This Special Issue, The Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism. New Research Perspectives, proposes a set of contributions that presents some of the research lines organized around the thesis of cognitive capitalism, a project that insists upon rereading the historical development of the capital/labor relation from the point of view of the knowledge economy. In this introduction we outline a method of analysis in terms of cognitive capitalism by insisting on the critique of conventional theories of both the economics of knowledge and the knowledge-based economy. This is done in order to explain the role of knowledge in the long-term development of capitalism, while providing a Marxian theoretical map of historical time in the process.