The Crisis and Transformation of Law of Value in the Cognitive Capitalism Needs the De-economical and Political Interpretation of Theory of Value
This article is written as a response to the review of Cheon Hui-Sang on my book, titled as Cognitive Capitalism. In this article I argue that the principle of value which measure a commodity by the socially necessary labor time for producing it, cannot explain the recent cognitive labor-reality and the decommodifying character of it. And I argue that the principle cannot be accepted as veritable in the case in which that principle appears as effective. Because that principle is so distanced from the real labor-reality and labor-relation. Marx preposed that value is irrelevant of the stuff or content of labor because of that value is determined by the lasting time of labor necessary for producing commodity. It can be easily applied to material labor. But it cannot be applied indifferently to immaterial labor. In the age of cognitive capitalism in which the immaterial labor is transformed into productive labor and is performing a hegemonic role in total labor of society, the value cannot be understand by the economic representation which is constructed on the image of production and exchange of commodities. So I argue that we need a new biopolitical understanding of the value-relation itself.
(Jeong-Hwan Joe)

Reaffirming the critique of Joe Jeong Hwan's Cognitive Capitalism
This paper criticizes Joe Jeong Hwan’s response to my review of Cognitive Capitalism, and re-affirms the major arguments of the review. First, by arguing that only material labour produces (labour-)value, Joe reduces the scope of the labour theory of value significantly. Second, he subordinates the production of (labour-)value into a historically specific form of division of labour by arguing that only physical labour performed under the separation between conception and execution produces (labour-)value. Third, he theorieses the social as the result of becoming-common among individuals and among individuals and environments, and thus reduces Marx’s critique of capitalism to a moral and external critique, more specifically a critique against historical constraints, which are imposed, from without, upon ahistorical becoming-common.
(Hee-Sang Jeon)



The Concept of Value in Cognitive Capitalism Theory
Cognitive capitalism theorists deny the validity of Marx’s value theory in the post?industrial capitalism, but at the same time they adhere to the category of value. This approach renders their position on the value theory vague. The way they deal with the theory makes it ambiguous whether their fundamental aim is to keep Marx’s value theory by substantially revising it or to pursue another value theory even from the tradition of philosophy, ethics or linguistics. What is more, it is also conceptually unclear why the theory of cognitive capitalism needs the value concept at all. Based on these questions, we will attempt to clarify the status of the concept within the theory of cognitive capitalism by investigating the way those theorists conceive and deal with Marx’s value theory in particular and the value theory in general. For this purpose, we examine recent works by some of leading figures of the theory of cognitive capitalism.
(Hyun Woong Park)



On the Conceptualisation of ‘Immaterial Labour’ and Its Measure
By investigating the critique of value theory delivered by some advocates of cognitive capitalism theory, this paper seeks to find ways to accomodate their problematic within value theory itself. To do this, we will firstly defend value theory against their attack in the negative way by criticising them for their simplistic understanding of value theory and, then, discuss more positively how to embrace their problematic. Central to our argument is that what they call ‘immaterial labour’ can be most meaningfully captured when approached from its historical (trans-)formation rather than simply by juxtaposing it against the more traditional form of labour, and that its ‘measure’ is not fixed but remains undetermined within ever changing historical conditions.
(Gimm, Gong Hoe)

Cognitive Capitalism and Basic Income
This article approaches the feasibility of basic income in contemporary capitalism using the concept of Cognitive Capitalism. Cognitive Capitalism theory is the radical interpretation of Knowledge-based Economy. Therefore it accepts the critical role of knowledge in contemporary capitalism but reinterprets the trends in the polarization of labor class and instability of financial system. On traditional economy, the argument for sustainable basic income comes from efficiency wage model under asymmetric information. While this model assumes decreasing returns to scale, Cognitive Capitalism theory assumes increasing returns to scale. Using this assumption adopted by Knowledge-based Economy theory, Cognitive Capitalism theory provides the economic reasoning why basic income is necessary and basic income can support the economic growth. However Cognitive Capitalism theory innovates Marxian value theory which has two fold effects. On the one hand it provides the value theoretic basis for basic income. On the other hand it could erode and jeopardize the value theory itself.
(Hyeon Hyo Ahn)

From ‘Common City’ to ‘Glocal Agora’
Jeong Hwan Joe has presentened a ‘common city’ concept based on reconstruction of the theories of ‘cognitive capitalism’ by Negri, Hardt, and Dyer-Witheford. This common city as a alternative city to the contemporary metropolis reveals the vision of becoming common of the commons or the common in metropolis and between metropolises. The subject for it is supposed as multitude whose singularities are differential but include the common. The overlapping spaces of local/state/region/earth in a city, its common spaces and commonwealth are not systemized in the concept of common city. Therefore, the role of state and earth spaces for the common space and commonwealth of a city exceeding the networks between cities can not be formulated as a part of common city. ‘Glocal agora’ which was formulated by marxian No-Wan Kwack as a sustainable multi-spatial(local/state/region/earth) common space and commonwealth including basic income of the city and as a whole alternative city would be promote the evolution of the concept ‘common city’. ‘Multitude’ as the supposed subject for common city would be evolved by the becoming precariat as a new class and a proletariat of the 21th. century of the 99%.
(No-Wan Kwack)






On the Asymmetry between Regular and Irregular Workers
The ever-expanding gap between regular and irregular workers since 1997 in Korea poses a difficulty in allocating the two groups to one and the same class. In this article I will investigate actual factors that make the two groups non-identical(despite their presumed belonging to the traditional “working class”) and other actual factors that make the two identical (despite their distinctive differences). I attempt to conceptualize the asymmetry between the two groups from the perspective of the labor union’s strategic possibility through modifying Swenson’s “trilemma” of the union movement. And in the theoretical instance, it is necessary to distinct the concepts, working class and proletariat or working class and precariat. Irregular workers belongs to the proletariat or precariat as non-working class or non-class. Precariat has a “potential for effacement” that obliterates the prescribed meaning of the working class through violating the existing borderline of it. This multiple asymmetry between regular and irregular workers asks us get out of labour movement that have modeled itself on regular labour movement.
(Yi-Jinkyung)

The Implications and Limits of Hilferding's Fiance Capital for Understanding of Contemporary Capitalism
This paper investigates the implications and limits of Hilferding's Fiance Capital if order for understanding of contemporary capitalism, focusing on his theory of money and finance capital. The arguments in this paper are as follows. Firstly, Hiferding made a mistake in finding the essence of money not in the terms of the opposition between use-value and value of commodity, but in the terms of anarchy of production, therefore limiting his theory of crisis to theory of disproportion. And his theory that the value of money is determined by 'socially necessary circulation value, is merely the result of mistake that he committed in theorising the value of silver coin under silver standard, when the silver mint was suspended. Secondly, Hilferding's theory of finance capital is not only the generalization of the historically specific experience of German banking system at the beginning of 20th century, but also the result that he deducted the control of industrial capital by finance capital from the control of commodities by money. Lastly, for us to explain the specific characteristics of contemporary capitalism satisfactory without committing the same errors as Hiferding, at first we should fully develop Marxist economic theory. And then we should study the characteristics, distinguishing the general characteristics that are common to all specific stages of capitalist development and the specific ones that belong only to the contemporary times.
(Chang-Keun Kim)