The extraordinary transformation that the human intellect has been enduring due to privatisation is complemented by a remarkable mutation of collective memory. Social practices that have, through most part of human history, been part of collective efforts are now subdued under the shackles of capital. Because knowledge is not something metaphysical but a material living aspect of the social being, its retraction from the social into a private sphere simultaneously means its (at least partial) amputation. As intellectual property(private) is presented as the pinnacle of social development, its concrete socio-material dimensions are blurred, and intellectual activity is reduced to metaphysics. Although knowledge that is always social has been taken hostage by capitalist power, theoretical discourse idealistically misrepresents this process.