> So the environmentalists taking the corporate buck in the
> name of cleaning up companies' performance are, in truth,
> helping them to stay dirty by bypassing democratic
> constraints. But because corporations have invested so
> heavily in avoiding democracy, CSR has become big business
> for greens.
>
> In this social climate, it's not hard to see why Peter
> Melchett imagined that he could move to Burson Marsteller
> without betraying his ideals. It was a staggeringly naive
> and stupid decision, which has destroyed his credibility and
> seriously damaged Greenpeace's (as well, paradoxically, as
> reducing his market value for Burson Marsteller), but it is
> consistent with the thinking prevalent in some of the bigger
> organisations.
>
> Environmentalism, like almost everything else, is in danger
> of being swallowed by the corporate leviathan. If this
> happens, it will disappear without trace. No one threatens
> its survival as much as the greens who have taken the
> company shilling.
Monbiot does a better job of taking the pulse of an ill patient than he does in recommending a cure. It should be pretty obvious by now that environmentalist reformism is a dead end that is easily co-opted by corporate greenwashing and corporate hiring of reformist sellouts like Peter Melchett. While the reformist environmental movement has achieved some real goals over the decades, it is inherently incapable of transcending the methods in which capitalism has recuperated it.
What we need now is a return to direct action, i.e. a dialougue with capitalism like the one the black bloc conducted on the streets of Seattle in 1999. Monsanto isn't on the ropes because of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace--it was put there by illegal direct action and sabotage conducted by thousands of activists around the world.
I see a vivid example of this dead end every time I walk down the street to the subway station. Across the street from the gleaming QWest building is the slightly smaller corporate headquarters of the Nature Conservancy.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was an underground tunnel between the two buildings.
<< Chuck0 >>
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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE
An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said, "I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking hands when a truck hit us."
(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).