From the gene to the globe: Extracting rents based on intellectual property monopolies

Abstract

ABSTRACT The increasing power of concentrated financial capital is accompanied by an extension of processes of commodification and procedures of dispossession similar to forms of original accumulation. This continuing and reinforced accumulation by dispossession in its different guises is capital's answer to the problem of over-accumulation. As a form of dispossessing accumulation, the implementation and extension of intellectual property monopolies is of particular importance. In the context of an increasing socialization of labor, in particular of innovative activities, the private appropriation of knowledge in the form of intellectual property monopolies and its commercial valorization has become a central characteristic of the current configuration of capitalism. Income based on such property titles has become an important form of the appropriation of resources in the finance-dominated accumulation regime. The article applies Marxian rent theory to intellectual property monopolies. Findings from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries illustrate how, based on specific power relations, the owners of property titles can appropriate resources and values. Rent extraction processes take place on different scales, from the enforcement of property monopolies over gene sequences to the role of the USA as a rentier state on a global scale.