History and Dialectics of Intellectual Property

In Chap. 2 , the common association of intellectual property and the abstract right is challenged. When considered from the material perspective of knowledge production, metaphysics no longer appears to be a suitable means to understand intellectual appropriation. Unlike mainstream theory based on neoclassical economics, the dialectical materialist method contextualises the heterogeneous existences of intellectual property in different and antagonistic social property relations. What is at stake is the control over the appropriation of social surplus labour, which in capitalism gains the specific form of surplus-value. While for most part of history control of intellectual means occurred simultaneously with the control of material production, the destruction of the value of knowledge production created a new compulsion to control intellectual appropriation directly.