Information as work and as value

Abstract

This article suggests an approach to Marx's capital valorisation theory supported by a dialectical information theory as developed by physicians, biologists and also communication theorists during the second half of the 20th century. It suggests that it is possible to link the basic concepts of information, as science has established them, to Marx's basic concepts of capital. Based on this foundation, this article also tries to explain how capital, in its development, has evolved to discharge redundant or repetitive jobs but has become increasingly dependent on random or creative ones. Because of this circumstance, in its present stage, the capitalist production process creates value in many concrete forms of semiotic information. Because information cannot be reduced to the status of a commodity, as the theory explains, capitalist states and corporations are improving and hardening intellectual property laws in order to appropriate the information value created by “creative” or “artistic” work.