Beyond rentiership: Standardisation, intangibles and value capture in global production

Abstract

We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in a moment of step-change within capitalism may be premature. Implicit in arguments for a step-change is the claim that the present-day economy emphasises unproductive or rentier forms rather than the more productive and entrepreneurial forms of the past. In contrast, we argue that to understand our current situation we need to focus on the division of labour and most especially on processes of standardisation and the rise of intangible assets. Moving from Marx’s understanding of rent as a class relation, we re-embed rent within the circuit of capital and the realm of value distribution to investigate the class dynamics (among labour, capital and the state) through which giant firms seem to generate value out of rentierism. We argue that these class dynamics include the crucial and unexplored relation between standardisation and intangibles. We suggest standardisation within the division of labour renders people, places, and things interchangeable and that, in contrast, intangible assets differentiate them. When intangible assets emerge as new forms of property, they enable owners to generate scarcity and exert direct and/or indirect control over the wider division of labour. Through examining the combined rise of standardisation and intangible assets within the technical division of labour, we demonstrate how hierarchy within the social division of labour empowers some corporations to capture value produced elsewhere within the circuit of capital.