothing. Work, however is money.”

- Hermann von Helmhotlz

During Mostafa and I’s presentation last week on Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution, edited by Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack, I posed a question to the class in hopes to eliciting a conversation about how technology fits within the capitalist structure. The full outline of our presentation can be found at eng654.blogspot.com. In the entry for “Chapter 3: Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or, Marx’s Theory of Machines” by C. George Caffentzis,  we posted a video published by RSAnimate titled the “Crises of Capitalism” which is a remediation, of sorts, of a lecture given by economist David Harvey. 

In the video, from 7:30 to 9:05, Harvey seems to suggest that it is “financial ingenuity” that has driven the course of capitalism. I presented this video in class, with specific attention given to that minute and a half, because Harvey says that the “the whole history of capitalism has been about financial innovation.” I saw this standing in a little bit of a contrast to some of the previous texts we’ve read in class, namely of such theorists like Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells, as read via the Theories of the Information Society by Frank Webster. Bell and Castells argue that the vast quantity of bits of information form together to create a new society, as compared to such previous eras like the Agricultural or Industrial Ages.  

In an attempt to blend Caffentzis and Harvey with Bell and Castells, I asked in class whether it was significant that Harvey fails to mention technological and informational shifts in society in his critique of capitalism. If we notice the gaps in his critique, then is it possible to say that for Harvey, technological innovation – such as robots, automation, etc. – is just another form of the “financial innovation” that has shaped capitalism, instead of it being a separate component? Unfortunately, I don’t think I posed the question as correctly as I could, nor did I follow up by trying to tease out the underlying reasons for my questioning. 

So I thought I’d do that here, after this neat comic I found, of course:

In my thinking, this relates to the debate between what Webster deems as those “proclaim[ing] a new sort of society that has emerged from the old” versus “writers who place emphasis on continuities” (7). It would seem to me that Harvey fails to mention how he sees technology as shaping capitalism because he does not see technology as anything that is worth standing by itself. As such, all the components of technology that Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Caffentzis see as not adding any value to the production process – specifically, robots and automation – are, in Harvey’s view, just another factor in how the capitalists have altered the economic structure(s) of the world. In the video, Harvey only takes issue specifically with how “financial innovation” has “the effect of empowering the financiers.” I see Harvey as including technological innovation as just another category or element that the capitalist employs in order to keep atop of the hierarchical relationship between him and the working masses (or as Marx saw them, the proletariats).

Additionally, I see Harvey’s line of thinking as relating to Caffentzis argument that despite the notion that “the working day would be so reduced by mechanization that our existential problem would be… how to fill our leisure time” (29), automation, robots and “mechanization has lead to an increase, not a decrease, of work” [author’s emphasis] (31). An increase in work means an increase in the exploitation of worker from the capitalist’s viewpoint, which ultimately leads to an increase in value, ostensibly in a perfect application of the process. Replacement of workers by robots does nothing to add value to commodities despite the application of automation allowing the capitalist to manufacture commodities faster, cheaper and in greater numbers. According to Marx, the real source of value lies in the exploitation of the worker’s labor-power, and because robots have no labor-power to exploit, they cannot create value. This whole argument seems to fall in line with Morris-Suzuki’s use of Ernest Mandel’s theory that “total automation of all productive activity (including services) is incompatible with capitalism. We cannot even be certain that it would be compatible with human society of any kind” (15).

Of course, this brings us back to Harvey’s idea of “financial innovation.” If the increasing use of automation and technology in the capitalist structure is not the defining feature in contemporary economic circles (like it might initially be perceived as being), does this mean that robots are just another instrument in the capitalist’s toolbox, rather than a complete and separate workspace? This would mean, of course, that every innovation, be it technological or industrial, a new machine, robotic being or way of operating, are only parts of the grand scheme of the capitalist to own and control the vast economic spheres.

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Caffentzis, C. George. “Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or Marx’s Theory of Machines.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack. New York: Verso, 1997. 29-56. Print.

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Robots and Capitalism.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack. New York: Verso, 1997. 13-27. Print.

theRSAorg. “RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism.” YouTube. 28 June 2010. Web. 15 October 2012. 

Webster, Frank. Introduction. Theories of the Information Age 3rd Edition. New York. Routledge, 2006. 1-7. Print. 

On Writing and Speaking

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow...”

- Lawrence Clark Powell

It always thrills me when what I’m studying in one class merges over to another class.

With that in mind, in her essay “Writing”, Barbara Johnson makes the case that what Derrida saw wrong with the logocentristic nature of Western philosophy – the privileging of speech over writing resulting from the hierarchical notion of binary relationships – was that “even when a text tries to privilege speech as immediacy, it cannot completely eliminate the fact that speech, like writing, is based on a differance… between signifier and signified inherent in the sign. Speakers do not beam meanings directly from one mind to another. Immediacy is an illusion” (343). I think it’s interesting that Johnson uses the word immediacy, because the first thing I thought to connect it to was Bolter and Grusin’s notion of remediation, in which immediacy and hypermediacy play against each other as old media is adapted, updated and used to create new media. If Johnson is saying that speech operates under the notion of immediacy – that it is, it is “presence, life, and identity” – then the act of writing, of creating a text, takes on ideas of hypermediacy, of “deferment, absence, death, and difference” (343). Meaning that when we read words on the page, at some conscious level we are constantly acknowledging that we are using a tangible object in order to gain insight, knowledge, entertainment, etc., but that this relationship is effectively hypermediated in that we can never see past the words on the page to see something inherently sustainable underneath. All we see are signifiers, never the truth.

Furthermore, I thought briefly to connect this to Habermas’s idea of the public sphere, in which the act of physically meeting in a place – a coffeehouse, a salon, etc. – changed how information was circulated. Habermas suggests that because of the rise in publication materials such as newspapers, magazines and journals, more of the population – that is, white, land-owning males – became involved in political and social discussions. In this way, they were influenced primarily by texts, by the written word, by physical objects. But Habermas saw the actual meeting, the physical act of coming together, as the most important facet of how the public sphere was shaped. Due to this interpretation, it seems that Habermas was, to some extent, favoring speech over writing.

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Johnson, Barbara. “Writing.” Literary Theory: an Anthology 2^nd Edition. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 340-347. Print.

Analysis #1

"Information smacks of safe neutrality; it is the simple, helpful heaping up of unassailable facts. In that innocent guise, it is the perfect starting point for a technocratic political agenda that wants as little exposure for its objectives as possible. After all, what can anyone can say against information?"

- Theodore Roszak

Originally published in 1891, the advertisement for “Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription” –  alleged to remedy such feminine “maladies” as “nervous excitability, exhaustion, prostration, hysteria,” as well as imparting “strength to the uterine organs” – shows some surprisingly complex political and cultural undertones. Although it is not specifically noted where this advertisement first appeared, we can assume that an advertisement of this sort would most likely have been published in a journal or magazine marketed exclusively for women. The undercurrents of political and cultural notions arise precisely in regards to its form as a newspaper advertisement and from its content as addressed specifically to women’s interests, which in turn mark it as indoctrinating the patriarchal ideological stances of the particular era.

As Jürgen Habermas outlines in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the shift from solely private activities to public discourse amongst a widespread sphere of influence was marked by the rise not only in public spaces such as coffee-houses but also in the proliferation of affordable printed materials such as books and newspapers. Furthermore, up until the eighteenth century, “advertisements occupied only about one-twentieth” of political or cultural journal space, as most business communication was conducted either face-to-face or by word-of-mouth (Habermas 190). However, it was around the middle of the nineteenth century that advertising agencies became solidified business models. As newspaper and journals increasingly relied on selling advertising space in order to turn a profit, the publisher’s job was shifted from “a merchant of news to… a dealer in public opinion” (Habermas 182). Indeed, we can see this manifested in the advertisement, especially since the name of the product – “Favorite Prescription” – marks it has having some sort of societal approval and necessity. By keeping in mind Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s notion in Remediation that “no medium [seems to] function independently and establish its own separate and purified space of cultural meaning,” to some extent the rhetoric of the printed advertisement seems to remediate the rhythm and persuasive techniques of the sales pitch of the door-to-door salesman, albeit in a much more “public” setting, i.e. a newspaper with a high circulation (55).

One major criticism of Habermas’s notion of the public sphere is its notable exclusion of women. Habermas seems to peg this as a result of the “nobility joining the upper bourgeois stratum [that] still possessed social functions… [of] landed and moneyed interest”, thus resulting in conversations that included “economic and political disputes” (33). Evidently, according to Habermas, women would not be interested in such intellectual pursuits, and thus were neglected in terms of participation in the public sphere. However, he does note that it was “female readers… [that] often took a more active part in the literary public sphere,” constituting a reading public that held some significant economic sway (Habermas 56). Perhaps then this is the reason that the market for women’s journals and magazines, aimed at their interests, came about well before equality for women in the political realm, including the right to vote, which happened almost thirty years after “Dr. Pierce’s” was published. Furthermore, the advertisement’s likely publication in a women’s newspaper or journal, itself a form of media which “developed into a capitalist undertaking… [fueled by] a web of interests extraneous to business,” particularly shows its primary goal of selling a product, not necessarily providing women with the tools or opportunities for rational-critical debate (Habermas 185).

It is at the intersection of form and content that we can begin to see the underlying function of such advertising as related to Althusserian notions of ideological apparatuses, as well as the inherent attitude of the dominant patriarchal society. By considering Althusser’s thesis that ideology has physical properties, then we could argue that this particular advertisement, as published in a newspaper or journal, shows what Habermas sees as the “psychological manipulation of advertising” (190). As such, the language of the advertisement is directed to women by appealing to their insecurities. Of particular notice are the phrases “Many lovers have been separated because the health of the lady in the case failed” and “No man finds attraction in a woman who is subject to [the various disorders]”. What is subverted in this particular advertising technique is the fact that the “sender of the message hides his business intentions in the role of someone interested in the public welfare,” in this case, of the individual lady who might be suffering from these thoroughly Victorian aliments (Habermas 193). Furthermore, the illustration works to continue the “psychological manipulation” by characterizing the male gaze. Much like Dürer’s woodcut, here the “desire for immediacy is evident in [the man’s] clinical gaze, which seems to want to analyze and control… its female object” (Bolter 79). The man stares at the woman seated in front of the piano, turning the page of her music notes almost like an austere school-master. He holds the position of authority, standing above her, and thus she is regulated to a position of adolescence, fragility and obedience. Bolter and Grusin later make the argument that the male gaze in linear perspective “depends on hypermediacy, which is defined as an ‘unnatural’ way of looking at the word” (84). However, Althusser would argue that the interpellation process so engulfs society in ideological viewpoints that we are unable to see things any differently. For the women of this time period, lacking political and social equality, a masculine authority admonishing them for “undesirable” traits (i.e. the “organic diseases peculiar to women”) might be enough to persuade them to immediately go out and purchase the advertised product. Habermas extrapolates this claim by noting that “ideology accommodates itself to the form of the so-called consumer culture and fulfills… its old function, exerting pressure toward conformity” (215). It is precisely that conformity to the patriarchal notions of the differences between the sexes that is played out through this particular advertisement.

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Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Literary Theory: an Anthology 2^nd Edition. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 691 702. Print.

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000. Print. 

Clymer, Floyd. Scrapbook: Early Advertising Art. New York: Bonanza Books, 1955. Print. 

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991. Print.

Webster, Frank. Theories of the Information Society 3^rd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.