{"id":181084,"date":"2021-03-22T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181084"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:44","slug":"capital-science-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/capital-science-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Capital, Science, Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Development of Productive Forces in Contemporary Capitalism<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 Mar 2021 –<\/em> Understanding the way in which contemporary capitalism\u2014which Samir Amin insightfully characterized as the era of generalized monopolies<\/i>\u2014organizes productive forces is crucial to grasping both the forms of domination defining imperialism today and the profound metamorphoses that monopoly capital has undergone during the last three decades.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The concept of general intellect, put forward by Karl Marx, is a useful starting point for the exploration of the organization of productive forces. Let us take the example of one of the most \u201cadvanced\u201d innovation systems today: Silicon Valley\u2019s Imperial System. Our analysis seeks not only to reveal the profound contradictions of capitalist modernity, but also to highlight the significant transmutation that today\u2019s monopoly capital is undergoing. Far from acting as a driving force for the development of social productive forces, it has become a parasitic entity with an essentially rentier and speculative function. Underlying this is an institutional framework that favors the private appropriation and the concentration of the products of general intellect.<\/p>\n

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Computer Circuit Board<\/p><\/div>\n

Capital, General Intellect, and the Development of Productive Forces<\/h2>\n

Capitalism is characterized by the separation of the direct producers from their means of production and subsistence. This separation broke violently into the embryonic phase of capitalist development with the process that Marx referred to as \u201cso-called primitive accumulation\u201d (more correctly translated as \u201cso-called primary accumulation\u201d). It is not just a foundational process, external or alien to the dynamics of capitalism, but one that reproduces itself over time and is accentuated through new and increasingly sophisticated mechanisms with the advent of neoliberal policies, so much so that David Harvey proposed the category \u201caccumulation by dispossession\u201d in his book The New Imperialism<\/i> to refer to this incessant phenomenon.2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Importantly, the primal separation of the direct producer that Marx describes in chapters 14 and 15 of the first volume of Capital<\/i> is only formal<\/i>. In the early stages of industrial capitalism, even if the direct producers did not own the means of production\u2014which they considered foreign property and an external force of domination\u2014they maintained some control over their working tools in the production process. Thus, the separation was not wholly complete until the appearance of large-scale industry in the second half of the twentieth century, which radically changed the situation. The production of machines by machines\u2014that is, the use of an integrated machinery system, as a totality of mechanical processes distributed in different phases moved by a common motor\u2014gave way to a complete separation between workers and their tools. This brought the optimal conditions for a second and deeper dispossession, relegating labor to a subordinated role in the production process and converting the worker into an appendage of a machine. It is worth mentioning, however, that the use of this metaphor by Marx does not mean that the direct producer is unable to eventually contribute to the attainment of an improvement or a technological innovation. There are several historical examples that account for this possibility.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, in terms of the theory of value<\/i>, there is a general movement toward the predominance of dead labor, objectified in the machine, over living labor\u2014in other words, the prevalence of relative surplus value in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. The emergence of machinery and large-scale industry meant that capital managed to create its own technical mode of production as the foundation of what Marx conceives in the unpublished sixth chapter of Capital<\/i>, volume 1, as the real subsumption of labor under capital; in other words, the \u201cspecific capitalist mode of production.\u201d As Marx wrote, \u201cthe historical significance of capitalist production first emerges here in striking fashion (and specifically), precisely through the transformation of the direct production process itself, and the development of the social productive powers of labour.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

This process originated during the second half of the First Industrial Revolution and deepened during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870\u20131914), where science and technology appear as engines of production, forcing development as the so-called first globalization was occurring. Since then, the growth of capital has been directly associated with the development of production forces and the consequent expansion of surplus value, mainly in the form of relative<\/i> surplus value. At the same time, this is marked by the continuous increase in the organic composition of capital (the relation between capital invested in the means of production and that invested in the labor force), where \u201cthe scale of production is not determined according to given needs but rather the reverse: the number of products is determined by the constantly increasing scale of production, which is prescribed by the mode of production itself.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a> This inherent contradiction in the specifically capitalist mode of production is related, in turn, to (1) the trend of concentration and centralization of capital that accompanies accumulation dynamics and (2) the concomitant tendency toward absolute impoverishment of the working class, in what Marx conceives as the general law of capitalist accumulation<\/i>:<\/p>\n

The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labor, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital also develop the labor power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases, therefore, with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labor army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse proportion to its torment of labor. Finally, the greater the growth of the misery within the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater the official pauperism.5<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The trend toward the complete separation of the worker from the means of production is consolidated into what Victor Figueroa described as follows:<\/p>\n

The factory offers us the image of a production center that does not demand workers\u2019 awareness or knowledge of the production process.\u2026 As if the factory, being itself the result of the productive application of knowledge, demanded for the knowledge to be developed outside and, therefore, independently to the workers it houses, where immediate labor is presumably a mere executor of the progress forged separately by science.6<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Labor and Monopoly Capital<\/i>, Harry Braverman described this fissure as an essential part of the scientific and technological revolution that detached the subjective and objective content of the labor process.<\/p>\n

The unity of thought and action, conception and execution, hand and mind, which capitalism threatened from its beginning, is now attacked by a systemic dissolution employing all the resources of science and various engineering disciplines based upon it. The subjective factor of the labor process is removed to a place among its inanimate objective factors. To the materials and instruments of production are added a \u201clabor force,\u201d another \u201cfactor of production,\u201d and the process is henceforth carried on by management as the sole subjective element.\u2026 This displacement of labor as the subjective element of the process, and its subordination as an objective element in a productive process now conducted by management, is an ideal realized by capital.7<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the face of these circumstances, derived from the technical and social division of labor inherent to the specifically capitalist mode of production, it is worth asking ourselves: In what way does capital, beyond the immediate work that is deployed in the factory, organize the development of the productive forces? What kinds of workers, universities, and research centers participate in this process? What is the role of the state and other institutions? What role do accumulated social knowledge, basic and applied science play? What types of intangible and tangible products are generated? What are the mechanisms and mediations involved in the transformation of scientific and technological work to productive forces? What kind of profit enters the scene and how does it affect the dynamics of social surplus value distribution, concentration, and centralization of capital?<\/p>\n

Although Marx does not explicitly address this issue in Capital<\/i> except in marginal footnotes, in the Grundrisse<\/i>\u2019s \u201cFragment on Machines,\u201d he coined the category of general intellect<\/i> and made some considerations, in the form of notes, that provide important clues to help us understand the subject.<\/p>\n

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand<\/i>; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production<\/i>, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and have been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real-life process.8<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From this, we can infer that fixed capital, or constant capital, is condensed into past material and immaterial labor (dead labor). Consequently, accumulated social knowledge is objectified in the means of production and becomes an immediate force of production. In other words,<\/p>\n

general intellect is a collective and social intelligence created by accumulated knowledge and techniques. This radical transformation of the workforce and the incorporation of science, communication and language within the productive forces has redefined the entire phenomenology of labor and the entire global horizon of production. General intellect means that the general form of human intelligence becomes a productive force in the sphere of global social labor and capitalist valorization. The power of science and technology are put to work.\u2026 With the concept of general intellect, Marx refers to science and consciousness in general, that is, the knowledge on which social productivity depends.9<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the advent of the capitalist mode of production, a new and particularly significant division was created between what could be called immediate labor and scientific-technological labor. While the former unfolds in the factory, the latter is carried out separately and under different, although complementary, forms of organization, with both converging in the critical function for capitalist development: the increase of surplus value. If immediate labor is actually subsumed by capital, scientific and technological labor can only be, at best, formally subsumed, becoming what Figueroa calls a workshop of technological progress<\/i> to distinguish it from the way immediate labor in the factory is organized.10<\/sup><\/a> However, the way general intellect is structured, in its quest to accelerate the development of productive forces, acquires increasingly sophisticated and complex modalities, as in the paradigmatic case of the Silicon Valley Imperial Innovation System.<\/p>\n

The growing importance of immaterial work in the production process does not imply a \u201ccrisis\u201d of the law of value, as suggested by Antonio Negri.11<\/sup><\/a> Rather, it implies that an increasing proportion of the social surplus value and the social surplus fund captured by capital and the state is redistributed toward activities aimed at promoting the development of productive forces. In other words, immediate labor and scientific-technological labor interweave dialectically to broaden the scope of capital valorization through the deepening of exploitation. In this sense, under the prism of the theory of value, the general intellect contributes to increasing the organic composition of capital with a powerful leitmotif: the appropriation of extraordinary profits, that is, profits greater than the average profit, commonly conceived as technological rents<\/i>. In this aspect, the Ecuadorian-Mexican philosopher Bol\u00edvar Echeverr\u00eda specifies that there are<\/p>\n

two poles of monopoly property to which the group of capitalist owners must acknowledge rights in the process of determining the average profit. Based on the most productive resources and provisions of nature, land ownership defends its traditional right to convert the global fund of extraordinary profit into payment for that domain, in other words, into ground rent. The only property that is capable of challenging this right throughout modern history and has indefinitely imposed its own, is the more or less lasting domain over a technical innovation of means of production. This property forces the conversion of an increasing part of extraordinary profit into a payment for its dominion, in other words, into a \u201ctechnological rent.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is worth noting that Echeverr\u00eda brackets the notion of technological rent, associating it with ground rent\u2014or surplus associated with the ownership of a monopolizable good that does not derive from incorporated labor during the production process. Under the new forms of general intellect organization, monopoly capital appropriates profit through the acquisition of patents, without implying investments in the promotion and development of the productive forces, behaving in this sense as a rentier agent.<\/p>\n

Unlike immediate labor, the subordination of scientific and technological labor to capital is extremely complex, especially because the value that the scientific and technological labor force incorporates into the production process is not immediately objectified; it is the product and result of social knowledge expressed in the market once new commodities, new production processes, and new ways of organizing and increasing labor productivity are concretized. Pablo M\u00edguez refers to this phenomenon not as \u201ca simple subordination to capital, but an independent relation to labor time imposed by capital, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish working time from production time or leisure time.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

From the theory of value perspective, the process of valorization of scientific and technological labor is materialized in the production and circulation sphere, but in the distribution sphere of valorized capital<\/i>, that social surplus value, mediated by intellectual property, is issued in the form of a rent. In this sense, it is important to emphasize the fundamental role held by states in the distribution of social surplus to promote basic and applied science, supporting public and private universities, as well as research centers. The state also contributes to creating institutions and policies that allow for the private appropriation of rent to come out of the general intellect. These institutions become crucial to the dynamics of accumulation and uneven development characterizing contemporary capitalism and imperialism.<\/p>\n

The transformation of the general intellect into an immediate productive force, materialized in new commodities and new ways of organizing the labor process, requires the mediation of patents and a patenting system. In the capitalist mode of production, the creation of intellectual property through patents or patenting systems acquires a strategic importance in relation to the control and orientation of productive forces. This becomes a key element both for the private appropriation of products that emanate from the general intellect, and for the organization of innovation systems. In this sense, national and international patent legislations constitute a mechanism that enables the privatization and commodification of common goods, hindering potentially beneficial innovations for society.14<\/sup><\/a> For example,<\/p>\n

The legal mechanisms for the private appropriation of scientific-technological labor, with the patent as a nodal part in the restructuring of innovation systems, becomes a basic piece for the withholding of extraordinary profits made possible through global corporate regulation in tune with the imperial State policies.\u2026 Hence, international law functions as a core piece of private control of scientific-technological labor through a series of intellectual property and international trade regulatory agreements.15<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Following this idea, M\u00edguez argues that, in the context of contemporary capitalism, \u201cintellectual property is reinforced as it is the only mechanism that allows for the private appropriation of increasingly social knowledge in its incessant quest to valorize capital.\u201d16<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The development of the productive forces in contemporary capitalism\u2014and the course followed by the general intellect\u2014cannot be understood separately from the contemporary domination of monopoly capital. This hegemonic fraction of capital\u2014ubiquitous in contemporary capitalism\u2014finds its raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/i> in the appropriation of extraordinary profits and technological rents through monopoly prices, among other processes. According to Marx, monopoly appropriation of profit through prices refers to prices that rise above the cost of production and the average profit together, enabling monopoly capital to appropriate a relatively greater portion of social surplus value than the one that would correspond to conditions of free competition.<\/p>\n

Another fundamental feature of monopoly capital, as a sine qua non<\/i> condition for obtaining profits, is its need to maintain lasting advantages over other possible participants in a particular branch or branches where it operates. Such advantages can be natural or artificial, depending on the combination of forms of surplus profit, which, in turn, configure particular monopolistic practices. One of these forms is related to capitalism\u2019s revolutionary development of productive forces, as envisioned by Marx: technological change. In this regard, Joseph A. Schumpeter\u2014far from intending to identify his vision of technological change with that proposed by Marx in Capital<\/i>\u2014sets forth the existence of a positive relationship between innovation and monopoly power, arguing that competition through innovation or \u201ccreative destruction\u201d is the most effective means of acquiring advantages over potential competitors. Furthermore, Schumpeter argues that innovation is both a means of achieving monopoly profit and a method of maintaining it.<\/p>\n

It should be noted, however, that in the Marxist conception, there is no mechanical or direct identification of technological change with a positive vision of progress. On the contrary, being governed by the law of value and the necessity of capital to broaden accumulation, technological change does not escape the contradictions of capitalist modernity, which, as Echeverr\u00eda emphasizes, \u201cleads itself, structurally, by the way in which the process of reproduction of social wealth is organized\u2026to the destruction of the social subject and the destruction of nature where this social subject affirms itself.\u201d17<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The appropriation of extraordinary monopoly profits produced by means of intellectual property is accompanied in contemporary capitalism by a profound restructuring of this hegemonic fraction of capital, through a process of hyper-monopolization, where three additional forms of profit appropriation stand out:18<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The formation of monopoly capital global networks, commonly known as global value chains, through the geographic expansion of corporate power by transferring parts of production, commercial, and financial service to peripheral countries in search of cheap labor.19<\/sup><\/a> Basically, it is a new nomadism in the global production system based on the enormous wage differentials that persist between the Global North and the Global South (the global labor arbitrage). This restructuring strategy has deeply modified the global geography of production to the degree that just over 70 percent of industrial employment is currently located in peripheral or emerging economies.20<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n
  2. The predominance of financial capital over other factions of capital.21<\/sup><\/a> In the absence of profitable investments in the productive sphere due to the overaccumulation crisis triggered in the late 1970s, capital began moving toward financial speculation, creating strong distortions in the sphere of social surplus value distribution through the financialization of the capitalist class, which has led to an explosion of fictitious capital\u2014financial assets without a counterpart in material production.22<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n
  3. The proliferation of extractivism by monopolizing and controlling land and subsoil by monopoly capital.23<\/sup><\/a> In addition to accentuating the dynamics of accumulation by dispossession, the growing global demand for natural resources and energy has led to an unprecedented privatization of biodiversity, natural resources, and communal goods benefiting mega-mining and agribusiness. This implies the appropriation of huge extraordinary profits in the form of ground rent (unproduced surplus value) that translates into greater ecosystem depredation, pollution, famine, and disease with severe environmental implications, including global warming and worsening extreme climatic events that jeopardize the symbiosis between human society and nature.24<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The predominance and metamorphosis of monopoly capital under the neoliberal aegis has brought about far-reaching transformations in the organization of production and the labor process. These transformations are integral to the global capitalist system\u2019s geography, leading to a fall of the welfare state, an increase in social inequalities, and the emergence of a new international division of labor, where the labor force becomes the main export commodity. This, in turn, gives way to new and extreme forms of unequal exchange and transfer of surplus from the periphery to the core economies of the system. In this context, the irruption of the technoscience revolution has generated new ways of promoting scientific and technological creativity, of organizing the general intellect on a global scale and of appropriating its products.<\/p>\n

    Untangling Silicon Valley\u2019s Imperial Innovation System<\/h2>\n

    A strategic dimension of capitalist development in the era of generalized monopolies corresponds to the extraordinary dynamism that the development of productive forces achieves through a rampant rate of patenting. Hence, it is vital to understand the characteristics of the most advanced innovation system today, hegemonized by the United States and georeferenced in Silicon Valley, which operates as a powerful patenting machine and has tentacles in various peripheral and emerging countries. The organizational architecture of the general intellect in this complex economic terrain enables corporate control over scientific and technological labor of an impressive mass of intellectual workers trained in different countries around the world, both in core and periphery economies. In this system, a wide range of agents and institutions interact to speed up the dynamics of innovation, reducing the costs and risks associated with inventors and independent entrepreneurs\u2014organized through innovative embryonic companies known as startups\u2014to be capitalized by large corporations through the acquisition or appropriation of patents.25<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Some of the most outstanding features of what we conceive as the Silicon Valley Imperial Innovation System are:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The internationalization and fragmentation of research and development activities under \u201ccollective\u201d methods of organizing and promoting innovation processes: peer to peer, share economy, commons economy, and crowdsourcing economy, through what is known as Open Innovation. These are forms of scientific and technological inventions produced outside the boundaries of multinational corporations, which involve the opening and spatial redistribution of knowledge-intensive activities, with the increasing participation of partners or external agents to large corporations, such as startups that operate as privileged cells of the new innovative architecture, venture capital, clients, subcontractors, head hunters, law firms, universities, and research centers.26<\/sup><\/a> This new form of organizing the general intellect has given way to the permanent configuration and reconfiguration of innovation networks that interact under a complex interinstitutional fabric commanded together by large multinational corporations and the imperial state (see Chart 1). This networked architecture has deeply transformed previous ways of driving technological change.
      \n\u200cIt is worth noting that, in this context, scientific and technological labor carried out by startups is not formally subsumed to capital as inventors are not direct employees of large corporations. Hence, subsumption is subtle and indirect, backed by an institutional framework established by the Patent Cooperation Treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and a sophisticated ecosystem network that fosters the collective development of products emerging as part of the general intellect on a planetary scale and its private appropriation through patents and other proprietary mechanisms mediated by law firms responding to large multinational corporation interests. As a result, accumulated social knowledge\u2014a collective drive accelerated by networks of scientists and technologists\u2014ends up in corporate hands through juridical mechanisms.      27<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n
    2. The creation of scientific cities such as Silicon Valley in the United States and new \u201cSilicon Valleys\u201d recently established in peripheral areas or emerging regions, mainly in Asia, where collective synergies are created to accelerate innovation processes. As Annalee Saxenian highlights, it is a new georeferenced paradigm that moves away from the old research and development models and opens the way for a new culture of innovation based on flexibility, decentralization, and the incorporation, under different modalities, of new and increasingly numerous players that interact simultaneously in local and transnational spaces.28<\/sup><\/a> Silicon Valley became the pivot point of a new global innovation architecture, around which multiple peripheral links are woven to operate as a sort of scientific maquiladora<\/i> located in regions, cities, and universities around the world. This gives rise to a new and perverse modality of unequal exchange, through which the costs of forming and reproducing a highly skilled workforce involved in the dynamics of scientific innovation are transferred from core economies to peripheral and emerging countries, generating extraordinary profits via monopolistic technological rents.<\/li>\n
    3. New forms of control and appropriation of scientific labor products by large multinational corporations, through various forms of subcontracting, associations, and management and diversification of venture capital. This control is established through a two-way channel. On the one hand, it is established through specialized teams of lawyers thoroughly familiar with the institutional framework and operating rules for patents imposed by the Patent Cooperation Treaty and WIPO, serving the interests of large corporations. Under this complex and intricate regulatory framework (see Chart 2), it is practically impossible for independent inventors to register and patent products on their own. On the other hand, this is done through teams of lawyers who operate as headhunters, contractors, and subcontractors working though \u201cstrategic investment\u201d to appropriate and gain control over general intellect products.29<\/sup><\/a>
      \n\u200cThe way in which large multinational corporations participate in the dynamics of innovation incubated and deployed through the Silicon Valley matrix reveals that, more than development driven to facilitate social productive forces, monopolistic capital operates as a rentier agent that appropriates the products of the general intellect without participating in the production process of its development. In other words, the extraordinary profits that constitute the leitmotif of monopoly capital become technological rents in accordance with the meaning that Marx attributes to ground rent: the possibility of demanding a significant portion of social surplus value by virtue of owning a product<\/i>, in this case the patent, though not acquiring it through a production process that incorporates value through labor. Hence, in the era of generalized monopolies, monopoly capital ceases to be a progressive agent in the development of the productive forces and becomes a parasitic entity that even decides, as owner of intellectual property, which products are potentially significant in the market and which will remain petrified in the freezer of social history.      30<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n
    4. A North-South horizon expansion of the workforce in areas of science, technology, innovation, and mathematics, and increasing recruitment of a highly skilled workforce from the peripheries through outsourcing and offshoring mechanisms. In this sense, highly skilled migration from peripheral countries plays an increasingly relevant role in global innovation processes, generating a paradoxical and contradictory dependence of the South on the North, where patent inventors more often reside in peripheral and emerging countries. In fact, this trend can be seen as part of a higher stage in the development of global value chains\u2014what we prefer to call global monopoly capital networks<\/i>\u2014as the new international division of labor moves up the value-added chain to the scientific and technological sphere, and while monopoly capital moves to capture profit derived from productivity and knowledge contributed by a highly qualified workforce from the Global South.31<\/sup><\/a> This trend can be found in different sectors of the global economy, including agricultural biotechnology and biohegemony in transgenic crops, as well as the appropriation of Indigenous knowledge related to seed technology.32<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n

      Chart 1. Graphic Representation of the Silicon Valley Innovation System<\/h2>\n

      \"Chart<\/a>Source:<\/em> Produced based on information gathered from Strategic Business Insights.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      \n

      Chart 2. World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty<\/h2>\n
      \"\"<\/a>

      Source: Image adapted from the World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty, 2015, www.wipo.int.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

      A key piece that supports the new geopolitics of innovation is the creation of an ad hoc institutional framework aimed at the concentration and appropriation of general intellect products through patents under the tutelage and supervision of the WIPO in agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO).33<\/sup><\/a> Since the late 1980s, there has been a trend toward generating legislation in the United States, in tune with the strategic interests of large multinational corporations in the field of intellectual property rights.34<\/sup><\/a> Through rules and regulations promoted by the WTO, the scope of this legislation has been significantly expanded. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has taken on the role of promoting the signing and implementation of free trade agreements, since intellectual property disputes within the WIPO\/WTO tend to be enormously complex due to their multilateral nature. The U.S. strategy also includes bilateral free trade agreement negotiations as a complementary measure to control markets and increase corporate profits. The regulations established by the Patent Cooperation Treaty, amended in 1984 and 2001 within the framework of the WIPO and WTO, have contributed significantly to the strengthening of this trend.<\/p>\n

      In addition, according to the nature and characteristics of the Imperial Innovation System, the United States appears as the leading capitalist power in innovation worldwide, absorbing 23.9 percent of the total patent applications registered in the WIPO from 1996 to 2018. However, in the same period, China surpassed the United States in patent applications, with 23.1 percent compared to the U.S. 21.7 percent (Table 1).<\/p>\n

      \n

      Table 1. Requested and Granted Patents: Total and 10 Main Countries, 1996\u20132018<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
      Patents:
      \nGranted<\/td>\n      		Requested<\/td>\nDistribution (%)<\/td>\nGranted<\/td>\nDistribution (%)<\/td>\nPercent Granted<\/td>\nRank<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Total<\/td>\n45,361,224<\/td>\n100.0<\/td>\n19,447,764<\/td>\n100.0<\/td>\n42.9<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Subtotal<\/td>\n37,412,593<\/td>\n82.5<\/td>\n15,696,151<\/td>\n80.7<\/td>\n42.0<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      China<\/td>\n10,497,318<\/td>\n23.1<\/td>\n3,138,160<\/td>\n16.1<\/td>\n29.9<\/td>\n3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      U.S.A.<\/td>\n9,862,774<\/td>\n21.7<\/td>\n4,646,826<\/td>\n23.9<\/td>\n47.1<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Japan<\/td>\n8,627,834<\/td>\n19.0<\/td>\n4,093,992<\/td>\n21.1<\/td>\n47.5<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Korea<\/td>\n3,534,255<\/td>\n7.8<\/td>\n1,811,789<\/td>\n9.3<\/td>\n51.3<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Germany<\/td>\n1,406,340<\/td>\n3.1<\/td>\n357,246<\/td>\n1.8<\/td>\n25.4<\/td>\n7<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Canada<\/td>\n842,421<\/td>\n1.9<\/td>\n388,204<\/td>\n2.0<\/td>\n46.1<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Russian Federation<\/td>\n831,702<\/td>\n1.8<\/td>\n622,539<\/td>\n3.2<\/td>\n74.9<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      India<\/td>\n652,043<\/td>\n1.4<\/td>\n130,933<\/td>\n0.7<\/td>\n20.1<\/td>\n13<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      United Kingdom<\/td>\n601,246<\/td>\n1.3<\/td>\n165,056<\/td>\n0.8<\/td>\n27.5<\/td>\n12<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      Australia<\/td>\n556,660<\/td>\n1.2<\/td>\n341,406<\/td>\n1.8<\/td>\n61.3<\/td>\n8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

      Source:<\/em> SIMDE-UAZ. Estimations using data by WIPO, 1996\u20132018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      In the era of generalized monopolies, the development of productive forces has entered a point of no return in which the contradictions between progress and barbarism embodied in capitalist modernity have become more evident than ever before. The historical mission of progress attributed to capitalism in the development of the productive forces of society has turned into its opposite: a regressive path that threatens nature and humanity. In this context, the current dispute between the United States and China is uncertain. While there are signs that the United States still maintains leadership in strategic fields of innovation, China has been gaining ground and contesting the U.S. scientific-technological preeminence and global hegemony. Under the conditions of this disputed scenario, the COVID-19 pandemic opens a great question, where the only certainty is uncertainty.<\/p>\n

      Notes<\/h2>\n
        \n
      1. \u21a9<\/a> Samir Amin, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism<\/a><\/cite> (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).<\/li>\n
      2. \u21a9<\/a> David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism<\/cite> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).<\/li>\n
      3. \u21a9<\/a> Karl Marx, chap. 6 in El capital<\/cite> (1867; repr. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1981), 60.<\/li>\n
      4. \u21a9<\/a> Marx, chap. 6 in El capital<\/cite>, 76.<\/li>\n
      5. \u21a9<\/a> Karl Marx, El capital<\/cite>, tomo 1, vol. 3 (1867; repr. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2005), 804.<\/li>\n
      6. \u21a9<\/a> Victor Figueroa, Reinterpretando el subdesarrollo: Trabajo general, clase y fuerza productiva en Am\u00e9rica Latina<\/cite> (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1986), 40.<\/li>\n
      7. \u21a9<\/a> Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century<\/a><\/cite> (New York: Monthly Review, 1998), 118.<\/li>\n
      8. \u21a9<\/a> Karl Marx, Elementos fundamentales para la cr\u00edtica de la econom\u00eda pol\u00edtica 1857\u20131858 (Grundrisse)<\/cite>, tomo 2 (1858; repr. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), 229\u201330.<\/li>\n
      9. \u21a9<\/a> Antonio G\u00f3mez Villar, \u201cPaolo Virno, lector de Marx: General Intellect, biopol\u00edtica y \u00e9xodo,\u201d SEGOR\u00cdA: Revista de Filosof\u00eda Moral y Pol\u00edtica<\/cite> 50 (2014): 306.<\/li>\n
      10. \u21a9<\/a> Figueroa, Reinterpretando el subdesarrollo: trabajo general, clase y fuerza productiva en Am\u00e9rica Latina<\/cite>, 41.<\/li>\n
      11. \u21a9<\/a> Antonio Negri, Marx m\u00e1s all\u00e1 de Marx<\/cite> (Madrid: Akal, 2001).<\/li>\n
      12. \u21a9<\/a> Bol\u00edvar Echeverr\u00eda, Antolog\u00eda: Cr\u00edtica de la modernidad capitalista<\/cite> (La Paz: Oxfam, Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, 2011): 78\u201379.<\/li>\n
      13. \u21a9<\/a> Pablo M\u00edguez, \u201cDel General Intellect a las tesis del Capitalismo Cognitivo: Aportes para el estudio del capitalismo del siglo XXI,\u201d Bajo el Volc\u00e1n<\/cite> 13, no. 21 (2013): 31.<\/li>\n
      14. \u21a9<\/a> Guillermo Foladori, \u201cCiencia Ficticia,\u201d Estudios Cr\u00edticos del Desarrollo<\/cite> 4, no. 7 (2014): 41\u201366.<\/li>\n
      15. \u21a9<\/a> Juli\u00e1n Pinazo Dallenbach and Ra\u00fal Delgado Wise, \u201cEl marco regulatorio de las patentes en la reestructuraci\u00f3n de los sistemas de innovaci\u00f3n y la nueva migraci\u00f3n calificada,\u201d Migraci\u00f3n y Desarrollo<\/cite> 27, no. 32 (2019): 52.<\/li>\n
      16. \u21a9<\/a> M\u00edguez, \u201cDel General Intellect a las tesis del Capitalismo Cognitivo,\u201d 39.<\/li>\n
      17. \u21a9<\/a> Echeverr\u00eda, Antolog\u00eda<\/cite>, 173.<\/li>\n
      18. \u21a9<\/a> Francisco Javier Caballero, \u201cReplanteando el desarrollo en la era de la monopolizaci\u00f3n generalizada: Dial\u00e9ctica del conocimiento social y la innovaci\u00f3n\u201d (PhD dissertation, Universidad Aut\u00f3noma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2020).<\/li>\n
      19. \u21a9<\/a> Ra\u00fal Delgado Wise and David Martin, \u201cThe Political Economy of Global Labor Arbitrage,\u201d in The International Political Economy of Production<\/cite>, ed. Kees van der Pijl (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2015), 59\u201375.<\/li>\n
      20. \u21a9<\/a> John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna, \u201cThe Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review<\/cite> 63, no. 6 (November 2011): 1\u201315.<\/li>\n
      21. \u21a9<\/a> Walden Bello, \u201cThe Crisis of Globalist Project and the New Economics of George W. Bush,\u201d in Critical Globalization Studies<\/cite>, ed. Richard P. Appelbaum and William I. Robinson (New York: Routledge, 2005),101\u20139.<\/li>\n
      22. \u21a9<\/a> Robert Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble: The U.S. in the World Economy<\/cite> (New York: Verso, 2002); John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, \u201cThe Financialization of the Capitalist Class: Monopoly-Finance Capital and the New Contradictory Relations of Ruling Class Power,\u201d in Imperialism, Crisis and Class Struggle: The Enduring Verities and Contemporary Face of Capitalism<\/cite>, ed. Henry Veltmeyer (Leiden: Brill, 2010).<\/li>\n
      23. \u21a9<\/a> James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Extractive Imperialism in the Americas<\/cite> (Leiden: Brill, 2013).<\/li>\n
      24. \u21a9<\/a> Guillermo Foladori and Naina Pierri, \u00bfSustentabilidad? Desacuerdos sobre el desarrollo sustentable<\/cite> (Mexico: Miguel \u00c1ngel Porr\u00faa, 2005).<\/li>\n
      25. \u21a9<\/a> Ra\u00fal Delgado Wise, \u201cUnraveling Mexican Highly-Skilled Migration in the Context of Neoliberal Globalization,\u201d in Social Transformation and Migration: National and Local Experiences in South Korea, Turkey, M\u00e9xico and Australia<\/cite>, ed. Stephen Castles, Derya Ozkul, and Magdalena Arias Cubas (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015): 201\u201318; Ra\u00fal Delgado Wise and M\u00f3nica Guadalupe Ch\u00e1vez, \u201c\u00a1Patentad, patentad!: Apuntes sobre la apropiaci\u00f3n del trabajo cient\u00edfico por las grandes corporaciones multinacionales,\u201d Observatorio del Desarrollo<\/cite> 4, no. 15 (2016): 22\u201330; M\u00edguez, \u201cDel General Intellect a las tesis del Capitalismo Cognitivo.\u201d<\/li>\n
      26. \u21a9<\/a> Henry Chesbrough, \u201cOpen Innovation: A New Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation,\u201d in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm<\/cite>, ed. Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, and Joel West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1\u201314.<\/li>\n
      27. \u21a9<\/a> Guillermo Foladori, \u201cTeor\u00eda del valor y ciencia en el capitalismo contempor\u00e1neo,\u201d Observatorio del Desarrollo<\/cite> 6, no. 18 (2017): 42\u201347.<\/li>\n
      28. \u21a9<\/a> AnnaLee Saxenian, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy<\/cite> (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2006).<\/li>\n
      29. \u21a9<\/a> Titus Galama and James Hosek, S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology<\/cite> (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008).<\/li>\n
      30. \u21a9<\/a> Foladori, \u201cTeor\u00eda del valor y ciencia en el capitalismo contempor\u00e1neo.\u201d<\/li>\n
      31. \u21a9<\/a> Ra\u00fal Delgado Wise, \u201cEl capital en la era de los monopolios generalizados: Apuntes sobre el capital monopolista,\u201d Observatorio del Desarrollo<\/cite> 6, no.18 (2017): 48\u201358; Rodrigo Arocena and Judith Sutz, \u201cInnovation Systems and Developing Countries\u201d (DRUID Working Paper 02\u201305, Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics, Aalborg, 2002).<\/li>\n
      32. \u21a9<\/a> Laura Guti\u00e9rrez Escobar and Elizabeth Fitting, \u201cRed de semillas libres: Cr\u00edtica a la biohegemon\u00eda en Colombia,\u201d Estudios Cr\u00edticos del Desarrollo<\/cite> 7, no. 11 (2016): 85\u2013106; Pablo Lapegna and Gerardo Otero, \u201cCultivos transg\u00e9nicos en Am\u00e9rica Latina: Expropiaci\u00f3n, valor negativo y Estado,\u201d Estudios Cr\u00edticos del Desarrollo<\/cite> 6, no. 11 (2016): 19\u201344; Renata Motta, \u201cCapitalismo global y Estado nacional en las luchas de los cultivos transg\u00e9nicos en Brasil,\u201d Estudios Cr\u00edticos del Desarrollo<\/cite> 6, no. 11 (2016): 65\u201384.<\/li>\n
      33. \u21a9<\/a> Wise and Ch\u00e1vez, \u201c\u00a1Patentad, patentad!\u201d<\/li>\n
      34. \u21a9<\/a> Peter Messitte, \u201cDesarrollo del derecho de patentes estadounidense en el siglo XXI. Implicaciones para la industria farmac\u00e9utica,\u201d in Los retos de la industria farmac\u00e9utica en el Siglo XXI: Una visi\u00f3n comparada sobre su r\u00e9gimen de propiedad intelectual<\/cite>, ed. Arturo Oropeza and V\u00edctor Manuel Gu\u00edzar L\u00f3pez (Mexico: UNAM\u2013Cofep, 2012),179\u2013200.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        ___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

        2021<\/a>, Volume 72, Issue 10 (March 2021)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

        Ra\u00fal Delgado Wise<\/span> is an academic, activist, and author and editor of numerous books, chapters, and articles. He is the president and founder of the International Network on Migration and Development, codirector of the Critical Development Studies Network, and professor and director of the Doctoral Program in Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico. He is also the editor of <\/em>Migraci\u00f3n y Desarrollo and the UNESCO chair in Migration, Development and Human Rights. <\/em><\/p>\n

        Mateo Crossa Niell<\/span> is an assistant professor at the Mora Institute in Mexico City.<\/em><\/p>\n

        Go to Original – monthlyreview.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        1 Mar 2021 – The Development of Productive Forces in Contemporary Capitalism – How capitalism has become a parasitic entity with an essentially rentier and speculative function. Underlying this is an institutional framework that favors the private appropriation and the concentration of the products of general intellect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":181085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[232,2198],"class_list":["post-181084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism","tag-capitalism","tag-post-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284726,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181084\/revisions\/284726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}