"Yer not a RAD, are ya?"
May. 14th, 2007 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mhuzzellSo my Granddad has asked me on occasion. Heh. And yet I still want to be like him when I get old. He recently had another bout of ill health, and is currently drifting in and out of coherence. But when he is coherent, he's still sharp. And apparently contemplating etymologies. The other day he woke up and asked my dad to fetch a dictionary, because he'd been wondering whether 'bride' and 'bridal' have the same root. Believe it or not, they don't.
Anyway. Yesterday the Ethical Investment campaign held a meeting to work out the final wording of the policy we will present to the university's finance managers. At this meeting, Phil raised an interesting question: can investment ever be ethical? And if not, what is the point of such campaigns?
Because of course investment can't be ethical. Capitalism itself is inherently flawed. One argument says that you should just leave it alone, let it get as evil as it will, so that the people will rise up against it. I prefer Alice's line: that if we try to make it ethical and fail, we will expose the flaws inherent in the system. Like a massive, real-life Socratic irony.
At least we're not alone. This push to try to make capitalism somehow ethical has been growing for years. Just this morning, there was an article in The Guardian about shareholders trying to make Tesco actually act ethically and conform to their purported ideals in overseas trade. Because apparently paying £8 per month to their workers in Bangladesh (where a living wage is estimated at £22 per month) doesn't fulfil Tesco's "commitment to corporate social responsibility". Who knew? But I worry that, even if the shareholders are successful, Tesco will respond with greenwash rather than real change. A very disturbing article in the Utne Reader last summer has made me highly suspicious of the whole idea of "green businesses". Because image is everything in public opinion; they don't have to actually change, they just have to make people think they're ethically and environmentally sound. Even fucking Wal-Mart is in on it.
But I still hope Alice's argument will work. Because this greenwash is making me question my generally pragmatic stance. Should I stick to my ideals, or compromise in order to (perhaps) effect real change? I wish I had time to re-read some of the early anarchists, at least for inspriration. Mikhail "bickered with Marx" Bakunin, or Pierre Joseph "I didn't vote for the constitution because it was a constitution" Proudhon--and Proudhon was supposedly the "pragmatist" among the anarchists!
But I'm not sure if sticking steadfastly to one's ideals is always best. Take voting, for instance. Emma Goldman said you should never vote, because by participating you legitimise the whole electoral system. But I can't commit myself to non-participation, because I can't stand to just stand by. Nor would I intentionally spoil a ballot (in most cases), because I don't think it actually makes a point. This most recent election in Scotland had a record number of spoiled ballots, and not one analysis has so much as mentioned the possibility that some of them might have been intentionally spoiled--mostly people just rail against the apparent stupidity of a population that can't figure out a ballot paper. So I would rather vote in the lesser evil (when in fact there is one) than let the greater evil rule. I also see no contradiction in vehemently opposing any particular actions of someone I helped vote into power.
And yet it is in Kropotkin that I find the most real inspiration. I find his theories to be hopelessly utopian, but I admire his commitment to the movement. His descision to 'forego the pure joys of academia' in order to devote himself to anarchism is often on my mind. (And was his cause any less noble for having failed?) I find I'm very cynical lately, defeatist, apathetic. One must remember: "Struggle! To struggle is to live, and the fiercer the struggle the intenser the life. Then you will have lived; and a few hours of such a life are worth years spent vegetating. Struggle so that all may live this rich, overflowing life. And be sure that in this struggle you find a joy greater than anything else can give. This is all the science of morality can tell you. Yours is the choice."
Anyway. Yesterday the Ethical Investment campaign held a meeting to work out the final wording of the policy we will present to the university's finance managers. At this meeting, Phil raised an interesting question: can investment ever be ethical? And if not, what is the point of such campaigns?
Because of course investment can't be ethical. Capitalism itself is inherently flawed. One argument says that you should just leave it alone, let it get as evil as it will, so that the people will rise up against it. I prefer Alice's line: that if we try to make it ethical and fail, we will expose the flaws inherent in the system. Like a massive, real-life Socratic irony.
At least we're not alone. This push to try to make capitalism somehow ethical has been growing for years. Just this morning, there was an article in The Guardian about shareholders trying to make Tesco actually act ethically and conform to their purported ideals in overseas trade. Because apparently paying £8 per month to their workers in Bangladesh (where a living wage is estimated at £22 per month) doesn't fulfil Tesco's "commitment to corporate social responsibility". Who knew? But I worry that, even if the shareholders are successful, Tesco will respond with greenwash rather than real change. A very disturbing article in the Utne Reader last summer has made me highly suspicious of the whole idea of "green businesses". Because image is everything in public opinion; they don't have to actually change, they just have to make people think they're ethically and environmentally sound. Even fucking Wal-Mart is in on it.
But I still hope Alice's argument will work. Because this greenwash is making me question my generally pragmatic stance. Should I stick to my ideals, or compromise in order to (perhaps) effect real change? I wish I had time to re-read some of the early anarchists, at least for inspriration. Mikhail "bickered with Marx" Bakunin, or Pierre Joseph "I didn't vote for the constitution because it was a constitution" Proudhon--and Proudhon was supposedly the "pragmatist" among the anarchists!
But I'm not sure if sticking steadfastly to one's ideals is always best. Take voting, for instance. Emma Goldman said you should never vote, because by participating you legitimise the whole electoral system. But I can't commit myself to non-participation, because I can't stand to just stand by. Nor would I intentionally spoil a ballot (in most cases), because I don't think it actually makes a point. This most recent election in Scotland had a record number of spoiled ballots, and not one analysis has so much as mentioned the possibility that some of them might have been intentionally spoiled--mostly people just rail against the apparent stupidity of a population that can't figure out a ballot paper. So I would rather vote in the lesser evil (when in fact there is one) than let the greater evil rule. I also see no contradiction in vehemently opposing any particular actions of someone I helped vote into power.
And yet it is in Kropotkin that I find the most real inspiration. I find his theories to be hopelessly utopian, but I admire his commitment to the movement. His descision to 'forego the pure joys of academia' in order to devote himself to anarchism is often on my mind. (And was his cause any less noble for having failed?) I find I'm very cynical lately, defeatist, apathetic. One must remember: "Struggle! To struggle is to live, and the fiercer the struggle the intenser the life. Then you will have lived; and a few hours of such a life are worth years spent vegetating. Struggle so that all may live this rich, overflowing life. And be sure that in this struggle you find a joy greater than anything else can give. This is all the science of morality can tell you. Yours is the choice."
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 08:22 pm (UTC)Another good quote that I came across recently, from Robespierre, who would have known, "No one loves armed missionaries."
Over the years I have become an ameliorist, rad though I was in my youth. (My father's parents, btw, were card-carrying Communists, though they left the party in the 30s because of Stalin. Unlike certain French Intellectuals we could name, they were never taken in by him.) Effect change, let the gods worry about the Big Picture! is my motto. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 08:37 pm (UTC)