Language, Meaning and the Knowledge Economy

Glyn Williams

Centre for European Research

Introduction

We are at the cusp of change, from one variety of capitalism to another. It involves new roles for the state, new relations of production and new forces of production. It reverberates in how the various social science disciplines change, and how new forms of the understanding of language appear.

The reference point for the change is that which is referred to as immaterial labour, which is defined as the activity of the manipulation of symbols. Immaterial labour involves two different components. The informational content of the commodity refers directly to how skills increasingly involve computer use and both horizontal and vertical communication, while the activity that generates the cultural content of the commodity involves activities not usually recognized as 'work' – the definition and fixing of cultural standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms and public opinion.

A major architect of the more recent developments was Robert Reich, secretary of labour in the USA under President Clinton. Reich argued that in the long run immaterial labour would be crucial for all economies. It involves scientific and technological research, training of the labour force, development of management, communication and electronic financial networks. Those jobs operating intellectual labour included researchers, engineers, computer scientists, lawyers, creative accountants, financial advisers, publicists, editors and journalists and university academic staff. The growth of such activities would run parallel to a decline in Tayloristic activities since such repetitive and executive activities could be easily reproduced in states with low labour costs. He further argued that globalization had removed the link between the state and the ownership of capital and the means of production. Rather, what is important is efficiency and the productivity of communication, with capital being owned by multinational corporations. What is lost through the denationalization of the ownership of capital is compensated for by the ownership of immaterial labour, of the control of knowledge production. Knowledge becomes nationalized and its organization is managed nationally. Thus the state should invest strategically in value-creating activities, the immaterial activities that characterize the knowledge economy. Income generated by this sector would be deployed to deal with the unemployment of the unskilled and low-skilled labour, partly in order to reduce the disparity between the incomes of skilled workers and those of the working poor.

It is partly because of these features of action that there has been an increasing search for creative workers. It involves yet an