Hill, and three anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions.

No abstract

We theorize the forms of value in the Marxist system in a way that challenges the dominant tradition. The standard procedure has been to read Marx's Capital as an analysis that begins at a high level of abstraction and moves toward more concrete concepts. Our alternative approach posits that the forms of value in the Marxist system evolve from more concrete toward more abstract forms of wealth that increasingly separate from and obscure labor exploitation.Our procedure therefore replaces the dominant interpretation of 'successive approximations' employed by most scholars. We develop a broader account of Marx's project alongside textual evidence retrieved from many of his writings.We also provide a new way to incorporate the monetary, financial, and rentier forms of wealth into Marx's labor value theory. The proposed alternative approach can potentially open a research agenda on the contemporaneous dynamics of abstract and concrete forms of wealth in advanced capitalism.

We present a Marxian theory of the capitalist production of knowledge and of financialization as two processes subsumed under the principle of autonomization of capital. Our approach consists of three tasks. The first is to develop the principle of autonomization. The second is to show how financialization can be a misleading term. The third is to develop a new theory of the production and distribution of valueless knowledgecommodities and knowledge-rent. Our Marxian framework demonstrates how the autonomization of capital manifests itself in its two active dimensions: the financial through financialization, and the productive through knowledge-commodities.

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.