Knowledge, a Fictive Merchandise

Polanyi defined work, earth & money as fictive merchandise, as they were not produced to be sold. The article aims at proving that knowledge, too, is a particular, if fictive, merchandise, in particular the last thirty years. It analyses the invention of a knowledge economy & transformation of knowledge into an economic commodity & shows that the current attempts to give this fiction more actuality pose a threat to knowledge itself by confining it to an instrumental function. Furthermore an elaboration on the idea of a second wave of enclosures in which biodiversity & sociodiversity are threatened by genetic modification & the omission of traditional knowledge to gain a maximum of quantitative output. And on the history of legislation on intellectual property and the Buy-Dole Act in particular, allowing inventions financed by public funds to be immediately adapted for industrial & commercial application. References. O. van Zijl