The Privatisation of Knowledge: Intellectual Property and the Destruction of Collective Memory

This book argues that the private appropriation of human knowledge through intellectual property gives rise to power relations, which colonise the collective mind as well as individual minds. In so doing these power relations destroy the social fabric necessary for producing and reproducing knowledge.

Besides the direct impact on political-economic relations, the privatisation of knowledge distresses collective memory. The book concludes that although individual, social, and collective memories can only exist in tandem, the atrophy of the social and collective dimensions of the mind results in a sort of social dementia.

The Privatisation of Knowledge is essential reading for all scholars and researchers of economic philosophy. It is also ideal for researchers of Marxian social science.

João Romeiro Hermeto is Visiting Scholar at Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy.