IPR is the vital internal link

While the formal subsumption of labour under capital is based on the extraction of absolute surplus-value, the real subsumption, which gives representation to the specificity of the capitalist mode of production, is grounded in the appropriation of relative surplus-value. That is, “with the production of relative surplus-value […] the whole real form of the mode of production changes and a specifically capitalist mode of production arises (also technologically)”, thus social property relations are subordinated in its totality, “on the basis of which and with which, at the same time, only the relations of production corresponding to the capitalist process of production develop between the various agents of production, and especially between capitalist and wage labourer” (Marx, 1988, p. 95).

The development of production—private property—presupposes improving its efficiency; the increase in output per time unit and productive unit demands the revolution of the factors of production. Private property improvement thus presupposes intellectual property development. The progress of private property cannot be explained by a simple material appropriation—as during the process of the so-called primitive accumulation in which the soil was “enclosed”—again, the result of this process becomes the premise for its further expansion. Intellectual appropriation advances at first as a product of the now-established economic imperatives. The initial competition among capitalists, on the one hand, and labourers, on the other, imposes an immanent compulsion for efficiency over the means of doing. Individual know-how alone does not suffice to actualise this legality.

The development of capitalist knowledge arises first and foremost from the ranks of labourers. Scientific advancement thus entails a double historical determination. From a concrete, practical reason, workers created and developed practical knowledge, thus changing the means of production. As Clifford D. Conner asserts, this was a vital step for the development of capitalist production forces. Only a posteriori, theoretical science organises, theorises, and summarises the already ongoing practical scientific breakthroughs and achievements, enabling further imitations, emulations, copying, and appropriation (Conner, 2005). Intellectual appropriation (thus intellectual property) becomes to that extent condition for the property of the means of production, and this relationship constitutes the totality of property. Real subsumption of labour is simultaneously real subsumption of science.

Intellectual property is simultaneously relations of production and factors of production. This inseparable character had already been acknowledged by Marx. “The social productive forces of labour, or the productive forces of directly social, socialised (i.e. collective) labour come into being through cooperation, division of labour within the workshop, the use of machinery, and in general the transformation of production by the conscious use of the sciences” (Marx, 1988, p. 95). Socialised labour is a condition for applying science to production; however, scientific development presupposes (a) certain (degree of) material conditions. However, the fetishisation of this process strips off its historicity, and scientific development appears instead as an immanent feature of capitalism (see infra). Conversely, absolute surplus-value historically precedes relative surplus-value; however, with the development of capitalism, the relative becomes a condition for the absolute. This understanding demystifies any claim that capitalism is a singular, homogenous (social) practice.

The quantitative-qualitative dialectics between property and intellectual property is essential throughout the development of capitalism. Historically, this also becomes clear with, first, bearing in mind the initial agricultural capitalism in England, second, its further development into industrial capitalism, and third, the capitalist imposition of formal subsumption overseas, which to date remains a pivotal condition for the extraction of relative surplus-value. Briefly considering the latter, the so-called knowledge-based economies imposed absolute surplus-value relations on peripheral (underdeveloped) countries with the extraction of raw materials; however, since industrial transformation has been losing ground within the national borders of capitalist centres, then protecting knowledge, as a precondition of private property of the means of production, became an ever greater imperative. Initially, capitalist production was divided into two: one centre of raw material production and another centre of raw material transformation, namely, industrial production. Then, as intellectual production was separated from the other two spheres, production was divided into three (generally speaking, since production chains may incorporate multiple countries and be divided into even more spheres). While the extraction of raw material remains confined to countries rich in natural resources, industrial production and transformation was—through the search for greater rates of profit—significantly moved towards capitalist peripheries, where the value of the reproduction of labour power is less than in developed countries (mainly the United States, parts of (Western) Europe, and Japan). However, because property and intellectual property represent a totality, moving industries abroad invariably implies exporting its intellectual dimension as well. One does not need a formalised, theorised manual to obtain knowledge. Just as, during the nineteenth century, theoretical science systematised practical science to enable the reproduction of discoveries/inventions, the material condition of anything permits a similar assessment by others—then considered reverse engineering. These basic principles of the production of knowledge—known to humankind throughout history but also present in any child who enacts to a great extent herself both the pedagogy of learning by acts of mimesis and tinkering—must be hindered. Intellectual appropriation becomes an indispensable mechanism of private appropriation, thus becoming intellectual property(private).