Page 179 - The Drucker Lectures

160 [ The Drucker Lectures

nomics—there is a sharp distinction between the wage fund, all
of which goes into consumption, and the capital fund. Most social
theory of industrial society is based, one way or another, on the
relationship between the two, whether in conflict or in necessary
and beneficial cooperation and balance. In the knowledge society,
the two merge. The pension fund is deferred wages and, as such,
a wage fund. It is also increasingly the main source of capital, if
not the only source of capital, for the knowledge society.
Equally important, perhaps more important: In the knowl-
edge society, the employees—that is, knowledge workers—again
own the tools of production. Marx’s great insight was the realiza-
tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools
of production and therefore has to be alienated. There was no
way, Marx pointed out, for the worker to own the steam engine
and to be able to take the steam engine with him when moving
from one job to another. The capitalist had to own the steam
engine and had to control it. Increasingly, the true investment in
the knowledge society is not in machines and tools. It is in the
knowledge of the knowledge worker. Without it, the machines,
no matter how advanced and sophisticated, are unproductive.
The market researcher needs a computer. But increasingly,
this is the researcher’s own personal computer—a cheap tool the
market researcher takes along wherever he or she goes. And the
true capital equipment of market research is the knowledge of
markets, of statistics, and of the application of market research to
business strategy, which is lodged between the researcher’s ears
and is his or her exclusive and inalienable property. The surgeon
needs the operating room of the hospital and all of its expen-
sive capital equipment. But the surgeon’s true capital investment
is the 12 or 15 years of training and the resulting knowledge
that the surgeon takes from one hospital to the next. Without
that knowledge, the hospital’s expensive operating rooms are so
much waste and scrap.