Trademark reinforces capitalism and maintains class divides

In this sense, power does not emerge from social relations but is rather located a priori within the law, representing a circular logic. The abstract right appears to be its locus of existence. The socio-historical dynamics giving intellectual property(private) actuality is abstracted to the point of being postulated as an abstract object deprived of concrete existence. Its existence is simply putative. Te concrete boundaries of intellectual property(private) are superseded; its only limit becomes the law in-itself. It is Drahos’ merit, nonetheless, to point out that modern marketing has become highly dependent on intellectual property(private) (which, with digitalisation, becomes even more relevant). “Without trademark law, for instance, advertising could not create the high degree of product diferentiation that exists in many markets” (Drahos, 2016, p. 188). Tis means that contemporary commodity fetishism requires the attribution of uniqueness where there is virtually none; with it, the so-called primitive accumulation enters the realm of behaviour and perception, being shaped and controlled by means of private appropriation.

However, he fails to connect these relations to the socio-ontological dimension of the production and reproduction of life. Consequently, he misses the umbilical connection of property and intellectual property and the fact that the privatisation of the latter has become a means of securing private control over the former. As the value of knowledge production and reproduction abruptly plunges, the value of the property of the means of production also decreases while the contradiction between social production and private appropriation becomes increasingly more explicit. Intellectual property(private) appears as the means of reshaping social perception, reorganising production value, controlling the struggle of classes, and enabling capitalism to persist. It is thus impossible to understand it as something merely abstract and separated from property.