Oxford Handbooks Online: The Commodification of Knowledge and Information

The Commodification of Knowledge and Information
Oxford Handbooks Online

Tomás Rotta and Rodrigo Teixeira
The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx
Edited by Matt Vidal, Tony Smith, Tomás Rotta, and Paul Prew
Subject: Sociology, Social Theory, Economic Sociology Online Publication Date: Nov 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.013.23
Abstract and Keywords
This entry presents an analysis of the commodification of knowledge and information in

contemporary capitalism. We provide a consistent account of how information as a
commodity effects the workings of both capitalism and of Marxist theory. The first part of
the chapter critically revisits Marx’s own writings on the commodification of knowledge
and how the immaterial labor hypothesis initially interpreted these writings. Based on the
new categories knowledge-commodity and knowledge-rent, we then present our own
approach in response to the challenges raised by the immaterial labor hypothesis. Lastly,
there is an analysis of the more recent contributions on the commodification of
knowledge and information within the Marxist literature. The current debate on the value
of knowledge has been divided between two camps: the reproduction cost approach and
the average cost approach. Finally, there is a look at empirical estimates of the
magnitudes of knowledge-rents.
Keywords: knowledge-commodities, knowledge-rents, value theory, Marx, immaterial labor
The commodification of knowledge and information has been an undeniable feature of our
economic system. Copyrights, patents, and intellectual property rights have proliferated
worldwide in the past decades (OECD 2013). The commodity form thus appears to spare
nothing and no one.
At every point in time in the history of capitalism when the commodity form took hold of a
new economic object, a profound transformation would ensue. When the commodity form
took hold of land, capitalist land rents emerged. When the commodity form took hold of
labor power, wage labor and wages emerged. When the commodity form took hold of
capital, interest-bearing capital emerged. Now we claim that when the commodity form
took hold of knowledge and information, knowledge-rents emerged.
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Here we present an analysis of the commodification of knowledge and information in

contemporary capitalism. Our approach aims primarily at developing Marxist theory so
that it can face the new challenges posed by the existence of commodified information. In
the nineteenth century Marx himself developed some deep insights on the future of
science and information as productive forces within capitalism. Marx, however, had not
yet experienced the vast and profound commodification of knowledge we experience
nowadays. This fact bears consequences for the Marxist tradition, and it is our current
task to provide a consistent account of how information as a commodity effects the
workings of both capitalism and Marxist theory.
The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, we will critically revisit Marx’s own
writings on the importance of knowledge in production and how the immaterial labor
hypothesis initially interpreted these writings. In revisiting Marx’s insights on the roles of
science and the “general intellect” we will be able to see how he foresaw the production
and distribution of wealth in a future stage of capitalism. The immaterial labor hypothesis
originally raised the argument that capitalism has been going through a structural shift
by relying ever more on immaterial commodities produced during non-labor time. The
hypothesis of a supposed change in the nature of both labor and commodities began to
question abstract labor as the substance of value, and as a consequence called into
question the analytical validity of Marx’s value theory.
Second, we present our own approach in response to the challenges raised by the
immaterial labor hypothesis. We introduce new Marxist categories with the explicit
purpose of theorizing the emergence of commodified information: knowledge-
commodities with zero value, knowledge-rents, and knowledge-lords. Crucial to our
argument is Marx’s distinction between production and reproduction time, and between
productive and unproductive activity. Our own approach, we claim, coherently integrates
Marx’s value theory with the transformation of knowledge and information into
commodities.
Third, we analyze the more recent contributions on the commodification of knowledge

within the Marxist literature. The current debate on the value of knowledge is divided
between two camps: the reproduction cost approach (of Teixeira and Rotta), and the
average cost approach (of Starosta and Fuchs). The reproduction cost approach claims
that commodified knowledge tends to have zero value because of its costless
reproduction. The average cost approach, on the contrary, claims that commodified
knowledge has value and that its value is given by the initial expenditures necessary to
produce it. We argue that the reproduction cost approach is theoretically superior to the
average cost approach, as only the zero-value interpretation is consistent with the notion
of moral (i.e., value) depreciation. We also present empirical estimates of the magnitudes
of knowledge-rents, and then conclude with final remarks on artificial intelligence and
the limits of the Marxist theory of value.
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1. Cognitive Capitalism and the Immaterial

Labor Hypothesis
In an insightful passage in the 1857–1858 Grundrisse, a passage that did not reappear
afterward in any edition of Capital, Marx has an intriguing comment on the impact of
technology and science on the limits of value as the form of wealth in capitalism. He
explicitly posits that labor time is the measure of value. But then acknowledges that
technology and science applied to production progressively render labor time a miserable
measure of wealth. It is a lengthy passage but well worth quoting in full:
But to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes
to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the
power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful
effectiveness’ is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent
on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the
progress of technology, or the application of this science to production….Real
wealth manifests itself, rather—and large industry reveals this—in the monstrous
disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the
qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the
power of the production process it superintends…. In this transformation, it is
neither the direct human labour he [the worker] himself performs, nor the time
during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive
power … which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth.
The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a
miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself.
As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of
wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange
value [must cease to be the measure] of use value…. Capital itself is the moving
contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it
posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence
it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the
superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition
—question of life or death—for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life
all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social
intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the
labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the
measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them
within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value…. The
development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge
has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the
conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the
general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it.
(Marx [1858]1973:705–706, emphasis in the original)
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This passage from the 1857–1858 Grundrisse was unknown to readers until its
publication in 1939. In the 1990s it then became the basis for the immaterial labor
hypothesis of André Gorz, Toni Negri, Michael Hardt, and Maurizio Lazzarato. The core
idea of this hypothesis is that technological progress makes labor time an inadequate
measure of value, for the “general intellect” depends ever more on what is produced
during non-labor time. These authors identify the “transformation” that Marx alludes to
as the transition from an industry-based to a service-based economy. This transition from
industry to services is, in their understanding, the limit to value theory grounded on labor
time.
Negri (1991), Hardt and Negri (2001, 2004) and Lazzarato (2006) have put forth the
argument that immaterial labor has modified the forms under which capitalist production
takes place. Immaterial labor, they claim, produces immaterial products such as
knowledge, information, ideas, images, affection etc. The qualities and specific
characteristics of immaterial production tend to transform the labor process and even
society itself as a whole. In contrast to agriculture and industry, immaterial labor emerges
in the service sector and does not produce tangible goods. Immaterial labor blurs the
distinction between work and non-work time and changes the nature of labor time from
quantitative to qualitative.
Gorz ([2003] 2010) developed a similar set of ideas under his notion of cognitive
capitalism. According to Gorz, current production relations are more tied to the complex
and unmeasurable dimensions of human capital than to the former tangible forms of fixed
capital. This replacement of fixed capital by human capital occurs because capitalism has
gradually subordinated to the profit motive the knowledge, the science, and the arts
developed during non-work time. Gorz ([2003] 2010) also differentiates between the
present post-Fordist worker and the former industry worker still attached to the assembly
line. The worker typical of Fordism is an appendix to material production and its work
time is measured in hours of repetitive physical effort. The post-Fordist worker, on the
contrary, is known for the qualitative aspects of its labor, for its knowledge and skills, for
its behavior and improvisation, for its imaginative and cooperative capabilities mostly
nurtured outside of the workplace.
The main argument that Hardt, Negri, Lazzarato, and Gorz have raised against Marxist
value theory is that abstract labor is no longer the substance of value. The profound
changes that immaterial labor has introduced into the nature of labor and production
ended up displacing labor time as the internal regulating mechanism of capitalism.
Immaterial labor, these authors claim, creates immaterial commodities whose values
cannot be measured by the labor time required for their production. The valorization of
value now depends less on unpaid labor time and hence more on the scientific knowledge
and skills developed during non-labor time.
Along similar lines, Paulani (2001), Fausto (2002), and Prado (2005) have suggested that
present-day capitalism is developing under the post-large industry form, in reference to a
“third moment” that succeeds manufacturing and the large industry that Marx theorized
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in Capital. The crucial feature of post-large industry is that knowledge itself becomes a
core engine of production. As capital increasingly makes labor time a poor measure of
value, it modifies the way in which capital subjugates labor within and outside the
production process. If previous forms of capitalism led to the formal and real
subordination of labor to capital, capitalism now achieves a higher stage with the
intellectual subordination of labor to capital. More recently, Virno (2007) and Vercellone
(2007) have also developed the idea that in cognitive capitalism the general intellect
operates as a sublation of the real subordination of labor to capital.1
The concept of immaterial labor poses a theoretical challenge to Marxist theory. If

abstract labor is no longer the substance of value, then value has lost both its internal
measure in labor time and its role in regulating production and exchange. One crucial
consequence of value losing its internal measure in labor time is that the price system
becomes more arbitrary and dependent on non-economic factors such as monopoly rights.
In the next section we address these concerns and show how it is possible, and logically
consistent, to remain within the Marxist theory of value while concomitantly
acknowledging the recent transformations in capitalism.
2. Knowledge-Commodities and Knowledge-

Rents
In a more recent analysis, Teixeira and Rotta (2012), Rotta and Teixeira (2016), and Rotta
(2018) propose a solution to the theoretical challenge inherent to the concept of
immaterial labor. In these studies we conceptualize the role of commodified knowledge
but we do so within Marx’s value theory, without rejecting abstract labor as the substance
of value.
In this regard it is crucial to distinguish between production and reproduction in the

determination of value and socially necessarily labor time. Marx begins Capital at a very
high level of abstraction, a stage in his theoretical exposition at which we only find the
production of commodities. Growth, reproduction, and inter-capitalist competition are not
yet explicitly (even though they are implicitly) included in the analysis.2 But as soon as
Marx approaches a more concrete level of analysis he progressively introduces the
conditions of capital reproduction. At this point, once reproduction comes to the forefront
of the theoretical exposition, there begins an important shift within Marx’s value theory.
At the initial higher level of abstraction, in which only production is featured, commodity
production determines the magnitude of values. But once reproduction is explicitly
brought into the picture at a more concrete level of analysis, value is then determined by
the conditions of commodity reproduction. The Marxist theory of value is fundamentally
reliant on the difference between the production and the reproduction of commodities.
Because of its undue focus on the very first chapters of Capital, the Marxist tradition has
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misunderstood how reproduction (not production) determines value and socially

necessary labor time.
Once the reproduction of capital is explicitly brought into the analysis, Marx posits that
what determines the value of any commodity is not the socially necessary labor time
required for its production but the socially necessary labor time required for its
re-production.
For example, from Capital I:
But in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine also undergoes what we
might call a moral depreciation. It loses exchange-value, either because machines
of the same sort are being produced more cheaply than it was, or because better
machines are entering into competition with it. In both cases, however young and
full of life the machine may be, its value is no longer determined by the necessary
labour-time actually objectified in it, but by the labour-time necessary to
reproduce either it or the better machine. It has therefore been devalued to a
greater or lesser extent.
(Marx [1887]1990:528, emphasis added)
From Capital II:
Just as with any other commodity, so in the case of labour-power, too, its value is
determined by the amount of labour needed to reproduce it…. wages are the value
of the commodity labour-power, and the latter can be determined (like the value of
any other commodity) by the labour needed for its reproduction.
(Marx [1893]1992:458–459, emphasis added)
In Capital III Marx pointed to “the great difference in costs between the first construction
of a new machine and its reproduction” ([1894]1994:199), and then claimed that:
Once machines, factory buildings or any other kind of fixed capital have reached a
certain degree of maturity, so that they remain unchanged for a long while at least
in their basic construction, a further devaluation takes place as a result of
improvements in the methods of reproduction of this fixed capital. The value of
machines, etc. now falls not because they are quickly supplanted or partially
devalued by newer, more productive machines, etc., but because they can now be
reproduced more cheaply.
Fluctuations in the rate of profit that are independent of changes in either the
capital's organic components or its absolute magnitude are possible only if the
value of the capital advanced, whatever might be the form— fixed or circulating—
in which it exists, rises or falls as a result of an increase or decrease in the labour-
time necessary for its reproduction, an increase or decrease that is independent of
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the capital already in existence. The value of any commodity—and thus also of the
commodities which capital consists of—is determined not by the necessary labour-
time that it itself contains, but by the socially necessary labour-time required for
its reproduction. This reproduction may differ from the conditions of its original
production by taking place under easier or more difficult circumstances.
(Marx [1894]1994:237–238, emphasis added)
Apart from all the accidental circumstances, a large part of the existing capital is
always being more or less devalued in the course of the reproduction process,
since the value of commodities is determined not by the labor-time originally taken
by their production, but rather by the labor-time that their reproduction takes,
and this steadily decreases as the social productivity of labor develops. At a higher
level of development of social productivity, therefore, all existing capital, instead
of appearing as the result of a long process of capital accumulation, appears as
the result of a relatively short reproduction period.
In the case of commodified knowledge, Marx’s reasoning is pushed to its limit: once
initially produced as commodities, knowledge and information tend to require no labor
time to be further reproduced. They become knowledge-commodities with zero value and
the ownership of them gives rise to knowledge-rents. Examples of knowledge-
commodities are all sorts of commodified data, computer software, chemical formulas,
patented information, recorded music, copyrighted compositions and movies, and
monopolized scientific knowledge. Mokyr (2002) prefers to call it the “useful knowledge”
of information, techniques, and instructions stored in technical artifacts.
The owners of commodified knowledge, which are mostly private companies, are
knowledge-lords, the primary appropriators of knowledge-rents. In a process analogous
to the original enclosures of the commons in the 16th century we can now speak of the
“new enclosures” that privatize knowledge. The new enclosures of the 21st century deny
labor the free access to knowledge as much as the 16th century enclosures denied labor
the access to free land (the commons) as a means of production.
Because it produces no new value, the creation and ownership of commodified knowledge
is actually an unproductive form of capital accumulation (Rotta 2018). Productive
activities are those activities that create new surplus value, while unproductive activities
are those that do not create new surplus value. Because knowledge and information can
be reproduced without any labor, its production generates no value and hence no surplus
value and must therefore be classified as unproductive activity.
A knowledge-commodity is, in all cases, a commodity. It has value and use-value as its
social determinations. But quantitatively this value is zero, because the measure of value
is the (zero) labor time necessary to reproduce the commodity. The knowledge-commodity
does not lose value as one of its determinations, otherwise it would cease to be a
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commodity in the first place. It is thus more accurate to speak of knowledge-commodities

with zero value than of valueless knowledge-commodities, even though we employ these
two terms interchangeably. This is somehow analogous to a situation in which the
temperature of an object is zero degree Celsius. The temperature as a property (physical,
not social in this analogy) of the object is present, as the kinetic energy of its constituent
particles, even though quantitatively the temperature on the Celsius scale is zero.
A corollary of this reasoning is that what Hardt, Negri, Lazzarato, and Gorz labeled as
“immaterial labor” belongs mostly to the unproductive side of capitalism. Commodified
knowledge and information have no value and hence cannot contain any surplus value.
The profits that accrue to knowledge owners are knowledge-rents that represent value
drawn from other value-producing activities in the economy. This is consistent with
Marxist value theory and thus cannot be an argument favoring the dismissal of labor time
as the measure of value.
The main theoretical misunderstanding of those who advocate the end of Marx’s theory of
value is that they have not properly conceptualized the difference between production
and re-production time, and neither the difference between productive and unproductive
activity. Even though the language is not completely clear, Marx gave us a hint of this
reasoning:
[The] product of mental labor—science—always stands far below its value,

because the labor-time needed to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-
time required for its original production
(Marx [1863]1988:Addenda to Vol. 1).
Once discovered, the law of the deflection of a magnetic needle in the field of an
electric current, or the law of the magnetization of iron by electricity, cost
absolutely nothing…. Science, generally speaking, costs the capitalist nothing, a
fact that by no means prevents him from exploiting it.
(Marx [1887]1990:508)
In Capital III Marx then considers the existence of use-values that require no labor to be
reproduced:
The use-value is the general bearer of the exchange-value, but not its cause. If the
same use-value could be created without labor, it would have no exchange-value,
yet it would have the same useful effect as ever.
(Marx [1894]1994:786)
It is, nonetheless, crucial to distinguish between the knowledge-commodity itself and

other tangible and non-tangible commodities it might be attached to. In certain cases the
knowledge-commodity is traded (sold or licensed) per se. Examples are when customers
and companies purchase the license to use software, or when a company pays the
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royalties required to use a specific drug formula. But in other cases the knowledge-
commodity can only be traded if bundled together with another commodity. This situation
leads to a potential theoretical confusion if we do not properly distinguish the knowledge-
commodity itself from the other commodities bundled together with it.
A few examples might clarify this instance. When a band performs a live concert its fans
must pay for the entrance tickets. The ticket price covers the costs of all the inputs used
such as the musical and technical equipment necessary for a live concert. The ticket price
also covers the compensation of the productive labor of the musicians performing live to
the public. However, the musicians are playing copyrighted compositions, and this is
where the knowledge-rents arise. The copyrighted songs are knowledge-commodities and
a share of the concert revenues are actually payments for the knowledge-rents associated
with these songs. Hence, what we call a concert is in fact a bundle of several
commodities, among them knowledge-commodities such as musical compositions. The
live performance is a combination of the productive labor of musicians and technical staff,
plus the unproductive labor of those who composed the songs in the first place. If
recorded, the video of the concert itself can be sold afterward as a knowledge-commodity
with zero value in a DVD or via Internet streaming.
When you buy a smartphone, part of the phone price covers the production costs of the
physical components. But another part of the price remunerates the patented design and
the copyrighted software stored in the memory. The copyrighted parts of the phone are
therefore knowledge-commodities, and the revenues associated with these specific
components are knowledge-rents. This implies that your smartphone is in fact a
combination of more than one commodity. A share of the phone price pays for the
productive labor of those workers making the physical components. Another share of the
phone price pays for the knowledge-rents, out of which the knowledge-lords pay for the
unproductive labor of those workers making the design and the software.3
Even fixed capital in the form of machines and equipment are combinations of different
commodities. Suppose that a company takes ten years to develop a new type of machine
capable of performing a very precise process. The physical machine does need labor time
to the reproduced, and hence it contains value. But the copyrighted design and the
copyrighted blueprint of the machine are the knowledge-commodities inherently attached
to the machine itself. The same goes for any software used to operate this machine. This
copyrighted knowledge is the knowledge-commodity that gives rise to knowledge-rents.
Therefore, knowledge-commodities and knowledge-rents are present even in fixed forms
of capital such as machines and equipment. The physical part of this fixed capital suffers
both use-value depreciation and value (moral) depreciation, such that the machine
gradually transfers (and hence loses) its value to the output. But the copyrighted part of
this fixed capital does not have value and the payments associated to it are knowledge-
rents.
The knowledge-commodity is not a commodity that is knowledge-intensive. The

knowledge-commodity is not the technical artifact in which information is stored. The
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knowledge-commodity is the commodified information itself. For example, take the case of
pharmaceuticals. A pill (the tangible drug) is not a knowledge-commodity. The knowledge-
commodity is the information that allows the company to make the drug in the first place.
The information that allows the pharmaceutical company to make the drug is a
commodity because this useful information was produced with the explicit purpose of
making a profit. Hence, this information is commodified. But because commodified
information has zero value, it gives rise not to surplus value but to rents. For the
knowledge-commodity to have zero value, we do not even need to wait until another
competitor company can reproduce this drug at zero labor time. The pharmaceutical
company that paid for all the initial sunk and fixed costs of research and development can
itself already reproduce this commodified information at zero labor time. For a
knowledge-commodity to have zero value is not necessary that competitors replicate it.
The innovating company that created the knowledge-commodity in the first place can
already reproduce this commodified information indefinitely, regardless of what its
competitors do.
Marx’s theory of ground rent related only to agriculture and mining (Fine 1979; Harvey
2006:349–357; Rigi 2014; Basu 2018). But we can now draw on his insights to claim the
existence of four categories of knowledge-rents:
(i) Monopoly Rent: Because of intellectual property rights the owner of information
is able to price (the use of) its knowledge-commodities above their zero value, hence
extracting a monopoly rent from its users. The intellectual property rights transform
a non-scarce commodity into one that is artificially scarce. The monopoly rent exists
regardless if the user of the knowledge-commodity is a final consumer or a company
using it as an input. If the owner of the knowledge-commodity sells not its use rights
but the actual ownership, then the price of the knowledge-commodity is the
discounted expected stream of future knowledge-rents.
(ii) Differential Rent type I (DR-1): Each knowledge-commodity gives rise to
different levels of productivity for the companies using them as inputs. If certain
companies use a particular software to enhance their productivity, these privileged
companies will obtain DR-1. The software gives them a concrete productive
differential. This is analogous to lands with different levels of fertility. But if all
companies use the same software, the productive differential is eroded and DR-1
ceases to exist. Note that software need to be upgraded constantly but, in any case,
each upgraded version is a new knowledge-commodity with zero value.
(iii) Differential Rent type II (DR-2): Companies using knowledge-commodities as
inputs do so but with different amounts of capital. If the organic composition of
capital or the amount of capital invested across companies that use the software are
not the same, even if all of them use the same software, DR-2 will emerge.
(iv) Absolute Rent: Absolute rent would exist only if knowledge-commodities had
value and were produced within a specific sector protected by intellectual property
rights and with a lower organic composition of capital then the rest of the economy.
Unlike monopoly rent, which draws from the global pool of surplus value, absolute
rent draws from the surplus value in a particular sector of production, like land rents
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in the agricultural sector. Because these conditions are not satisfied in the case of
knowledge-commodities, absolute knowledge-rents are implausible.4
As Teixeira and Rotta (2012) and Rotta (2018) demonstrated, it is empirically verifiable
that present-day capitalism is indeed becoming more dependent on the existence of rents
such as land-rents and knowledge-rents. In fact, the expansion of unproductive activities
and of rentier forms of capital is exactly what Marx had theorized and foreseen in the
development of capitalism. There is still no need to reject labor as the substance of value
and hence no need to reject the Marxist theory of value. On the contrary, the rise of
rentier activities and of other types of unproductive activity is exactly what Marx had
conceptualized through his notion of value autonomization (Rotta and Teixeira 2016).
In the next section we turn to the more recent developments in the Political Economy
literature regarding the roles of knowledge and immaterial labor.
3. The Commodification of Knowledge and

Information: The Recent Literature
The political economy literature on the commodification of knowledge and information
has been growing steadily in the past decades. At the present moment the scholarship is
divided between two camps in regard to the determination of the value of commodified
knowledge. The reproduction cost approach posits that commodified knowledge tends to
have zero value, and that knowledge-rents are appropriations of the global pool of surplus
value in the economy. The average cost approach, on the contrary, posits that the initial
investment necessary to create commodified knowledge (the research and development
costs to produce the “mold”) determines the value to be realized once the knowledge-
commodity is sold or licensed. In this section we highlight the advances made in this
debate. Our understanding is that the reproduction cost approach is theoretically
superior to the average cost approach because it is the only one that is consistent with
the notion of moral (i.e., value) depreciation.
Foley (2013) draws from the classical political economy distinction between productive
and unproductive activities to claim that commodified information contains no value and
that its ownership gives rise to intellectual property rents. The unique feature of
commodified information is that, unlike the case of land rents in which the same soil can
be used for only one crop at a time, the same piece of information can be used by multiple
parties concomitantly. Unlike land, knowledge is non-rival and hence its owner can
extract rents multiple times over from costless copies of the same commodity. These
rents, Foley argues, are part of a pool of surplus value generated in capitalist production
though they have no direct relation to the exploitation of productive workers in
themselves. The production of knowledge and the associated intellectual property rights
allow unproductive capitalists to grab a share of the global pool of surplus value without
directly contributing to it. Foley also notes that despite being classified as an
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unproductive activity, knowledge creation can indirectly raise the productivity of labor in
productive activities.
On this same issue, Foley has a very good passage on how the creation of surplus value is
actually an unintended by-product of the struggle to appropriate (not necessarily to
produce) surplus value. Which implies that, in capitalism, economic growth is an
unintended by-product of the pursuit of profits:
The global pool of surplus value emerges from the social relations of capitalism as
an unintended by-product of the competition to appropriate surplus value. Its
magnitude is an emergent and contingent phenomenon beyond the influence of
any individual capitalist, responsive only to broad political, cultural, and social
factors. The immediate competitive challenge for all capitals is the appropriation
of a larger share of this pool of surplus value. Some modes of appropriation
indirectly contribute to increasing the size of the pool of surplus value, but many,
including a wide variety of methods of generating rents, do not. There are some
self-correcting mechanisms built into the social relations of capitalism … If, for
example, capitalists relentlessly shift capital from the generation of surplus value
to the unproductive pursuit of the appropriation of surplus value, sooner or later
profit rates in productive sectors will rise and profit rates in unproductive sectors
will fall, according to the general law of competition.
(Foley 2013:261)
Jeon (2011) further notes that in the Marxist tradition in South Korea there has been an
intense debate between those who think that knowledge-commodities have value and
those who think otherwise. Among those who believe that knowledge-commodities have
value, the main argument is that the fixed capital and all the costs behind the production
of the very first unit (the “mold”) must be taken into account into the unit values of the
output. Hence, if this hypothesis is correct, the value of knowledge-commodities is the
average cost per unit produced inclusive of all sunk and fixed costs. Given the large
expenditures with machinery, laboratories, and research and development that need to be
spread out across all copies sold, the average cost of knowledge-commodities cannot be
zero. But such an approach ignores Marx’s value theory grounded on reproduction time.
As we have seen in the last section, Marx was very explicit about the fact that
reproduction, not production, determines the value of any commodity. Jeon (2011) also
notes that in the group of Korean scholars that identify with the hypothesis that
knowledge-commodities have zero value, there has been a convergence toward the idea
that intellectual property rights do imply the existence of information rents.
Starosta (2012) and Fuchs (2015) also disagree with the notion that knowledge-
commodities have zero value. These authors believe that value is determined in a similar
way to average costs. And because average costs are the total costs (inclusive of fixed
costs such as plants and equipment) divided by the output, the value of knowledge-
Page 12 of 23

commodities is not zero. Starosta warns against attempts of determining the values of
commodities taken individually:
The determination of the value of the individual commodity can no longer be

considered in isolation but must be directly posited in its organic relation to the
mass of commodities whose unity embodies the valorization of the capital
invested…. the total value is determined ‘first’ and then shared out equally by
each individual commodity, which now contains a proportional fraction of the
former…. the real determination of value actually transcends the isolated single
commodity as such…. Inasmuch as each single commodity embodies an equal
fraction of the value of the product of capital as a whole, the comparison between
the (exceptionally high) cost of production of the first article and (exceptionally
low) cost of reproduction of the rest is rendered meaningless as far as their value-
determinations are concerned…. intellectual property rights do not force the
exchange-value of software above its insignificantly small (or nonexistent) value …
but mediate its full realization…. In this sense, there is no essential difference
between cognitive commodities and “physical” ones beyond the aforementioned
technicality of extending the legal regulation beyond the act of exchange proper
and into the conditions of use.
(Starosta 2012:373–376)
Starosta argues that the total value of the entire output must be divided across each unit
produced. This average cost approach to the determination of value is therefore an
attempt to remain within the boundaries of Marx’s value theory, while at the same time
rejecting the claims that Marx’s value theory has become obsolete in cognitive capitalism.
Starosta cites passages from Capital, mostly drawn before Marx explicitly introduces
reproduction into the analysis, to corroborate his perspective. But ignores those that
contradict his claims. What determines the value of any commodity is the labor time
required to reproduce it. And this reproduction time bears no relation with the labor time
originally required to create the commodity in the first place.
Marx’s value theory based on reproduction time and, consequently, on moral depreciation
(the change in the values of the existing stock of commodities) is much more nuanced
than a simple average cost approach. The determination of value based on the socially
necessary labor time to reproduce a commodity is, in fact, similar to current cost
accounting practices. A closer inspection of Marx’s quotes in the previous section of this
chapter shows that moral depreciation:
(i) Is the loss of value that, abstracting from the physical wear and tear (the use-
value depreciation), impacts the stock of all commodities, including those that have
already been produced in the past;
(ii) Can occur because of the existing reproduction methods on the supply side, and
also because of changes on the demand side;
(iii) Can occur because reproduction time takes into account the immediate effects
of new technologies on the obsolescence of already existing technologies;
Page 13 of 23

(iv) Can occur because of economies of scale that reduce reproduction costs as more
output is produced, for a given technology.
Contrary to average costs, reproduction time does not rely on the sunk and fixed costs
originally employed in the production of the mold: “the value of the capital advanced …
rises or falls as a result of an increase or decrease in the labour-time necessary for its
reproduction, an increase or decrease that is independent of the capital already in
existence” (Marx [1894]1994:237–238—emphasis added). Reproduction time can thus fall
to zero after the mold is produced regardless of the large amounts of fixed capital used in
its conception.
The immediate drop in the reproduction time of knowledge-commodities after the mold is
created does not derive from a sudden fall in the average cost due to economies of scale
and neither from a change in technology. The extreme case of moral depreciation that
characterizes knowledge-commodities derives from the structure of the existing methods
of reproduction of commodified knowledge and information. For this reason, moral
depreciation is logically consistent only with a theory of value based not on average costs
but on reproduction time. We do not have to claim, therefore, that knowledge-
commodities have value in order to save Marx’s value theory.
Starosta (2012) and Fuchs (2015, chapter 5; 2017) thus disagree with the notion that
knowledge production is a type of unproductive activity. Our claim that knowledge
creation is an unproductive activity might indicate that the unproductive workers
creating knowledge and information are not exploited. But this is definitely not the case:
All capitalistically employed labor is exploited by capital, whether it is productive

labor or unproductive labor. The rate of exploitation of each is their respective
ratio of surplus labor time to necessary labor time…. In the case of productive
workers, their rate of exploitation is also the rate of surplus value, since their
surplus labor time results in surplus value.
(Shaikh and Tonak 1994:31)
In Capital III Marx claims that by exploiting unproductive workers the unproductive
capitalist grabs a share of the global pool of surplus value:
It is only by way of its function in the realization of values that commercial capital
functions as capital in the reproduction process, and therefore draws, as
functioning capital, on the surplus-value that the total capital produces. For the
individual merchant, the amount of his profit depends on the amount of capital
that he can employ in this process, and he can employ all the more capital in
buying and selling, the greater the unpaid labour of his clerks. The very function
by virtue of which the commercial capitalist's money is capital is performed in
large measure by his employees, on his instructions. Their unpaid labour, even
though it does not create surplus-value, does create his ability to appropriate
surplus-value, which, as far as this capital is concerned, gives exactly the same
Page 14 of 23

result; i.e. it is its source of profit. Otherwise the business of commerce could
never be conducted in the capitalist manner, or on a large scale. Just as the unpaid
labour of the worker creates surplus-value for productive capital directly, so also
does the unpaid labour of the commercial employee create a share in that surplus-
value for commercial capital.
(Marx [1894]1994:407)
Contrary to Fuchs’s approach, and drawing from Teixeira and Rotta (2012), Rigi (2014)
builds on the concepts of knowledge-commodities and of knowledge-rents in order to
analyze the distribution of surplus value among different forms of intellectual property
such as copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. Rigi rightfully claims that
knowledge-rents cannot be conceptualized solely within national borders, for the core
countries are able to extract rents from the surplus value produced in peripheral regions
of the globe. In a similar way, Seda-Irizarry and Bhattacharya (2017) conceptualize
knowledge-rents at the level of global value chains, as rents might imply the transfer of
surplus from non-capitalist modes of production in peripheral countries to the capitalist
mode of production in core countries.
Within the Marxist tradition, an early mention of a category akin to “knowledge-rent” is

from Ernest Mandel (1975:192) in his theory of “technological rents” as the surplus
profits derived from monopolized innovations that reduce production costs. Haddad
(1998) uses the term “knowledge-rents” more precisely to indicate the revenues whose
origin lies in the labor of “knowledge workers” employed at private companies. Perelman
(2003:305) and Zeller (2008) further establish a comparison between land property rights
and patents. But despite their insights, these authors do not develop a consistent value
theory of knowledge-rents as we do in Teixeira and Rotta (2012) and Rotta (2018).
Zeller (2008), in particular, offers an attempt at theorizing information rents within a

Marxist framework. He posits that intellectual property rights are similar to the enclosure
of the commons in the time of primitive accumulation. Even though claiming explicitly
that information rents are monopoly rents, Zeller does not explicitly engage into a
discussion of whether or not commodified information has value. Despite analogies to
land rents and accumulation by dispossession, in his work there is no further theoretical
development besides the claim of monopoly rents associated to patents. As we put forth,
without a proper value theory of commodified information it is not possible to develop a
consistent theory of information rents. Zeller (2008:97) seems to suggest that
commodified knowledge does have value and that patents ensure the value of knowledge
is realized, but if commodified information has value then the analogy with monopolized
land (which does not have value) and land rents is unclear:
Knowledge is a product of labor. But the problem lies in the fact that information
and technology once produced are usually quite simple to reproduce, and
therefore the realization of the exchange value is questioned … The phase of
producing knowledge and information whose acquisition will be secured based on
Page 15 of 23

a patent is normally characterized by a high share of variable capital. Therefore, a

potentially high surplus value arises here. But it is not yet realized.
(Zeller 2008:97–99, emphasis added)
As Teixeira and Rotta (2012:456–459) explain, within a Marxist framework, interest is the
form of revenue associated with loaned money or with licensed commodities that have
value. Rent, on the contrary, is the form of revenue associated with commodities that do
not have value. Borrowed money is an amount of value and hence is paid back with
interest. Borrowed (i.e., leased) machines and equipment have value and hence the lease
payments are interest payments. In the case of licensed knowledge there is no value
being borrowed, and hence the payments associated with it are not interest but rents
instead. Unworked land yields rents to its owner because unworked land requires no
labor to be produced (as it is a free gift from nature) and thus contains no value. Without
a consistent value theory, as Teixeira and Rotta (2012:456–459) develop, there is a great
risk in conflating interest and rent.
The political economy notion that knowledge has zero value is featured in mainstream
economics, albeit under a different value theory, as the zero marginal cost of knowledge
(Duffy 2004). Shavell and van Ypersel (2001:545) note that this special feature of
knowledge also applies to industries producing pharmaceuticals, software, movies,
recorded music, books, and visual products.
Rotta (2018) is one of the yet few empirical works that attempt to estimate the actual size
of knowledge-rents and their evolution over time. Using input-output matrices and
national income accounts for the United States from 1947 to 2011, Rotta (2018) arrives at
aggregate and disaggregate estimates of Marxist categories for both productive and
unproductive activities. The rise of knowledge-rents is just one dimension within the
larger secular trend of rising unproductive activity. Unproductive activity has been
growing at a fast pace in terms of incomes, fixed assets, and employment. The total
income of unproductive activities quadrupled relative to the total value generated in
productive activities during the 1947 to 2011 period. The estimates reveal that
knowledge creation and finance have been the fastest growing unproductive activities
both in terms of net income and capital stock. As percentage shares of the net income of
all unproductive activity within the American economy, there has been substantial growth
in the shares of finance and insurance from 14% to 23.2%, and also in knowledge and
information rents from 7.9% to 17.4%. Finance and knowledge-rents combined have risen
from 21.9% to 40.5% of the net income of all unproductive activity, hence nearly doubling
in the postwar period. As percentage shares of the net capital stock in all unproductive
activities, the fastest growth rates in shares have been in knowledge and information
(from 0.8% to 5.0%) and in finance and insurance (from 1.7% to 10.3%). Finance- and
knowledge-related activities have grown their combined capital stocks six- fold (or 502%)
from 1947 to 2011 as a share of the total unproductive capital stock.
Page 16 of 23

Robbins (2009) provides detailed estimates of corporate income of United States

corporations from the use of intellectual property, including royalties and licensing fees.
The evidence indicates that these transactions have been growing rapidly at 11% on
average per year from 1994 to 2004. Robbins (2009)’s work provides further discussion
on how intangible assets and the revenues associated with them impact official GDP
estimates. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis, for example, now plans to include
investment in intangible assets as part of GDP.
The concepts of knowledge-commodities and of knowledge-rents can also unify two

important branches of Marxism: the cultural industry (including digital media) and value
theory. As Fredric Jameson noticed back in 1984, the Marxist tradition had not yet been
able to integrate “cultural and informational commodities” with the labor theory of value.
Our approach, we argue, bridges this gap in the political economy scholarship:
This description is also quite consistent with the Frankfurt School’s conception of
the ‘culture industry’ and the penetration of commodity fetishism into those
realms of the imagination and the psyche which had, since classical German
philosophy, always been taken as some last impregnable stronghold against the
instrumental logic of capital. What remains problematical about such conceptions
—and about mediatory formulations such as that of Guy Debord, for whom ‘the
image is the last stage of commodity reification’—is of course the difficulty of
articulating cultural and informational commodities with the labor theory of value,
the methodological problem of reconciling an analysis in terms of quantity and in
particular of labor time (or of the sale of labor power in so many units) with the
nature of ‘mental’ work and of nonphysical and noncomensurable ‘commodities’ of
the type of informational bits or indeed of media or entertainment ‘products.’
(Jameson 1984:xi, emphasis added)
In this regard, Fuchs (2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016; also Fisher and Fuchs 2015) has
done some interesting work on the production of knowledge and information in social
media such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Myspace, WordPress, etc. His argument is
that the users themselves are producing the content of the information commodities.
Social media companies appropriate and commodify user-generated content without
paying for the labor time required to produce it. In return, these companies offer their
services without charge. Fuchs thus labels these users as prosumers: consumers that
actually produce the content that they themselves consume. Social media companies are
responsible for providing the digital platform, thus encoding all the content, and then
receiving fees from advertisers.
In spite of our theoretical disagreements in terms of value theory, Fuchs does offer an
interesting hypothesis, namely that on social media it is the users (the prosumers)
themselves that generate the information that is then gathered and commodified by the
companies developing the online platforms. Wikipedia, the biggest encyclopedia in the
history of humankind, would be another great example of user-generated content, even
though in this particular case there is no profit motive and hence knowledge is not
Page 17 of 23

commodified. The question that remains open is if, once produced by the users
themselves, these information commodities on social media still require labor time to be
further reproduced. From our perspective, this user-generated content online
necessitates labor to be produced but, once produced, necessitates no further labor to be
reproduced. Companies such as Google and Facebook can commodify the online content
of their users, but it is still a commodity with zero value. Our argument does not negate
the possibility that the users are somehow “exploited” when they generate the content
online that is later on gathered, processed, and commodified.5 It does question, however,
the notion that this online content on social media has value. Our understanding is that
commodified information, because of its effortless reproduction, has always zero value
regardless of who produces it.
4. Implications and Final Remarks

Notwithstanding the ongoing debate on whether or not commodified knowledge has
value, the Marxian political economy literature has been able to reach one consensus:
that, contrary to the immaterial labor hypothesis, there is still no need to reject the
Marxist value theory. The immaterial labor hypothesis has claimed that Marx’s value
theory is no longer relevant in cognitive capitalism. In this chapter we argued otherwise,
namely that the commodification of knowledge and information can be explained in a
consistent way within the Marxist value theory.
This does not mean, of course, that the Marxist theory of value faces no limits. As a
theory that is contingent on a specific mode of production and on a specific historical
moment, it will make evident its own constrains. One possible case, even still within the
capitalist mode of production, is that of artificial intelligence (AI). In Marxist theory, only
direct human labor creates new value. Machines and equipment transfer their values to
the output but do not add any new value to it. AI could challenge this idea, for it is a non-
labor input that does create a new output not previously conceived, foreseen, or planned
by human labor. AI implies that fixed capital itself has productive and creative powers,
independent of the human labor originally used to program it in the first place.
The political economy of knowledge commodification, however, has not yet reached a
consensus on the status of knowledge-commodities. The reproduction cost approach of
Teixeira and Rotta claims that knowledge-commodities tend to have zero value and that
the commodification of knowledge leads to the formation of knowledge-rents, drawn from
the global pool of surplus value in the economy. The average cost approach of Starosta
and Fuchs, on the contrary, claims that knowledge-commodities have value and that their
value is determined by the initial investment in the research and development of the
“mold.” Intellectual property rights then assure the realization of the value of
commodified knowledge.
Our understanding is that the reproduction cost approach is superior to the average cost
approach for two main reasons. First, the reproduction cost approach is much closer to
Marx’s own insights on value theory. Second, the reproduction cost approach is the only
Page 18 of 23

approach consistent with the notion of moral (i.e., value) depreciation; the average cost
approach is not. Our empirical estimates also indicate that knowledge-rents have been
rising both as a share of the total income of unproductive activities and relative to the
total value created in productive activities.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Tony Smith, Bruno Höfig, Ian Seda, Deepankar Basu, and Jakob Rigi
for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts.
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Notes:
(1) See Smith (2013) for a critique of Virno and Vercellone and also for a further critique
against the immaterial labor hypothesis for not properly considering the distinction
between wealth and value in Marxist theory.
(2) Fausto (1987a, 1987b) theorizes this distinction between implicit and explicit, or
between presupposed and posited determinations as Marx moves from more abstract to
more concrete levels of analysis.
(3) Kraemer, Linden, and Dedrick (2011) estimate the production costs of iPhones and
iPads in 2010. They find that the cost of physical materials in the iPhone 4 represents
only 22% of the final retail price, while labor costs amount to only 5.3%. They do not,
however, attempt to estimate the size of the knowledge-rents.
(4) Zeller (2008) and Teixeira and Rotta (2012) had originally claimed that absolute
knowledge-rents could exist, but Rigi (2014) correctly pointed out that absolute rents are
not a constituent part of knowledge-rents: “the surplus value that is transformed into
patent rent is not produced in the knowledge sector … knowledge has no value, and,
therefore, the knowledge sector does not produce surplus value at all. This surplus value
is produced outside the knowledge sector.”
(5) Following Smith’s (2013) analysis of “free gifts” to capital, we could claim that when
data are produced by people using computers as a by-product of their activity online, the
data are provided to capital as a “free gift” outside the commodity form, becoming a
commodity only at some later point in some other process. Hence, Fuchs’s notion of
“exploitation” of online users does not employ Max’s concept of exploitation in its strict
sense.
Tomás Rotta
Tomás Rotta, University of Greenwich
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Rodrigo Teixeira
Rodrigo Teixeira, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
Page 23 of 23

Oxford Handbooks Online: The Commodification of Knowledge and Information

Uploaded by

Oxford Handbooks Online: The Commodification of Knowledge and Information

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The Commodification of Knowledge and Information

Oxford Handbooks Online

Abstract and Keywords

This entry presents an analysis of the commodification of knowledge and information in

Keywords: knowledge-commodities, knowledge-rents, value theory, Marx, immaterial labor

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

Here we present an analysis of the commodification of knowledge and information in

Third, we analyze the more recent contributions on the commodification of knowledge

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1. Cognitive Capitalism and the Immaterial

(Marx [1858]1973:705–706, emphasis in the original)

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The concept of immaterial labor poses a theoretical challenge to Marxist theory. If

2. Knowledge-Commodities and Knowledge-

In this regard it is crucial to distinguish between production and reproduction in the

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misunderstood how reproduction (not production) determines value and socially

For example, from Capital I:

(Marx [1887]1990:528, emphasis added)

From Capital II:

(Marx [1893]1992:458–459, emphasis added)

(Marx [1894]1994:209, emphasis added)

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(Marx [1894]1994:237–238, emphasis added)

(Marx [1894]1994:522, emphasis added)

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commodity in the first place. It is thus more accurate to speak of knowledge-commodities

[The] product of mental labor—science—always stands far below its value,

(Marx [1863]1988:Addenda to Vol. 1).

It is, nonetheless, crucial to distinguish between the knowledge-commodity itself and

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The knowledge-commodity is not a commodity that is knowledge-intensive. The

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3. The Commodification of Knowledge and

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Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

The determination of the value of the individual commodity can no longer be

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All capitalistically employed labor is exploited by capital, whether it is productive

(Shaikh and Tonak 1994:31)

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Within the Marxist tradition, an early mention of a category akin to “knowledge-rent” is

Zeller (2008), in particular, offers an attempt at theorizing information rents within a

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

a patent is normally characterized by a high share of variable capital. Therefore, a

(Zeller 2008:97–99, emphasis added)

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Robbins (2009) provides detailed estimates of corporate income of United States

The concepts of knowledge-commodities and of knowledge-rents can also unify two

(Jameson 1984:xi, emphasis added)

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4. Implications and Final Remarks

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Fausto, Ruy. 1987a. Marx: Lógica e Política—Tomo I. São Paulo: Brasiliense.

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

Haddad, Fernando. 1998. Em Defesa do Socialismo. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes.

Harvey, David. 2006. The Limits to Capital. New York: Verso.

Mandel, Ernest. 1975. Late Capitalism. London: NLB.

Marx, Karl. [1858]1973. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

Marx, Karl. [1887]1990. Capital: Volume I. London: Penguin Books.

Marx, Karl. [1893]1992. Capital: Volume II. London: Penguin Books.

Marx, Karl. [1894]1994. Capital: Volume III. London: Penguin Books.

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

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Tomás Rotta, University of Greenwich

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

Rodrigo Teixeira, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 17 February 2019

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