Notes on the Edu-Factory

and Cognitive Capitalism

Silvia Federici
George Caffentzis1

Since February of 2007 we have been involved in discussions

concerning university education with many comrades around the world
on a list that dealt with the notion of the “edu-factory.” (For more on
this effort go to the edu-factory website: http://www.edu-factory.org.)
The following notes present some reflections on two concepts that
have been central to this discussion: the edu-factory and cognitive
capitalism.
First, we agree with the key point of the “edu-factory” discussion
prospectus:

As was the factory, so now is the university. Where once the

factory was a paradigmatic site of struggle between workers
and capitalists, so now the university is a key space of
conflict, where the ownership of knowledge, the reproduction
of the labour force, and the creation of social and cultural
stratifications are all at stake. This is to say the university is
not just another institution subject to sovereign and
governmental controls, but a crucial site in which wider social
struggles are won and lost.

We are coordinators of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa

(CAFA) and since 1991 our support for the struggles in African
universities followed from the same analysis and logic. Universities are
important places of class struggle, and not only in Europe and North

1 Silvia Federici may be contacted at [email protected]. George Caffentzis may

be contacted at [email protected].

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America. We insisted on this point against the critics of the post-

colonial university, who looked down on any effort to defend
educational systems that they saw as modeled on colonial education.
We argued that university struggles in Africa express a refusal to let
international capital:

• decide the conditions of work;

• appropriate the wealth invested in these institutions
which people have paid for.
• suppress the democratization and politicization of
education that on African campuses had grown through
the 1980s and ‘90s.

More generally, in the same way as we would oppose the shutting

down of factories where workers have struggled to control work and
wages—especially if these workers were determined to fight against
the closure—so we agree that we should resist the dismantling of
public education, even though schools are also instruments of class
rule and alienation. This is a contradiction that we cannot wish away
and is present in all our struggles. Whether we are struggling around
education, health, housing, etc, it is illusory to think that we can place
ourselves outside of capitalist relations whenever we wish and from
there build a new society. As students’ movements across the planet
have shown, universities are not just nurseries for the leaders of a neo-
liberal elite, they are also a terrain for debate, contestation of
institutional politics, re-appropriation of resources.
It is through these debates, struggles and re-appropriations, and
by connecting the struggles in the campuses to the struggles in other
parts of the social factory, that we create alternative forms of
education and alternative educational practices. In Italy, for instance,
with the contract of 1974, metal-mechanic workers were able to win
150 hours of paid study leave per year in which, together with
teachers, mostly from the student movement, they organized curricula
that analyzed the capitalist organization of work, also in their own
workplaces. In the US, since the '60s, the campuses have been among
the centers of the anti-war movement, producing a wealth of analysis
about the military-industrial complex and the role of the universities in
its functioning and expansion. In Africa, the university campuses were
centers of resistance to structural adjustment and analysis of its
implications. This is certainly one of the reasons why the World Bank
was so eager to dismantle them.
The struggle in the edu-factory is especially important today
because of the strategic role of knowledge in the production system in

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a context in which the “enclosure” of knowledge (its privatization,

commodification, expropriation through the intellectual property
regimes) is a pillar of economic restructuring. We are concerned,
however, that we do not overestimate this importance, and/or use the
concept of the edu-factory to set up new hierarchies with respect to
labor and forms of capitalist accumulation.
This concern arises from our reading of the use that is made of
the concept of “cognitive capitalism” as found in the statement
circulated by Conricerca as well as in the work of some Italian
autonomists. True, we need to identify the leading forms of capitalist
accumulation in all its different phases, and recognize their “tendency”
to hegemonize (though not to homogenize) other forms of capitalist
production. But we should not dismiss the critiques of Marxian theory
developed by the anti-colonial movement and the feminist movement,
which have shown that capitalist accumulation has thrived precisely
through its capacity to simultaneously organize development and
underdevelopment, waged and un-waged labor, production at the
highest levels of technological know-how and production at the lowest
levels. In other words, we should not dismiss the argument that it is
precisely through these disparities, the divisions built in the working
class through them, and the capacity to transfer wealth/surplus from
one pole to the other that capitalist accumulation has expanded in the
face of so much struggle.
There are many issues involved that we can only touch upon in
these notes. We want, above all, to concentrate here on the political
implications of the use of the notion of “cognitive capitalism” But here
are a few points for discussion.
First, the history of capitalism should demonstrate that the
capitalist subsumption of all forms of production does not require the
extension of the level of science and technology achieved at any
particular point of capitalist development to all workers contributing to
the accumulation process. It is now acknowledged, for instance, that
the plantation system was organized along capitalist lines; in fact, it
was a model for the factory. However, the cotton picking plantation
slaves in the US South of 1850s were not working at the level of
technological know-how available to workers in the textile mills of the
US North of the time, though their product was a lifeline for these same
mills. Does that mean that the Southern slaves were industrial workers
or, vice versa, the Northern wageworkers were plantation workers?
Similarly, to this day, capitalism has not mechanized housework
despite the fact that the unpaid domestic work of women has been a
key source of accumulation for capital. Again, why at the peak of an
era of “cognitive capitalism” do we witness an expansion of labor in

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slave-like conditions, at the lowest level of technological know-how—

child labor, labor in sweatshops, labor in the new agricultural
plantations and mining fields of Latin America, Africa, etc.? Can we say
that workers in these conditions are “cognitive workers”? Are they and
their struggles irrelevant to and/or outside the circuit of capitalist
accumulation? Why has wage labor, once considered the defining form
of capitalist work, still not been extended even to the majority of
workers in capitalist society?
This example and these questions suggest that work can be
organized for capitalist accumulation and along capitalist lines without
the laborer working at the average level of technological/scientific
knowledge applied in the highest points of capitalist production. They
also suggest that the logic of capitalism can only be grasped by looking
at the totality of its relations, and not only to the highest point of its
scientific/technological achievement. Capitalism has systematically
and strategically produced disparities through the international and
sexual/racial division of labor and through the “underdevelopment” of
particular sectors of its production, and these disparities have not been
erased, but in fact have been deepened by the increasing integration
of science and technology in the production process. For instance, in
the era of cognitive labor, the majority of Africans do not have access
to the Internet or for that matter even the telephone; even the
miniscule minority who does, has access to it only for limited periods of
time, because of the intermittent availability of electricity. Similarly,
illiteracy, especially among women, has grown exponentially from the
1970s to present. In other words, a leap forward for many workers, has
been accompanied by a leap backward by many others, who are now
even more excluded from the “global discourse,” and certainly not in
the position to participate in global cooperation networks based upon
the Internet.
Second and most important are the political implications of an
use of “cognitive capitalism” and “cognitive labor” that overshadows
the continuing importance of other forms of work as contributors to the
accumulation process.
There is the danger that by privileging one kind of capital (and
therefore one kind of worker) as being the most productive, the most
advanced, the most exemplary of the contemporary paradigm, etc., we
create a new hierarchy of struggle, and we engage in form of activism
that precludes a re-composition of the working class. Another danger is
that we fail to anticipate the strategic moves by which capitalism can
restructure the accumulation process by taking advantage of the
inequalities within the global workforce. How the last globalization
drive was achieved is exemplary in this case.

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Concerning the danger of confirming in our activism the

hierarchies of labor created by the extension of capitalist relations,
there is much we can learn from the past. As the history of class
struggle demonstrates, privileging one sector of the working class over
the others is the surest road to defeat. Undoubtedly, certain types of
workers have played a crucial role in certain historical phases of
capitalist development. But the working class has paid a very high
price to a revolutionary logic that established hierarchies of
revolutionary subjects, patterned on the hierarchies of the capitalist
organization of work. Marxist/socialist activists in Europe lost sight of
the revolutionary power of the world’s “peasantry.” More than that,
peasant movements have been destroyed (see the case of the ELAS in
Greece) by communists who considered only the factory worker as
organizable and “truly revolutionary.” Socialists/Marxists also lost sight
of the immense (house)work that was being done to produce and
reproduce industrial worker. The huge “iceberg” of labor in capitalism
(to use Maria Mies’ metaphor) was made invisible by the tendency to
look at the tip of the iceberg, industrial labor, while the labor involved
in the reproduction of labor-power went unseen, with the result that
the feminist movement was often fought against and seen as
something outside the class struggle.
Ironically, under the regime of industrial capitalism and factory
work, it was the peasant movements of Mexico, China, Cuba, Vietnam,
and to a great extent Russia who made the revolutions of the 20th
century. In the 1960s as well, the impetus for change at the global
level came from the anti-colonial struggle, including the struggle
against apartheid and for Black Power in the United States. Today, it is
the indigenous people, the campesino, the unemployed of Mexico
(Chiapas, Oaxaca), Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, the farmers of
India, the maquila workers of the US border, the immigrant workers of
the US, etc. who are conducting the most “advanced” struggles
against the global extension of capitalist relations.
Let us be very clear. We make these points not to minimize the
importance of the struggles in the edu-factory and the ways in which
the Internet has led to the creation of new kinds of commons that are
crucial to our struggle, but because we fear we may repeat mistakes
that may ultimately isolate those who work and struggle in these
networks. From this viewpoint, we think that “the no-global”
movement (for all its difficulties) was a step forward in its capacity to
articulate demands and forms of activism that projected the struggle in
a global way, creating a new type of internationalism, one bringing
together computer programmers, artists, and other edu-workers with

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farmers and industrial workers in one movement, each making its

distinctive contribution.
For this political “re-composition” to become possible, however,
we need to see the continuity of our struggle through the difference of
our places in the international division of labor, and to articulate our
demands and strategies in accordance to these differences and the
need to overcome them. Assuming that a re-composition of the
workforce is already occurring because work is becoming homogenized
—through a process that some have defined as the “becoming
common of labor”—will not do. We cannot cast the “cognitive” net so
widely that almost every kind of work becomes “cognitive” labor, short
of making arbitrary social equations and obfuscating our
understanding of what is new about “cognitive labor” in the present
phase of capitalism.
It is an arbitrary move (for instance) to assimilate, under the
“cognitive” label, the work of a domestic worker—whether an
immigrant or not, whether s/he is a wife/mother/sister or a paid laborer
—to that of a computer programmer or computer artist and, on top of
it, suggest that the cognitive aspect of domestic work is something
new, owing to the dominance of a new type of capitalism.
Certainly domestic work, like every form of reproductive work,
does have a strong cognitive component. To know how to adjust the
pillows under the body of a sick person so that the skin does not blister
and the bones do not hurt is a science and an art that require much
attention, knowledge and experimentation. The same is true of the
care for a child, and of most other aspects of “housework” whoever
may be doing this work. But it is precisely when we look at the vast
universe of practices that constitute reproductive work, especially
when performed in the home, that we see the limits of the application
of the type of computer-based, technological know-how on which
“cognitive capitalism relies.” We see that the knowledge necessary for
reproductive work can certainly benefit from the use of the internet
(assuming there is time and money for it), but it is one type of
knowledge that human beings, mostly women, have developed over a
long period of time, in conformity with but also against the
requirements of the capitalist organization of work.
We should add that nothing is gained by admitting housework
into the new realm of cognitive labor, by redefining is as “affective
labor” or, as some have done, “immaterial labor,” or again “care
work.” For a start, we should avoid formulas that imply a body/mind,
reason/emotion separation in any type of work and its products.
Moreover, does replacing the notion of “reproductive work,” as
used by the feminist movement, with that of “affective labor” truly

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serve to assimilate, under the “cognitive” label, the work of a domestic

worker (whether immigrant or not, whether a wife/sister/mother or
paid laborer) or the work of a sex worker to that of a computer
programmer or computer artist? What is really “common” in their
labor, taking into account all the complex of social relations sustaining
their different forms of work? What is common, for instance, between a
male computer programmer or artist or teacher and a female domestic
worker who, in addition to having a paid job, must also spend many
hours doing unpaid labor taking care of her family members
(immigrant women too have often family members to care for also in
the countries where they migrate, or must send part of their salary
home to pay for those caring for their family members)?
Most crucial of all, if the labor involved in the reproduction of
human beings—still an immense part of the labor expended in
capitalist society—is “cognitive,” in the sense that it produces not
things but “states of being,” then, what is new about “cognitive labor”?
And, equally important, what is gained by assimilating all forms of work
—even as a tendency—under one label, except that some kinds of
work and the political problematic they generate again disappear?
Isn't it the case that by stating that domestic work is “cognitive
work” we fail, once again, to address the question of the devaluation
of this work in capitalist society—its largely unpaid status, the gender
hierarchies that are built upon it—through the wage relation?
Shouldn't we ask, instead, what kind of organizing can be done—so
that domestic workers and computer programmers can come together
—rather than assuming that we all becoming assimilated in the mare
magnum of “cognitive labor”?
Taking reproductive work as a standard also serves to question
the prevailing assumption that the cognitivization of work, in the sense
of its computerization/ reorganization through the Internet—has an
emancipatory effect. A voluminous feminist literature has challenged
the idea that the industrialization of many aspects of housework has
reduced housework time for women. In fact, many studies have shown
that industrialization has increased the range of what is considered as
socially necessary housework. The same is true with the infiltration of
science and technology in domestic work, including childcare and sex
work. For example, the spread of personal computers, for those
houseworkers who can afford them and have time to use them, can
help relieve the isolation and monotony of housework through chat
rooms and social networks. But the creation of virtual communities
does not alleviate the increasing problem of loneliness, nor does it help
the struggle against the destruction of community bonds and the
proliferation of “gated” worlds.

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In conclusion, notions like “cognitive labor” and “cognitive

capitalism” should be used with the understanding that they represent
a part, though a leading one, of capitalist development and that
different forms of knowledge and cognitive work exist that cannot be
flattened under one label. Short of that, the very utility of such
concepts in identifying what is new in capitalist accumulation and the
struggle against it is lost. What is also lost is the fact that, far from
communalizing labor, every new turn in capitalist development tends
to deepen the divisions in the world proletariat, and that as long as
these divisions exist they can be used to reorganize capital on a
different basis and destroy the terrain on which movements have
grown.

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