Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism

Front matter

MARIANO ZUKERFELD

KNOWLEDGE

IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL CAPITALISM

Chapter 1. Capitalism, Physical Property and Intellectual Property 1.1 The Two Arms of Capitalism

1.2 ... and the Two Aspects of Goods: Physical Matter and Knowledge Matter

1.3 Physical Matter: A Brief History of ‘Matter’ and Energy 1.4 Towards the Other Entity? Beyond Physical Matter 1.5 From Information to Knowledge Matter

1.6 Knowledge Matter and Why It Matters: Towards a Materialist Perspective of Knowledge

Chapter 2. How to Know Knowledge? Introducing Cognitive Materialism 2.1 Epistemology 2.2 Marxism and the Sociology of Knowledge 2.3 Cognitive Materialism

5.1 Introduction: Regulation, Expropriation and Exploitation 5.2 Regulation

5.3 General Concept of Expropriation and Exploitation: Common Aspects and Divergences

5.4 Capitalist Expropriation

5.5 Commercial and Non-Commercial Exploitation 5.6 Capitalist Exploitation

5.7 Three Types of Capitalist Exploitation

Chapter 6. Classes: A Theory from a Cognitive Materialist Perspective

6.1 Introduction: The Need for a Theory of Social Classes 6.2 The Proposal: Classes from an Abstract Perspective 6.3 From Feudalism to Mercantile Capitalism 6.4 From Mercantile to Industrial Capitalism 6.5 From Industrial to Informational Capitalism 6.6 Classes in Informational Capitalism

Index

100 102 103

115 117

121 125 127 129 138

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I owe a debt of gratitude to Christian Fuchs, not only for including this book in the series he edits, for his valuable and opportune suggestions, and for the theoretical influence of his own works but, above all, for his activity coordinating institutional initiatives (conferences, a journal, an institute and this series) which offer unique opportunities to those of us who critically study informational capitalism. I am also grateful to Andrew Lockett, UWP Press Manager, who with a generous demonstration of tolerance towards the cultural other, agreed to adapt various formal aspects (the completion date for the manuscript, among others) to the predictably noncompliant idiosyncrasies of this Argentinian author.

Without detracting from the previous and following acknowledgements, the fact that this book has seen the published light of day was only possible thanks to an ensemble of rare virtues that have combined in the rigorous work of its translator, Suzanna Wylie. Among them: the ability and the vocation necessary to understand this book right down to the finest details, something indissociable on the one hand from a polished grammatical and cultural command of the particular variety of Spanish we speak in Buenos Aires, and on the other hand, from an impressive knowledge of the authors and currents mentioned here; but also the engagement of an editor when checking sources or making suggestions related to content and, without a doubt, the intensive and generous dedication of huge quantities of time to complete her work in due time and form.

viii Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism

Although some drafts of this work are several years old, their final composition basically occurred in the Science, Technology and Society centre of the Maimónides University towards the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016. Therefore, I must thank Adrián Giacchino, director of the research area of the university for his persistent willingness to channel the support of the university towards the diverse needs that the activity of research entails. I am also grateful to Pablo Kreimer, director of the STS centre (and to all the researchers there) for having given me, in various ways, the respectful stimulus needed for the ideas expressed in this book to prosper. CONICET (Argentinian National Council of Scientific and Technological Research), the institution that funded my doctoral and post-doctoral grants, and that now pays my salary, has provided me with the privilege of being able to devote myself to investigating the areas that I choose with absolute freedom.

I feel grateful, in particular, to the members of the research team I am a part of, e-CTS (Studies on Technology, Capitalism, and Society team): Guillermina Yansen (who is the co-author of an earlier version of chapter 6), Agostina Dolcemáscolo, Andrés Rabosto (who recommended crucial literature to me, offered valuable criticism and shared important discussions) and, very especially, to Florencia Botta and Lucila Dughera who, radiating warmth and solidarity, have lavished support on me whose contours and magnitude would be impossible to describe in words that would fit on these pages.

I also owe gratitude to Emilio Cafassi, who gave me the opportunity of initiating myself into research and teaching about the relationship between capitalism and digital technologies, and who transmitted some aspirations to me, among them that of attempting to have respect for prose while at the same time disrespecting the solemnity of the academic world.

Among other excellent professors I have had, I would like to highlight two in particular: Ruben Dri and Juan Iñigo Carrera. Both share the attributes of being less recognised than they should be for their outstanding contributions, being authentically and profoundly humble, and probably, energetically rejecting what I have done here with their teachings in relation to Hegel and Marx, respectively. I must also thank Valentina Delich, who taught me to traverse the world of intellectual property, and Andrés Lopez who suggested fundamental readings of economics. Chapters 5 and 6 of this book can be read as an extended response to a comment that Nestor Kohan made to me in 2010. My gratitude goes out to him, in recognition of the debt outstanding from an ‘asado.

There are three colleagues who, always at turning points, have offered me vital, abundant and repeated support that until now I have not managed to reciprocate sufficiently. They are: Fernando Peirano, Alex Ruiz Silva and Rocio Rueda Ortiz. In turn, I am grateful to Alejandro Dolina, Agarrate Catalina and Zamba, whose forms and contents have silently but surely influenced this book.

Acknowledgements ix

On a personal level, some friends have collaborated in diverse but unquestionable ways: Andrés, Mauro, Mariano, Pablo, Rocío, Mariana, Marina, Cecilia, Jimena.

However, the deepest of my personal gratitudes is for a brave man, Norberto Eligio Lopez, who after having carried a handful of burning relics across hostile times and spaces, has shared them with me; little glowing embers that burn as much as they illuminate.

Among others, Pablo Llonto and Stella Segado have collaborated in a lucid and impartial manner in the project of shedding light on a still obscure history. From my extraordinary family, I owe special gratitude to my Aunt Sonia, without whose generous help this book, amongst other things, would not have been feasible.

Last, but far from least, it is unthinkable for me to consider the idea of gratitude without automatically associating it with my daughter Laura, wellspring of joy and love, who also, and against all probability, has enthusiastically participated in this editorial project.

Introduction

The great classics that have studied Capitalism, those that have criticised it as well as those that have lauded it, have undertaken the task by privileging the most diverse range of variables. However, in the studies published up to the third quarter of the twentieth century, flows of Knowledge have had to settle for supporting roles in the drama of capitalism, when they haven't been sidelined and excluded from it altogether.

But if knowledge has received rough treatment at the hands of those who have applied themselves to studying the transformation of productive processes, even more brusque has been the treatment given to the frameworks of regulations around access to that knowledge: what we now, simplistically, call Intellectual Property. Ostracised and condemned to dwell in a marginal branch of law, it has had quite a different fate to that of physical private property.

In recent years, along with digital technologies, digital social media and other associated phenomena, authors have emerged who, approaching the question from different disciplines, have attempted to consider the role of knowledge

Zukerfeld, M. 2017. Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism. Pp. 1-9. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book3.a. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 and intellectual property within the dynamics of capitalism. Indeed, it has become clear that it is not possible to scientifically understand what happens to flows of digital information without understanding how they engage with diverse forms of knowledge (beliefs, ideologies, skills, norms etc.).

However, it has not been noted, apart from certain exceptions, that knowledge only exists materially, and that this very materiality is crucial when studying it. On the contrary, there is a tendency to understand knowledge as an ‘immaterial entity, which seriously limits the possibilities for its scientific analysis.

Without doubt, the efforts of various authors have produced valuable, although partial, contributions. And where they haven't provided sustenance they have at least contributed to stimulating the appetite. Notwithstanding, the social sciences still lack a systematic, multi-disciplinary, materialist and scientific conceptualisation of how knowledge works in the productive processes, and what its relationship is to the different stages of the capitalist totality. This book is an attempt to take a step in the direction of redressing that situation.

II

The foundations of this book are in my 2010 Doctoral thesis, Capitalism and Knowledge: Cognitive Materialism, Intellectual Property and Informational Capitalism. After my defence, I organised the text into three sprawling volumes (Zukerfeld 2010) and sent it to the most eminent publishers in Argentina to offer them the privilege of publishing it. Unanimously, the seasoned editors gave my manuscript the warmest of welcomes, opting to incinerate the rambling drafts. Despite being misunderstood by these arbiters of the analogue era and, more generally, by the academic elite, the trilogy won the popular acclaim of digital natives and sectors of the working class. More precisely, its thousands of pages were made use of with great delight by my daughter Laura (Bassa and Zukerfeld 2008) and her kindergarten friends to make collages and paper airplanes. Likewise, a carpenter of dubious competence benefitted greatly from volume II, which he used as a substitute leg for my sofa. Emboldened by these successes, I shared the manuscript on the web and ever since then I have been craftily serving it up to a captive audience comprised of my students.

In terms of the contents, the first volume primarily undertook the theoretical presentation of cognitive materialism. The second and third volumes were dedicated to applying this theory to two complementary fronts: on the one hand, the history of capitalism, characterising its three stages (mercantile, industrial, and informational), with particular attention to informational capitalism; and on the other hand, the evolution of a group of capitalist regulations of different types of knowledges, including principally those institutions that today we assemble under the expression intellectual property (encompassing copyright, patents, trademarks, industrial secrets, but also traditional knowledge,

Introduction 3 geographical indications, right of publicity, sui generis laws, various types of licenses and many others).

Above and beyond logical order suggesting priority position for the presentation of the theoretical framework of this analysis, I am also convinced that as a result of the gap in the literature, development of the theory should be given priority. This book, therefore, consists of an updating and development of what was the first volume of Capitalism and Knowledge. To that end, I have corrected and expanded the first four chapters and eliminated some discussions pertaining to the literature on the knowledge economy and social studies of science and technology. Additionally, I have added chapters 5 and 6 which provide an account of two significant shortcomings of the original text: the absence of a theory of exploitation, and a theory of classes from the perspective of cognitive materialism.

MI

There are those who say that the first thing that should be made clear in a text such as this, is who it is engaging in discussion with. In this sense, it is important to point out that this book dedicates practically no space to the time-honoured enemies of the critical, emancipatory, tradition. I do not dwell on attacks aimed at the handful of powers in whose hands are concentrated the resources of the world economy, financial capitalism, neoliberalism and its personnel (like the foot soldiers who are currently destroying my country), American imperialism, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other parasites living off human societies and nature. There are many excellent texts already dedicated to those matters and, without doubt, there will be many more to come.

Instead, here I will enter into a discussion with closer traditions with which I share concepts, ambitions, outlooks. Traditions I admire, but in which however, in some of their manifestations, I find aspects that I intend to criticise in the most emphatic way. These traditions are manifold, but there are three it is worth delineating here.

The first is Marxism, with which I share, among other things, the idea that the concept of capitalism is the key to embarking on the scientific study of our societies, that exploitation is a phenomenon inherent to capitalism and that the contradiction between what it describes as productive forces and social relations of production is central to understanding the transformation from one stage to another.

However, I will attempt to argue with those dogmatic aspects that transform what was an innovative wissenschaft into a conservative religion, which in many cases is completely incapable of dialogue with other traditions. I am as convinced that Marx was the most important thinker in the social sciences as I am that his work contains inescapable limitations. The fact that many Marxists are unable to perceive Marx’s cognitive production, and their own, as products historically conceived in a particular stage of capitalism is an incoherence that never fails to astound me. More specifically, I will debate the humanist aspects that various forms of Marxism are rooted in and, connected to this, I will point out the limits of the Marxist theory of exploitation, as a consequence of the problems inherent to the labour theory of value. More importantly, I will try to show that Marxism has neglected the analysis of the role of knowledge in capitalist productive processes.

Secondly, in relation to autonomist and post-structuralist authors, including those from the cognitive capitalism tendency, I share the vocation to highlight the discontinuity, the change of stage from industrial capitalism to what we call informational capitalism (and what these authors describe as societies of control, cognitive capitalism, semiocapitalism, etc.). Additionally, I hold with with the observation concerning the blurring of working time and free time that the current stage is characterised by, I vindicate the gesture of studying the relationship between knowledge and capitalism from a critical perspective and admire the search for new theoretical tools which with which to analyse this new stage.

Nevertheless, I have some important differences with this perspective. On the one hand, much of its indisputable publishing success has been based on concepts that, even though they seem attractive initially, are ultimately beautiful but of little use. On the other hand, many of these critical philosophical initiatives, when they engage with discussions about the capitalist economy, adopt concepts from orthodox economics in a completely naturalised and acritical way.

Thus, they ascend to their concepts upon the scaffolding provided by the dominant ideology. More generally, I do not share these approaches’ rejection of the categories of totality, contradiction, negativity, and I believe that much of their blithe positivity makes them functional to the dominant ideology of informational capitalism. Finally, this tradition brandishes the banners of difference, otherness, multiplicity. However, in practice it is no more adept at dialogue with difference (in other words with those viewpoints that do not echo its mantras) than any other dogmatism. This intolerance in the face of plurality, debate, and constitutive contradictions, that for Marxism, scientism, or any religion can be explained (disagreeably but with coherence) by the belief that there is one truth, which they are in possession of, is completely unsustainable when observed in these ‘philosophies of difference’

Thirdly, with social scientists, that is, the producers of academic papers (in the fields of sociology, STS studies, philosophy, communication, economics, law, among others). I share the vocation to submit research findings to the judgement of independent reviewers, to accept the opinions of colleagues with other points of view, and produce results based on empirical evidence and systematic reasoning. In turn, I intend to incorporate specific contributions from each of these fields, which would be onerous to enumerate here.

Introduction 5

However, I cannot avoid expressing the most energetic repudiation of the enthusiastic submission to the current norms of the academic world by these academic paper producers. The increasingly frequent choice to devote oneself to research, and within it to one area in particular, in virtue of securing a smooth career path, exercising intellectual dilettantism or travelling around the world with the excuse of anodyne conferences, has greatly impaired the potential of the social sciences to understand the world, let alone to change it. There is no tragedy in admitting that one lacks passion, love, or commitment towards the research object (there are even those who take pride in it). In that case, it would suffice to change the object, or activity. No one should deprive themselves of trying to do work they love, not even in the context of the unjust societies we live in; at the same time, no one should deprive others of that opportunity either. On the contrary, I have unfortunately seen time and again how some of the most original, serious, and committed researchers (who immerse themselves in texts and not in speculations about academic posts and funding), are relegated and even ejected from the academic world in favour of research bureaucrats. Bureaucrats who regurgitate vacuous papers, polluting the cognitive ecosphere, who, with dispassionate expertise, poach posts and funding on the basis of artificially bloated CVs.

Now, in terms of concrete individuals, the aspects I appropriate and those I criticise from each of these traditions cannot be cleanly disentangled from each other. They combine, in greater or lesser proportions, in the same human subjects, inhabiting them as dialectical contradictions. Furthermore, these contradictions inhabit the author of these lines and spill out into this book. Criticism, at least of the variety attempted here, is always the critique of contradictory totalities and is, simultaneously, self-criticism.