Carlo Vercellone on Cognitive Capitalism

Discussion

From the reading notes of Michel BAUWENS, 2006:

Carlo Vercellone presents a research project, which he stresses is not a fully elaborated theoretical model. The priority is to avoid the different forms of reductionism:

   - 1) technological determinism
   - 2) knowledge production as solely economic
   - 3) refuses historical and social abstractions which view knowledge as a third production factor independent of capital and labor

The reason for the new model is that the cyclic explanation (innovation followed by long consolidation periods), no longer seems to hold, as the crisis has been permanent for already 30 years at least.

One explanation that is also explicitely rejected is that shareholder models (which replace the managerial model) create heightened pressure that results in permanent restructuration. In this 'financial capital thesis', the evolution is viewed from the prism of different factors of capital (financial vs industrial), with the former imposing detrimental short-termism, as well as a cyclic balance of forces between freed finance and state regulation. For these economists, post-fordism is a secondary consequence only. Therefore, what is needed is a re-regulation by the state.

For Vercellone, this fails to see:

   - 1) how the state itself was the protagonis of deregulation and
   - 2) how this financialization was a result of the crisis of Fordism, and in particular, why and how it arose as a response to that crisis, in extracting surplus value from industry itself.

The cognitive capitalism thesis sees a different genealogy based on four major factors:

- 1) the greater role attributed to finance by industrial groups themselves, starting in the 70s as a response to an increase in social conflict; this, together with automation and decentralization, aims at making capital more independent of the workers

- 2) it was also a key method to start evaluating immaterial processes and products, and located profits 'outside of the production process'

Value is now situated, less in the formal knowledge incorporated in the business processes, and more and more in the qualitative living knowledge.

How does the Cognitive Capitalism thesis differ from the "New Economy" thesis ?

- CC is a critique of the 'growth driven by ICT" hypothesis

- the latter are 'technology-deterministic theories which see technology and information as exogenous factors, driving a post-industrial revolution

- the latter also does not take into account the difference between information and knowledge; not seeing that the former is not operative without active transformation.

CC affirms that:

- 1) a new intellectuality is more primary than ICT by itself

- 2) information can only thrive through living labour, i.e. by becoming embodied knowledge

- 3) it stresses the ambivalent nature of ICT

       - a )  in the context of th enew diffuse intellectualityh, i.e. the ICT promotes horizontal non-merchant cooperation
       - b)  but it can also serve neo-Taylorist purposes

Problems with the other theories:

- they often want to offer a general theory, and do not historicize enough