Source: From the Q&A period of a speech by Noam Chomsky at Washington State University on April 22, 2005

Questioner:

“IP” or Intellectual Properties. Do you feel that they are an integral

component to personal freedoms or a detriment? And what place does

Intellectual Property have in public and academic settings?

Chomsky:

That’s a very interesting question. It has an interesting history. The

World Trade Organization, the Uruguay round that set up the World Trade

Organization imposed, it’s called a “free trade agreement”. It’s in fact a

highly protectionist agreement. The US is strongly opposed to free trade,

just as business leaders are, just as they’re opposed to a market economy.

A crucial part of the Uruguay round, WTO, NAFTA, and the rest of them, is

very strong (what are called) intellectual property rights. What it

actually means is rights that guarantee monopoly pricing power to private

tyrannies.

So take, say, a drug corporation. Most of the serious research and

development, the hard part of it, is funded by the public. In fact most of

the economy comes out of public expenditures through the state system, which

is the source of most innovation and development. I mean computers, the

internet. Just go through the range, it’s all coming out of the state

system primarily. There is research and development in the corporate

system, some, but it’s mostly at the marketing end. And the same is true of

drugs.

Once the corporations gain the benefit of the public paying the costs and

taking the risks, they want to monopolize the profit. And the intellectual

property rights, they’re not for small inventors. In fact the people doing

the work in the corporations, they don’t get anything out of it, like a

dollar if they invent something. It’s the corporate tyrannies that are

making the profits, and they want to guarantee them.

The World Trade Organization proposed new, enhanced intellectual property

rights, patent rights, which means monopoly pricing rights, far beyond

anything that existed in the past. In fact they are not only designed to

maximize monopoly pricing, and profit, but also to prevent development.

That’s rather crucial. WTO rules introduced product patents. Used to be

you could patent a process, but not the product. Which means if some smart

guy could figure out a better way of doing it, he could do it. They want to

block that. It’s important to block development and progress, in order to

ensure monopoly rights. So they now have product patents.

Well if you take a look at, say, US history. Suppose the colonies after

independence had been forced to accept that regime. Do you know what we’d

be doing now? Well first of all there’d be very few of us here. But those

of us who would be here would be pursuing our comparative advantage and

exporting fish and fur. That’s what economists tell you is right. Pursue

your comparative advantage. That was our comparative advantage. We

certainly wouldn’t have had a textile industry. British textiles were way

cheaper and better. Actually British textiles were cheaper and better

because Britain had crushed Irish and Indian superior textile manufacturers

and stolen their techniques. So they were now the preeminent textile

manufacturer, by force of course.

The US would never have had a textile industry. It grew up around

Massachusetts, but the only way it could develop was extremely high tariffs

which protected unviable US industries. So the textile industry developed,

and that has a spin off into other industries. And so it continues.

The US would never have had a steel industry. Again same reason. British

steel was way superior. One of the reasons is because they were stealing

Indian techniques. British engineers were going to India to learn about

steel-making well into the 19th century. Britain ran the country by force,

so they could take what they knew. And they develop a steel industry. And

the US imposed extremely high tariffs, also massive government involvement,

through the military system as usual. And the US developed a steel

industry. And so it continues. Right up to the present.

Furthermore that’s true of every single developed society. That’s one of

the best known truths of economic history. The only countries that

developed are the ones that pursued these techniques. The ones that weren’t

able… There were countries that were forced to adopt “free trade” and

“liberalization”: the colonies, and they got destroyed. And the divide

between the first and the third world is really since the 18th century. It

wasn’t very much in the 18th century, and it’s very sharply along these

lines.

Well, that’s what the intellectual property rights are for. In fact there’s

a name for it in economic history. Friedrich List, famous German political

economist in the 19th century, who was actually borrowing from Andrew

Hamilton, called it “kicking away the ladder”. First you use state power

and violence to develop, then you kick away those procedures so that other

people can’t do it.

Intellectual property rights has very little to do with individual

initiative. I mean, Einstein didn’t have any intellectual property rights

on relativity theory. Science and innovation is carried out by people that

are interested in it. That’s the way science works. There’s an effort in

very recent years to commercialize it, like they commercialize everything

else. So you don’t do it because it’s exciting and challenging, and you

want to find out something new, and you want the world to benefit from it.

You do it because maybe you can make some money out of it. I mean that’s

a… you can make your own judgment about the moral value. I think it’s

extremely cheapening, but, also destructive of initiative and development.

And the profits don’t go back to individual inventors. It’s a very well

studied topic. Take one that’s really well studied, MIT’s involved:

computer controlled machine tools, a very fundamental component of the

economy. Well, there’s a very good study of this by David Nobel, a leading

political economist. What he pointed out and discovered is the techniques

were invented by some small guy, you know working in his garage somewhere

in, I think, Michigan. Actually when the MIT mechanical engineering

department learned about it they picked them up and they developed them and

extended them and so on. And then the corporations came in and picked them

up from them, and finally it became a core part of US industry. Well, what

happened to the guy who invented it? He’s still probably working in his

garage in Michigan, or wherever it is. And that’s very typical.

I just don’t think it has much to do with innovation or independence. It

has to do with protecting major concentrations of power, which mostly got

their power as a public gift, and making sure that they can maintain and

expand their power. And these are highly protectionist devices and I don’t

think… You really have to ram them down people’s throats. They don’t

make any economic sense or any other sense.

Questioner:

…So what role though do you think they should play in academic and public

institutions?

Chomsky:

Well I don’t think they should play any role. (Applause) But, since 1981

there was an amendment which gave universities the right to patent

inventions that came out of their own research. Actually that’s kind of a

gag. I mean nothing comes out of the university’s own research. It comes

out of public funding. That’s how the university can function. That’s how

their research projects work. The whole thing is set up to socialize cost

and risk to the general public, and then within that context, yeah in your

biology lab you can invent something. But I don’t think universities should

patent it. They should be working for the public good. (Applause) And that

means it should be available to the public. So…