Knowledge as a fictitious commodity: a Polanyian reading of the 'digital economy'

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the attempts to use Karl Polanyi's framework to makesense of current developments have multiplied, producing a noticeable and lively debate.This debate centres on the notion of double movement put forward by the Hungarianthinker in his masterpiece – The Great Transformation. The paper is a contribution to thisdebate. The first part addresses a series of questions that make the interpretations of thedouble movement advanced so far not very compelling. To this end, a close reading ofPolanyi's text, with the aim of dismantling and rearticulating its analytical structure, iscarried out. The upshot is a dynamic and multistage picture of the double process as arecurrent and vortex-like attempt to progressively commodify natural and socialresources against growing opposition. The second part employs this revised reading ofthe double movement to explain the collapse of the postwar consensus politics, thesuccess of the neoliberal counterrevolution and the development of the knowledgeeconomy. The claim put forward here is that, in addition to sustained efforts to deepenprevious forms of commodification (land, labour and money), we are witnessing afullblown attempt to turn knowledge into a new fictitious commodity. Building on theidea of digital Taylorism, the paper tries to show that information and computertechnologies are being used to standardise and routinise a growing number of intellectual,professional and managerial activities which were able to escape previous attempts in thisdirection. Once again, at the forefront of this process there are powerful state actors, whoare using New Public Management policies strategically to: support the enclosure ofintangible cultural resources through the creation of intellectual property rights regimes,and undermine the counter-reaction of negatively affected societal actors by rising thecollective action problems they face.