Conclusion

Abstract

The recognition of knowledge is intimately related to the exercise of power. In class societies, ownership of the means of production enables rewarding, punishing or ignoring the knowledge of workers without such ownership. In feudal economies, craftsmen who were able to band together in guilds gained sufficient power to guard and gain reward for their specialized knowledge, whereas serfs who had intimate complex knowledge of the land remained tied to their lords with little reward. In capitalist economies, workers have been freer to seek diverse forms of knowledge and different employers. Widening democratic access to many forms of previously exclusive knowledge has been a progressive feature of these market-based economies.