Re: Aikido Activism -- a new economic and social model already begun?
by Burkhart
07 April 2004 16:45 UTC < < <
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> Kevin Danaher, a leading activist and writer regarding
> the history of corporate objectives and excess, has
> used the term Aikido to describe Global Exchange's
> strategic campaign against Nike, Starbucks, etc. --
> using the force of PR (a power and momentum
> traditionally leveraged by corporations) or the threat
> of that force to present a turning force to the
> corporation,

I thought that the current state of thinking was moving
against company-specific campaigns because they seemed
to produce only company-specific results? I also don't
understand how intellectual property law fits into this.

dd

Hi dd,

Let me take the second issue first, and vice versa. Can you imagine every law, court case, contract -- essentially every societal transaction -- as either relating to individual empowerment or collective empowerment? Individual empowerment means individual liberties and freedoms as well as the secondary effects that come from living in a society where individual initiative is rewarded, so people are motivated, and levels of industry, production, commerce, and interaction are high. Now the question to me is: how does the collective empowerment fit in with the individual empowerment? Sometimes the two seem to be at odds, for example as in the case of approximately 90-year copyright periods that seem mostly to serve the collective empowerment of Hollywood -- rather than any individual empowerment to creatives. So the question should be: does a given collective empowerment propel individual empowerment forward or does it curb individual empowerment? I think a fundamental thesis in sociology should be that ideal collective empowerment is always working towards furthering individual empowerment -- and perhaps that the ONLY sustainable collective empowerment has the advance of individual empowerment as its primary goal (in the essay, I point out that while this may be an unrealizable ideal, that at least it defines an objective for policy and practice). The cases of companies or governments unjustly exploiting their customers, suppliers, investors, or citizenry all stand out as examples where collective empowerment worked against individual empowerment.

So that is the set up to showing how intellectual property law fits in. Some point to the basis of intellectual property law in the U.S. constitution, where Section 8, Clause 8, indicates government is empowered "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and
Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." In 1750, Rousseau argued that the advancement of art and science had not been beneficial to humankind, but had permitted governments to have greater powers to unjustly exploit the citizenry. Here I go back to arguing that individual empowerment is the key (after all we are a society of individuals, and the net capability, joy, wisdom, or any other quality of society is the sum total of all the individual capabilities, joys, wisdoms, etc.). And again I advance the concept that collective empowerment is there to serve individual empowerment (which this clause of the constitution certainly appears to support). Then, IP
(Intellectual Property) Aikido Activism merely reflects a strategy by which individual empowerment is aimed to be advanced by using the legal protections of intellectual property to promote a campaign to advance better understanding
and practice of collective empowerment, by forming corporations consistent with the most sound ideals of our time -- for example in the model of Total Corporate Responsibility advanced and perhaps invented by Frank Dixon of
Innovest ( www.innovestgroup.com/ ). Frank points out that public companies are typically held back from employing the type of responsibility that would actually make them "sustainable" corporations because of Wall Street's pressure on maximizing profit and growth. In order to break free from competitive pressure to behave irresponsibly, intellectual property can substantially clear a field from competitors so to permit freer choices in degree of corporate responsibility. So IP Aikido Activism offers the fulcrum
to leverage in a new advanced state of capitalism, which in the essay I call "Individual Empowerment Capitalism," for which in a globalizing age, sustainability is naturally a key component -- but there are other goals, including transparency/accountability and moderation of profits (because myopic focus on profit is exactly what leads to neglect of responsibility).

Now to your first question. On the issue of company-specific campaigns vs. categorical progressive efforts, I am no expert, but for example after the first tobacco company had to answer for spiking its cigarettes with nicotine to hook its customers, the whole industry was then brought into court. Similarly the anti-sweatshop movement began with one or a few target companies -- but may not have grown to be as systematically addressed as the tobacco issues. The
point you make is made in a different way by Danaher in his book, Insurgency, when he points out that many of the worst offenders in the sweatshop category are the labelless brands, for which PR Aikido Activism does little (except that
by using it against Nike, the anti-sweatshop issue at least got thrust into the public consciousness). If I recall his point wasn't that individual corporate campaigns were a bad thing, merely that the remediation needed to advance
further than just the largest companies, who might be offenders of using sweatshops, but quite possibly the worst offenders were not the Nikes of the world, but the countless smaller, often unnamed clothing manufacturers.

Thanks dd for your questions.

Burkhart