Luis Arboledas-Lérida

Abstract

This article examines the historical transformation that the funding model of science has undergone in the last decades by applying the Marxian categories of formal and real subsumption of academic labour under capital. From that perspective, we argue that project-based funding of R&D activities has become the main mechanism through which the commodity form and the exchange value become the general mediation for the scientific production, i.e. the commodification of academic research. The VIII European Union Framework Program for Research and Innovation (labelled as Horizon 2020) is taken as a case study to show how the exchange between units of scientific production and the State operates.

Keywords

Academic labour, formal subsumption, funding of science, research project, Marxism

From: Critique 2020 48 (2-3)

Editor: Wang Yi