The development of productive forces is an important object of study for contemporary social theory. Nonetheless, this relationship has been hitherto limited to consideration of technical elements of labor processes. Technology, new knowledge, and administrative and production techniques have been indicated as central elements in the constitution of the "revolutionary consciousness" of the working class. Today, in debates on non-material labor, the direct relationship between the cognitive content of labor and the development of a politically revolutionary "consciousness" as a causal nexus between the political unity of the working class emerges as a fundamental explanatory axis. In this article, I attempt to discuss the role of professional qualification in the composition of theses on non-material labor as a central productive force in capitalist societies. I will go on to critique these theses insofar as they argue that technical qualification informs the possibilities for revolutionary working class practice and political consciousness. I understand quite the opposite, that is, that capital today has reorganized the exploitation of labor according to its own interests. New forms of persuasion have been added on to the Taylorist and Fordist production techniques that disseminate ideas such as the one which poses the worker is a "partner" who should incorporate the "spirit" of the capitalist firm. Workers' subjectivity, thus reconstructed, is in this way reconfigured and reclaimed by capital.
political practice; professional qualifications; non-material labor; forms of exploitation; transformation of labor