Infinity mirrors and double spaces: for a critique of the political economy of global branding

In International Political Economy (IPE), brands appear across debates on intangible assets, managerialism, supply-chain governance, value capture, and hidden costs; yet, their role in organizing value globally remains secondary. This article advances a critique of the political economy of global branding, arguing that global branding organizes value worldwide through the metamorphoses of brand capital into four forms: commercial, constant, fictitious, and neocolonial. These metamorphoses generate a specular ‘infinite mirrors’ dynamic that magnifies the distance and complexity between the production and realization of value across space and time. Grounded in Marxist value theory and drawing on Harvey’s relational space-time of value, and in dialogue with François Chesnais, who contended that financial capital overflows into other forms of capital, we develop an analytical framework of brand capital metamorphosis through empirical cases from IPE and Business and Management literature. The article’s contribution to IPE is twofold: It centers global branding as a mechanism of value organization that connects dispersed debates into a processual account of capital’s movement, and it offers an analytical tool for examining supply chains, digital platforms, and extractive sectors, revealing mechanisms of valorization and the tensions that sustain accumulation.