THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE 'CREATIVE CLASS':A THEORETICAL COMMENT

摘要

From time to time it is claimed that the contemporary economy has undergone fundamental transformations, to the extent that long established theoretical understandings - and in particular those associated with Marx's analysis - are no longer relevant. Thus we allegedly live in a "new economy," a "network society," or the "information age." The old schemata of capital and labor are outdated in an era where the decisive economic forces are "symbolic analysts" (Reich, 1991), "information workers" (Poster, 2001), or the "creative class" (Florida, 2002), to which the old logic no longer applies. There can be no doubt that new technologies, in particular the revolution in information and communication technologies, have changed many aspects of the world economy dramatically. Still, however, notions of fundamental change are being challenged. Chris May, for instance, uses Marxian economic analysis to criticize "information fetishism" and "new economy" hype (May, 2006). He argues that "the underlying property relations . . . remain in substance unaltered" and that "it is this continuity of the capitalist logic that seems to be wilfully hidden by much of the discourse regarding the emergence of the information society and the 'new economy'"(321). For May these and related issues are particular pertinent in relation to business concerns with defending companies' intellectual property rights in the products of "information workers'" labor.