Il linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato. Per una critica al capitalismo cognitivo

Abstract

To understand the social relations behind the process of institutionalization of the language, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi develops his own theory of language around the concept of linguistic labour-value, tracing the method used by Marx to reveal the hidden mechanisms that move the economic market. The application of economic categories, borrowed from the Grundrisse and Capital, to the field of symbolic production, if on one hand may seem a stretching, on the other hand gives a solid foundation to the most original concepts of the Rossi-Landian philosophy of language: linguistic alienation and exploitation. The comparison between an unintentional institution like the market and the one of the social sign systems, shows how the regulatory power of the latter may become, similarly to the first, coercive and take the form of a set of rules favoring some groups at the expense of others.

The use of the law of value in explaining the semiotic processes demonstrates its actuality, now that capitalism does also symbolic-communicative activities of the elements of production. The reading of Rossi-Landi can offer valuable tools for the examination of the mechanisms that preside over the development of capital through the exploitation of the labor named mental.