Twenty Theses on Contemporary Capitalism (Cognitive Biocapitalism)

The aim of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it is an attempt at systematizing a series of reflections elaborated by a number of studies appeared in the last decade. This research comes from scholars in different disciplines, but who identify, even in their internal differences, with a method of analysis rooted in the Italian Workerist thought of the 1960s. On the other hand, it tries to clarify an issue that has provoked much debate in the last few years, especially in the field of heretic and heterodox thought, that is to say, the analysis of the salient characteristics of the current state of capitalism. In the last two decades, innovations in the fields of transportation, language and communication started to gather around a new single paradigm of accumulation and valorization. The new capitalist configuration tends to identify in “knowledge” and “space” (geographic and virtual) as commodities a new foundation for dynamic skills of accumulation. We advance that the contemporary form of capitalism is defined in a univocal way as cognitive biocapitalism. Independently of the dominant convention, contemporary capitalism is always in search of new social and vital circles to absorb and commodify, involving more and more the bare vital faculties of human beings.