Intellectual Property

In 5^th century Greece, Plato and Aristotle frowned upon the ways of the sophists, masters of rhetoric and persuasion who, according to their critics, employed questionable reasoning and arrived at merely relativistic truths through their discussions.  Also, much to Plato’s disgust, the sophists charged a fee for their “insights”, essentially turning knowledge into a form of property, something that can be bought and sold (Brooks, Intellectual Property Rights).  Assuming this to be true, Plato and Aristotle would likely be absolutely appalled by the common perception of intellect in today’s world; for while we may look back on the actions of these masters of persuasion with disdain, the sophists were simply employing a more direct route in the exchange of knowledge that has been again established in current civilization.  Plato envisioned a society organized around the public good, where citizens would be in constant dialogue with each other, working to find some higher, universal truth, refusing to buy into the idea of personal property. Yet today, our societal systems and structures have generated a way of looking at knowledge as property, or specifically “creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce,” and created laws under which this “property” is in direct control of its creator for a certain period of time (WIPO).  Yet these concrete boundaries that have been placed around ‘creations of the mind’ raise many questions – why are these laws necessary in the first place? Who benefits from them? Also, how can we say that something is purely an individual invention, when we have no way of measuring the countless external influences that went into that person’s creation?  By examining these questions primarily through the lens of Marxist philosophy, it becomes clear that the idea and implementation of “intellectual property” is a misinterpreted and sadly unchallenged product of our economic system.  For society to be maximally progressive and directed towards the well-being of its citizens, it cannot operate upon the idea of intellectual property and should instead function out of an “intellectual commons.”