Some notes on brands (was: [ox-en] Some notes on value..)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:28:12 +0200
Hi list!
17 months (537 days) ago Adam Arvidsson wrote:
This came out of a discussion with Bob Jessop in Lancaster a couple
of weeks ago.. I'd like to share and would be happy for comments-
it's all tentative.
Though I think Adam is no longer here - his email address bounces for
some time now - I think it is still interesting to comment on this
because I think Adam has an important topic though I disagree with
quite a lot of what he says. My perspective is more from peer
production than from capitalism though.
I'll try to keep relevant context for my comments. For the full post
please refer to
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04384.html
BTW: This whole topic probably relates to the "no-logo" stuff which I
heard of some years ago but never got into it. May be comments from
someone who knows of this would also be interesting.
BRANDS, ETHICAL CAPITAL AND THE ETHICAL ECONOMY
Brands can be understood to embody a third important form of capital
in the knowledge economy, along with material capital and knowledge
capital. Like knowledge capital (IPs) they work to establish a
monopoly rent from a resource that is essentially socially produced.
Unlike IPs this resource mainly consists in accumulated affect and
sociality. (The value of a brand depends on a mass of people
maintaining a relatively stable pattern of affectivity around it, a
brand is in this sense something a kin to, almost , a loosely knitted
community, or maybe a community of weak ties) This way brands are a
form of ethical capital: they build on the ability and desire of free
(that is not entirely commanded) actors to create community, in the
absence of given hierarchies or monetary obligations (cf.
Aristoteles' etikos).
Though I understand how Adams means "ethical" here - by the reference
to Aristoteles' notion - I don't think this is a very useful wording.
Most people do understand something different by ethical.
I'd agree insofar that the relationship to a brand can be emotional -
which is probably what is meant by affect. The question to me is why
this is so. I think this question is important.
In fact in peer production we also have lots of brands. Linux, Gnu,
Apache, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap - just to name a few. Adam analyzes
this only in terms of capitalism. I'd find it more interesting to
analyze this for peer production.
Brands thus establish a third circuit of value (M-C-M') that is
central to informational capitalism. The first, material, circuit of
value is the classic one described by Marx, value is extracted by
submitting commanded labor to discipline. In this situation the means
of production are monopolized by capital and labor time can work as
an (approximate) measure that allows the systematic abstraction of
concrete labor into abstract value.
Even in this circle of capital there is nature which is appropriated
in order to be valorized. This is done by using the laws of nature to
create technology and by plain usage of natural resources.
The second circuit is that of
knowledge capital. This builds in part on the direct command over
salaried labor and the 'classic' abstraction of surplus value. To an
increasing extent however it builds on the ability to appropriate
socially produced resources that are not directly 'owned' by capital
and that, consequently cannot be directly commanded.
Similar to nature.
This can be the
results of state sponsored investments in research and development,
it can be the synergic productivity of social interaction among
knowledge workers, research institutions and knowledge intensive
firms (learning regions, creative cities) and increasingly it is a
matter of the direct appropriation of knowledge and innovation
generated in the everyday interaction among ordinary consumers (user-
led innovation systems, crowdsourcing, etc.).
Though this is probably true the appropriation of stuff which is not
owned by capital in the first place is common. Privatize the gains and
socialize the losses is as old as capitalism is - or rather even
older. I can't see how this can be used to make a difference.
Brands constitute a
third circuit that appropriates and commodifies the ethical practice
of ordinary consumers: their ability and desire to build community.
I don't know whether it makes sense to talk in such a common way about
what I recognize as a quite small phenomenon. I mean there are lots
and lots and lots of brands. Very few of them form communities in any
sense making sense. Most brands just identify a certain company. Only
a very few brands - such as Nike - are used to build (and exploit) a
community.
Crucial here is the question what a brand is good for - in use value /
non-alienated terms. Only then it is possible to understand why a
brand has a meaning after all. I'll get back to this later.
But how is the value of this ethical productivity established. This
question is important not only in order to understand how the
information economy works today, but also in order to understand the
future potential of the free social productivity that capital
increasingly relies on. We clearly have a new mode of production,
what I call an ethical mode of production, manifested in important
phenomena like brand value, Open Source Software, peer to peer etc. I
call this mode of production 'ethical' for two reasons: One it is
mainly based on the desire to construct community (and be recognized
by that community).
I don't know whether this desire to construct community is so
important.
But even if so: I think 'ethical' is a misleading term here - though
it's of course a nice brand...
Two, its valuable outcomes consist in forms of
community that can maintain (however temporary) forms of order in a
complex environment.
Again I don't see a reason to use 'ethical' here.
The valuable contribution of Linux is not
primary a result of the labor time invested by its participating
programmers, but of the social organization of those efforts into a
productive community able to generate a complex outcome.
First I think that Adam really by far underestimates the importance of
labor time for peer production. Of course there is a lot of labor time
which goes into peer production. Recently I read an article which
claimed that the amount of labor which went into Apache for instance
would not have been possible in a commercial setting - because it
would have been to expensive for a market.
Second the ability to organize contributions - and that is what is
needed to create complex products like Linux - is a standard ability
for big capitalist companies. In fact I think this is an ability which
is needed by any complex setup of distributed contributions.
So in the
ethical mode of production the creation of use value (wealth) no
longer depends directly on the investment of labor time, instead it
depends on the ability to create community.
I think this is a wrong conclusion in the sense it is first not true
and second not different from capitalism.
Today such instances of an ethical mode of production are subaltern
to, if not directly subsumed by the capitalist economy. The question
is whether this ethical mode of production constitute itself as an
ethical economy: that is a world economy in the Marxian sense able to
trade (in some way) the produce of one particular productive network
with that of another and in that way establish an objective price
that reflects the socially necessary amount of community construction
(affect!?) deployed in its production.
What Adam calls "economy in the Marxian sense" here is actually Marx'
description of capitalism. I.e. Adam's question is acutally: How can
ethical economy be understood as capitalism? I think this is a
misleading question.
The right question IMHO would be: What are the foundations of a peer
production economy? Trade - as abstract exchange - is certainly not a
foundation so it is pointless to argue about it.
Can the ethical economy
develop its own value form?
I never understood why it even should. Unfortunately I never get a
satisfactory answer to this :-/ .
To begin to answer that question we must
investigate its existing 'value form'. A good place to begin is to
look at the brand, the actually existing value form of the ethical
economy.
Brands have a double nature. On the one hand they are commodities,
objects with certain monetary values that are traded (mainly) on
financial markets. On the other hand they are a form of ethical
capital. Their ethical values consist in the investments of mass
affect that they have been able to accumulate. This is what the
managerial literature calls 'brand equity' (the capacity of a brand
to generate value) and it is what is understood to underpin monetary
brand values. This ethical value is also what brand valuation
companies try to estimate in order to produce a legitimation for the
financial values of brands. So, in the self-understanding of
contemporary capitalism, the monetary value of brands are based on
their ethical values, their ability to accumulate mass affect.
Well, the amount of affect they are able to raise is absolutely
pointless unless this affect can be valorized. In other words: A brand
for which you can't sell commodities for is pointless for capitalism -
regardless on how much affect you can generate. Understood this way a
brand is only one part of a set of equations which tell you about the
market success of a company.
But let's get back to the concrete, use-value meaning of a brand. I
think the most important feature of a brand is this:
a brand is a symbol for something complex
By using a brand you mainly use a symbol for a possibly very complex
thing. For instance the brand stands for the product lines of a
company. The products and the different product lines are complex
things which may be hard to describe. By saying "BMW", "Barack Obama"
or "Linux" you use a symbol to identify this complex something.
This feature of a brand has nothing to do with affect. But the complex
thing a brand describes can easily have to do with emotions / affect.
People may like the things each of the above named brand stands for.
They like it because they know what they get by that brand and they
like what they get.
Another important feature of a brand is that it is stable over time.
This means that at different points in time it identifies the same
complex things - though they might undergo evolution. For someone who
created the brand it is thus important that the meaning is kept over
time.
I think these things are the use-value sides of a brand. These apply
to valorizable brands as well as to brands of peer production
projects. I'd like to emphasize that community is not part of this
use-value.
What creates these ethical values? They are not the direct results of
investments in labor time. You can work as much as you want on your
music and style, that, in itself will not make you a rock star.
Rather, suddenly something happens and then, you've made it. What
determines your value are the quality and quantity of affect
(attention) that you have been able to accumulate. The relation
between the productive time invested in a project and the mass affect
that it is able to attract is non-linear, or viral, to use a popular
marketing term.[2]
Well, for rock stars this might apply - though I think a good musician
training a lot has better chances to create affect than me.
But for most other brands this simply is nonsense. BWM is not a great
brand because someone snipped a finger. They build great cars which
are fun to drive - at least some people think this ;-) . Linux is not
a great brand because of some magic but because it is a very useful
product.
I think Adam makes a logical error here: Though it is true that a lot
of work and/or talent does not necessarily make you successful for
most fields a lot of work and/or talent is a precondition for success.
Models could be found in contemporary mathematical
theories of network dynamics, and perhaps in Gabriel Tarde's theories
of the role of public sentiment.[3] Indeed, the logical relation
between value and labor is rather the reverse of that usually
associated with the capitalist economy. Once you have a sufficiently
attractive brand, you will attract an abundance of free labor as well
as other resources.
BMW attracts free labor?
Linux has no problems recruiting new programmers:
people want to work for them for free;
True.
people pay to use brands in
their everyday life and thus freely co-produce their ethical value
through their constructive consumer practices. On financial markets,
capital flows to the most attractive brands. More means more in this
case, if you have accumulated a significant stock of ethical capital,
people will freely give you their time and further attention, or, on
financial markets, their capital.
What in one sentence Adam sets equal are indeed two very different
phenomenons. A valorizable brand attracts capital because the
capitalist expect a good return on investment because a successful
brand guarantees good profits.
In peer production a well-known brand often is a good indicator for
that your effort makes sense. Or that your effort can be used directly
by you because you need this patch you are contributing.
The logic behind ethical capital is political rather than economic.
Or better it pertains to what Weber saw as the charismatic,
irrational side of politics. If you, or your brand, can mobilize the
affective energies of the polis, its members will freely put their
resources at your disposition. (Fight for your cause; work for you;
vote for you; give to you of their hospitality- indeed, as Weber
claimed, peaceful charismatic leaders mainly live off donations from
the community that they have created[4]). The source of this valuable
charisma is, as in Weber's classic analysis, the ability to create
community.
I'm not sure this really describes the situation well. If there is a
community it builds around a good idea.
(By contrast the economic logic of value would be based on
the ability to command labor (as in the oikos) and thus measure its
contribution in terms of labor time.)
This neglects that the dead labor once commanded needs to be sold on
the market. A capitalist not selling her commodities creates no value.
A brand is exactly useful for this process of selling commodities on
the market.
The predominance of brand
value, reputation, 'ethical capital', corporate ethics and similar
entities as elements to the immeasurable intangible values that are
increasingly important to contemporary capitalism is an empirical
indication of the fact that this political logic of value is becoming
increasingly influential in informational capitalism.
Today such political values can only be translated into one abstract
equivalent, monetary exchange value. The question is however, can
such political values be made tradable in other ways; and how, in
that case, would such a system look like?
Again: No idea why someone should even want this. I'll stop here
because though Adam gives no idea of why this could be wanted engages
with this question.
However, one of the examples Adam gives is useful to show how confused
his thinking is.
Essentially air-miles is
a measure of the affective appreciation that an airline has of you as
loyal customer,
First an *airline* can not have something like an affective
appreciation. Humans can but not airlines.
Second AFAICS the airline does not give you air-miles for correct
behavior or your nice way of smiling but for every mile you pay for.
This has nothing to do with appreciation but is a rebate created to
improve customer binding. Personally I hate to be bound this way and
appreciate if rebates are integrated into prices in the first place.
and they can be traded for a wide range of gifts:
free trips, upgrades, car rentals etc.
First you can not trade for a gift. It is either a gift or a traded
item.
Second in fact this is simply a trade. You gathered some rebate - i.e.
monterary value - and may exchange the rebate for some product - i.e.
monetary value. Believing that some gives a gift to you is buying the
propaganda of the company.
I remember that this concept of rebate has been in place when I was a
child - which is pretty much before air-miles have been invented.
(Again air-miles do not have
an objective exchange value, strictly speaking, since their relation
to possible gifts is subjectively and variably determined by the
airline itself.
An airline which does not exchange the rebate for more or less the
same amount of "gift" will be out of business soon.
Relationship should rather be understood as that of a
stable gift economy. I give my loyalty to the airline. I can
reasonably expect the airline to give me a certain kind of gifts in
return.)
Sorry, but this is really nonsense. What you can expect is a rebate.
But what you should expect are lower prices freeing you mentally to
use whichever airline is best for your next flight.
Grüße
Stefan
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