‘Intellectual Proletarians’ by Emma Goldman from 1914 is rather timely, as more people are affected by “the changes taking place in workers’ labor processes […], where the skills involved in direct labor are increasingly skills involving cybernetics and computer control” [1].
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was a “leading figure in international anarchism and feminism, a passionate advocate of free speech, birth control, and worker’s rights.” [2]
“This terrible dependence upon those who can make the price and dictate the terms of intellectual activities, is more degrading than the position of the worker in any trade.” [3]
[1] Maurizio Lazzarato, ‘Immaterial Labour’, 1996
[2] The Emma Goldman Papers Project at UCB (University of California, Berkeley)
[3] Emma Goldman, Intellectual Proletarians, in Mother Earth 8, no. 12 (February 1914): 363–370.