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Capital, knowledge and ownership: The ‘information society’ and intellectualpropertyChristopher May aa Faculty of Economics and Social Science, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK E-mail:

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CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGEAND OWNERSHIP

The ' informat ion society ' andintel lectual property

Christopher May

University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

AbstractThe argument that the information society represents 'something new' is pred-icated on the claim that its use of a new resource — knowledge/information —fundamentally differentiates it from previous systems of capitalism. Howeverthe actual organization of the posited information society constructs a wide-spread recognition of the legitimacy of intellectual property. The articleexamines the two central claims for transformation made in the informationsociety discourse: that information is a new resource, and that increasingly it istheoretical or symbolic knowledge that is valued. However, neither shift hasproduced a change in the relations of production, and much that is claimed asnew in information society is actually the fragmentation of the social divisionof labour. Though there have been changes in the forms of production, therelations of production remain organized on the basis of property, thoughoften now intellectual property. This reveals the discourse of informationsociety as a justification for the intensification of capitalism, not an account ofits transformation.

KeywordsCapitalism, division of labour, information society, intellectual

property rights

Gardening, for instance, may be uncomputerisable.

Lawyers and accountants [however] could be today's counterparts of early- 19th-

century weavers, whose incomes soared after the mechanisation of spinning only to

crash when the technological revolution reached their own craft.

(The Economist 1995: 26)

Certain people may make a pretence of believing that the information economy has

replaced the goods economy, but it is enough to remind them that information has

become a good...

(Durand 1997: 148)

Information, Communication & Society 1:3/Autumn 1998 246-269 1369-118X © Routledge 1998

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INTRODUCTION

The argument that the information society represents 'something new' is pred-

icated on the claim that its use of a new resource — knowledge/information —

fundamentally differentiates it from previous systems of capitalism. However

even as this claim is made, the actual economic and social organization of the

posited information society is working to construct a widespread recognition

of the legitimacy of intellectual property. The intent (explicit or implicit) is to

reign knowledge into a set of property relations which are an adjunct to those

found in 'already existing' capitalism. Thus the claim that the new uses of

knowledge within capitalism have produced a fundamental transformation are

undercut by capital's clear, and in the main successful, project of increasing the

commodification of knowledge through its characterization as property. If the

claim for the disjuncture between industrial capitalism and information capi-

talism is based on the differences between the central social relations of

resource use, that knowledge is a different sort of input from material

resources, then this claim is fatally compromised by capitalism's ability to treat

both in the same way — as property.

While I recognize that the information society and claims made for it

concern more than the restructuring of economic relations, many of the

claimed changes in social relations are related to changes in economic rela-

tions. Though the issue of intellectual property in the first instance seems to be

an economic issue, if access to information is increasingly patterned by prop-

erty relations, then claims regarding the social effects of information society,

the quality of (information) life and the empowerment that stems from the

access to knowledge, will be tied up with the information economy. Therefore,

though in one sense the information society and the information economy are

analytically separable, they are also intertwined, particularly in the issue of

ownership of knowledge and informational resources. Currently it may be

easier to make property from information than knowledge, especially where

knowledge is tacit. But the codification of best practice, the protection of orga-

nizational knowledge as trade secrets (through employment contract law using

'inevitable disclosure' discussed below), and the development of increasingly

powerful intelligent tools, suggest that the continuing dynamic is towards the

capture of (tacit) knowledge from individuals, and its commodification in one

way or another as property.

Thus, much of the celebration of the arrival of the 'information society'

(sometimes referred to as the 'Third Wave' (Toffler 1980), the 'Third

Revolution' (Perkin 1996), or other epochal characterization of a 'new' era)

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CHRISTOPHER MAY

leaves one alternative either obscured or forgotten: might this only be an

intensification or extension along the lines capitalism has been developing for

quite some time? At the same time, the discourse of information society is

often used to organize and shape actor behaviour, not least of all by

governments who seek to support specific policies: promotion of flexible

labour markets, the encouragement of certain types of training, and the re-

orientation of educational priorities (a PC for every student in every school

rather than increased pay for teachers or increased book budgets, for

example). Certain developments are presented as inevitable and of a particular

character, requiring specific political economic actions and responses. These

proclamations of the emergence of a post-industrial society are not a particu-

larly recent phenomena (Webster 1995; Kumar 1995), though they seem to

have reached something of a fever pitch in the last few years.

At one extreme there has been optimism: an expansion of leisure time and

general freedom from drudgery, empowerment through information tech-

nology and the transformation of work into something approaching the

experience of the 'professions'. At the opposite pole, there is a pessimistic

view: an information rich and poor hermetically sealed off from one another,

with the excluded masses unable to enjoy the fruits of knowledge-work

(the Bladerunner thesis, perhaps). In this bleak vision as Curtis suggests,

inequality will be entrenched through the mobilization of information to

segment society into a 'computer generated caste system' (Curtis 1988).1

Opinions range between these two positions, but all are based on the

presumption that the emergence of the information society will change the

nature and logic of global capitalism. There is some form of break with the

past, a new age.

Despite the persuasiveness of this literature of transformation, I contend

that while the superficial appearance of the information society may be

different from what has gone before, far from changing the nature of capi-

talism, this new period leaves important elements firmly in place. While the

information society may be changing the outward appearance (or form) of the

global political economy, there is a remarkable continuity in the underlying

power relations (or substance) of the system. Indeed if anything it has enabled

power relations to be reproduced at a higher level of intensity while differenti-

ating their form. In this sense the posited new age is not post-capitalist, but

rather the intensification of capitalism.

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THE 'INFORMATION SOCIETY' AND THENEW AGE

The idea of the information society lies behind much of the presumption for

the revolutionary potential of information technology. One of the key driving

forces in many views of globalization is the development of the 'knowledge

industries' (especially in the communications and financial sectors). This is a

wider concept than the expansion of a globalized services sector: it attempts

to capture both the value-added increasingly accorded to non-material inputs

into products and the importance of global flows of knowledge to wealth

creation.2 The movement of material goods accordingly seems less important

than flows of information and knowledge. The move to a 'weightless

economy' is a recurrent motif in writings on the new age, leading Quah to

conclude that 'the term "industrialized countries" no longer carries any reso-

nance: now, no advanced and growing country is dependent on production

industries' (Quah 1997: 55).

Indeed, Anthony Smith has gone as far as to argue that the early writings on

post-industrialism

had more of a Hegelian ring about them. Information technology was penetrated by the

historic spirit.. .[and] the very act of formulating this idea of an information and communi-

cation society has exercised much of the transforming power, or at least has provided the

political acceleration

(Smith 1996: 72)

The arguments for the emergence of the information society reinforced the

observed dynamic, and have contributed to the reorganization of socio-

economic relations they purported to 'recognize'. Thus the post-industrial

position may itself have contributed to the emergence of a new socio-

economic settlement: the information society.

Rather than explore the nuances of different writers' ideas about what the

information society might look like, I shall present a thumbnail sketch of the

two central issues that it seems to me bind transformational accounts

together. Two linked claims are made about the emergence of the informa-o o

tion society, from which all other claims flow: that knowledge has emerged

as a new and valuable economic resource (or input), and that economically

valued knowledge has shifted in itself from a technical, 'information'-based

notion to something more akin to 'knowledge-as-complex-symbology'. While

there are other elements to most writing on the information society, all are

predicated on these two basic transformations in the use and character of

knowledge.

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A different type of resource

The first of these defining movements from industrial to information society is

the increasing centrality of information and/or knowledge resources to the

economic organization of societies. Thus, taking Drucker as exemplary, the

expansion of knowledge as a basic economic resource will lead to a division

between 'intellectuals' and 'managers', which will be the key political chal-

lenge of this new period (Drucker 1993: 8—9). The key refrain in Drucker's

vision of the post-capitalist society is one of disjuncture. However, Drucker

also recognizes a continuity of capitalist institutions, though 'looks are decep-

tive'.While the

world economy will remain a market economy and retain the market institutions, its every

substance has been radically changed. If it is still 'capitalist' it is now dominated by 'informa-

tion capitalism'.. .there is less and less return on the traditional resources: labour, land and

(money) capital.The main producers of wealth have become information and knowledge...

(Drucker 1993: 181-3)

The emergence of this new resource has transformed the nature of capitalism.

Though it still revolves around markets and profit, economic organization has

been fundamentally changed. And the key transformation is in the process of

resource capture and use — the move from mainly material inputs for produc-

tion of material outputs to the manipulation of ideas or knowledge inputs

producing more valuable knowledge 'products'.

Therefore a central dynamic of the shift to post-industrial organization is

the move from the centrality of material resources to a process that accords

more importance to the securing of knowledge and ideational resources (Lash

and Urry 1994; Masuda 1980; Morris-Suzuki 1988). But also, value-added is

increasingly seen by entrepreneurs not to stem from the good's materiality but

to be based on its ideational elements. Which is to say that though goods may

still have some material value related to their various inputs, the knowledge-

related inputs (such as design, marketing, 'quality' and technological novelty)

are becoming the key aspects of competition as understood by market actors.

Thus, it is proposed that knowledge-based capitalism breaks with previous

capitalist models by virtue of its raw materials and the uses it makes of them,

the sorts of products that it produces.

The information society, by virtue of the changes required in social and

economic organization brought about by the new role and use of knowledge

will be different from the previous, materially based, industrial society. While

this transformation may not happen instantaneously, like the industrial revolu-

tion it will transform the social landscape over which human activities are

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enacted. This third wave, following the agrarian and the industrial waves, will

profoundly alter human society (Toffler 1980).

A new type of knowledge

But in this new information society it is not only that knowledge inputs are

increasingly being utilized, the character of the knowledge used itself is

changing. Proposing the category of 'intellectual technology' Daniel Bell

recognized that methods of organizing activities can be regarded as technolo-

gies themselves which will spread and have distinct impacts on the adopting

sectors, organizations or societies. Successful adoptions of new organizational

techniques will be copied by other actors when such innovations seem to

contribute to success (however conceived). Interestingly, Bell notes that what

is 'distinctive about the new intellectual technology is its effort to define

rational action and to identify the means of achieving it' (Bell 1974: 30).

Indeed he argues that 'the major source of structural change in society.. .is the

change in the character of knowledge', a change which will substitute 'a tech-

nical order for the natural order' (Bell 1974: 44—5) — the appliance of science,

perhaps. This new knowledge order will increasingly set the agendas from

which problems are addressed, it will define the acceptable and unacceptable

through the technological assumption of discoverable rationality, the presump-

tion that there is an optimal and 'objective' answer to problems. Therefore, the

services which indicate the emergence of the post-industrial society are those

which prompt the 'expansion of a new intelligentsia — in the universities,

research organizations, professions and government' (Bell 1974: 15).

Bell recognizes that

knowledge has of course been necessary in the functioning of any society. What is distinctive

about the post-industrial society is the change in the character of knowledge itself. What has

become decisive for the organization of decisions and the direction of change is the

centrality of theoretical knowledge — the primacy of theory over empiricism and the codifi-

cation of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that.. .can be used to illuminate many

different and varied areas of experience.

(Bell 1974: 21)

This claim has been taken up more recently by Robert Reich in his discussion

of the rise of 'symbolic analysts' and their increasing importance. Though

Reich (following the 'spirit of the age') accords more weight to private institu-

tions, he too sees these sectors of the workforce as holding a pivotal role in

contemporary (and future) society (Reich 1991: 177 ff.). Indeed, if the

concern with information and knowledge has been a major issue during the

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last twenty-five years, one of the shifts within the discourse has been a move

from collective provision of knowledge resource development to a more indi-

vidualized responsibility. But a distinction between information and knowledge

has also opened up.

Whereas there has always been value in information in the sense that it is a

passive resource which can be easily transferred between parties, the proposed

shift to the information society has involved a greater emphasis on knowledge.

This might seem a false distinction, and indeed the terms information and

knowledge are often used interchangeably. What this distinction does capture is

the difference between the transfer of data, and the theoretical or intellectual

tools that are needed to produce further knowledge-related resources from

such data. Information has become (or perhaps always was) a commodity,

whereas knowledge is more akin to skill and expertise, the higher order intel-

lectual abilities needed to produce new knowledge from knowledge itself.3

The increasing social and economic importance put upon the mobilization and

possibilities for control of knowledge (in addition to information) is the

second element to the emergence of the information society (Masuda 1980;

Stehrl994:63ff.).

Interestingly Bell explicitly limits his account of knowledge to that which is

circumscribed by the concept of intellectual property (Bell 1974: 176). While

this is clearly not meant as a final definition but as an instrumental analytical

device, this does limit the discussion that might follow from his identification

of the importance of knowledge in a putative post-industrial society. And by

appealing to a set of ideas about property in a market society his analysis

implicitly maintains that post-industrial society while different from industrial

society retains similar property relations (May 1998). This stands in stark

contrast to his claim that the 'emerging post-industrial society is

communal.. .insofar as the criteria of individual utility and profit maximization

become subordinated to broader conceptions of social welfare and community

interest' (Bell 1974: 481). If knowledge is held as property in a market orga-

nized society (and neither Bell, nor most other writers on information society,

seem to suggest that this new era will be anything but market organized), then

it is difficult to see how such a subordination might proceed.4 Despite such

shortcomings this remains a highly influential analysis (Webster 1995: 38—9,

49-51).

The issues that seem important in light of this brief discussion of the

posited shift to a (potentially global) information society are two-fold: What is

the organizational character of this 'new' information society? and is a global

information society fundamentally different from what has gone before? If the

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answer to the second question is negative, then this has profound implications

for the mobilization of political efforts on behalf of (and importantly by) the

disadvantaged in this 'new' global society.

TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE AND PROPERTY

A key element in debates regarding the growing importance of knowledge and

information has been that this shift is a direct result of the development of

powerful information technologies. As Webster has noted, though this techno-

logical determinism is not often as crude asToffler's'techno-boosterism', it is an

element in a wide range of characterizations of the new information age

(Webster 1995: 218; 1997: 108—9). Discussions of the information society have

been tied up with the ability of companies and individuals to utilize information

and knowledge for profit. And the key tool for such utilization has been the

computer (in its myriad forms — from desktop to mainframe).

Castells argues that the information society will be a network society: it

will be open, and though 'the price to pay for inclusion in the system is to

adapt to its logic, to its language, to its points of entry, to its encoding and

decoding', it will allow diverse cultural and political identities to flourish

(Castells 1996: 374; 1997 passim). But as he has previously made clear, this

potential needs to be positively developed by its potential subjects, it will not

necessarily be benign (Castells 1989: 350—3). It is prescient to emphasize that

'technology neither dictates features of the manufacturing process nor has

effects independent of the human actors involved, [its] effects are anything but

self-evident' (Grint andWoolgar 1997: 138, emphasis added). Analysis of the

information society needs to be sensitive to the socio-economic relations in

which new technologies appear, and to recognize that the impact of technolo-

gies is mediated through the actors deploying them. Technologies do not

necessarily bring with them specific social relations antagonistic or co-opera-

tive. It is the use to which technologies are put that develops their social

relations, and though this may be partly implied by the technology's design, its

social effects are not given.

Such a concern has led Castells to contribute to the 'high-level expert

group' report 'Building the European Information Society for Us All'. The

report, while retaining the patina of dirigiste European economic policy, is

concerned with supply-side issues of training and education, as well as the

promotion of competition, It suggests that the requisite powers for the regula-

tion of the information society should be transferred by states to the European

level. The report then argues that:

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it is essential that people, and excluded groups in particular, should not be forced to adjust

to the new technologies. Rather, the technologies must become better geared to human

needs. The Information Society should not create new categories of exclusion; [it] should

improve social integration and quality of life.

(European Commission 1997a: 43)

Underlying this, and other aspects of the report is the expectation that infor-

mation technology will transform the socio-economic relations of the

European population (and by extension, the global population). This, as I

pointed out above, is a central refrain of the information society literature

(academic and popular).

This raises the proposed emancipatory potential of information technology:

have information technologies changed the socio-economic basis of productive

activity? and does access to the globalized flow of information (and knowl-

edge) transform the political—economic experiences of the user? A recent

report produced by the IBM-sponsored National Working Party on Social

Inclusion concluded that:

[it] would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of communication and information-

handling skills in the Information Society. Too much attention paid to the technology draws

attention away from the need for people to be able to exploit information once they have

it...

but argues on the next page that:

Gaining access to the communication facilities can be the hardest step in the processes of

participating in a creative communication environment. Once there, most groups will know

exactly how to exploit the technology.

(IBM/CDF 1997:64-5)

This encapsulates the technological issue. Once they have access to communi-

cation and information technologies will 'most groups know exactly how to

exploit it'?The study warns that access is not the only issue, but is confident

that access can be sufficient, given the extant skills of groups (and individuals).

Though the report seems in the first instance to be aware of the technological

determinism in suggesting that access is necessary but not sufficient for

'empowerment', a page later this conclusion is reversed.

The debate regarding the policies and actions required by the shift to an

information society is often expressed in terms of access to knowledge.

Especially within Internet discussion groups, it is expected that the informa-

tion society will be a naturally democratic global public sphere, where it is

argued 'information wants to be free' to flow throughout the world. However,

given the information society's overtly market character, the 'irony is that

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those who might most benefit from the net's democratic and informational

potential are least likely to either have access to it, the tools to use it, or the

educational background to take advantage' of the knowledge resources on

offer (Barber 1997: 224).The intellectual and technological resources to take

advantage of the opportunities of the information society are not distributed

equally. Given the costs of obtaining education (increasingly market-driven

throughout the global system), alongside the purchase of computer hardware

and line rental, the distribution of informational benefits is likely to follow

patterns of wealth distribution. The issue of the market leads me to return to

the distinction between the information society which includes wide claims

regarding the social worth of information networks and the more limited

term, the information economy.

That there is slippage between the concept of an information society and an

information economy is admirably exhibited in the (British) Department of

Trade and Industry's recent report Development of the Information Society:

An International Analysis. In this report the 'term is used to mean a society

where individuals — whether they be consumers or employees — use informa-

tion intensively', a characterization which regards individuals as only acting in

markets, be they 'consumers or employees' (HMSO 1996: 4). And the report

notes 'the most important driver of uptake of the information society is the

enhanced utility that products and services will deliver to consumers and the

extent to which the supply side is able to develop to deliver these enhanced

benefits' (HMSO 1996: 7).The information society is thus a transformation of

the nature of market activity. Throughout the report the information society is

conceptualized as a competitive economic strategy, which should be supported

by the state. The emergence of the information society is no longer a social

transformation, which impacts on the economy, here it has become an

economic transformation that impacts on society. So, though earlier writers

stressed the social impact and transformation that would be wrought by the

emergence of the information society, in this report at least there is a move to

think of the information society as a developmental strategy to enhance

'national competitiveness'.

The crucial aspect of the rise of the information society, particularly in its

guise as the information economy, is the increasing importance of owning

knowledge and information — intellectual property. Reich suggests that:

[the] issues of old capitalism — law on property [and so on].. .are no longer really appro-

priate. The key assets of new capitalism are not defined as physical property but intellectual

assets, many embedded in people.

(Lloyd 1997: 36)

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It is my contention that this view is completely mistaken, the interest and

importance given to intellectual property actually reinforces the issues of'old

capitalism', centred on property relations, and does not indicate a new capi-

talism (and thus a new politics). This confusion lies in the emphasis on the new

resources of the information society (what they are, how they function, what

will be produced) at the expense of any consideration of the social relations (of

production) of this emergent 'new' era. The property relations which underlie

the information economy, based on intellectual property, need to be brought

into the analysis.

I have argued elsewhere that the incidence of justificatory schema based on

the similarity between property and intellectual property is the result of the

structural power of particular groups over knowledge (May 1998). Without

the protection of property rights over their products it is hard to imagine capi-

talists in particular coming to market with knowledge-based products.5

Alongside moves toward a global information society, the intellectual property

rights regime has been increasingly globalized through the World Intellectual

Property Organization (WIPO). Most recently, and supporting the further

expansion of the global information society's property regime, the knowledge

industries played a major role in ensuring that a very specific (and broadly

successful) position was taken by the US negotiating team in the recent Trade

Related Intellectual Property agreement (TRIPs) under the auspices of the

World Trade Organization (WTO) (Sell 1995; 1998). The requirements (and

interests) of intellectual property owners (which is by no means necessarily

the same group that originates such intellectual property) were those that

were foregrounded. This resulted in the rationale of protection and the

support for particular ownership rights taking precedence over the need for

transfer (especially to developing states) of useful knowledge outside

economic channels.

If'information wants to be free' this was not reflected in the TRIPs agree-

ment, nor more recent European proposals. These new proposals reinforce the

right of copyright holders to control the reproduction of their works especially

'in view of the development of new forms of reproduction' (European

Commission 1997b: 2). Perhaps the most important proposed extension to

copyright is the Communication to the Public Right, which suggests legislation

to allow rights to be recognized for 'on demand' services, and unlike previous

reproduction law which has only covered the actual reproduction, these

proposals 'apply irrespective of the number of times the work or other subject

matter is actually transmitted on-line on demand — it is the act of offering the

service to the public which will require authorization' (European Commission

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1997b:3).This shift allows rights holders significantly tighter rights of control

than has hitherto been the case vis-a-vis Internet-related technologies. The

development of European policy has been driven by powerful multinational

companies in the knowledge industries, alongside representatives of smaller

specialized rights-holding firms. As Doern notes it 'is these business interests

that more than any other factor [have] forced changes in trade related intellec-

tual property law in the larger global setting' and continue to do so in Europe

(Doern 1997: 397). It is not the users, nor the question of public (that is, free)

access that is uppermost in the minds of policy-makers, even though informa-

tion society will be organized around the access to knowledge arid

informational resources.

As I have briefly noted above, this issue of access has pervaded much of the

literature but without a full appreciation of two crucial problems: the ability to

actually access a particular informational resource for a specific use may well

be curtailed (or costly) due to the incidence of intellectual property; and the

requirement for the user to have the requisite intellectual tools to manipulate

and gain sustenance from information may limit access along the lines of the

distribution of educational resources and attainment. If the information society

is as dependent on the institution of intellectual property as previous forms of

capitalism have been on the institution of property, then wide or open access

to the conduits of information remains a necessary but not sufficient condition

for the claims made on behalf of information society.

Even accepting the argument that with access and the provision of educa-

tion the problems of social exclusion can be lessened, if the question of

property rights remains central to the socio-economic relations of this new

knowledge or information-dominated era, then the change may not be as

significant (or seismic) as the claims for post-capitalist or post-industrialist

society suppose. Indeed it is even possible that the demand for education

(while in itself fully legitimate and supportable) represents merely a supply-

side measure, regarding the skills required in the workforce by knowledge

capitalists, that will do little to alleviate inequality (both national and interna-

tional) within the global information society. However, here I want to

concentrate on the first of these two issues, the incidence of intellectual prop-

erty (rights). If the social relations indicated by the incidence of property in

the information society are examined, as opposed to the shifts in technologies,

(if the relations of production are included in an analysis alongside the forms of

production) then it is my contention that there is considerable continuity

between the information society and industrial society, rather than extensive

disjuncture.

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THE FRAGMENTATION OF LABOUR

The relations between the holders of knowledge relative to the companies and

other actors who profit from it, as well as the way such knowledge is

deployed, based on intellectual property, indicate that the framework or

substance of the information society is characterized by continuity. Indeed

labour relations within the knowledge industries remain remarkably familiar

even if their actual organization has changed (Sayer and Walker 1992;Tomaney

1994). And, though the knowledge industries are presented as the paradigmic

new employers, the substantial expansion of employment in the era of the

information society may actually be in the 'personal services' sector (Handy

1984; Sayer and Walker 1992). Thus knowledge-based (white-collar) employ-

ment needs to be recognized as only a partial characterization of employment

in the emerging 'new age'. Indeed, as Kumar has pointed out, much of the

claim for the increasingly professionalized workforce (the rise of the knowl-

edge workers) has been predicated on a statistical sleight of hand (Kumar

1995: 25—6). Only by accepting that the renaming of employees with more

professional sounding titles is evidence of an actual functional change, as well

as supposing all those involved in the putative knowledge sector are profes-

sionals, could claims for a substantive change in employment patterns be

supported. This is not a robust proposition.

For Kumar, the claims for transformation are completely unwarranted.

Though it is clear that there has been an information revolution, in that the supply

and use of information goods has both widened and accelerated, this is not the

same thing as information society. Kumar sees no reason to accept the claims of

theorists of information society that we have entered a new phase of social evolution,

comparable to the 'great transformation' ushered in by the industrial revolution. That revo-

lution achieved a new relationship between town and country, home and work, men and

women, parents and children. It brought in a new ethic and new social philosophies. There is

no evidence that the spread of information technology has caused any such major changes.

On the contrary, the bulk of the evidence indicates that what it has mainly done is to enable

industrial societies to do more comprehensively what they have already been doing.

(Kumar 1995: 162)

Though there is little evidence of the transformation of society which is

continually asserted by the information society ideologues, this has not

compromised its usefulness as a justification for (re)introducing certain

employment practices. And it is here that the continuity with previous forms

of capitalism is most marked.

Castells, like Reich, suggests that transformation in the labour force is not a

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move to the widespread incidence of 'knowledge working', but rather a

'decline of the middle'. While there are still highly paid (relatively) secure jobs

available, 'the bulk of new jobs pay lower wages and enjoy less social protec-

tion than in recent historical experience' (Castells 1989: 202; Gallie 1996).

This move to organizational cores and outsourced employment (not limited to

the local districts but stretching out across borders) has become the mantra of

the new flexibility. This has been emphasized by the moves to project-based

knowledge utilization and production — such as the decline of the studio

system in Hollywood (Lash and Urry 1994), or contract-working in any

number of industries, from software programming to textiles. Castells has

referred to this trend as the 'individualization of labour in the labour process',

which he suggests is the 'reversal of the historical trend of salarization of work

and socialization of production' that characterized the industrial era (Castells

1996: 265). Again, this would seem to argue for an intensification of capitalism

(a return to previously successful practices) rather than its replacement.

Additionally, as Sayer and Walker suggest:

the economy can still be characterized in classical terms as a system dominated by industrial

production, whose outputs come mostly as tangible goods: goods circulating primarily as

commodities, accompanied by the circulation of money; produced by human beings with the

help of machines, technical knowledge, and rational organization.. .[and] the proliferation of

so-called service sectors and service occupations can be explained in terms of burgeoning

social and technical divisions of labour throughout the industrial system.

(Sayer and Walker 1992: 104)

Which is to say, the emerging knowledge industries are not so much the result

of new types of enterprise (though the commodities they produce may be

novel in the form in which they are presented) or of a new form of society, but

are the result of the continuing fragmentation of the social division of labour.

And the management of the division of labour in the economy (local, regional

and global) is not a process that is neutral, rather it flows from the power of

capital to configure the process of production and exchange (Rueschemeyer

1986). The forms of this division may be new, tasks may emerge and be subdi-

vided or aggregated with the aid of new technologies, however the underlying

power relations of capitalism remain remarkably familiar.

The transformation of work in the information society may therefore be

less than has been proposed by its 'boosters'. By devolving certain manage-

ment functions to project groups, but retaining overall strategic control, new

organizational strategies have given the appearance of a partial transfer of

control to the workforce (a quasi-empowerment). However, such empower-

ment is strictly limited to the parameters set by management (Tomaney 1994).

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As Carchedi points out, the use of information technologies limits the choice

of working practices through the need to work with already supplied, complex

software which channels both effort and output. Despite the seemingly more

powerful and 'open' nature of these tools they actually set quite limited para-

meters to the possible methods of knowledge work. And with such technology

the monitoring of work (and 'down time') can be carried out continually and,

more importantly, unobtrusively (Carchedi 1990). Recent research into the

work practices of call centres suggests that far from being the empowered

knowledge workers of the information society paradigm, they are subject to

high levels of control and surveillance, and work at such intensity that they are

often 'burned out' after eighteen months (Fernie 1998). So there is a dichoto-

mous movement towards a further social division of labour alongside the

enhanced possibility for centralized control through surveillance represented

by information technology.

This centralization of control alongside a fragmentation of the social division

of labour is also evident on a global scale. It is a commonplace that while devel-

oping states continue to export material goods and industrialize on the basis of

producing material goods, the developed or core states are moving towards

service economies, with less and less of the working population involved in the

production of material goods (for instance, Quah 1997). In a sense these states

are becoming post-industrial on the back of a continuing agricultural and indus-

trial periphery. But as Castells has explored at some empirical length, even this

is not the full picture. While there is certainly a rise in those sectors of the

economy which may be seen as knowledge dependent, this will not be a move to

a comprehensive information society. As important as knowledge resources may

be, even within the manipulation of physical/material resources, there will

always be vast sectors of industrialized production alongside the knowledge-

centred sectors, and large amounts of service employment that can be seen as

knowledge work only with a heightened disregard for the actualities of service

sector employment (Castells 1996: 210—310).

And though these 'outlying' sectors (in an organizational rather than

geographic sense) are not informational, they are controlled (their production

of goods and services manipulated) by the use of information that has itself

become centralized in vast multinationals. This takes place in a direct sense

through economic organization and technical transfer, or in an indirect sense

through the use of the derivatives markets to develop 'futures' and related

financial instruments. Thus beneath the fragmentation of labour which is

evident in the claims for an information society, there is the increasing poten-

tial for control that such information flows represent.

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My argument therefore is that the post-industrial view of capitalism as an

emerging globalized information society fundamentally misreads the nature of

the capitalist process. While there is a freedom for some, the introduction of

increasingly sophisticated information technologies permits increased control

over the many. This may be control in the workplace, control of information

that impacts on the markets for material goods, or the control of information

flows in the knowledge industries themselves. Though there are new forms of

economic organization, this does not mean that the substance of relations

between those who own capital and those who have only their labour (physical

or mental) to sell have dramatically altered. At the centre of this control is the

use and ownership of knowledge and information — intellectual property. The

resources of information society, when they exist as property, are increasingly

only free in the sense that we all have the freedom to own a Rolls Royce: that

is, there may be some economic impediments to benefiting from them.

THE INTENSIFICATION OF CAPITALISM

The information society literature may correctly reflect a change in the way

the relations of production within the modern global political economy are

managed. But while the organizational forms of these relations may be

changing, when the underlying reliance on property relations and surplus

accumulation is revealed, the relationship between actors has remained

remarkably similar. This is not to argue that capitalism is unchanging, only that

there is a need to identify what is changing and what is not. Much has been

written on what has changed, and this has over-emphasized disjuncture, so

here I make no apology for concentrating on continuity.

While accepting that capitalism has widened itself geographically (usually

discussed under the rubric of globalization) Wood argues that it has also deep-

ened its penetration into previously non-commodified social relations.

The notion of universalization rather then transformation flows from her

emphasis on

the logic of capitalism, not some particular technology or labour process but the logic of

specific social property relations. There certainly have been constant technological changes

and changes in marketing strategies. But these changes do not constitute a major epochal

shift in capitalism's laws of motion.

(Wood 1997: 550)

Thus, Wood makes clear the distinction between the forms of production

under capitalism (the technologies or processes) and the continuing character

of the relations of production. So though the techniques and technologies that

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are being utilized have changed, the ownership of the key resources has not.

If knowledge is the key resource as has been suggested above, the strength and

widespread reliance on intellectual property is of major import. A change in

the regime for the ownership of knowledge which enabled substantial change

in the ownership of the means of production would certainly be potentially

transformatory, however, given the current globalized settlement of intellec-

tual property law co-ordinated through WIPO and more recently the WTO

and the EU, such a shift is not apparent, nor likely in the near future.

To reinforce this argument for continuity it is also useful to recall the

distinction between the economy (the market) and capitalism itself, between

the 'economic life' and the activities of capitalism, suggested by Braudel.

Though this distinction is an analytical one only, as 'it is very difficult to draw a

line indicating what...is the crucial distinction between capitalism and the

economy', it is nonetheless useful (Braudel 1982: 455). For Braudel, a form of

economy is operating 'when prices in the markets of a given area fluctuate in

unison.. .[and] in this sense, there was a market economy well before the nine-

teenth and twentieth centuries' (Braudel 1982: 226). An economy is a device,

embedded within society, for the co-ordination of demand and supply which

produces prices which enable exchange mediated by money of goods that have

been socially produced. This contrasts with capitalism, which intervenes in the

economy by producing goods or services specifically for profit, speculatively.

The capitalist earns a socially recognized (and legitimated) return on invest-

ment (enabling capital to be reproduced and accumulated) when items are

brought to market and successfully sold (Braudel 1982: 400 ff.). Market

economies can exist without capitalism, but capitalism cannot exist outside a

market economy.

A separation of the notion of market from capitalism enables the analysis of

changes in the form of market relations (most specifically the sorts of commodi-

ties and services brought to market) to be distinguished from the driving

organizational logic of capitalists acting in the market itself. Thus, changes in

the social division of labour do not necessarily constitute epochal changes in

economic organization. If we accept that markets pre-exist capitalism

(capitalism is arguably predicated on the marketization of labour6), then while

they are interrelated, changes in the market's character do not indicate neces-

sary changes in the 'laws of motion' of capitalism, though both must be socially

legitimated to survive. The character of the economy may change due to

technological or social changes, and this may expand or contract the possibili-

ties for capitalistic intervention, but it does not change the substantive

conditions required for the reproduction of capital itself.

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This suggests that while the technologies and practices of capitalism in the

market have changed in form, their underlying property relations — those

between labour-owning and capital-owning groups — could remain in

substance unaltered, though obscured through the presentation of new 'ideas'

about economic organization. Indeed, it is this continuity of the capitalist logic

required for successful intervention in the economy that seems to be wilfully

hidden by much of the legitimizing discourse regarding the emergence of the

information society. Thus, while it is

entirely possible that the origin of surplus in the era of capitalism has gradually

moved.. .[w]hat is significant is that the allocation of this surplus to the capital-owning class

has not been affected by the alteration in its sources.

(Heilbronner 1985:75-6)

New technologies do not seem to indicate a profound change in the under-

lying relations of production or their property-based organization. The crucial

issue is: to whom do the fruits of accumulation flow in the information

society? In most cases the intellectual property that is the key resource is not

owned socially or by public institutions, it is owned privately. And in the main

this does not mean by the individuals who have developed new knowledge, it is

owned by their employers, or has been transferred to the current owners by

the originators, because only the knowledge industries' firms have sufficient

resources to successfully mobilize these ideas for profit, given the structure of

the market and its barriers to entry.

While dependent on the construction of alienable property (to separate

labour from its product and to allow products to be exchanged in a market)

the forms of property are not limited except for their legal existence qua

property (Heilbronner 1985: 57 ff.).7The process is driven by the need to

earn a profit, for capital to be reproduced, and not by particular forms of prop-

erty. To be specific, the relations between knowledge capital and the

knowledge worker remain essentially the same as under 'modern' capitalism.

This is to say that capital controls and deploys the knowledge outputs in a

similar way to the products of its more materially oriented workers.

Employment contracts routinely assign the intellectual property rights of

workers' knowledge outputs to the employer, much as they would for materi-

alized production. Innovations belong (in most instances) not to the

knowledge workers but to their employers. Service contracts may forbid (for a

period of time) the transfer of internalized personal 'skills' to competing firms

(through the taking of a new post).

Companies may also define the knowledge of important workers, not as the

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workers' skills and abilities, but as the trade secrets of the employer. Presented

as the danger of'inevitable disclosure', the problem of employees revealing

organizational trade secrets of their previous employer to their new employer

(which might have previously been coded as 'transferable skills') has become

an important concern for multinationals (Di Fronzo 1996; Spanner 1996).

Most interestingly, this issue was at the centre of the recent dispute between

General Motors and Volkswagen over the employment of a high-level manager

by the latter, who was using an approach to cost-cutting developed while

employed by the former. But it would be a mistake to regard this merely as an

issue at executive level, as the tightening of many standard employment

contracts' intellectual property clauses indicates. Thus, work practices may

have changed, as have working conditions for the 'symbolic analysts', but the

ownership of their outputs is still allocated through the capital/labour

relation. Even where individuals contrive to own their own intellectual prop-

erty, in most cases the structure of the knowledge industries are such that to

profit from their creations in any way they must at least license (or rent) them

to knowledge capitalists.

THE IDEA OF THE 'INFORMATION SOCIETY'

The information society may represent a new form of capitalism, inasmuch as

the appearances that the relations of production take may change and be

concerned with differing sorts of resources. However, this is not the same as a

substantive new era. Far from being new, the emergence of the knowledge

industries, and the information society as an idea of economic organization,

indicates an intensification of capitalist social relations. This is not to argue that

there is no possibility of changes in the forms of production affecting the rela-

tions of production or vice-versa. But neither is it the case that they necessarily

do (McLennan 1989: 63—9). And to my mind the case for changes in the forms

of production in an information society bringing about changes in the relations

of production has not been made. As I have tried to show above, though there

has been considerable change in the organizational forms of contemporary

capitalism, this has not had a major impact on the relations of production,

which are still based on property, albeit increasingly intellectual property. The

'information society' is not so much an analytical construct as a discourse of

disciplinary intent, which alongside 'globalization' has produced quite specific

policy requirements to favour certain areas of the economy — those sectors

grouped together under the rubric of the knowledge industries.

However, as Kumar correctly points out

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To call the information society an ideology and to relate that ideology to the contemporary

needs of capitalism is to begin, not end the analysis. Capitalism has had many ideologies over

the past two-hundred years — laissez-faire, managerialism, welfarism Each has had its own

kind of relation to capitalist society; each has contained its own distinctive contradic-

tions The 'information society' may be a partial and one-sided way of expressing the

contemporary social reality, but for many people it is now inescapably part of that reality.

(Kumar 199S: 34)

Following Kumar, I too stress that this ideology needs to be explored: in its

origins and reproduction, and in its partiality. Though it obscures much, the

notion of information society is not completely without foundation, and thus

the contradictions that can be explored within its discourse can reveal sites of

potentially successful contestation. This critique of the information society is

the project for which this article is a first cut.

If capitalism is socially embedded though it can be distinguished from the

market, as Braudel suggests, then it requires some form of legitimization to

continue to intervene in socially existing markets. What I suggest is that the

discourse of information society is one way that the current changes in the

organization of capitalism are being presented, in an attempt to re-establish its

legitimacy. Capitalism has changed it is claimed, old criticisms are misplaced

and no longer relevant. But while the tactics for confronting capitalism's

trends of uneven development, exploitation, promotion of inequality and

pauperization may need to be changed, the underlying strategic thinking from

which such tactics flow remains valid, useful and apposite. Claims to the

contrary are not disinterested nor merely technocratic accounts of shifts in the

global political economy. There is a need to resist the discourse of naturaliza-

tion which suggests the globalization of the information society is an

exogenous process.

Given the paradigmatic character of the knowledge industries in globaliza-

tion discourse, their political economy becomes of central import. But, as I

have argued, the presumptions about information society and the knowledge

industries, on which many writers rely, significantly misunderstand the nature

of knowledge or information capitalism. They disregard the central impor-

tance of the reproduction of property relations as intellectual property

relations. If we are to be concerned with the inequalities in the global system,

as I believe we should, then we need to recognize that continuance of property

rights as the foundation on which capitalism is based. This would require us

not to forget or dismiss the politics of property which have a long and violent

history. There is a continuity between the need for capitalism to make material

resources property and the need to make ideational resources property. This

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does not suggest the emerging globalized knowledge economy is no longer

subject to the same questions put to capitalism in the past. If knowledge is the

resource of the future, then knowledge inequality and its alleviation must be

the political concern of the next millennium. We should not throw away the

analytical tools we may need at the beginning of such a struggle.Christopher May

Faculty of Economics and Social ScienceFrenchay Campus, University of the West of England

Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QYChristopher. May@uwe. ac. uk

NOTESThis article originated in a discussion piece for the British International Studies

Association Globalisation Working Group workshop in April 1997. More developed

versions were presented at the 1997 BISA Annual Conference, in the Corporate and

Global Governance Research Group lecture series at UWE, and at the 1998

International Studies Association Annual Conference. I would like to thank everyone

who has commented on previous versions, especially Mark Brawley, Robin Brown,

Randall Germain, Stella Maile, Tim Sinclair and Frank Webster, as well as the referees

for iCS who helped refine the final version. The shortcomings of this article remain the

author's own.

1 This theme is also taken up with less pessimism by Lash and Urry (1994), and is married to a

call for social policy action by Aronowitz and DiFazio (1996), who conclude that displace-

ment by technology is slowly but surely moving up through the knowledge-worker hierarchy

and thus may engender more calls for intervention as middle-class professionals are increas-

ingly replaced by computers. This is also broadly the view of Paul Krugman, cited in

The Economist article referred to above.

2 Beniger (1986) suggests that the emergence of information society is predicated on the

'control revolution', which was itself a response to the forces unleashed by the Industrial

Revolution.

3 For Giddens this is the character of late-modernity. In this sense, while recognizing the sorts

of shifts that writers concerned with information society have identified, Giddens implicitly

does not accept their periodization of a root and branch transformation (Giddens 1990).

4 Five years later Bell seems to have recognized this problem and suggests that the collective

nature of knowledge production indicates that it should in the main be the responsibility of

public bodies, as the market is unable to provide a 'socially optimal policy of investment in

knowledge' even with an intellectual property regime in place (Bell 1979: 174).

5 If in the short term some software companies have accepted pirated copies of software as a

way of increasing market penetration, this should be seen as something similar to 'loss-

leaders', a marketing strategy rather than a dismissal of their property rights.

6 See Polanyi (1957), whose views on what constitutes a 'market', however, are different to

Braudel's (1982: 225-6).

7 The issue of the parallels between the possibility of materialized property and intellectual

property are central (see May 1998) but here it is sufficient that it is recognized that there is

a substantial legal sanction behind the acceptance of intellectual property qua property.

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