This started out as a reply to Nate’s comment on the post below, but it turned out rather long so I thought I’d post it here.

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I think Nate is absolutely right in his scepticism towards a definitive separation of mental and manual labour. This is one of the things I had in mind with the third concluding point. Obviously this isn’t all that clear (partly due to my muddly mind and partly due to my lack of linguistic capacity), so I thought I would try to make myself clearer.

From the standpoint of a certain scepticism towards the kind of definitive separation of mental from manual labour mentioned above, the question is whether the concept of “immaterial labour” is of any, if not “use”, the at least theoretical relevance. I would say, that if it has any relevance, it is not in the form of an ontological (basically positivist) concept, but rather in terms of what one perhaps could call “limit concept” in lack of a better word (calling it transcendental might be pushing it a bit too far). As a species of “labour”, “immaterial labour” points towards a certain limit in the concept of labour.  

It might be instructive to try to make out in what the “immateriality” of “immaterial labour” consist. Offhand I can think if two possible meanings of immaterial in immaterial labour(there are probably a few others as well): in the first one the immateriality is predicated on the labour as such and in the second one it is predicated on labour in a transferred sense, in relation to the character of its product.

If immateriality is immediately attributed to labour as such, one seems to end up in sort of a Cartesian split between thinking and extended substance of the kind you point to in your comment. “Immaterial labour” would in this interpretation be labour devoid of all corporeality, labour of a spectral kind. This definition is obviously unsatisfactory.

If immateriality on the other hand is attributed to labour with respect to the specific character of result of the labour process, that is, either that the process is exhausted into a no-thing, that is, not into some thing, or that the process is not exhausted into some-thing that exists (ex-is-ts) apart from and outside of that process, the immateriality is rather an immateriality on part of the product. Immaterial labour then, is labour which gives rise to immaterial products. This is roughly the position of Lazzarato, Virno, and probably also Negri. The question is then, what happens with labour as such? Virno et al draw the conclusion that labour tout court is an obsolete category, and I think they are moving a bit too fast. I would like to try hold on to the labour part of “immaterial labour”, and from this second definition of immaterial labour try to make out its consequences for labour as such.

From the standpoint of labour, “immaterial labour” taken to mean labour devoid of manual/corporeal aspects is an absurd concept. Of course this is not all that far from what Lazzarato, and in particular Virno says when they say that present day work is no longer labour – “the society of labour has come to an end” says Virno. Here though, it is labour that is absurd, in its being too dense, too “real”. “Immaterial labour” is no longer labour since it is no longer possible to tie the productivity of immaterial labour to the framework of the waged working day. In when used in this manner, in my opinion, immaterial labour posited as the beyond of labour as such seems to ground itself in, or at least imply the kind of Cartesian split of substances mentioned above. The conception of labour from which they want to distance themselves is just one which deals with labour only in terms of manual, strenuous labour (artisan or factory style), but as this distance is taken with regard to an ontological concept the new position seems to turn out equally ontological (though with a different positive content).

To return to the absurdity on part of “immaterial labour”, I think, and this is what I meant by “immaterial labour” as a limit concept, that “immaterial labour” conceived of as labour devoid of manual/corporeal aspects is possible not in an ontological way, but  rather as a consequence of the division of labour. As such it is predicated on labour from the standpoint of the immaterial product. From the standpoint of the immaterial product this is perfectly reasonable, a perfectly reasonable absurdity, and this reasonable absurdity points in a negative way to the inadequacy of the type of ontological conception of labour here discussed. 

So, to conclude, if “immaterial labour” is of any use or relevance, it is not in terms of a positive content. Rather, it might be relevant in that it might function as a key to unlock the concept of labour from its positivist constraints, from its seemingly unproblematic given character.