The problem with the knowledge economy, writes Roberto Mangabeira Unger, is not that it is disrupting the way we work and produce, but that it is not doing so enough. Having long since displaced manufacturing as “the most advanced mode of production” in the richest economies, it “remains the prerogative of an elite”, he laments.
The fact that the most innovative way to organise economic activity remains trapped in small segments of the economy is, for Unger, the root of our greatest challenges, “the single most important cause of both economic stagnation and economic inequality”. The promise of greater productivity across the economy cannot be delivered, Unger argues, without a comprehensive transformation of our society and politics as well.
If he is right, then the visionary programme this new book sets out for universalising the knowledge economy is not just a nice-to-have, but necessary. The Knowledge Economy is indispensable, too, as a study of how to remedy the political polarisation inequality has brought.