ABSTRACT
The concept of human capital takes on a new role, far more central to development than the previous one. For the most insightful authors, whether Marxist or heterodox, investment in human capital was to be the driving force of the post-industrial economy. The growth of new occupations and the new middle classes was in sharp contrast with Marx's theses, which created great confusion for the Marxist authors in the 1960s–70s. Some authors used the term of proletarianisation, or similar terms, not in the structural sense but only to indicate the decline–in status and in working conditions–of the skilled immaterial occupations that had once been privileged. Accumulation, Marx wrote, through the increase in productivity, brings about a decline in the value of capital both as means of production and as consumption goods. Not all Marxist or radical economists rejected the idea of the benefits of increased productivity and growth in intellectual labour.
