General intellect
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General intellect, according to Karl Marx in the Grundrisse, is capable of becoming a structural force of production. The concept designates a combination of technological expertise and social intellect, or general social knowledge (increasing importance of machinery in social organization). The "general intellect" passage in the Fragment on machines, says that, while the development of machinery led to the oppression of workers under capitalism, it also offers a prospect for future liberation.[1]
Overview
According to Marx, the development of the general intellect manifests in a capitalist society, in the control of the social life process.
Thus, for Dyer-Witheford, the vision laid out in the Fragment “is eminently recognizable as a portrait of what is now commonly termed an ‘information society’ or ‘knowledge economy’” (1999, 221). […] In Virno’s view the Fragment argues that “abstract knowledge (primarily but not only scientific knowledge) is in the process of becoming nothing less than the main force of production and will soon relegate the repetitious and segmented assembly of the production-line to a residual position” (2007, 3).[2]
In other words, with the idea of the general intellect, Marx designates a radical change of the subsumption of labour to capital and indicates a third stage of the division of labour.[3] Paolo Virno maintained that "general intellect" is not exclusive to communism, and applies generally to late capitalism.[4]
Etymology
According to Matteo Pasquinelli, Marx took the expression 'general intellect' from William Thompson's book An Inquiry Into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth (1824), an early text written on mental labour. According to Pasquinelli, the concept disappears in the transition between the Grundrisse and Capital as it is replaced by the notion of collective worker or Gesamtarbeiter. [5]
See also
References
External links
- Paolo Virno, "General Intellect" in Lessico Postfordista, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2001.
- Matteo Pasquinelli, "Italian Operaismo and the Information Machine", Theory, Culture & Society, first published on February 2, 2014.
- Matteo Pasquinelli, "On the Origins of Marx's General Intellect". Radical Philosophy, 2.06, winter 2019.
- Tony Smith. The "General Intellect" in the Grundrisse and beyond.
- ↑ Paolo Virno, ‘Citazioni di fronte al pericolo’, Luogo comune, n. 1 (November 1990), Rome; translated by Cesare Casarino as ‘Notes on the general intellect’, in: Marxism beyond Marxism, eds. Saree Makdisi et al. (New York: Routledge, 1996), 265–272.
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- ↑ Carlo Vercellone. From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism. Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 13–36
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