After Industrialism: Knowledge Capitalism
The Revista de Estudios Globales. Análisis Histórico y Cambio Social (REG) twill publish a monographic issue dedicated to the exploration of the transformation of capitalism and the formation and development of knowledge capitalism, at global level and in its regional, national and local manifestations.
The history of capitalism is the history of the formation and evolution of modern societies, and their continuous expansion until absorbing the entirety of the planet though successive colonial waves between early modernity and the 19th century. It is also a network of constant mutation and adaptation of core structures concerned with the accumulation of capital, generation of value, circulation, and appropriation of resources of all types, with markets as articulating mechanism, and contractualism as metanarrative.
Different approaches to these topics, from those focused in the nation-State or even very local dynamics (Tutino, 2011), to those rooted in global perspectives (Arrighi, 2010[1994]; Beckert, 2014) agree on observing qualitatively distinct stages, identifiable through the specific configurations of their political economies. These can be designated as eras within capitalism and correspond to merchant –or in Beckert´s work, war- capitalism, and industrial capitalism.
Of course, it is not only about the organization of economic production and capital accumulation, as these configurations encompass all the core structures of societies organised according to this mode of production. The latter is a mode of organising the production and reproduction of human social reality as a whole, with direct impact on the natural environment. Particularly, the industrial era of capitalism, formed by the effects of the industrial revolution and concomitant political and social processes, implied a profound transformation in the ways of life and an acceleration of change in all spheres (Mokyr, 1999; Hobsbawm, 1996[1962]). This last idea points to an increase of the systems of contradictions demanding adjustments of the configuration, thus accelerating historical evolution, with a shortening of the observed lapses between critical changes, particularly visible in the technological field (Grinin, Grinin & Korotayev).
In the second half of the 20th century, several authors observed the emergence of early forms of organisation of the reproduction of human systems (societies) that differed from industrialism. In the 1960s, Peter Drucker (1969) developed the concept of knowledge economy –used also as knowledge-based economy-, characterised by the centrality of so-called knowledge industries in the generation of value. These became decisive in the production of knowledge-intensive goods and services and played a critical role in the political economy of contemporary societies. In his work, Drucker predicted that the United States would develop as a knowledge economy, according to then already observable trends, like the evolution of the composition by industries of its total economic output.
In early 1970s, Alain Touraine (1971), Daniel Bell (1999[1973]) and Ivan Illich (1975[1973]) addressed then incipient transformations in societal structures that led them to talk about a post-industrial society.
Within that framework, social subjects and macrosubjects were formed and interacted according to mutated patterns of behaviour and hierarchies, different from those typical of the industrial society. They also forecasted an evolution in that direction of the most “advanced” States and societies of their time. If we were to apply world-systems analysis (Arrighi, 2010[1994]), this would imply a structural transformation in the core of the capitalist world-economy.
The term post-industrial, applied to capitalism itself in some instances, means primarily a negation of a prior configuration, an indication of what it no longer is, or what is in the process of disappearing. However, it is incapable to describe the emerging reality as, on the other hand, does the concept of knowledge economy. That allowed for the later emergence of the concept knowledge society, a key piece in the exploration of a distinct form of organising societal-cultural processes around knowledge, its production and distribution (Böhme & Stehr, 1986).
These studies indicated that capitalism as a whole was entering a new, qualitatively distinct stage. This explains the growing body of work that explores those transformations and propose explanations, descriptions and concepts, albeit often associated to the emergence of particular phenomena or groups of phenomena, without necessarily capturing the systemic scope of the change. These include, among other variants, concepts like data capitalism, surveillance capitalism, high-pressure capitalism, and financial capitalism.
All these are of great value, and are based on empirically attested behaviours that need in-depth study. The question is if any such approaches is sufficient to describe to satisfaction the recent evolution of the capitalist mode of production at the global scale and serve as the basis for its explanation. A way to address this point is to consider that each of those lines of inquiry capable of generating empirically verifiable results has tackled a dimension of a broader process. This means that the study of the global transformation and its specific and local correlates must produce models inclusive of those developments.
In the 21st century we found approaches to the problem of the transformation through the identification of the key drivers of the reorganization of the global political economy, in line with generalising perspectives that support explanations of global systemic scope. Here we find the proposal of knowledge capitalism (Ordóñez, 2006; Stehr, 2022; Domínguez López, 2022 y Domínguez López & Barrera Rodríguez, 2023). From different perspectives and even from different disciplines (sociology, economics, history) the authors who took this path converge around the consideration of knowledge economy and knowledge society as indicators of the nature of the change, and place knowledge, its production, circulation and appropriation, as the key identity factor. This does not mean the only factor, nor it establishes a hierarchical relation between factors but recognises the centrality of knowledge in the models of accumulation. On that base, these perspectives address the modification of social relations, the configuration of subjects, markets, ideas, political life, and the international system.
This brief discussion indicates that we are in front of a structural transformation of global scale, expressed in distinct ways in regional, national and local spaces. Due to its systemic nature, it is observable in all dimensions of human life. Transitional processes are characterised by increased uncertainty and the emergence of contradictions and conflicts, thus making their study more difficult and more useful.
Hence, the REG is accepting contributions from any theoretical perspective, any methodological approach, and any discipline, that explore and shed light on the historical development of the new configuration of capitalism. It is open to the study of diverse special scales, diverse dimensions, key forces and actors, and its implications, both current and for the future. It is not limited to the phenomenon as observed in until now core economies and societies in the capitalist world, as studies on regions and countries considered peripheral are welcome. These contributions will integrate a monographic issue intended as a milestone in the inquiry into a key topic in contemporary reality.
References
Arrighi, G. (2010 [1994]). The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. Londres, New York: Verso.
Beckert, S. (2014). Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred A. Knopff.
Bell, D. A. (1999 [1973]). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books.
Böhme, G. & Stehr, N. (eds.). (1986). The Knowledge Society: The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, Tokio: D. Reidel Publishing Company
Domínguez López, E. (2022). Capitalismo del conocimiento. Transición y contradicciones políticas en los Estados Unidos del siglo XXI, en Universidad de La Habana, 294, pp. 1-20.
Domínguez López, E., & Barrera Rodríguez, S. (2023). Transition and Labour in the United States: Industry and Employment in the Changing Political Economy of Knowledge Capitalism, en Forum for Social Economics, 52(4), pp. 334-353.
Drucker, P. (1969). The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to our Changing Society. Londres: Heinemann
Grinin, L., Grinin, A., & Korotayev, Andrey. (2020). A quantitative analysis of worldwide long-term technology growth: From 40,000 BCE to the early 22nd century, en Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 155, pp. 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119955
Hobsbawm, E. (1996[1962]). The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848. New York: Vintage Books
Illich, I. (1975 [1973]). Tools for Conviviality. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins,
Mokyr, J. (ed.), (1999). The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective (2da Edición). Boulder, Oxford: Westview Press.
Ordóñez, S. (2006). Capitalismo del conocimiento: elementos teórico-históricos, en Economía Informa, 338, pp. 23-33
Stehr, N. (2022). Knowledge Capitalism. New York, Londres: Routledge.
Touraine, A. (1971). The Post-Industrial Society: Tomorrow's Social History: Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society. New York: Random House.
Tutino, J. (2011). Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajio and Spanish North America. Durham: Duke University Press.
