Power, Knowledge and Technology in a Finite World

This introduction to our special issue on “Intellectual Monopoly and the Reconfiguration of Corporate Power” provides an overview of the contributions and situates them within a broader analysis of the current global capitalist juncture. It focuses on the role of knowledge amid the ecological crisis and how intellectual monopolisation is detrimental not only to the future but also to the present of our societies. The papers in this issue examine the frontiers of intellectual monopolisation and its effects on communities, workers and the ecology. The expansion of knowledge capture and monetisation by a few corporate giants reflects their growing capacity to exert control beyond ownership. Such a transformation of capitalism could not have occurred without the complicit role of core states. The entanglement of political and corporate power is, therefore, another critical dimension explored in both this introduction and the special issue. Taken together, the papers offer an original and comprehensive depiction of the global political economy and underscore, as we argue at the end of this introduction, the urgent need to terminate knowledge enclosures.