CRITICISM OF "INFORMATION CAPITALISM"

1. CAPITALISM AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP
Capitalist production is based on ownership system. In other words, the most fundamental condition for capitalistic production is that all items necessary for goods production are subject to possession, not only physical means of production but also labor force are subject to ownership, and on that basis capital produces goods under the control of production means and labor by allowing capital to own them by means of equivalent exchange trading in a free market. Thus, the capitalist regime is a regime in which capital is attributed to ownership of labor products by producing products possessing labor force owned by workers.
As the definition of ownership, it is possible to prescribe to be owned that it is in the condition to be able to exclusively dispose / transfer the "subject with value" without interference by anyone, or to be able to set / transfer certain rights such as using right, and ownership means that owned status is recognized as right. Therefore, it is impossible for ownership to be doubled on the same subject at the same time, so ownership has unity, monopoly and exclusivity as intrinsic attributes. Modern private (capitalistic) ownership rights are abstracted to realize universal distribution of goods, while the core of ownership is occupying state of goods, and its monopoly is released from the physically and spatially restrictive character and made an abstract right separated from the physical and spatial occupancy, and are converted to those that abstractly admit an monopolistic exclusive control rights over goods. In order to ensure mass production and universal distribution of goods under capital control, abstraction of ownership was indispensable.
Also, the fact that mass-produced goods are universally circulated and each good is owned means that the same information in the form of goods (substances embodied information) is copied in large quantities at relatively low cost, and that same information is held at the same time by a large number of people, which shows the informational aspect having goods production under capitalist system. Thus, it can be said that capitalism had already had an informational aspect accompanying with mass production of goods from the time of its occurrence, and capitalism is a system with fundamental contradiction that it has informational aspect while depending on the goods production.
2. INFORMATION AND CAPITALISM
While information is "object with value", since it can exist simultaneous and multiplex holding and can not have exclusivity and exclusivity, unlike goods information inherently and also abstractly can not be possessed, it can not be subject to private ownership, further information have a characteristic that its value generally decreases with time, and its value gets lost when universally distributed. Therefore, information is inherently incompatible with capitalism whose basic element is private ownership, and in principle the concept of "information capitalism" can not be established.
Moreover, it is inevitable that the capitalist system can not survive by further progress of informatization due to the essential characteristics of information. In response to the progress of information technology, while the currency become virtual by losing the backing of gold at Nixon Shock, it becomes a realistically active economic element, and it becomes to influence directly to the real economy being independent from the real economy. The currency worked as self-replicable capital, and developed as global financial capitalism. However, in accordance with further informatization progresses, the information itself freed from physical restraint becomes to independently circulate with economical value, the production and distribution of information explosively increases, the importance of information production and circulation in the economy will expand, and information apart from goods will occupy the most of human activities. When the circulation of information is left and released from the yoke of private ownership, in principle, the information society heterogeneous from capitalism will develop dramatically.
3. MODERN CAPITALISM
In modern capitalist production system, even under the innovation of information technology due to the development of computers and the Internet, by forming a global division of labor production system utilizing it, it is still maintaining the capitalistic production style based on the production structure where goods production accounts for a large proportion, and as far as under the those condition there is little direct influence of informatization and it can be said that capitalism well being. So, if it is called "information capitalism" after clearly recognizing that modern capitalism is in these state, even though the linkage of the word "information" and "capital" is not appropriate, there is no objection to be capitalism.
However, industrial countries where desire for goods is already saturated has fallen into a state of no growth without innovation in which the information achieved as a serious element, being largely affected by reduction of the desire for goods such as represented by cars and the environmental and resource constraints brought by excessive consumption of goods. Also, the value achieved by innovation is remarkably fallen down by informatization, so the decline in profit rate is only covering the eyes. It is the present condition that capitalistic reproduction by goods production is finally secured by only incorporating the developing countries into the capitalistic production system through globalization and global financial capitalism in developed countries is formed in a manner of parasitizing to it.
Therefore, when the capitalistic production style is expanded to every corner of the world (the majority of the continent of Africa), the capitalist production system and economy of the world including the advanced countries will decline. Because capitalistic goods production system is established on the premise of excessive expansion production, and when it gets stuck, there is no choice but to decline the economy which is not conforming to the proper consumption / energy saving environment and shift to a suitable economy.
4. "INFORMATION CAPITALISM"
Next, let's see under what kind of situation and what kind of logic the concept of "information capitalism" is established. The first concept expressed as "a certain capital", in which "a certain" that is not capital in capitalistic production is treated as "capital", should be the concept of "human capital" that links "human" with "capital". The concept of human capital is reflected the recognition that human resources in the management and technical departments of capitalist production are very important factors which influence the reproduction of capital so as being equal to capital, and it was positioned as human capital and became popular name. Therefore, the concept of human capital is totally irrelevant to the concept of "capital" different from the concept such as financial capital.
Then, along with further development of the capitalistic production, by highly advancing of the production structure, the work to improve and innovate production technology and production control using mainly knowledge becomes more general and its weight becomes higher, the fact that many workers took charge of it resulted in the concept of "knowledge workers". And it is positioned as knowledge capital reflecting the recognition that knowledge and technology used by such knowledge workers have become extremely important factors influencing the reproduction of capital that are comparable to capital, and it became common name as knowledge capital and knowledge capitalism. Therefore, the concept of knowledge capital is also completely irrelevant to the concept of "capital".
And the expression "information capitalism" is often used in ambiguous meanings such as capitalism under a society in which circulation and processing of not only knowledge but also general information is becoming to universal and informatization is progressed. For example, in "Redefinition of Capitalism" by Takamitsu Sawa (Iwanami Shoten, 1995), it is expressed as ""informatization of capitalism", ie information capitalism", and in the future it is an important subject of economics to clarify the mechanism of information capitalism. In "Theory of Information Capitalism" by Hiroyuki Kitamura (Otsuki Shoten, 2003), it is stated that modern capitalism characterized by an open networked production style established with information technology innovation is called information capitalism for the time being. Moreover, even such "information capitalism" is said to be positioned as a long-term transitional period, not at the stage that can be said to be established today. In other words, it seems that capitalism will continue to exist as information capitalism even becoming to an information society with progressing informatization.
Even though it is certain that modern today is capitalism under the progress of informatization, in the case contemporary capitalism characterized by information technology innovation name as information capitalism like this way, it has fundamental deficiencies that the idea is tacitly induced to overlook the intrinsic properties of the information and the historical nature of capitalism, and it can say that the consideration process is inappropriate from the beginning.
5. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND CAPITALISM
As mentioned above, even if the information is incompatible with private property rights from its essence and it does not conform to the capitalistic economic system, it can conform to the private ownership system only in the case that information make subject to intellectual property rights. Looking at historical progresses, it is necessary first to protect technical information in the production of goods, so that an intellectual property system is established under capitalist system, so that property rights and ownership are becoming to permit for specific information. Intellectual property rights (ownership) are property rights legally enforced to have unity, monopoly and exclusivity by "registering" specific "information" regarding the "information", and conformed forcibly to private ownership system oriented to goods, and faked "information" as "goods". In addition, the reason why it was possible to fake specific information (intellectual property) so as to be subject to private ownership is that modern private ownership is systematized as a abstract right. And as importance of intellectual property rights system has increased in response to advances of informatization due to sophistication of capitalistic production method.
In this way, it is possible to find out the ways in which the logic of capital can be accomplished while the information being as directly important elements only in the intellectual property rights system. In fact, patent rights were originally restricted to those related to industrial products and their manufacturing technology, whereas in recent years there has been no objection to target such as agricultural products · seeds, foods, medical treatment · medicine, genetic information, information · communication, computer software, etc. to patent. It is the situation to be hot to make a big profit like Microsoft and Apple by subjecting information to the real right, and to secure a large profit for invested capital. Thus, information capitalism can be established as a global intellectual property capitalism, if it is possible to falsify most of the information into goods as subjects of intellectual property rights. In order to confine information in the private ownership system and the capitalist economy, it is inevitable that all information must be subject to intellectual property rights.
However, it is impossible to do so. Because information can be immediately circulated globally without much effort and cost due to progress of informatization (innovation of processing of information, communication, and network technology), even if intellectual property right is set to specific information, the right having an effect of private ownership rights is limited to that have became to goods, regarding to the information itself the right can not have effectiveness from the characteristics of the information because it circulates irrelevantly against the intellectual property right and as a result that information becomes worthless. Furthermore, if a system in which nearly all the main information is subject to intellectual property rights and is effectively owned by someone is established, almost all activities of human beings must receive permission from someone, it will be subject to direct control, conflicts with the fundamental freedom of human beings, resulting in unprecedented remarkable social injustice.
So, as stated in "Intellectual property rights and information society", rights referring to personal rights protect separately, intellectual property rights are limited to allow collection of access fee for information and ownership rights should not be allowed. At the same time, at least the patent right should be limited to those related to industrial products, and restrictions must be imposed on medical / health, education, food and agriculture. Treatment of intellectual property rights equally to ownership of goods will cause repetition of runaway and collapse inherent in capitalism, unfair control, expansion of classification gaps. In the future, it is an issue to examine more specifically how to properly protect the value and promote production and circulation of information in order to realize a healthy and fair information society, together with how the modern capitalism which is the capitalism under progress of informatization will develop under further progressing of informatization.