René Ramírez discusses building a social knowledge economy in Ecuador that democratizes access to knowledge and innovation. This involves moving away from an intellectual property system dominated by large companies that seek profits, towards one where knowledge is considered a public good. The goal is to use knowledge and technology to transform Ecuador's production matrix and reduce dependence on imports by facilitating technology transfer and industry development. However, this challenges the current global regulatory framework dominated by capitalist interests.

1. René Ramírez: ‘Culture has no limits –a
priori- but ethical ones’
The nature of the political dispute is not confined to the electoral fight or to finding spaces in
state institutions. After several discussions, it is evident that if there is a light at the end of the
road in the construction of other types of societies, other than the traditional capitalism, it will
light up in the field of knowledge.
In Latin America, thinkers such as Alvaro Garcia Linera or René Ramírez have set up the
guidelines for this discussion beyond the disputes of political parties. President Rafael Correa
himself has given rise to debates that exceed the trite development model and has considered
other ways of conceiving the setting of equity, justice and socialism as from researches and
encounters with wisdom and knowledge.
Hence, it is necessary to discuss this issue and for that purpose René Ramírez, National
Secretary of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (Senescyt – Spanish
Acronyms), and intellectual of deep thoughts and proposals, is the person who mostly gives rise
to these discussions.
What does building a knowledge-based economy entail?
One of the core programmatic proposals of this Government is moving from the economy of the
'limited resources' to that of the 'unlimited resources'. That is, moving from being a country of
primary exports and secondary imports to building an economy based on the knowledge and
creativity of the human talent of its citizens. Natural resources are finite and perishable. Ideas,
innovation, creativity, and culture have no limits -a-priori- but ethical ones.
Could this be understood as a ‘caprice’ of the Government...
It is not a whim that the Government gives much importance to higher education and scientific
research: scholarships, student loans, strengthening of universities and technical and
technological institutes, evaluation and accreditation of universities, better wages for
teachers/researchers, investment of nearly 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in higher
education, building and financing Yachay, Ikiam, Unae, Uniarte, etc.. This set of reforms seeks
to create the most suitable academic and intellectual environment for the cultivation of research,
culture, science, critical thinking and cutting-edge knowledge.
In this context, it is necessary to work on two systems: education and innovation. This
Government, in just about seven years, has significantly gone forward in the educational system
(although there is still a long way to go), but building a system of social innovation is still
pending.
What are the components of this social innovation system?
The way in which innovation operates in a society depends, as always, on fundamental political
choices. In the advanced capitalist countries, innovation goes hand in hand with the
accumulation needs of large companies and multinationals. Universities and scientists are
attached to this dynamic and eventually investigate in accordance with particular interests
(without denying that in some cases this may help broader interests).
But world trade sets the tone for what to research and produce.

2. Indeed, the current rules of world trade have produced a refractory phenomenon: the "tragedy
of the anticommons." This has involved hyper-privatization, over-patenting and hyperconcentration of capital by those institutions who fund research and innovation, which has
caused a social under-use of the knowledge resource. Breaking such a tragedy, regaining a
sense of what is public and democratizing access to and use of this good is the main core of the
social knowledge economy and the social innovation system. The ultimate goal of innovation
should not be the maximization of profit but the production of an economy that enables to satisfy
needs, ensure rights, and enhance individual, collective and territorial capabilities.
To achieve these goals it is imperative to develop, as part of the social innovation system,
subsystems of human talent, research, funding, and scientific and innovation infrastructure, as
well as the management of property rights. Precisely, these four subsystems propound a glance
and a comprehensive treatment of the path followed by the generation of expertise and
knowledge up to its free access and social use.
Rafael Correa pinpointed that the submitted proposal involves a change between the
cognitive capitalism approach and what you have called "social knowledge economy".
What are the main differences?
Generally, capitalism seeks to privatize everything, commercialize everything. If capitalists could
commercialize air, they would do so (actually, to my understanding, there are already chambers
where people pay to breath fresh air). Nevertheless, the nature of knowledge in its character or
condition of public good registers neither the exclusion nor the rivalry of a private good. It is an
unlimited resource that can be freely and very easily distributed if there were no institutional
hurdles. For instance, a book or software can be published online so that everyone may use it.
Even if a person uses it, initially, there would be no impediments for others to do so.
Furthermore, without ad hoc barriers there would be no way to exclude anyone from its
availability and usufruct. This is exactly the focal point that recognizes, and therefore, regulates
the social knowledge economy.
In the case of cognitive capitalism, it has built a global regulation that enables the privatization
and commercialization of the knowledge resources. This has been processed through the World
Trade Organization (WTO), the Bilateral Investment Treaties or the Bilateral / Multi-part Trade
Agreements. It is obvious that industrialized countries seek these commercial systems of
knowledge/technology since they are the owners of the latest know-how. Meanwhile, the only
role that is reserved to the Southern countries is that of "being consumers" of the science,
creation and innovation of the North.
And how is this verified in Ecuador?
Given the fact that we are a nation of late development and due to our ideological principles, the
new knowledge management must seek to build an institutional framework that recovers the
sense of what is public and common to the knowledge resource. In other words, not only do we
propose to build an open, free and public system of knowledge because we believe in it (by
conviction) but because we need it at this historic moment that the country faces. Basically, we
refer to a sovereign bet in order to break the historical and contemporary dependency restraints
in the cognitive field, and programmatically, to change the productive matrix and the
industrialization processes associated with it.
Let us remember that, for example, the U.S.A. had a quasi-open knowledge management
system during their early periods of industrialization – they only recognized national patents and
did not allow foreign companies patents. Thus, they could freely copy their technology -. Other
countries that have recently developed their industry, such as India, did not even accept the
international regulation of the WTO until a few years ago, when - for example - their
pharmaceutical industry for generic drugs had already taken off. The ruling leaders of this

3. country knew that if they accepted a privative intellectual property regime they would not be
able to develop this industry, jeopardizing not only the manufacturing development of their
country but also the health of its population. Russia is another example of a country that agreed
recently to the WTO rules.
This entails that the agreements we have signed internationally, the agreements that we will
sign and the new organic code of social knowledge economy must seek to build an intellectual
property system that develops creative activity and socio-economic innovation, thus facilitating
technology transfer and open access to knowledge / culture (he/she democratizes) in order to
break the cognitive dependency we undergo thus far.
But in front of such a big challenge, there are some boundaries and complexities to
overcome.
We are clearly aware of our limitations as a small country that we will not be able to change the
international division of labor, but we must not fall into that appeasement in which, as mentioned
by the President of the Republic, "we have not only allowed them to impose on us the collar and
the bell but we have diligently bent down the head and the neck so that they put more bells on
us.” In other words, if we were asked to recognize patents for 15 years, we offered to recognize
them for 20! Now, our national legislation is more restrictive than the signed international
agreements. Therefore, we are developing a new legislation intended for democratizing
knowledge so as to make it an accessible good to everyone and which allows the development
of national industry. Today, notwithstanding we are given the option of keeping current the
intellectual property system which governs the use of seeds, there are countries close to
Ecuador that have signed to further deepen that property regime, so as to forbid to replant
seeds that are purchased abroad if they have a patent. We moved away from such a
perspective. On the contrary, we have to play with the flexibilities that those agreements have
and obviously, change the intellectual property national legislation. This legislation only
evidences the servility and submission of the elites who ruled us and wanted to prove to be the
most outstanding students of the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Hopefully at
some point, as countries from the Southern world, we may concur with the need to renegotiate,
both collectively and severally, those agreements present in the world trade which are the ties
to ignorance and underdevelopment. If we do not reduce the technological, scientific and/or
cognitive gaps, we will not break the structural dependency on the wealthy North of the planet.
But then the paradox that nature belongs to humanity jumps back and therefore, there
are no limits nor regulations and at the same time. On the other hand, we speak about
regulating everything to not make use of anything, as pointed out by some neoenvironmentalists.
We must be clear that biodiversity can not be patented. It is a patrimony and is not to be
confused with the inventions that are produced from it. That is why in the social knowledge
economy, through its regulations, we will pursue for biodiversity to be treated as an intangible
heritage of the nation and the state, as noted in the Constitution. Furthermore, we will protect
the knowledge of the ancestral people through special, sui generis schemes. These guidelines
aim at preventing biopiracy and recognizing, as the case may be, that such information belongs
to the Ecuadorians and/or to the ancestral peoples. We can not allow the multinationals to come
and steal our knowledge and then try to sell it to us, such is the case of the Epibatidine, a pain
reliever stemmed from our multicolor frog, whose usefulness only came to be known thanks to
the collective and ancestral knowledge of our peoples and was exploited by international
pharmaceuticals, without any benefits for our country and without the involvement of national
researchers.
In addition, the social knowledge economy considers the plurality of properties set forth in the
Constitution. Unlike cognitive capitalism, which only recognizes the private property of
knowledge, we seek that the Socialism of the Good Way of Living, takes into account the public,
mixed, collective, republican and -of course- also the private property (that is to say, a range of

4. forms of intellectual property according to the nature of the good), and that its mode of
production be mostly collaborative (as a network) with and for society and humanity. We must
remember that in this context, the Academic System Law was developed for institutions of
higher education, which promotes the construction of millions of knowledge networks that link
millions of brains. That is, to build the social intellect, the collective intellect, the general
intellect.
And all this would be an effective change mobilizer of the production matrix?
If we actually want to transform the productive matrix and to socially emancipate, we must
change the way knowledge and technology have been managed and valued . The
industrialization process that the current political project is pursuing, requires the legislation and
the dynamics of disaggregation and the technology transfer that are usually deliberately
hindered by the holders of patents, technologies and knowledge through organizations that
ensure such intellectual property rights. Opposing voices will soon come, willing to confuse the
citizens by stating that the new regulation seeks to discourage the private sector investment.
Quite the contrary. The social knowledge economy seeks to protect the national industry so that
it can be developed through the elimination of costs related to the non-free usufruct of
knowledge. Costs that actually turn into barriers of its potential development.
But in fact there may be economic groups which are affected by or upset with this
matter.
Perhaps the only group that could have difficulties is the importer. But this agenda is a
sovereign wager of the country. We rather seek to create industry, employment and added
value in Ecuador. Also to prevent a drain of currency abroad. Therefore, every businessman or
businesswoman and entrepreneur who is involved in this industrialization proposal will be
supported.
So as to illustrate and put into perspective, we could summarize by noting that while in cognitive
capitalism the most important is the "capitalist" banking, in social knowledge economy we talk
about "bank of ideas", a breeding ground of the social innovation system. Also, whilst in the first
case the goal of any bank is the accumulation of capital, in the second, it is the Good Way of
Living of its population and the entire planet.
So, what is the relationship between the change in the production matrix and the social
knowledge economy?
As I mentioned earlier, a change in the production matrix entails a change in the cognitive
matrix. I believe that the Southern countries live a second neodependency, far more lethal than
the first one which was based on industrialized goods. This new dependency is structured
through knowledge, the mind-invoice. The market and its invisible hand, in this new phase of
capitalism, does its biggest planning: programs the obsolescence and the deterioration of the
market goods. When a cell phone is purchased -for instance- usually the multinational that
manufactured it already knows for how long it will work, when will the new product be offered to
consumers and when will the technology recently placed in the market, become obsolete.
Currently, Ecuador imports hundreds of millions of dollars in technology. Therefore, if we do not
want to be a 'banana republic forever' we must sign international agreements and have a
legal framework that will allow us to make technology transfer and breakdown of the different
products and services. We cannot, for example, allow them to sell us equipment without even
including a repair manual, so that we will be always subject to purchase repair services abroad.
Also, the intellectual property system must ensure that the patenting process of multinationals
may not preclude systematically, the development of the local industry. It is not only nodal in the
programmatic proposal of this Government to strive for the changes to the production matrix but

5. it is necessary to do so in order to create more and better jobs in Ecuador; that the largest
amount of added value remains in the country; that there are no brain drain; and that there is no
currency loss through the process of importing an assortment of goods that, with little effort,
could have been done in the country a long time ago. To the hereabove mentioned we must
add that the dollarized system compels to have this development strategy. Not doing so in the
medium term, may structurally put at stake this monetary system in force, in Ecuador.
And this can only occur with a regulatory, public policy-making government, or does it
open to the free market and the individual initiative?
The aforementioned change will not take place without the Government, as a collective action of
all Ecuadorians, playing a strategic role to boost scientific and technological research and
reward investment in goods of public interest to society, such as food, medicine or technology
aiming at strengthening the educational processes.
It should be noted that the investment that Ecuador has made and will continue making in
higher education, science, technology and innovation play a strategic role in the change of the
production matrix. The economic effort in scholarships, educational loans, in universities and
technical and technological institutes, in Yachay, in Ikiam, in the Prometheus program would
have little impact in the strategy of creating a new pattern of accumulation for the country if
there is no transit from a commercial system of intellectual property to a system that freely
manages access to it. If the change in the production matrix lies in the innovation system, this
would be curtailed by the current property scheme or any scheme that deepens its perverse
effects given the high entry costs and institutional costs imposed by the current over-patenting
in the world economy. In this case, investment in scholarships or in Yachay would serve little to
the change of the production scheme.
How important is the Socialism of the Good Way of Living to this new form of managing
knowledge?
From a glass tower, some scholars try to make us believe that the world of reason and ideas
can be separated from the world of the material and political economy existing around the
world. This not only demonstrates the lack of understanding of what is happening now in our
planet, but the absence of political realism to find a true social transformation.
In cognitive capitalism, with the collapse of the traditional division between subject and object,
given the non-severability between mind and body, it becomes imperative to construct a system
of subjects who in their own production and reproduction of relations (language, feelings and
knowledge) can emancipate individuals and thereby society. This has to be thought with much
political pragmatism (it’s not about metaphysics!) but without losing the horizon of direction of a
new social order.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault sustained that anyone who has the knowledge has the
power. There will be no possibility of disrupting the power if we do not argue the way how
knowledge is managed; and, it must remain clear that in cognitive capitalism there is a
supremacy of capital towards life. In other words, while in cognitive capitalism the agent who
funds a research seeks to maximize profits derived from knowledge, the Socialism of the Good
Way of Living seeks to maximize the positive externalities (both material and immaterial) of
knowledge throughout the society. For example, for cognitive capitalism a drug should produce
the greatest possible amount of dollars whereas for social knowledge economy it should
produce the greatest positive impact on people’s health.
Secondly, if we cannot put a halt to this power, cognitive dependency will be perpetuated ad
infinitum, and along with it, the impossibility to make a real change in the country's production

6. matrix (with all the implications therein). Thus, a more vertiginous transformation to overcome
structural poverty and socio-economic inequality levels would be unimaginable.
Finally, we must have it clear that for both transnationals and local elites the most effective
strategy to maintain their power and domination is to keep the people in ignorance. At the heart
of cognitive capitalism, through the creation of institutions that hyper-privatize intellectual
property, they seek for few privileged people – those who can afford it – to have access to
knowledge. The Socialism of the Good Way of Living wants the individual to be autonomous
through free and democratic access to knowledge. Commercial intellectual property (closed)
systems keep the slavery of 'ignorance', whereas social knowledge economy strives to liberate
the individual and the society by democratizing the access and appropriation of produced
knowledge. In other words, the open knowledge becomes another factor of production to be
distributed throughout society.
In this sense, while the panacea of neoliberalism has been (and still is) to build tax
havens, for the Socialism of the Good Way of Living, the ideal territories are havens of
open knowledge where people and ideas can move freely, can work collaboratively to
solve problems concerning (and that keeps awaken!) the community, and enjoy art and
culture without restriction.
We must be clear that the heart of the programmed obsolescence of capitalism and therefore- the dependence of our countries lie in the scarce capacity of knowledge
production (especially in Africa and Latin America). The new independence then is to
build a system that generates non-capitalist knowledge and is based on the needs and
potentials of our peoples and of all humanity. In this context, the construction of such a
system is not only a material imperative but an essential path to emancipation.
What is at stake then, is not solely to free us from ignorance but to conquer the second
and final independence!