Value and Production of Knowledge: How Science is Subsumed to Capital

Abstract

One of the differences between knowledge-production activity of Modern science and pre-Modern science and other systems of belief is that the former attributes a universal character to its product. This unique aspect of modern scientific activity is related to its conceptuality. Modern natural science develops in response to the social needs that are determined by the continuous demand of capital for self-valorisation. The conceptual structure of modern natural sciences is the consequence of sciences' subsumption to capital and their realisation through the mediation of abstract labour. The universality of scientific knowledge is the expression of this mediation. © 2016 Critique.