Knowledge Economy
Regular price
€19.99
Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures.
In every part of the production system, the knowledge economy remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This confinement has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative-a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy-continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries.
Unger sets out the route to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.
In every part of the production system, the knowledge economy remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This confinement has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative-a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy-continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries.
Unger sets out the route to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is one of the leading philosophers and political thinkers in the world today. He is also active in Brazilian public life and has served twice as Brazil's Minister of Strategic Affairs, charged with developing initiatives that signal a direction for the country. Verso has published much of his work: in philosophy (The Religion of the Future), in social theory (False Necessity, Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task, and Plasticity into Power), in political economy (The Knowledge Economy), and in legal theory (What Should Legal Analysis Become?).