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Thesis Eleven, Vol. 81, No. 1, 20-35 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0725513605051612

The Political Economy of Post-Industrial Capitalism

George Liagouras

University of the Aegean (Greece), g.liagouras{at}fme.aegean.gr

The hypothesis of this article is that industrial capitalism, as conceptualized by a series of authors from Smith and Marx to Weber and Sombart, and then to Galbraith and Chandler, is outdated. We are entering a new era of information or ‘post-industrial capitalism’. The term used in the article is post-industrial capitalism. This is mainly because the notion of information capitalism does not define explicitly what is really new regarding the history of capitalism. Information capitalism can be either post-Fordist, or post-industrial, or even a transition period towards a post-capitalist society. The argument of the article is developed in two parts. The first offers a systematic comparison between the basic features of industrial and post-industrial capitalism. The second explores three main contradictions of post-industrial capitalism. The general idea behind this exploration is that the future of post-industrial capitalism remains open. It depends on how the contradictions of this new form of capitalism will be resolved. This, in turn, implies a critical position towards approaches that either extrapolate the economic patterns of the last two decades into the 21st century, or, by adopting sophisticated versions of technological determinism, propose a monistic scenario for the future.

Key Words: information economy • intangible capital • intellectual assets • national accounts • post-industrial • productivity paradox • symbolic resources


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