The Political Economy of Post-Industrial Capitalism

Abstract

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conceptualized by a series of authors from Smith and Marx to Weber and Sombart, and then to Galbraith and Chandler, is outdated.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 postindustrial, 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 postindustrial 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. KEYWORDS information economy • intangible capital • intellectual assets • national accounts • post-industrial • productivity paradox • symbolic resources WHY POST-INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM?The first issue here is to explain why the recent changes to capitalist economies put into question the fundamentals of industrial capitalism. The comparison between industrial and post-industrial capitalism that follows focuses on five basic features of economic systems -the technological base, Thesis Eleven, Number

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Digital Leader-Followership for the Digital Age: A North American Perspective

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