Moulier-Boutang, Yann
Guaranteed Income or Reduced Wages
- 2007.
93
The current transformations that simultaneously affect work, the substance and the form of value all lead to a profound instability which brings capitalism back to a pre-Keynesian situation. The emergence of a stable regime of cognitive capitalism faces a major contradiction: on the one hand, the new forms of employment promoted by cognitive capitalism tend to make a guaranteed income scheme the only form of retribution suitable to the new regime of production; at the same time, this form of retribution undermines the relationship of command and domination which capitalism must impose in order to perpetuate itself. In fact, one observes, within cognitive capitalism, a perpetual oscillation between its openness to the emancipatory forces it unleashes and the repressive moves through which it attempts to re-codify the capture of working hours and the production of knowledge.