<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Orsan</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 6:46 PM<br>Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: [WSF-Discuss] Searching for radicalism in a corporate age<br>To: "<<a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>>" <<a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>><br>
<br><br><div dir="auto"><div>Another interesting read:</div><div><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> "Brian K. Murphy" <<a href="mailto:brian@radicalroad.com" target="_blank">brian@radicalroad.com</a>><br>
<b>Date:</b> 14 augustus 2014 13:26:20 CEST<br><b>To:</b> <<a href="mailto:worldsocialforum-discuss@openspaceforum.net" target="_blank">worldsocialforum-discuss@openspaceforum.net</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[WSF-Discuss] Searching for radicalism in a corporate age</b><br>
<b>Reply-To:</b> Discussion list about the WSF <<a href="mailto:worldsocialforum-discuss@openspaceforum.net" target="_blank">worldsocialforum-discuss@openspaceforum.net</a>><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div><a href="http://greattransition.org/document/searching-for-radicalism-in-a-co" target="_blank">http://greattransition.org/document/searching-for-radicalism-in-a-co</a><span></span>rporate-age</div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#0000FF"><b>Searching for Radicalism in a
Corporate Age</b></font></div>
<div><b>Review and discussion of:<i> Protest Inc.: The Corporatization
of Activism</i>, by Peter Dauvergne and Geneviere LeBaron, Polity, 200
pp.</b></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>by Gus Speth, July 2014</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>As national and international challenges mount across the full
spectrum of human affairs, and as more and more acute observers
conclude that the problems we face trace back one way or another to
our system of political economy-the corporatist, consumerist
capitalism that we have today-it is timely to ask, where is the
activism that might change the system?<br>
</div>
<div>Some would say that it is currently surging. But Peter Dauvergne
and Geneviere LeBaron in their new book<i> Protest Inc.: The
Corporatization of Activism</i> are skeptical. Addressing the
prospects for an organized transnational movement, they see "little
chance of a global grassroots uprising able to transform the world
order."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Turning to the possibility of a more decentralized "movement of
movements," they ask,</div>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>"Do the facts really suggest that mobilizing the
grassroots in this way can ever slow globalization? Or replace
capitalism? Or achieve peace and justice? Many activists certainly
think so. But our analysis suggests that this is unlikely, and gets
unlikelier with each passing year."</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>What Dauvergne and LeBaron see as critical to the goals they seek
is the rise of a radical activism that will</div>
<blockquote>
<blockquote> "challenge political and corporate authority and
call for structural changeŠSolutions for radical activists cannot
arise from within the structures of the capitalist system but must
instead get at the root causes."</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>"What we are trying to understand," they write, "is why so
many activists within longstanding social and environmental movements
are increasingly accepting and working within the frame of global
capitalism."<br>
<br>
The book's great value lies in its contribution to the analysis of
the headwinds driving against the rise of this radical activism.
Prominent in their analysis is the active suppression and
discouragement of dissent. The authors contrast the escalating
protests pre-9/11-at international trade talks, World Bank meetings,
G8 summits, and elsewhere-with the post-9/11 situation and the
concurrent increasing frequency of paramilitary policing, forced
emptying of streets and parks, criminalization of protests, branding
of protesters as terrorists, and heightened surveillance of
activists.<br>
<br>
Another headwind they describe is the breakdown of social capital,
group solidarity, and shared political consciousness-in short, the
loss of the infrastructure of dissent.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Runaway businesses, throwaway cities, and fast-moving
populations-and, in the United States, the decline in union
membership-have all contributed to this breakdown. We have lost many
of the most important settings where group dissent can be born.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Closely related to these patterns is the individualization of
responsibility. The fault, dear friends, is not in the system but in
ourselves. We need to buy more that is fair trade, GMO-free, and
organic. If only we all drove Priuses, then we could save XYZ tons of
carbon from going into the air.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In the process, the authors note, we channel more and more time
and energy into the market as consumers, and less and less time as
citizens collectively addressing the paucity of responsible consumer
choices and the curse of consumerism generally.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>"With social life privatizing and fragmenting," the authors
note, "activism and politics require more time, just as people have
less and less time to become involved."<br>
</div>
<div><i>Protest Inc.</i> also highlights the enclosure of activism in
increasingly large and bureaucratic NGOs.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In the NGO world, there are three dominant, interconnected
imperatives: winning victories, getting credit for one's
accomplishments, and raising money. In many, perhaps most, contexts
today, the desire to be "effective" compels NGOs to a certain
tameness. We see this, for example, in the severely circumscribed
world of climate action advocacy in Washington, DC, today. The
imperative to get credit for accomplishments and to raise funds to get
more underlie the current fracturing of each progressive cause into an
often bewildering array of separate, competing groups, each promoting
its own brand.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>And in our world of creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy, NGO
success on all three fronts can benefit greatly from close links to
business and family wealth. But the closer one gets, the narrower the
range of acceptable critique becomes.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I suspect there are other forces sapping the strength of radical
activism. Certainly, in the United States, there are some who see our
situation as overwhelming and hopeless-too far gone to save, more<i>
game-over</i> than<i> game-on</i>. Even more find it all too painful
or difficult to think about, so they do not even try. Others who might
be prepared to struggle ask, for what? Quietly, they fear that
Margaret Thatcher was correct when she famously said that "there is
no alternative."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Clearly, more needs to be done to establish with a wide public
the plausible possibility of a Great Transition to a new political
economy-the next system.</div>
<div><br>
Dauvergne and LeBaron package their core points and much more in what
they call the<i> corporatization of activism</i> (though not
everything fits neatly). They see an overall trend towards a situation
where</div>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>"more and more corporations [are] financing and
partnering with activist groups [and] activists are increasingly
communicating, arguing, and situating goals within a corporatized
frame."</blockquote>
<blockquote><br></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div>They see a world</div>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>"where the agendas, discourse, questions, and proposed
solutions of human rights, gender equality, social justice, animal
rights, and environmental activist organizations increasingly conform
with, rather than challenge, global capitalism."</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Overall,<i> Protest Inc.</i> is feisty, provocative, and
persuasive on many points, and it raises vital issues. Where is
radical activism when we need it? Can we expect existing environmental
and other NGOs to deliver it? The book is not optimistic on either
question.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Nor should the reader expect a bold plan of action. The authors'
goal, they say, is to sound a loud alarm, to send a warning shot</div>
<blockquote>"across the bows of corporatizing activism, moving along
conversations among activists about strategy and encouraging
re-evaluation of public policies that stifle grassroots
activism."</blockquote>
<blockquote><br></blockquote>
<div>But the book has definite shortcomings. Like the authors, I
believe some important things can be seen best from 30,000 feet, but
this book carries that approach to an extreme. It often
overgeneralizes and overstates, only to be forced into repeated
'let-us-be-clear-what-we're-not-saying' qualifications.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>It takes a lot of easy shots at groups like the Nature
Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International, as
if anyone ever expected them to be radical activists.</div>
<div><br>
The authors also see a trend of increasing NGO coziness with
corporations and capitalism and a weakening of NGO resolve to
challenge the system. At least judging from my experience with
environmental NGOs, my reading of history is a little different.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The main environmental NGOs opted to work within the system well
over 40 years ago, and little has changed on that score since then. My
concern, which I have now written up several times, is that we should
have changed. We should have realized that we were winning battles but
losing the planet and that we should reassess our strategy and launch
a new environmentalism aimed at systemic changes that could lead us to
a new economy and a new politics.<br>
</div>
<div>My larger concern with the book, though, is its failure to look
more searchingly at the prospects for deep, transformative change. The
issue deserves more than the brief invocation of
"corporatization."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>It would be helpful to know, for example, what the authors'
theory of change is. Even with the long odds they see, if they have
not abandoned hope altogether (and the book itself is good evidence
that they have not), there must be some set of circumstances that they
would agree might launch a Great Transition. What are they?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Here, the authors would do well to consult for guidance the work
on scenarios, agency, and strategy gathered on this website.
Certainly, the potential role of crises features prominently in many
such analyses, but says little about crises and essentially nothing
about the climate change tsunami right off shore.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Linked to the omission of a theory of change is the failure to
look systematically at whether the levers of change are beginning to
move. I, for one, think that they are and that we are seeing the birth
of a new activism, some of it radical in both intent and method.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>But I would have liked to know more about what the authors think.
Regardless of who has the better crystal ball on this matter,
Dauvergne and LeBaron are right that societies are perilously close to
losing the ability cope and that large NGOs have failed to face up to
the extent of change needed.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>***************</div>
<div><i><b>Gus Speth</b></i> is an Associate Fellow at Tellus
Institute and a professor at the Vermont Law School. Previously, he
was the Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,
Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, and
chairman of the US Council on Environmental Quality. He is the founder
of the World Resources Institute and the co-founder of the Natural
Resources Defense Council. His latest book is a memoir,<i> Angels by
the River</i>, to be published by Chelsea Green Publishers in October
2014.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><i><b>See more at:
<a href="http://greattransition.org/document/searching-for-radicalism-in-a-cor" target="_blank">http://greattransition.org/document/searching-for-radicalism-in-a-cor</a><span></span>porate-age#sthash.M6WKOr0E.dpuf</b></i></div>
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