General intellect, according to Karl Marx in the Grundrisse, is capable of becoming a structural force of production. The concept designates a combination of technological expertise and social intellect, or general social knowledge (increasing importance of machinery in social organization). The "general intellect" passage in the Fragment on machines, says that, while the development of machinery led to the oppression of workers under capitalism, it also offers a prospect for future liberation.
According to Marx, the development of the general intellect manifests in a capitalist society, in the control of the social life process.<blockquote>Thus, for Dyer-Witheford, the vision laid out in the Fragment âÂÂis eminently recognizable as a portrait of what is now commonly termed an âÂÂinformation societyâ or âÂÂknowledge economyâÂÂâ (1999, 221). [â¦] In VirnoâÂÂs view the Fragment argues that âÂÂabstract knowledge (primarily but not only scientific knowledge) is in the process of becoming nothing less than the main force of production and will soon relegate the repetitious and segmented assembly of the production-line to a residual positionâ (2007, 3).</blockquote>In other words, with the idea of the general intellect, Marx designates a radical change of the subsumption of labour to capital and indicates a third stage of the division of labour. Paolo Virno maintained that "general intellect" is not exclusive to communism, and applies generally to late capitalism.
According to Matteo Pasquinelli, Marx took the expression 'general intellect' from William Thompson's book An Inquiry Into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth (1824), an early text written on mental labour. According to Pasquinelli, the concept disappears in the transition between the Grundrisse and Capital as it is replaced by the notion of collective worker or Gesamtarbeiter.