Knowledge Control and the Spectacle

The intellectual property system has become universal, imposing homogenisation pressure on knowledge production, subordinated to capitalist dominance. The existing contradictions become more accentuated, and further antagonisms emerge as capital concentration reaches new heights. Social rule increasingly depends on a sphere of appearances to sustain its legitimacy. With digitalisation, imperialist capitalism, characterised by the fusion of productive and banking capital with the capitalist state, engulfs the existing propaganda apparatus of marketing and surveillance into capitalist rule. From its original function to render capitalism exploitation amenable by shaping perception, it becomes a locus of surplus-value extraction. This industry depends on a blurred structure of vast private control over knowledge and the means of knowledge, privately appropriating human intellect and data.