Slides for the Lisbon conference on 'Social sustainability and dignified labour', 14 October 2021

1. Mental Objects,
Mental Production,
and the future of
work
Alan Freeman
Geopolitical Economy Research
Group
University of Manitoba

3. 0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
1951
1953
1955
1957
1959
1961
1963
1965
1967
1969
1971
1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019
Annual Growth Four-Year Moving Average
The Great Long Northern Decline
Average growth rate of the global North (USA, Europe, Japan,
settler colonies)
Average Northern growth
has slowed since 1961
This includes all Northern
countries since 1974
The longest decline in the
history of capitalism
In other words, growth has
in effect already stopped
The problem is not growth
It is production

4. The relentless growth of services
Share of labour engaged in services has
grown systematically since 1948
Now over 80%
Great majority of workers no longer produce
material things
The economy cannot be ‘fixed’ by increasing
the material productivity of labour
There will be no ‘Fourth Industrial
Revolution’
Even without growth, material production is
wasteful and destructive
Therefore in the material industries, focus
should be on decoupling
Not ‘greenwash’: it is necessary
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
1948
1952
1956
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004
UK US Japan Germany
USA
UK
Japan
Germany
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
1970
1973
1976
1979
1982
1985
1988
1991
1994
1997
2000
2003
2006
2009
2012
United States France
Germany Japan
Mexico United Kingdom
Share of employment
in manufacturing
Share of employment
in services

5. What do service workers do?
Not what might be
expected
Fastest growing is
Health and Education
Followed by Business
Services
And Leisure and
hospitality
Commerce and
finance both declining
Also government
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
1946
1951
1956
1961
1966
1971
1976
1981
1986
1991
1996
2001
2006
2011
Retail+Wholesale
Information
Financial Activities
Leisure and
Hospitality
Government
Health and Education
Business services

6. The new source of growth: mental production
Source: DCMS January 2015 estimates, figure 5 and table 6
The engine of
creation
The rise of creative employment

7. Growth of creative sector confirmed in many
countries – here are some results from Canada
0.80
0.90
1.00
1.10
1.20
1.30
1.40
1.50
1.60
1/1/2010
1/1/2011
1/1/2012
1/1/2013
1/1/2014
1/1/2015
1/1/2016
1/1/2017
1/1/2018
1/1/2019
1/1/2020
Employment
in
Canada
relative
to
1st
January
2010
Creative non-performing Performing Not Creative

8. The problem with
‘services’
To understand labour, we must know how many people are doing
what. Otherwise, any talk of transformation is a kind of economic
alchemy.
• The concept of ‘service’ is unhelpful
• One of the oldest terms of economics – comes from feudal term ‘serf’!
Originally ‘personal service’ (eg haircuts) now economically
irrelevant
• ‘Services’ are delivered remotely
• ‘Services’ are recorded and shifted in time
• ‘Services’ are not delivered personally
Many definitions eg ‘Service’ is anything delivered over time.
• Purpose is to make finance sound productive
• Leads to absurdity: a toothpaste tube delivers ‘toothpaste as a service’
• Has expanded to include transport, communications, etc etc etc
Need to classify work
to represent this new reality

9. ‘Human-centred’ and ‘Mental’ production
Two ‘dimensions’ of so-called service labour
• Rejects the counterposition between ‘cultural’ production and ‘Mac Jobs’
• What is really meant is the undervaluation of human-centred work
Some labour is neither human centred nor mental (assembly line)
Some is human-centred with low mental content (office cleaning)
Some is highly mental with low human focus (backend software)
Most important is human-centred with high mental content
(performance art, education, child care)

10. Defining mental
production
Critique of ‘material production’
• First, ‘material sufficiency’, identified with primitivism
• Then ‘material productivity’ identified with capitalism
• Then ‘mental superstructure’, identified with civilization
‘Vulgar Marxist’ concept of a succession of
stages of production
Marx and Engels did not have this notion
• ‘Only capitalists’ are capable of high thinking and art
It is intrinsically bourgeois and elitist
• ‘Only civilized people’ can engage in high mental activities
Colonial, imperialist and racist outlook

11. Critique of ‘material production’
ALL production has mental content
• When I make a cup, I am not making a ‘cylindrical white object with a handle’
• I am making a ‘utensil for drinking from’
• The mental component of use-value cannot be separated from the material
It is purposive: the purpose defines the use
• The labourer must know the purpose of the product
Consequently, all labour has a mental content
• Achieved by mechanisation
• Well adapted to commodity fetishism because ‘object’ deprived of human origins
• Well adapted to private property because material objects are excludable
Capitalism separated the mental and material elements of use

12. Pure mental production
‘Pure mental’ production precedes industrial production
• Cave-painting!
• Societies of plenty (Haida)
Mental Arithmetic dates to the Treviso system (1380)
• Transported Sino-Indo-Arabic numerals to Europe
• Transformed commercial productivity by facilitating rapid exchanges
of money
Logarithms (Napier)
Not a stage but a form of production

13. The definition of a mental object
Something that exists independent of material form
For example a poem, a song, an image, a theorem, an idea …
or a computer programme
It can be moved from one material form to another (Printed,
digitized, CD, spoken)
This ‘Content’ is a ‘mental object’

14. Mental Production
• But they do not require any particular material form
• Instead, they transform the material form (A book is not just a batch of paper)
Mental objects exist independently of the brain
• For example, a schoolbook, a scientific discovery
• Hence it is meaningful to speak of mental production as a sphere of human labour
Mental objects form inputs to production as well as outputs
Not ‘mental labour’ but ‘labour engaged in mental production’
• Distinguishes ‘creative workers’ from ‘support workers’
• This is a matter of specialization. Van drivers are required for theatre production!
Creative Industry analysis

15. The IT revolution – achievements and limits
• Algorithmic (mechanised, repetitive)
• Predicative (making judgements)
The two fundamental forms of mentation, known in logic
• That is, there is always a requirement for labour in mental production
• Cannot ‘mechanise’ labour out of existence in the mental sphere
Turing-Church theory: there will always exist predicative problems that
cannot be solved Algorithmically
• Bookkeeping
• Management
• Administration
BUT can mechanise ‘boring’ mental processes
• IF society allows and facilitates creative labour
This ‘frees’ labour to be creative

16. Definition and future of creative labour
Creative labour is labour that cannot be mechanised
It is typically
• Non-repetitive
• Problem solving
• Collaborative
The creative product
• Mental object
• Which is ‘distinctive’
NOT ‘cultural labour’
• An elitist concept
• Carlyle’s concept of ‘clerisy’ – art should be regulated by ‘educated’ 30%

17. Limits to mental growth
Creativity is an
inherent human
capacity
NOT the ‘elite’
(think Jazz, Samba,
Punk, Graffiti,
Rap,…)
But our present
society prevents its
realization as a
universal human
activity.

18. Machinocracy and the species-being of humans
Victorian anthropology: ‘how are we different from animals?
Now ‘how are we different from machines’
Capitalism turns humans into machines
All modern horror movies are about the threat from robots and machines
Much modern ecological thought recognises creative mental capacity of animals
And seeks even to reconnect humans with their animality
Humans and animals unite against capitalist machinocracy!

19. Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics
The Human use of Human
Beings - 1968

20. The limits of private property
Intellectual
property is a
restrictive property
form
Fails to generate an
income for the
creative labourer
Fails to provide
access to mental
objects by
artificially raising
prices
A product of a
material age,
fundamentally
outdated

21. The re-dignification of labour
Why did China succeed in defeating COVID?
Why did many poor countries (including Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam) do so well?
• Because their social provision and social organisation was superior
Why did America fail?
• It has the most expensive health system in the world
• It spent a fortune on big pharma
• But it cannot pay its doctors and nurses enough to retain them
• And it cannot mobilise a solidaristic, community-based defence
What is needed: not a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’
But a ‘first human revolution’

22. The answer?
Eliminate dependency on Material
resources
Demonetise the ‘reproduction of
creativity’ (make a free public resource)
Human-centred development
Validate creativity as a specifically human
capacity
Create a society with human
property relations