general intellect
General intellect (English for "general knowledge", "general understanding") is a term coined by Karl Marx for general knowledge in its social function as a direct productive force . It is used in the current discussion about post-Fordist industrial society, which is based on postoperaism .
According to Marx, the development of general intellect in a capitalist society manifests itself both in the production of industrial goods as fixed capital and in control over the social life process.
Use in Marx
Marx only uses the term in one place in the machine fragment of the manuscript Grundrisse der Critique der Politische Wirtschaft (1857-1859), where he writes:
- “Nature does not build machines, locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs , self-acting mules, etc. They are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of human will about nature or its activity in nature. They are organs of the human brain made by the human hand ; objectified power of knowledge. The development of the fixed capital shows the extent to which general social knowledge, knowledge, has become an immediate productive force and therefore the conditions of the social life process have come under the control of the general intellect and are rearranged in accordance with it. To what extent the social productive forces are produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but as immediate organs of social practice; of the real life process. "
Interpretations
origin
After Matteo Pasquinelli, Marx adopted the term general intellect from William Thompson's book An Inquiry Into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth of 1824. According to Pasquinelli, the concept disappears as the development from the ground plans to capital , where it is replaced by the concept of the collective worker or Overall worker is replaced.
literature
- Paolo Virno : When the night is deepest ... Comments on General Intellect, in: Atzert, Thomas / Müller, Jost (ed.): Immaterial work and imperial sovereignty . Analyzes and discussions on Empire, Münster 2004, pp. 148–155
- Paolo Virno: Notes on the "General Intellect", in: Saree Makdisi et al. (Ed.): Marxism beyond Marxism , Routledge, London and New York 1996, pp. 265-272
- Paolo Virno: General Intellect on Generation-online.org, published in Lessico Postfordista , Feltrinelli, 2001 (Italian), into English by Arianna Bove
- Wolfgang Fritz Haug : "General Intellect" and Massenintellektualität, in: Das Argument 235, June 2000, pp. 183-203
- Matteo Pasquinelli: On the Origins of Marx's General Intellect , in: Radical Philosophy 2.06, 2019.
- Carlo Vercellone : From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism on Generation-online.org (English, 24 pages pdf; 286 kB), published in Historical Materialism 15 (2007) p. 13– 36
- Tony Smith : The 'General Intellect' in the Grundrisse and Beyond (English, 37 pages PDF; 295 kB)
- Sabine Pfeiffer : Working capacity. A key to the analysis of (reflexive) computerization , VS Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-53114-226-7 , p. 121 ff.
- Christian Lotz (Ed.): Karl Marx: Das Maschinenfragment , Hamburg Laika Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-944233-21-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ K. Marx: Grundrisse, MEW Vol. 42, p. 602
- ↑ Matteo Pasquinelli: On the Origins of Marx's general intellect. In: Radical Philosophy. Vol. 2, No. 6, 2019.