There are certainly informational occupations that do not result in the production of an information commodity, but rather in different commodity types. They are part of a collective workforce outside the information sector. The distinction between the occupational and the industry definition of industries certainly is feasible and can be combined. The question however is which one fits best for a Marxist understanding of the economy.
To avoid an elitist definition of creativity, one can also resort to Marx (1867, 284), who argued that at the “end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally”. All human labour requires mental planning and anticipation of the result, albeit with different qualities. All occupations have an information dimensions and are creative in the general understanding of the word that Marx hints at, namely that they create usevalues that satisfy needs.
This brief non-exhaustive discussion shows why this chapter uses a framework, in which the information industry is defined as the realm of the production, circulation, and consumption of information products, both information goods and services. Many information products take on the form of commodities. There is however a growing sector of the information economy that transcends the commodity form and in which peer produced information takes on the form of an informational commons. Given this definition of the information economy, the share of the information industry in total national value added was in 2010 15.6% in Finland, 14.1% in France, 12.4% in Germany, 12.0% in Italy, and 10.6% in Norway (data source: OECD STAN).<sup>3</sup> The total employment share of this sector was in the same year 16.3% in Finland, 13.8% in France, 13.2% in Germany, 11.7% in Italy, and 14.2% in Norway (ibid.). One may now say these are significant, but not overwhelming shares. Let’s, however, compare these data to the manufacturing sector:<sup>4</sup> it accounted in 2010 for 14.8% of value added in Finland, 9.7% in France, 14.8% in Finland, 20.0% in Germany, 17.1% in Italy, and 7.3% in Norway. Manufacturing comprised in the same year 13.4% of total employment in Finland, 10.2% in France, 15.9% in Germany, 15.1% in Italy, and 8.8% in Norway. Six out of ten country-specific variables in these example calculations have higher values in the information than in the manufacturing sector.
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3 Comparable results can be obtained for other countries. OECD STAN at the moment of writing (January 2014) only provides data for 15 countries because ISIC Revision 5 is still a relatively new metric introduced in 2008 that has not been applied to older data and is not used for statistical purposes in all countries. No data are available for the United Kingdom. The data for the USA are not sufficiently disaggregated for use. See the appendix for a methodological discussion.
4 I calculated value added of manufacturing based on ISCI Revision 5 aggregated category D10T33 minus D18 and D26 that according I consider to be part of the information economy.