Origination,brands and the political economy of capitalism

The question of the power and position of brands in contemporary capitalism is a critical matter in any delineation of political economy. Andy Pike’s Origination makes an exemplary and original contribution to analysing this question. In this brief commentary, I do not summarize the main arguments, nor do I provide a thorough review of the book. Rather, I focus on three areas which I see as critical in how we understand brands and what Andy calls ‘brand geographies’ in contemporary capitalism. These are (1) theorization of the relationship between brands, rent and capitalism, (2) institutions and the state in the regulation and construction of brands and ‘origination’ and (3) a world of economic geography beyond branded goods and origination.

First, let me summarize what I see as the real strengths of Origination. The book provides a wonderfully rich, theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded critical cultural political economy of brands. One of its primary contributions is that it takes the discussion of brands beyond research on marketing in management studies and connects its analysis to an understanding of commodity flows, value generation and cultural signification in contemporary capitalism. By engaging with Scott’s ‘cognitive-cultural capitalism’ (Scott, 2000) and value chain/production network conceptualizations (Coe et al., 2004; Coe and Yeung, 2015; Gereffi et al., 2005), Origination develops a conceptualization of the construction of geographical associations with brands in the process of enacting temporary spatial fixes in contemporary capitalism. Another positive is the book’s ontology. The focus is on developing an understanding of the spatial circuits of origination and commodity flows. As such, it is among some of the best commodity studies work: linking production, circulation and consumption via the novel lens of the brand geographies that underpin these circuits. A third contribution is the book’s sensibilities. It provides a cross-disciplinary dialogue, engaging with multidisciplinary ‘trading zones’ (Barnes and Sheppard, 2010), to develop a grounded geographical political economy of brands. Finally, the book’s empirics are at its heart. The fascinating case studies ranging from Newcastle Brown Ale to Apple add tremendously to our understanding of this under-researched area of contemporary capitalism.

Let me turn, then to the first issue of a conceptual nature; the relationship between brand, value and rent in capitalism. ¹ A central element of any understanding of brands in contemporary capitalism turns on the relationship between brands, value creation and rent generation. Brands are, of course, in somewhat superficial terms, a way of generating additional wealth in contemporary capitalism. Chapter 2 of Origination pushes this further by linking the question of brands and origination as mechanisms of value creation: ‘Theorising brands…as integral to meaning and value construction throughout the spatial circuits of cognitive-cultural capitalism’ (p. 76). But are brands a way of creating value in capitalism? Is this their original contribution and why they are pursued so vigorously? Here I want to suggest that brands are more effectively thought of as a form of modern (landed) property which is deployed to generate monopoly rents. In doing so, I wish to raise what I see as several important issues concerning how we theorize the relationship between value and rent in capitalism and the place that brands occupy in that conceptual terrain. As Harvey (2002: 94) has argued, ‘Monopoly rent arises because social actors can realize an enhanced income stream over an extended time by virtue of their exclusive control over some directly or indirectly tradable item which is in some crucial respect is unique and non-replicable’. Brands can be seen, then, as a basis for the generation of rent arising from monopoly control mediated by particular property relations of intellectual property and brand rights. Rent arises to those whose property relations and forms of control over property enable them to extract such payments, which require the necessary legal and juridical systems of private property and class relations. Brands, as forms of modern (landed) property, enable brand owners to extract monopoly rents from this ownership form and property relation. In this way, brands do not generate value per se, understood through this Marxian political economy lens. Rather, in capitalism, Origination might then best be seen as a geography of monopoly rents: carving out spaces of geographic ‘authenticity’ (e.g. intellectual property) to secure monopoly rents.

While Harvey’s (1982) discussion, and that of Marx, is primarily related to agricultural land and rent extraction, we could consider the ways that this is deployed in relation to rent and globalizing production networks. As Harvey (1982: 331) has argued, ‘the full explanation of rent has to render compatible a payment made ostensibly to land [or other forms of property such as intellectual property; housing; a brand] with a theory of value that focuses on labour [i.e., a labour theory of value]’. This relationship has never been fully resolved in much political economic research, which tends to rely on an analytical separation between value and rent; one seemingly replicated in Origination.

Rent is not solely a relation of distribution of surplus wealth occurring after the labour process has been enacted on commodities in a circuit of capital. Rather, rent is becoming increasingly intrinsic to the very process of rent generation via the brand. In this sense, the key issue turns on the role of rent as a basis for generating ‘excess profit’ as part of aggregate surplus value (Harvey, 1982), over and above the specific forms of surplus value created through the production, circulation and realization of the capital circuit of commodity production. As such, the ‘appropriation of rent can then simply be defined as “that economic form in which landed property is realised under capitalism” [Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 634]’ (Harvey, 1982: 343).

While Harvey’s discussion, as well as that of Marx, on monopoly rent focuses on land and urban housing, and others have focused on modern landed property and the control of marine resources and the sea (Campling and Havice, 2014), the principle is that the establishment of, and access to, prestige and status via a brand creates the ability to charge monopoly rents. This is precisely what the brand is about: monopoly control of the intellectual property and image to extract monopoly rents from prestige and status, which ‘depends on the ability to realize a monopoly price for the product’ (Harvey, 1982: 350). That ability is crucially related to the class relations of (landed) property and the ability to construct and control the property and social relations (e.g. intellectual property and brand rights) that establish a social space in which the brand is established. As such, ‘monopoly rent is a deduction out of the surplus value produced in society as a whole [not just in the specific labour process involved in the particular commodity being produced], a redistribution, through exchange, of aggregate surplus value’ (Harvey, 1982: 350; emphasis added).

As such, then, in capitalist economies what Pike calls ‘origination’ might alternatively be seen as a geography of monopoly rents – a process of carving out spaces of geographic ‘authenticity’ (e.g. intellectual property of the brand) to secure monopoly rents; which as Origination shows so convincingly are always geographical, always produced through different scalar and place-based relationalities and identities. This is not a question of value creation/redistribution at the point of production but one of rent extraction at the point of circulation. However, and this is the crucial point, it is a process in which rent appropriation and surplus value production are dialectically related (Walker, 1975) and have to be understood as fundamentally articulated whole of commodity production: surplus value creation and monopoly rent appropriation. This dialectical reading is important because it requires a politics of intervention not only in the regime of circulation of rent (e.g. the brand – ethical trade and the protection of brand reputation) or only in the sites of production of surplus value (e.g. the factory – struggles over labour’s share of appropriated surplus) but in both, in an articulated unity.

The second element of the analysis in Origination I want to raise is that relating to the conceptualization of the state and institutions as regulator of brands and origination. The emphasis in the analysis in Origination concerns in part the role of geographical indications (GIs; in the case of Newcastle Brown Ale) and intellectual property rights in the other cases. The focus is on the way in which the state interacts with brand geographies and, in certain instances at various scales, works to produce those geographies. However, what I would suggest is missing here is the linking of these phenomena (GIs, intellectual property rights, etc.) to an understanding of the state as a key institutional and legal framework for creating the conditions for monopoly rent generation, as opposed to seeing the as a regulator of wealth creating conditions. Suggestive here, although not explicit in her actual analysis is Parry’s (2007) work on GIs as the European Union’s mechanism for the ‘bringing into being’ conceptions of place and authenticity in the circulation of branded commodities. As such GIs and the spatial imaginaries and intellectual property relations that underpin them could be conceptualized as a site formulated by national and macro-regional states (e.g. the European Union) for the generation of monopoly rents. This constructivist analysis of the state–economy relation in capitalism becomes, then, part of wider recent attempts to theorize the state and global production networks/commodity chains (see Smith, 2015).

A third element I raise concerns the extent to which it is possible to understand contemporary capitalism as involving branded and non-branded goods with and without geographical associations. The answer apparently provided in Origination appears to be that all brands are geographical; that all brands are embroiled in differentiated and relative geographical intensities of branding practices. However, this raises a question about what we do in relation to ‘non-branded’ or more ‘mundane’ products. Such products have geographies of production and circulation of their own, but their place identities are perhaps less brand and place-oriented than in the way emphasized in Origination. Might there be scope for an intersection between the analysis of origination with that of an ‘ordinary’ economy of capitalism (Lee, 2006) as part of a ‘diverse economy’ of origination? Are our analyses over-fixated on single, dominant branded cases? Do we miss more mundane and ordinary firms and their production and circulation practices as a consequence? Indeed, what opportunities and constraints might there be – given the theorization of monopoly rents and brands elaborated earlier – for value creation without brand monopoly rents? Does this limit provide an alternative politics of an economy beyond the brand? None of these questions are set out here to undermine what Andy Pike has achieved with Origination. He has formulated an innovative and novel conceptual and empirical framework to understand an increasingly important key dynamic in contemporary capitalism. Rather these questions are raised in order to push further the kinds of analysis which could be developed.