ABSTRACT. This paper starts from Marx’s “Fragment on Machines” in the Grundrisse, that sees workers as linkages in the “automatic system of machines” of “intelligent capitalism.” The paper provides a brief characterization of the concept of knowledge economy as it first developed in the sociological accounts of post-industrial society in the 1960s by Touraine (1969) and Bell (1972). The OECD’s (1996a) influential formulation of the “knowledge-based economy” developed as a combination human capital theory (Becker, 1962), “the economics of ideas” based on endogenous growth theory (Romer, 1990), and national innovation (Lundvall, 1992). In the second part, the paper focuses diverging forms of the knowledge economy, including (i) the creative knowledge economy and the learning economy, (ii) open knowledge production and open science economy, and (iii) cognitive capitalism and (iv) knowledge socialism.

Keywords: knowledge economy; endogenous growth theory; creative knowledge economy; open science economy; cognitive capitalism; knowledge socialism

How to cite: Peters, M. A. (2022). “A Post-Marxist Reading of the Knowledge Economy: Open Knowledge Production, Cognitive Capitalism, and Knowledge Socialism,” Analysis and Metaphysics 21: 7–23. doi: 10.22381/am2120221.

Received 17 August 2021 • Received in revised form 11 September 2021
Accepted 13 September 2021 • Available online 15 September 2021