The aff’s form of patenting over the very forms of life enacts biopolitical control over the very genetic positions of the body.

(Links to big tech, big pharma, seeds, plants, microorganisms)

Not only big tech but also big pharma was mostly erected on public funds. The changes in the patent system represented a qualitative break in the real subsumption of knowledge under the capitalist mode of production, from being allegedly a means of knowledge stimulation to becoming a means of controlling and blocking knowledge. Basic research was consequently engulfed by the proprietary model of knowledge. While Mazzucato unveils how this affects hepatitis, cancer, and HIV treatments, Fabienne Orsi, Christine Sevilla, and Benjamin Coriat have shown how this model affects health on a broad scale, as it also hinders testing. Patents have enabled “monopoly over the diagnostic and therapeutic activities based on genes” (Orsi et al., 2006, p. 327). The notion that privileges were conferred to inventions and not discoveries was once again blurred, making it theoretically possible for “gene sequences per se” to be patented (Nicol, 2021, p. 111). The arbitrary power over the privatization of life has thus far attained many forms. One could argue that owning and con trolling plants and animals, and even human beings in the multiple forms of slavery and servitude, have kicked off a long process of naturalization and normalization which culminates in the privatization of genes. Additionally, intellectual privatization in relation to life was already taking place at least since the nineteenth century, continuing throughout the twentieth century before the famous Diamond v. Chakrabarty case in the late twentieth century. For instance, microorganisms in the form of yeast received patents as early as in 1873. From that point on, seeds and plants were also subjected to privatization in the form of intellectual property.

The mediation which the Internet offers contains an essential dimension within social relations. On the one hand, it provides a venue for social interaction, in which a simulation of real-life gains digital actualization; on the other, this social interaction is deprived of actively real human sensual capacities. Of course, one could say that this is a preposterous statement because one can perceive the Digital through human sight and hearing. Nevertheless, this mediation is foremost a simulacrum. Within the digital sphere, human senses are factually shut down, for one perceives what he is allowed to perceive. One does not truly see nor hear but experiences a simulation of what one ought to see or hear. With television or radio this is much more obvious; nevertheless, the human reciprocity that the Internet enables gives the impression that one is actively asserting his agency. One does not interact with the other person but rather with the other person’s simulacrum. One does not see or hear the other person but simply a simulation. It goes without saying that this assessment contains no value-judgement. It merely appreciates the limits of the Digital. This limitation, however obvious, is turned upside down and presented as actual freedom and potential to assert the individuality of the person. What remains hidden is the fact that after the real subsumption of the Internet under capitalism, it ceases to be a locus of simulated possibilities and becomes a simulacrum of the simulation, becoming the quintessence of publicity, propaganda, and control.

Often presented as a place of gift economy (contemporarily conceived as sharing economy), the illusion of free services and freedom likewise entails a double veil of simulation. Although it was initially unclear to many that free service was simply a deception, its disclosure reveals the considerable subordination of Internet users to capitalist power. While you and I—connected to any digital device with Internet access—become the commodities being bought and sold, legislators, regulators, citizens, etc. have internalized this process as part of the new normal and shown pronounced passivity vis-à-vis capitalist power. Private capital mediates not only the economic sphere of production and distribution, now, with the commodification of the user—the constant appropriation of personal data—such flexibilization does not relate to the realm of possibilities to unfold novel social relations but rather the consolidation of precarisation beyond the mere sphere of immediate labor towards all social life (see infra).

Not only the big techs are deeply invested in this modus operandi. The relationship between big pharma, big tech, and the government has become so intertwined that one cannot differentiate where one begins and the other ends. The immense amount of data being produced and processed by the Digital invades the spheres of biology, which is being dissected at a molecular level and being standardised as mechanical pieces and consequently transformed into a branch of engineering. The so-called BioBricks aim “at creating artificial cells and life forms functionally indistinguishable from naturally occurring ones and interoperable with them. At its most extreme it seeks to add completely new functions” (Dutfield, 2012, p. 176). Capitalist power over life is thus surpassing the dimension of production of plants, drugs, and animals, that is, what we put in our bodies; its control now reaches the genetic and molecular com positions of the body.

Control of the biological body has not been randomly achieved. Instead, it reflects the neoliberal shaping of human behavior and perception of concrete reality. Despite having been proven ineffective in the unconstrained creation and spreading of knowledge, intellectual property(private) actualizes the neoliberal method of securing new venues of primitive accumulation to capitalism. The advancement of technology in biology does not constitute an exception. “Biotechnology patents thus expand the proprietary character of knowledge to the detriment of the intellectual commons”, in other words, an “ontological commodification” (Pellizzoni & Ylönen, 2012, pp. 55, 57f). This commodification process necessarily presupposes a process of appropriation, which must thus be drawn from collective knowledge. The creation and appropria tion of data banks involve surveillance and audience commodity. “Biobanks raise issues of privacy, confidentiality, consent, trust, citizen rights, civil participation and so on” (Pellizzoni & Ylönen, 2012, p. 58). Therefore, a surveillance system becomes paramount to enable the cre ation and actualisation of such data banks (see infra). This biopolitical power asserting control is not only externally imposed but also internally assimilated (Gramsci, 1971).