[lbo-talk] Dumb QOTD: What kind of labor produces intellectual property?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Sep 2 12:44:25 PDT 2011


On Sep 2, 2011, at 8:28 AM, Charles Turner wrote:


> Could someone point me to an answer to this?
>
> Reading Z's _End Times_, and in his chapter about political economy, he mentions the three classical divisions of income: labor, capital, land ownership.
>
> So what is a royalty? Is it a rent? Is an intellectual property a kind of capital? What kind of labor produces intellectual property?

Royalty on what? If it's for a musical composition or work of prose collected by the writer, it's a payment for labor. If it's on a patent, it can be a kind of rent - a return above "normal" profit created by a monopoly over the technique. Depends on the situation, really.

Doug



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