Knowledge valorization in new capitalism

MIGUEZ, PABLO; SZTULWARK, SEBASTIAN

París

Congreso; FEP-AHE-IIPPE Congress: Political Economy and the Outlook for capitalism París, 5-7 de Julio de 2012; 2012

Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE), French Association of Political Economy/ Association Francaise d´Economie Politique (FAPE) and International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE)

In this paper we problematize the role of knowledge in valorization process. We analyze it looking at changes in nature of means of production, changes in ways of working organization, the nature of work, and the ways to create value and consumption patterns, the last thirty years. Above this changes there has been created a new stage in development of capitalism at a world level.Recent transformations in process of creation and appropriation of value are so big that break the long term accumulation dynamic of the industrial capitalism. To analyze this historical change we will use the concept of "historical system of accumulation", developed by Dieuaide et al (2007), that refers to "the association between a mode of production and a logic of accumulation that guides, in a large period of time, the tendencies of capital valorization, the work division, and the reproduction of fundamental social relationships". We will call new capitalism to the historical system of accumulation that emerges in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, since the crisis of the industrial capitalism.The valorization process of capital refers to Karl Marx studies about long term dynamics of capitalism. As we know, this process developed from objective factors (means of production) and from one subjective factor (the labor force itself). Both factors produce use value. The objective factors represent "dead work", work objectified in tools and objects from the working process-. The subjective factor constitutes the "living work", labor force that act in the labor process with the means of production. The valorization process ends when value created in the work process materialized in the market (in the sphere of circulation), transforming money in capital