HAL Id: halshs-00263661
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00263661
Submitted on 14 Mar 2008
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entic research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.
L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diusion de documents
scientiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.
From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect:
Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of
Cognitive Capitalism, in Historical Materialism
Carlo Vercellone
To cite this version:
Carlo Vercellone. From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of
the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism, in Historical Materialism. Historical Materialism, Brill Academic
Publishers, 2007, 15 (1), pp.13-36. �10.1163/156920607X171681�. �halshs-00263661�
From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect:
Elements for a Marxist Reading of the esis of
Cognitive Capitalism
Carlo Vercellone
Lecturer of economics, University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.
Carlo.Vercellone@univ-paris1.fr
Abstract
Since the crisis of Fordism, capitalism has been characterised by the ever more central role of
knowledge and the rise of the cognitive dimensions of labour. is is not to say that the centrality
of knowledge to capitalism is new per se. Rather, the question we must ask is to what extent we can
speak of a new role for knowledge and, more importantly, its relationship with transformations in
the capital/labour relation. From this perspective, the paper highlights the continuing validity of
Marx’s analysis of the knowledge/power relation in the development of the division of labour. More
precisely, we are concerned with the theoretical and heuristic value of the concepts of formal
subsumption, real subsumption and general intellect for any interpretation of the present change of
the capital/labour relation in cognitive capitalism. In this way, we show the originality of the general
intellect hypothesis as a sublation of real subsumption. Finally, the article summarises key
contradictions and new forms of antagonism in cognitive capitalism.
Keywords
crisis, division of labour, knowledge, formal subsumption, real subsumption, general intellect,
cognitive capitalism, diuse intellectuality
I n t r o d u c t i o n
e contemporary historical conjuncture is marked by the diusion and the ever-
more central role of knowledge in the organisation of production and the
dynamic of technical progress.
1
is evolution is accounted for by neoclassical
theories of endogenous growth and of a knowledge-based economy through an
approach which abstracts from the capital/labour antagonism and from the
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156920607X171681
1. I would like to thank the referees for their critical suggestions that have allowed me to develop
and clarify the ideas presented here.
Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 13–36
www.brill.nl/hima
HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 13HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 13 3/13/07 2:24:05 PM3/13/07 2:24:05 PM
14 C. Vercellone / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 13–36
conicts of knowledge and power which structure transformations in the
division of labour.
2
e hypothesis of cognitive capitalism develops from a critique of the political
economy of the new liberal theories of the knowledge-based economy. An
understanding of the meaning at stake in the current mutation of capitalism
cannot be reduced to the mere constitution of an economy founded on
knowledge, but in the formation of a knowledge-based economy framed and
subsumed by the laws of capital accumulation.
3
On this basis, this article investigates two theoretical questions to which we
will attempt to give some of the elements of a response. Does the tendency to the
diusion of knowledge signal a break with respect to the logic of the capitalist
division of labour and of technical progress operative since the rst industrial
2. For a critique of these theories, see Lebert and Vercellone 2004.
3. is critical perspective on apologetic accounts of neoliberal inspiration is inscribed in the
two terms which compose the very concept of cognitive capitalism: i) the notion of ‘capitalism’
denes the enduring element in the change of the structural invariants of the capitalist mode of
production: in particular, the driving role of prot and the wage relation or, more precisely, the
dierent forms of dependent labour on which the extraction of surplus labour is founded; ii) the
term ‘cognitive’ emphasises the new nature of the conictual relation of capital and labour, and of
the forms of property on which the accumulation of capital rests. It is necessary to note that the
notion of cognitive capitalism has also been developed as a response to the insuciency of the
interpretations of the current mutation of capitalism in terms of the transition from a Fordist to a
post-Fordist model of exible, or what is sometimes referred to as ‘Toyota-ist’, accumulation. e
interpretative category of ‘post-Fordism’, adopted by both a critical Le coming from workerism
[operaismo] and by economists of the regulation school, essentially remains a prisoner of a neo-
industrialist vision of the new capitalism. e new model of production and the new nature of the
relation of capital to labour are conceived principally as an immanent overcoming of the socio-
economic factors which have brought to an end the rigid paradigm of mass production. In substance,
for the theories of post-Fordism, the rst aspect of the new productive model can be traced back to
the technological leap of telematic and microelectronic innovation that occurred with the third
industrial revolution. e argument goes that the association of the information revolution and
Japanese methods of lean production have allowed the old assembly line to adapt to the increasingly
unstable and volatile nature of demand. At the same time, thanks to a new organisation of labour in
terms that are more exible and decentralised, the new model of production is said to have
eliminated the critical points of the cycle of production upon which the emergence of the
antagonistic gure of the mass worker was founded. eories of post-Fordism, while capturing
some signicant elements of rupture, o en remain bound to a factory-inspired vision of the new
capitalism seen as a further development of the Fordist-industrial logic of the real subsumption of
labour by capital. For these reasons, the category of post-Fordism appears to us to be inadequate for
comprehending the profound transformation of the antagonistic relation of capital to labour
related to the development of an economy founded on the driving role of knowledge and the gure
of the collective worker of the general intellect. e notion of cognitive capitalism aims to contribute
to overcoming these diculties, taking account of the way in which the crisis of Fordism has
corresponded to a superior level of ‘great crisis’. is crisis signals the exhaustion not only of a model
of development specic to industrial capitalism but the tendential crisis of some of the more
structural invariants of the long-period dynamic that opened with the rst industrial revolution.
HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 14HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 14 3/13/07 2:24:05 PM3/13/07 2:24:05 PM
C. Vercellone / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 13–36 15
revolution? To what degree is it possible to nd in Marx and, in particular, in the
notion of the general intellect, elements that allow for the identication of the
radically new character of the contradictions and of the antagonism that traverses
cognitive capitalism?
In order to respond to these questions, this article proposes to highlight the
originality and the actuality of Marx’s contribution, underlining the conictual
relation of knowledge to power that determines the development of the capitalist
division of labour. Specically, we will deal with the theoretical and heuristic
value of the concepts of formal subsumption, real subsumption and the general
intellect. e notion of subsumption
4
is used by Marx to characterise the diering
forms of subordination of labour to capital. With the idea of the general intellect,
he designates a radical change of the subsumption of labour to capital and
indicates a third stage of the division of labour. It involves a tendential overcoming
of the Smithian logic of the division of labour proper to industrial capitalism,
and posits, in a new manner with respect to the other writings of Marx, the
possibility of a direct transition to communism.
We shall see that these categories are useful in cra ing a theoretical recon-
struction in historical time which is able to identify the signicance of the
current turning point in the dynamic of capitalism in the longue durée. From this
results a periodisation in which three principal stages of the capitalist division of
labour and of the role of knowledge can be identied (even if these phases in part
overlap with each other).
5
i) e stage of formal subsumption develops between the beginning of the
sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth century. It is based on the models of
production of the putting-out system
6
and of centralised manufacture. e
relation of capital/labour is marked by the hegemony of the knowledge of
cra smen and of workers with a trade, and by the pre-eminence of the mechanisms
of accumulation of a mercantile and nancial type.
4. I have preferred the term ‘subsumption’ to ‘submission’ because it better allows us to grasp the
permanence of the opposition of capital to labour and the conict for the control of the ‘intellectual
powers of production’ in the unfolding of the dierent stages of the capitalist division of labour.
5. e periodisation that I propose here is essentially aimed at showing the relevance and
heuristic value of Marxian categories and method for any interpretation of the present mutation of
the capital/labour relation. erefore, I privilege an analysis centred on the development of
tendencies and ruptures within the Marxian discourse, even if this is to the detriment of a more
detailed historical argument. For a more developed historical perspective on the complexity of the
processes that led from industrial capitalism to cognitive capitalism, I suggest that the reader see
Lebert and Vercellone 2003 and Vercellone 1999, 2003a, 2004, 2006 and Vercellone (ed.) 2003.
6. is system, also called the system of the diuse factory, is based on the gure of the mercantile
entrepreneur who organises production in the home by artisans and independent workers.
HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 15HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 15 3/13/07 2:24:06 PM3/13/07 2:24:06 PM
16 C. Vercellone / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 13–36
ii) e stage of real subsumption starts with the rst industrial revolution. e
division of labour is characterised by a process of polarisation of knowledge
which is expressed in the parcelling out and disqualication of the labour of
execution and in the overqualication of a minoritarian component of labour-
power, destined to intellectual functions.
7
e attempt to save time, founded on
the law of value-labour, is accompanied by the reduction of complex labour into
simple labour and by the incorporation of knowledge in xed capital and in the
organisation of the rm. e dynamic of capital accumulation is founded on the
large factories (rst of all, those of the Mancunian model, then those of Fordism),
which are specialised in the production of mass, standardised goods.
iii) e third stage is that of cognitive capitalism. It begins with the social crisis of
Fordism and of the Smithian division of labour. e relation of capital to labour is
marked by the hegemony of knowledges, by a diuse intellectuality, and by the
driving role of the production of knowledges by means of knowledges connected to
the increasingly immaterial and cognitive character of labour.
8
is new phase of the
division of labour is accompanied by the crisis of the law of value-labour and by the
strong return of mercantile and nancial mechanisms of accumulation. e principal
elements of this new conguration of capitalism and of the conicts that derive from
it are, in large measure, anticipated by Marx’s notion of the general intellect.
Formal subsumption, real subsumption and general intellect:
an historical perspective on the transformations of the division of labour
1. Division of labour and relations of knowledge/power. First and
fundamental terrain of the conicts between capital and labour.
Marx’s approach continues to oer an interpretative paradigm that helps us
account not only for the transformations of the division of labour but also for
the trajectories which could create, to use a phrase from Schumpeter, ‘the
conditions of a new evolution’. Marx’s analysis constitutes, from a methodological
point of view, one of the rst critiques of Smith’s account of the division of
7. See Freyssenet 1979.
8. I insist upon the two terms ‘immaterial’ and ‘cognitive’ because the concept of immaterial
labour, when used by itself to characterise the present change in labour, is, in my opinion, insucient
and imprecise. e essential trait of the present transformation in labour is not limited to its many
immaterial dimensions or, more precisely, those of its products. It can above all be found in the
reappropriation of the cognitive dimensions of work by living labour, with respect to all material
and immaterial activity.
HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 16HIMA 15,1_f3_12-36.indd 16 3/13/07 2:24:07 PM3/13/07 2:24:07 PM