Mental power (2000)

Book Review from the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Knowledge Capitalism By A. Burton-Jones. Oxford University Press. 1999.

This is another in the growing pile of books on how capitalism is changing, how it is bringing opportunities for the few and problems for the many who allegedly can do little or nothing about it. The author's fundamental proposition is that, among the various factors causing change in the economy, none is more important than the changing role of knowledge.

Burton-Jones gives us first what we are supposed to accept as the good news: "inflation is down, productivity is up, the US locomotive is powering away, the former communist bloc is rapidly embracing western-style capitalism". But he goes on to admit that "everywhere there is a sense of unease . . . the malaise is spreading throughout society". Large, labour-intensive manufacturing firms, which are able to relocate their production, are rapidly establishing themselves in the Third World where labour is cheap and government regulations few. Small firms are in trouble.

The consequences for workers are dire. Whole industries have declined, skilled jobs have been lost, and the new jobs created are often part-time, temporary, unskilled and poorly paid. Unemployment is high and insecurity widespread. The ever-present question is "who will be next?"

The labour power that workers have sold and employers have bought has always contained a proportion of "knowledge", relatively low with manual work and relatively high with non-manual and professional work. The balance is clearly shifting from industrial/manual employment to service/non-manual employment.

Burton-Jones suggests that firms are becoming knowledge integrators and individual workers knowledge suppliers. He writes of "flexihire", the new casual labour. He believes we are in a transitional stage "on the road from jobs owned by organizations to careers owned by individuals". It is a distinction without a difference. What kind of career can you "own" if you can't find a buyer for your knowledge?

The author, of course, has the knowledge. He drives us in his paper taxi around the terrain of capitalism but never ventures outside it, never even recognises that there is anywhere else to go. The changes he describes are "outside the control of all of us". We have "no option but to accept and work with, rather than against, forces outside [our] control".

On the last page he tells us we are all on a knowledge escalator. Some manage to climb the steps faster than others. "The main requirement is for everyone to be on board the escalator!" To such an injunction socialists can only reply "Include us out!" We have the knowledge to build a society that surpasses capitalism.

Stan Parker