Commonfare Hypothesis
* Book: Cognitive Capitalism, Welfare and Labour. The Commonfare Hypothesis. By Andrea Fumagalli, Alfonso Giuliani, Stefano Lucarelli, Carlo Vercellone. Routledge, 2020
Description
"This book deals with the transformations of both accumulation process and labour in the transition from a Fordist to a cognitive capitalism paradigm, with specific regard to Western economies. It outlines the advent, after industrial capitalism, of a new phase of the capitalist system in which the value of cognitive labour becomes dominant. In this framework, the central stakes of capital valorisation and forms of property are directly based on the control and privatization of the production of collective knowledge. Here, the transformation of knowledge itself, into a commodity or a fictitious capital, is analyzed.
Building on this foundation, the authors outline their concept of "Commonfare." This idea of commonfare implies, as a prerequisite, the social re-appropriation of the gains arising from the exploitation of those social relations which are the basis of accumulation today. This re-appropriation does not necessarily lead to the transition from private to public ownership but it does make it necessary to distinguish between common goods and the commonwealth. This book explains this distinction and how common goods and the commonwealth require a different framework of analysis."
Contents
- 1. An introduction to Cognitive Capitalism: A Marxist Approach
- 2. Metamorphosis of the Theory of Value and Becoming-rent of Profit: An Attempt to Clarify the Terms of a Debate
- 3. Twenty Thesis on Contemporary Capitalism (Bio-cognitve Capitalism)
- 4. New Forms of Exploitation in Bio-cognitive Capitalism: Towards Life Subsumption
- 5. A Financialized Monetary Economy of Production
- 6. Cognitive Capitalism, an Empirical and Theoretical Analysis