Marx, subsumption and the critique of innovation

This paper advances a Marxist approach to the critical study of innovation. Such an approach offers alternative analytical tools for understanding the social and political aspects of innovation that are increasingly coming into focus within academic and practitioner fields. After outlining the emerging field of critical innovation studies and its key concerns, I turn to the question of how a Marxist critique differs from other forms of critical scholarship. I then introduce Marx's application of the concept of subsumption to account for the relation between innovation and capital and to demonstrate the strength of a Marxist approach to the critical study of innovation.