anticipating realization: value's logic of movement and amazon's anticipatory shipping

Atle Mikkola Kjøsen | 1

Anticipating Realization: Value’s Logic of Movement and Amazon’s Anticipatory Shipping

Paper presented at Historical Materialism (UK) 2014.

On December 24th, 2013, Amazon was awarded a US Patent for a “Method and System for

Anticipatory Package Shipping” (Spiegel et. al. 2013). In essence, this patent describes how the retailer

wants to build a system to start delivering commodities to potential buyers before they actually place an

order. If an algorithm determines that there is a high probability that a commodity may be bought, it

will decide to ship it, and if an order is placed, the package is rerouted to its destination while in transit.

In other words, the patent describes a system that anticipates exchange. Although Amazon has neither

confirmed nor denied that the patented methods have been implemented, the document is nevertheless

interesting for what it says about how things move in the capitalist mode of production. What is the

value-theoretic rationale behind the method of anticipatory shipping? Why must exchange be

anticipated?

Before I go into the specifics of the patent, I would like to explain the point of view of my

argument and why I find the document interesting. In my dissertation research I am trying to formulate

a theory of capital's media in the sphere of circulation, which can be described as a counterpart to

Marx's theory of machines in the sphere of production. Capital, as Marx (1978:185) argues, is a

movement, and I am interested in how things and people (as personifications of economic forms) move

in the capitalist mode of production. More specifically, in how capital moves, as in how it moves

through time and space, but also with what means and also the logic of its movement. Thus I am

looking into things like containers, intermodal transportation, warehouses, payment systems and

credit/debit cards as they function “within the circulation process and for the circulation process” (Marx

1978:229). As such they are media that make the formal movement of capital in the sphere of

circulation possible. As part of this project, one of the things I am trying to figure out is whether the


supply chain can be considered the content of capital as a circuit, and consequently how this content is

determined. The patent is interesting precisely because it is a useful case study with which to think

through capital and value's logic of movement, forms of media and whether the supply chain is the

content of the circuit of capital. Because I take a circulation point of view, I will not speak about

labour, but perhaps needless to say the working conditions inside Amazon's fulfillment centers is

horrible, the pace is relentless and always intensifying to meet Amazon's order fulfillment requirement

and wages are low. In order to implement what the patent describes, the working conditions would

likely get even worse.

My argument will proceed as follows. I first give an overview of the method of anticipatory

shipping that the patent describes. I then turn to a discussion on how the patent articulates the difficulty

of the sale in terms of movement and acceleration, how the system the document describes can be

thought of as a logistical support for the commodity and the function of the sale, and how it is an

articulation of value's logic of movement. And if I have time for a conclusion, I argue with reference to

the patent and cases of food leaving famine struck areas, that the movement of things in the capitalist

mode of production is, in German, verrükt, i.e. perverted/inverted.

Naturally, I won't be able to give a complete description of the patent. So in what follows I am

focusing only on what I consider to be the most significant elements. (SLIDE 1) The first slide shows a

block diagram illustrating an “exemplary shipping network” that consist of a fulfillment center (top

left), a delivery location (bottom right) and connecting these two locations, the shipping network of a

common carrier consisting of its service paths, a series of hubs and two modes of transportation. The

diagram thus depicts an idealized part of Amazon's supply chain, specifically its outgoing logistics.

Normally when Amazon receives an order via its “virtual storefront”, which occurs at a rate of 35 per

second during peak periods, the order is picked from inventory at the fulfillment center, packaged for

shipment and tendered to a common carrier, like FedEx or the postal service. Amazon's goal is that this


click-to-ship time should take no more than twenty minutes. Once tendered, the package takes a given

service path, going through one or more hubs for materials handling and routing towards its delivery

location that corresponds to a physical address. Hubs typically serve a geographical area in proximity

to the hub, such as a city or region (Spiegel et. al. 2013:1-3). A single or a combination of modes of

transportation can be used for shipping, such as the trucks and plane depicted on the slide, but may also

include rail or ships. The last mile to the delivery location is always covered by vans, the feet and

shoulder of a postman or, if Amazon's wildest dream (though perhaps not that wild anymore) comes

true, by drone. Air transportation offers an “expedited service path” with less latency, i.e. shipping

time, than the non-expedited service over land and via more hubs. As the diagram shows, shipping time

can also be reduced by using a private carrier to “inject” a package into the common carrier network at

a hub closer to the delivery location (Spiegel et. al. 2013:4).

Reducing shipping latency is in essence the focus of the methods that Amazon has patented.

With these (two) methods “[a] package including one or more items may be shipped to a destination

geographical area without completely specifying a delivery address at the time of shipment. Instead, a

delivery address may be completely specified while the package is in transit” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:5).

The patent refers to this proposed method of shipping as “speculative shipping” and is accomplished by

“in-transit package addressing”, which is defined as “completely or partially specifying a delivery

address for a package after that package has shipped” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:5). (SLIDE 2) A package

may be sent with just “an indication of a destination geographical area”, such as that serviced by a hub,

with the destination, as the slide shows at the top, being “identified by... a portion of postal code, such

as the three most significant digits of a USPS ZIP code” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:5). Apparently such

addressing is “sufficient to perform most of the routing of package to a potential delivery address

within the destination geographical area” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:5). As the middle figure shows, a

complete delivery address can be applied to the package while it is in transit and it can be re-routed to


another geographical area using the same method (figure at the bottom). This method is made possible

by making the package identifiable and trackable using barcodes or RFIDs together with sensor

networks (Spiegel et. al 2013:7). A benefit of speculative shipping is that even though the package is

transported using non-expedited shipping at less cost, it can nevertheless be delivered at the speed of

expedited shipping (Spiegel et. al. 2013:15).

The most interesting part of the patent, however, is anticipatory shipping, which is defined as

“speculative shipping of a package... in anticipation of a customer ordering items in that package, but

before such an order has actually occurred” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:5). First the system must determine

what items to ship and where, a decision that a “forecasting model” makes by analyzing so-called

“business variables” mined from the vast trove of data that Amazon collects on its customers. This

forecasting can be narrowed down to a granularity of an individual customer or to broad geographic

areas (Spiegel et. al. 2013:13-18). Variables include historical buying and browsing patterns, the

“relatedness” of an item to this pattern (think Amazon's recommendations), preferences explicitly

expressed by the customer, demographic information (Spiegel et. al. 2013:16) and “specific web pages

viewed and duration of views, overall length of customer's visit to [Amazon's web pages], links

hovered over and duration of hovering, shopping cart or wish list activity” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:17).

The forecasting model may also take into account the current state of the shipping network, packages

that have already been speculatively shipped and the likelihood that an item will incur return or

redirection costs.

Once items have been determined, picked, packaged and speculatively shipped there are five

potential scenarios that can happen. (SLIDE 3) The first, as illustrated on the slide, is that a customer

places an order for one or more items included in a speculatively shipped package, thereby feeding

back a complete delivery address into the system. If one or more speculatively shipped packages

already in transit matches the order, the fulfillment center’s computer system locates them and their


general geographic destination by querying stored or real-time tracking data. The system then selects

the package in closest proximity to the final delivery location, assigns and applies the complete address

in order for the common carrier to deliver it (Spiegel et. al. 2013:8-9). In other words, in the first

scenario Amazon's predictive analytics gets it right. But an order may not be placed for any of the items

in the speculatively shipped package.

The second and third scenarios thus include incurring additional shipping cost by redirecting the

package to another geographical area in anticipation of an order from that area, or returning it to its

point of origin. (SLIDE 4) The fourth scenario includes attempts to “induce a sale”, i.e. to turn a

potentiality into an actuality. While in transit, potential customer interest for item(s) in the package is

detected by analyzing more or less the same business variables as are used to decide what to

speculatively ship in the first place (Spiegel et. al. 2013:16). If such interest is detected, “a potential

cost to return or redirect the near-proximity package is determined” and rather than incurring the extra

costs, an attempt may be made to “convert the potential interest into an order” by offering items in the

package at a discounted price based on the cost of return or redirect analysis (Spiegel et. al. 2013:16-

17). If a customer is seduced and places an order, the package is assigned a complete address and

delivered. The last scenario is a marketing ploy, whereby “the package may be delivered to a

potentially-interested customer as a gift... to build goodwill”(Spiegel et. al. 2013:17).

What is the rationale behind these methods? Why would Amazon want to risk incurring costs of

shipping for what may be no reason? While the patent describes a process whereby Amazon's already

fast, flexible and efficient order fulfillment system becomes more so, the problem that anticipatory

shipping is a solution to is the particular difficulty of the sale facing retailers using “virtual storefronts”.

While this model of selling, as the document notes, offer several advantages in terms of costs and “a

potential customer base limited only by the reach of the Internet”, the “substantial disadvantage” to the

model is that “customers cannot receive their merchandise immediately upon purchase, but must


instead wait for the product to be shipped to them”. This latency may dissuade them from buying from

Amazon, “particularly if... items [they want] are more readily available locally” (Spiegel et. al. 2013:1).

Amazon's engineers thus argue that the speed of delivery is necessary in order to appeal to customers

who would otherwise demand the instant gratification of buying something in a bricks and mortar store.

Thus the problem the patent addresses is the difficulty of the sale particular to online merchants.

As Marx (1978:204) argues, in general, the sale, relative to the purchase, is the most difficult part of the

commodity's metamorphosis because the commodity is not in the form of direct exchangeability.

Therefore the sale forms “the greater part of [capital's] circulation time in normal circumstances” (Marx

1978:204). At the same time “the sale is more important than [the] purchase” because the latter is “not

a realization of surplus-value” (Marx 1978:205). Marx refers to exchange, the twin acts of selling and

buying, as a “changing of hands” (Marx 1976:179). At bricks and mortar stores, money and

commodities change hands immediately, but with online retailers the changing of hands is not

completed until the commodity has been delivered to a buyer who decides not to return it. The shipping

time after an order has been placed is thus part of Amazon's selling-time. The sale is thus more difficult

because the “test of use-value” (Marx 1976:179) that must be passed before the commodity's price can

be realized, is also more difficult because of the time it takes for having the commodity delivered. As

Marx (1978:135) indicates in Volume 2, a commodity's use-value includes its location in time and

space. If the commodity is not at the right place and at the right time when someone wants to buy it, it

may fail the test of use-value and no capital-value will therefore be realized. Amazon's selling-time is

thus a particular competitive disadvantage in the branch of retailing. Therefore the methods the patent

describes is all about reducing this selling-time by accelerating the circulation of their stock of

commodity-capital through anticipating realization, although in the case of speculative shipping

acceleration may only appears as such to the buyer.

Keeping the problem of the sale in mind, (SLIDE 5) the system that the patent describes, in


excruciating detail, can be understood as a logistical support for the function of the sale, maybe even as

a bearer of the formal movement C'—M' as it is connected to the movement of capital through its

circuit. If this is the case, it would indicate that the supply chain could be understood as the content of

capital as a circuit, the form-determinants perhaps including constant movement and accelerating the

velocity of capital so that the production process is in “constant continuity”. More specifically, the

system for anticipatory shipping can be thought of as a more sophisticated and complex version of the

logistical support Marx describes in the opening to the second chapter of Volume 1, where he writes

(SLIDE 6): “Commodities cannot go to market and perform exchanges in their own right. They must

have recourse to their guardians... [who] must place themselves in relation to one another as persons

whose will resides in those objects...” (Marx 1976:178). The logistical support described in this

opening is, of course, the guardian who uses his back and feet to carry the bearer of exchange-value to

the market, (and at the market, Marx (1976:189) says in chapter three, uses his tongue to shout the

commodity's prices or his literacy to put a price tag on it). More importantly, however, I argue that the

passage also indicates a certain logic or rationality of movement that things in the social form of the

commodity, and the individuals that personify this economic category, must follow. This logic of

movement is based on exchange-value, and the way in which the packages move in the patent, how

they are shipped, be it speculatively or not, is a further articulation of this logic.

I argue that moving the commodity to the market can be considered as a form determinant of

the commodity. This movement and trajectory is not normally thought of or might not even be accepted

as a determinant; after all, Marx left transportation, the “change of location” and commodities' “actual

course in space” for Volume 2. How things are moved is determined by capital. But why did Marx

include the language of “go[ing] to market” in the opening to chapter two of Volume 1? He could have

just written: “commodities cannot perform exchanges in their own right” considering that the chapter

deals with the exchange acts of commodity-owners; the only real movement discussed in that chapter is


when commodities change hands for the general equivalent. What I argue, however, is that this activity

is predicated on the movement of both commodities and their owners to the market as otherwise they

would not be able to place themselves in relation to one another. Arguably, the movement of things

(and people) to the market is a characteristic that pertains to capitalist society and not to the thing itself.

It is not a given that things must “go to market”; in a mode in which production is socialized, they

could go directly to where they are needed without having to go via the market for exchange.

Movement to the market would thus also be a presupposition of the commodity, anticipatory shipping

an articulation of movement as a result of capital.

That the phrase “go to market” is presented prior to the guardian as the agent that carries out

this activity, is significant considering that the opening to chapter two mirrors the form-analytic

relationship between chapters one and two. With form-analysis, Marx analyzes and presents the form-

determinants of the commodity before the activity of commodity-owners because the determinants are

“the given preconditions for the activity of the commodity owner” (Heinrich 2012:63). As commodity-

owners people are but representatives of commodities or their personifications, meaning that “they

must follow the laws imposed by the nature of commodities” (Heinrich 2012:63). Hence why Marx

specifies that the guardians' “must place themselves in relation to one another whose will resides in

those objects”. The commodity, as Marx observes in chapter one, is exchanged, and the owner does this

by comparing it to the general equivalent. But this comparison cannot occur unless two qualitatively

different commodities are present at the market. Therefore they must have been moved there. The

reason for this movement, I argue is given in the concept of value as a social substance and the internal

contradiction of the commodity.

As we know, value is not a characteristic of an individual commodity, but “can only appear in

the social relation between commodity and commodity” (Marx 1976:139) and that therefore the value

of a commodity “can... only be expressed relatively... in another commodity” (Marx 1976:140) that is


qualitatively different but quantitatively equal to it. Hence, in the value-relation xCa=yCb, “the natural

form of commodity B becomes the value-form of commodity A” , that is, the use-value B takes the

form of its opposite, namely exchange-value. Thus for value to appear in its form, the presence of

another commodity is presupposed in the “abstract space” of the expression of the value-form. The

implication being that two qualitatively different commodities produced by individual producers in

private and in isolation from each other must move to where they can change hands. Of course, there is

no mention of movement in chapter one, or the market for that matter, but phrases like “enter into

association” or the passive “brought into relation” stand in for movement.

Although Marx does give the commodity means of metabolic locomotion in its guardian, mere

physical movement is not enough, it still lacks the social power to circulate. The commodity's internal

contradiction must be given “room to move”, which happens with the further development of the

commodity into money, which externalizes the contradiction into the opposition between commodities

and money, i.e. a cell division of the germ form of capital (Marx 1976:198-99). In this opposition

money's function as the means of circulation actually makes the commodity formally move (Marx

1976:211). The formula C—M—C being the “room” in which the commodity's contradiction can move

in. This movement, mediated by money, enables the splitting up of the direct identity between sale and

purchase; sell your commodity now and buy what you need later somewhere else. The antithetical

phases (i.e. sale and purchase) of the commodity are the “developed forms of motion of [the] immanent

contradiction” that allow circulation to burst through spatial and temporal boundaries, i.e. so that the

commodity can move forward as a contradiction in time and space (Marx 1976:209). What I have just

referred to, Marx actually uses to describe the circulation of commodities as it occurs at the market. But

if we accept that moving the commodity to the market is required for exchange to occur, this formal

argument can be used as a theory of movement. Money is thus ultimately the reason for movement and

also establishes the grid in which people and things move, between the points of production and


exchange.

In essence, Amazon's patent expresses this logic of movement, albeit a movement based on

capital rather than exchange-value. The “room” in which capital moves is the circuit of capital (Marx

1978); what makes capital capable of moving through the circuit other than the formal imperatives of

valorization and realization is the supply chain. But given that the patent only focuses on the sale, the

reason for shipping packages, speculatively or not, is still that value must appear in its form, albeit at

first the value relation is merely ideal since the actual changing of hands, as mentioned earlier, happens

in two stages. A sale is at the same time a purchase, but in the case of online retail this identity is split

up in time and space, money changing hands before the commodity does. The patent also shows that

the commodity does not merely “go to market”, but through a supply chain; via paths that connect a

series of fulfillment centers, warehouse hubs, and materials handling and routing, all of which is

required for the commodity to be exchanged. In addition, it shows that a stock or inventory, as Marx

(1978:223) argues in Volume 2, is a necessary condition for commodity circulation.

Anticipatory shipping, however, should be thought of as an exception to the logic of movement

as described. Or more precisely it is an anticipation of a formal movement and that money will both

circulate commodities and realize their prices. Under normal circumstances, shipping commodities

does not occur until money has been used as means of circulation and purchase. With anticipatory

shipping the function of money does not make the commodity move, but rather the probability that this

function will be fulfilled. Hence, it is Amazon's predictive analytics that sets commodities in motion,

though it does not start their circulation. All of this is done because the sale is apparently so difficult

and the need to convert commodities into money so pressing that Amazon is willing to risk incurring

costs of circulation but without circulation necessarily occurring; or if a sale has been induced through

discounts, they are willing to accept the realization of a lower price than under normal circumstances.

To conclude, I want to draw attention to the phenomena of food movements during famines as


an opposite extreme to the movement of things the patent describes. In many cases food does not only

fail to move into famine-stricken areas, but in some cases, such as during the 19th century Irish famine,

the 1973 Ethiopian famine and the Bangladeshi famine of 1974, food actually moved away from where

there was desperate need for food (Sen 1981). Marx presents the value-form as a perverted form of

human practice. The reified forms of capital exist against human practice in perverted forms because

the inversion of subject and object leads to behaviours and forms of thought that emanate from the

object. The logic of moving food out famine-stricken areas, away from desperate need, or for that

matter, shipping goods to where there is no expressed need, but in anticipation of realization, are both

perfectly rational in capitalist society. But this logic has nothing to do with need, considering it

completely bypasses it as the reason for movement; instead such movements have everything to do

with exchange-value and production based on capital. The logic behind these movements arises from

the perverted forms of the capitalist mode of production, and therefore these movements cannot be

anything but verrükte, both mad and displaced.

Works Cited

Heinrich, M. (2012). An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital.New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Marx, K. (1976). Capital Vol. 1. London: Penguin Classics.

Marx, K. (1978). Capital Vol. 2. London: Penguin Classics.

Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Spiegel, J. R., McKenna, M. T., Lakshman, G. S. and Nordstrom, P. G. (2013). Method and System forAnticipatory Package Shipping. US Patent No. 8615473. Accessed August 2014 from http://www.google.com/patents/US8615473

Anticipating Realization:Value’s Logic of Movement and Amazon’s

Anticipatory Shipping

Historical Materialism, 2014Atle Mikkola Kjøsen [email protected]

Faculty of Information and Media StudiesUniversity of Western Ontario

“Commodities cannot go to market and perform exchanges in their own right. They must have recourse to their guardians... [who] must place themselves in relation to one another as persons whose will resides in those objects...” (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 178)

anticipating realization: value's logic of movement and amazon's anticipatory shipping

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