The Knowledge Economy

The Knowledge Economy

  • Paperback

    + free ebook

    Regular price $24.95 Sale price $19.96
    Page redirects on selection
    Add to cart
    20% off
  • Hardback

    + free ebook

    Regular price $29.95 Sale price $23.96
    Page redirects on selection
    Add to cart
    20% off
  • Ebook

    Regular price $9.99 Sale price $8.00
    Page redirects on selection
    Add to cart
    20% off

The transformative potential of the knowledge economy

Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures.

In every part of the production system, the knowledge economy remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This confinement has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative—a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy—continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries.

Unger sets out the route to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.

Reviews

  • A restless visionary.

    New York Times
  • The visionary program this new book sets out for universalizing the knowledge economy is not just a nice-to-have, but necessary. The Knowledge Economy is indispensable as a study of how to remedy the political polarization inequality has brought.

    Martin SandbuFinancial Times
  • One of the few living philosophers whose thinking has the range of the great philosophers of the past.

    Times Higher Education Supplement