Listen to an integral version of lecture by professor Andrea Fumagalli, who gave talk at June 11 at net.klub MAMA in Zagreb (http://boo.mi2.hr/~tom/Andrea_Fumagalli_Global_Economic_Crisis.mp3).
We believe that Fumagalli's lecture will be of interest to a wide audience of economists, political scientists, sociologists and other social scientists, as well as to activists. In the first part of the lecture Fumagalli provides...

a short historical overview of capitalism in the West – from the Fordist period of the first half of the 20th century to the period he calls “cognitive capitalism” from the 1990s and 2000s. These periods are characterised by different socio-economic relations. Fordism was characterised by mass production which was hierarchically organised and materially oriented, and which had primacy over the financial sphere. In the period of cognitive capitalism there is primacy of financial sphere and production of knowledge (i.e. services) through knowledge with consequent disappearance of boundary between work time and leisure time. Knowledge is now dispersed, and for its accumulation and diffusion society as a whole is credited. Such production relations stand in contrast to intentions of financial capital to captivate knowledge (e.g. through flexibilisation of the labour market and increase of the share of workers whose pay is below their subsistence level – so called working poor) and increase private sphere (e.g. through spread of intellectual property rights). In the context of cognitive capitalism and world socio-economic crisis in the second part of his lecture Fumagalli poses question how a modern New Deal could look like. Possible solutions are guaranteed minimum income (an income that state would pay to everyone, irrespectful of their wealth) and modification of one of the pillars of the capitalist system – private property.