The knowledge economy

"Revolutionary account of the transformative potential of the knowledge economy 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. In every part of the production system it remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures. The confinement of the knowledge economy to these insular vanguards 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. The shape of contemporary politics on both the left and the right reflects a failure to come to terms with this dilemma and to overcome it. Unger explains the knowledge economy in the truncated and confined form that it has today and proposes the way 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"--

"A revolutionary practice of production--the knowledge economy--has emerged in our time. It appears in every sector, not just in high-tech industry, but so far only as a series of insular vanguards that exclude the vast majority of workers and businesses. In this book Roberto Mangabeira Unger explores the hidden workings and the transformative potential of the knowledge economy. He describes the radical changes in economic and political institutions, and in ways of thinking, that could bring knowledge-intensive production to the whole economy--and inaugurate a period of accelerated and socially inclusive economic growth"--

Includes index.

1. The most advanced practice of production -- 2. The knowledge economy: its characteristics described at the level of management and production engineering -- 3. The deep structure of the knowledge economy: relaxing or reversing the constraint of diminishing marginal returns -- 4. The deep structure of the knowledge economy: production, imagination, and cooperation -- 5. The deep structure of the knowledge economy: trust, discretion, and the moral culture of production -- 6. The confinement of the knowledge economy: the fact and the riddle -- 7. Pseudo-vanguardism and hyper-insularity -- 8. Precarious employment -- 9. The confinement of the knowledge economy: the consequences for economic stagnation and inequality -- 10. The confinement of the knowledge economy: the beginning of an explanation -- 11. Making the knowledge economy inclusive: the cognitive-educational requirements -- 12. Making the knowledge economy inclusive: the social-moral requirements -- 13. Making the knowledge economy inclusive: the legal-institutional requirements -- 14. Background incitements: generalized experimentalism and high-energy democracy -- 15. Inclusive vanguardism and the dilemma of economic deve…