When not-for-profit organizations take on corporate heavyweights

Environmental not- for- profits in Australia are at the front line in campaigns and actions against corporate heavyweights.

As corporations increasingly use their financial and legal power to silence and challenge campaigning organizations, the risks to not-for- profits are significant.

Environmental organizations and campaigners are particularly vulnerable as they face off against corporate heavyweights who are well-resourced, well-connected and powerful.

The risks facing not-for-profits who take on corporate heavyweights was demonstrated in the recent case of the WWF and its legal stoush with mining magnate  Clive Palmer.

In a media release WWF claimed  that the Clive Palmer owned Yubala nickel refinery near Townsville Queensland was threatening to collapse, thereby releasing toxins into the environment. The WWF claimed that three ponds containing toxic industrial waste were at capacity and could collapse and create a major environmental disaster. 

Palmer sued the WWF and was successful in the court proceedings. The WWF  was forced to apologize to Clive Palmer and agreed to pay his legal costs over its claims..

Now Greenpace Australia is taking on another global corporate heavyweight Coca Cola and it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Greenpeace Australia has launched a media campaign against  corporate heavyweight Coca Cola Amatil to pressure Federal and State Governments to implement a national containers scheme. 

Greenpeace's campaign comes in the wake of Coca Cola Amatil's victory in the Northern Terriry courts where the powerful and wealthy multinational corporation used its financial and legal power  to successfully dismantle the Northern Territory Government's recycling scheme 'cash for containers'. In January 2011 the Northern Territory Government introduced a deposit scheme to encourgage people to recycle bottles and cans. Coca Cola successfully challenged the scheme in court claiming it was an inefficient and expensive method of increasing recycling rates.

Greenpeace is running full-page ads in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Its campaign has been entirely funded by  individual donations. In just over two weeks, over 50,000 people have  signed up to the campaign calling on politicians to implement a national ‘Cash for Containers’ scheme. 

Greenpeace is targeting Coca Cola Amatil directly arguing that: 

"Coke is currently trashing a popular and proven 10 cent recycling refund scheme and is the main blocker standing in the way of a national scheme. ‘Cash for containers’ has run successfully for 30 years in South Australia, where recycling rates are almost double those across the rest of the country.

Coca Cola Amatil has for years sought to undermine this proven system, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on misleading advertising and reportedly threatening to campaign against MPs who support the policy.

Largest protest in European history barely rates a mention in Australia

"This austerity is a never-ending story. We see no light at the end of the end of the tunnel, just more pain and difficulties. We have to protest, do something to stop it,"
 Lisbon pensioner Jose Marques.

On Wednesday fourteen million people across 23 European states participated in the largest strike and protest in European history in the  hope of staving off decades of corporate led austerity, precarity and unemployment.

Millions of workers walked off their jobs and marched on parliament buildings across the continent. Bloody street battles ensued Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Report from the streets can be seen here, here, here, here and here

The protests barely rated a mention here in Australia, other than a few reports here,and here.

Currently reading: Genealogies of Citizenship by Margaret Somers

Margaret Somers  book Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights is one of the finest books of contemporary social and political analyses I have read for a long time.

The book describes and analyses how decades of market fundamentalism have transformed increasing numbers of rights-bearing citizens into socially excluded internally stateless persons.  Somers argues us that the power and authority of the market is distorting the meaning of citizenship from non-contractual shared fate to conditional privilege, making rights, inclusion and moral worth dependent on contractual market value.

I rank it with Sheldon Wolin's remarkable book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism  as among the most prescient and significant diagnoses of our social, economic and political current malaise.

The pioneering work of Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)

With the death of Elinor Ostrom, activists and campaigners for social and economic justice have lost an important advocate and supporter.

Ostrom who was a Professor at Indiana University was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 2009.

Ostrom's work challenged and rebutted fundamental economic beliefs, particularly free market and neo-classical economic paradigms. Ostrom was particularly concerned with  relational aspects of economic activity — the ways in which people interact and negotiate with each other to forge rules and informal social understandings.

Ostrom's early work focused on what she called co-production. Ostrom argued that many public services depend heavily on the contribution of time and effort by the persons who consume these services, i.e., the clients and citizens.Ostrom believed that services rely as much upon the unacknowledged knowledge, assets and efforts of service ‘users’ as the expertise of professional providers. It was the informal understanding of local communities and the on the ground relationships that make services more effective.

Co-production describes the relationship that exist between ‘regular producers’, like health workers, police, and schoolteachers and their ‘clients’ who may be transformed by the services into safer, better educated and/or healthier persons.

Ostrom defined co-production as

 “…the mix of activities that both public service agents and citizens contribute to the provision of public services. The former are involved as professionals, or ‘regular producers’, while ‘citizen production’ is based on voluntary efforts by individuals and groups to enhance the quality and/or quantity of the services they use”

One implication is that privatization of public services and the turning over of services to the market fundamentally transforms the relationship between provider and service user, hampering the development of co-production and democratic governance.

Her later work examined how people and communities collaborate and organize themselves to manage collective shared resources like forests, fisheries and natural and social resources. The research overturned the conventional wisdom about government regulation  and challenged the idea that private ownership of public resources is better and more effective than the public and collective sphere.

Ostrom's work provides clear evidence  that the commons-based traditions of cooperation and communal management of resources is not a violation of basic economic common sense.

Her work undermines political conservatives and mainstream economists who denigrate collectively managed property and government and who argue that only private property and the "free market" can responsibly manage resources.  Her work also directly challenges current ideas that privatization and private ownership and expert management of resources is a more effective strategy than collective and public management

Ostrom advocated a “polycentric” approach to managing shared or common resources involving oversight “at multiple levels with autonomy at each level. She argued that shared management of resources helps to establish rules that “tend to encourage the growth of trust and reciprocity” among people who use and care for a particular commons.

Ostrim argued that key management decisions should be made as close to the scene of events and the people and groups involved as possible. Her work showed that the people most affected by or with a stake in shared or common resources are the ones best able to collaborate to use and manage those shared resources effectively and sustainably.

Her work demonstrates that ordinary people are able to create rules, institutions and systems that ensure the equitable and sustainable management of shared and common resources, what is often called our 'common wealth'.

She demonstrated the importance of shared (collective) rather than expert or private management of resources and knowledge and emphasises the importance of active citizen partcipation. She cited a comprehensive study of 100 forests in 14 countries that detailed how the involvement of local people in decisionmaking is more important to successfully sustaining healthy forests than who is actually in charge of the forests.

 David Bollier writes of the significance of Ostrom's work:

In the 1970s, economics was quickly veering into a kind of religious fundamentalism. It was a discipline obsessed with “rational individualism,” private property rights and markets even though the universe of meaningful human activity is much broader and complex. Lin Ostrom pioneered a different, more humanistic way of thinking about “the economy” and resource management. She originally focused on property rights and “common-pool resources,” collective resources over which no one has private property rights or exclusive control, such as fishers, grazing lands and groundwater. This work later evolved into a broader study of the commons as a rich, cross-cultural socio-ecological paradigm. Working within the social sciences, Ostrom proceeded to build a new school of thought within the standard economic narrative while extending it in vital ways.

 Ostrom's work also has direct relevance to the current economic and environment crises. She wrote:

"We cannot rely on singular global policies to solve the problem of managing our common resources: the oceans, atmosphere, forests, waterways, and rich diversity of life that combine to create the right conditions for life, including seven billion humans, to thrive.....Success will hinge on developing many overlapping policies to achieve the goals,.......We have a decade to act before the economic cost of current viable solutions becomes too high. Without action, we risk catastrophic and perhaps irreversible changes to our life-support system.”

Articles written in memory of her work are here, here, here and here.

A reading list of her work is here.

The last article she wrote before she died is here

Her last book, published just before her death was titled Working Together: Collective Action, the Commons, and Multiple Methods in Practice, and describes the advantages of using several different research methods to study a problem.

Left Turn: some of Australia's leading leftist thinkers think afresh

Looking forward to reading the new book Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left  edited by Antony Loewenstein** and Jeff Sparrow* both fine Australian writers, thinkers and campaigners.

Antony Loewenstein points out that the book is not a manifesto for change but rather a collection of interesting ideas that don’t necessarily get aired or discussed.

 The book is published by Melbourne University Press. A short review of the book is here  and a Facebook site for discussion of the book is here.

More about Anthony Loewenstein is here and some of Jeff Sparrow's writings are here.

A discussion between Antony and Jeff at the book's launch is available (here) on the Readings website. Extracts are below.

Antony Loewenstein: You were an activist before you became a writer and editor. Why do you think the Left still matters?

Jeff Sparrow: Because Australian politics has reached a dangerous impasse. The world situation is becoming increasingly fraught, and yet the simplest of reforms now seem entirely off the table. Climate change provides an obvious example of the growing gulf between what needs to happen and what’s actually being offered but there are plenty more instances.

Crucially, the range of ideas given serious consideration in Australian public life has become scarily narrow. In some ways, you could say the real division today lies not between the two main parties, but rather between the beliefs accepted by all political insiders (neoliberal economics, support for the US alliance, moderately conservative social norms, etc) and any other ideas whatsoever.

What’s more, the central tenets of that insider consensus seem impervious to external challenge. In other fields, being wrong about everything would be considered a career handicap. In Australian politics, the pundits who touted for the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have only become more influential, just as the economists who entirely failed to predict the GFC or the European meltdown dominate the discussions.

That’s the idea behind this book. It’s an attempt to open up debates, to give to voice for arguments from the Left, positions that generally don't get much of a hearing.

JS: As an independent journalist, how do you think the Left should react to the deep distrust of the mainstream media, especially when it comes to war, politics and protests?

AL: Not just whinge about it but both better critique the failings of the corporate media and support alternatives to it. Take the post 9/11 period. Far too many mainstream journalists haven’t just been physically embedded with the American and Australian military in Iraq or Afghanistan, they've been embedded psychologically with patriotic fervour. ‘Our’ side doesn’t commit crimes, we’re told, it’s an aberration if soldiers massacre civilians. This is pure propaganda and not the impression of civilians in a range of countries we're occupying, including Afghanistan (I just returned from there and heard it myself).

In Australia, there are few Leftists given space to challenge the establishment line over war and peace. There are occasional voices contesting this policy or that strategy but few who have consistently claimed that the ‘war on terror’ is more about instilling fear in the community than killing our enemies.
The writers in Left Turn don’t merely complain about the status-quo; they try to give alternatives to wilful, mainstream media blindness.

AL: Why hasn’t the Left been more successful in articulating alternatives to the GFC? Does the Occupy Movement represent an answer?

JS: The general cynicism about so many institutions, from newspapers to politicians, often translates into a disengagement from politics of any kind. Voters disenchanted with the major parties are just as likely to tune out from political discussions as they are to explore alternatives.

That's why the Occupy phenomenon was so important, since it managed, even if only briefly, to capture the political imagination. In my chapter on Occupy, I quote the American writer Barbara Ehrenreich: ‘Perhaps the best kept political secret of our time,’ she says, ‘is that politics, as a democratic undertaking, can be not only “fun”, in the entertaining sense, but profoundly uplifting, even ecstatic.’

There was certainly something of that in the Occupy protests. It’s the sentiment the Left needs to recapture — an ecstatic sense of the possibility of real change.

JS: Are you optimistic about the political future?

AL: I have no faith that the major parties in the West are interested in or capable of serious reform. We see this in Australia, Britain, America and much of Europe. These are political hacks who live and breathe the neo-liberal agenda despite its public popularity being at an all-time low. In my view, third or fourth party alternatives are vital to resurrect of true democracy.

But I have some hope in independent and online media to investigate parts of our world that can inform a deeper political understanding in our own country. In a globalised media environment, we can see instantly the failings elsewhere and hopefully learn from them.

A largely unregulated market system remains in place across the West and Occupy offered a small window into a far more equitable system. An issue like climate change will only be solved this way. Furthermore, if more people realised the realities of our foreign policy on the nations suffering because of them, I like to believe the political elites would be forced to adjust accordingly.

---

*Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland literary journal. He is the author of a number of books including Killing: Misadventures in Violence and the forthcoming Money Shot: A Journey into Porn and Censorship.

**Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of two best-selling books, My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. He is currently working on a book and documentary about disaster capitalism.

When profit drives the delivery of human services the quality of care suffers

More evidence of the danger of allowing for- profit corporations to provide human and caring services to vulnerable people.

A major US study  to be published in the Journal Health Services Research has found that for-profit nursing homes deliver significantly lower quality of care than not-for- profit and government run nursing homes.

In the US the 10 largest for-profit corporate providers of hursing homes  operate about 2,000 nursing homes, controlling approximately 13 percent of the country’s nursing home beds.

The study found that the main reason that the quality of care is worse in corporate and for-profit run  nursing homes is that corporate and for- profit providers employ fewer staff  to keep costs down and profits up. In studying staffing and quality in the 10 largest corporate for profit providers of nursing homes the researchers found that the corporate providers  have a strategy of keeping labor costs low to increase profits, with the result that the quality of care suffers and there is a higher number of rated deficiencies.

The researchers found that low nurse staffing levels are the strongest predictor of poor nursing home quality.

The study found that between 2003 and 2008, both the percent of registered nurses and the numbers of all nursing staff were significantly less (30 percent) in the corporate for profit providers than the non-profit homes.  The lower staffing correlated with a considerably higher number of rated deficiencies - the private chains having 36 percent more deficiencies, and 41 percent more serious deficiencies than the non-profits.  Deficiencies include failure to prevent pressure sores, resident weight loss, falls, infections, resident mistreatment, poor sanitary conditions, and other problems that could seriously harm residents.

What is also troubling is that the study found that the quality of care worsened in nursing homes taken over by private equity companies. Nursing homes had more deficiencies after being acquired by a private equity company.This is directly relevant to Australia where private equity companies are increasingly involved in aged care and nursing home provision. The study is the first to make the connection between worse care following acquisition by private equity companies.

"In recent decades, nursing home chains have undergone a considerable expansion.A number of chains were publicly-traded companies until the early 2000s, when five of the country’s largest chains went bankrupt. Following restructuring and ownership changes, as well as increases in Medicare payments, the largest chains became more financially stable. More recently, some of the largest publicly held chains were purchased by private equity investment firms, which invest funds received from investors, with whom they share profits and losses. 

The researchers compared staffing levels and facility deficiencies at the for-profit chains to those at homes run by five other ownership groups to measure quality of care. The 10 largest chains were selected because they are influential in the nursing home industry and are the most successful in terms of growth and market share. 

The study found that for-profit homes strive to keep their costs down by reducing staffing, particularly RN staffing.

The 10 largest for-profit chains in 2008 were HCR Manor Care, Golden Living, Life Care Centers of America, Kindred Healthcare, Genesis HealthCare Corporation, Sun Health Care Group, Inc., SavaSeniorCare LLC, Extendicare Health Services, Inc., National Health Care Corporation, and Skilled HealthCare, LLC.

From 2003 to 2008, these chains had fewer nurse “staffing hours” than non-profit and government nursing homes when controlling for other factors. Together, these companies had the sickest residents, but their total nursing hours were 30 percent lower than non-profit and government nursing homes. Moreover, the top chains were well below the national average for RN and total nurse staffing, and below the minimum nurse staffing recommended by experts.

 The study also found that the four largest for-profit nursing home chains purchased by private equity companies between 2003 and 2008 had more deficiencies after being acquired. The study is the first to make the connection between worse care following acquisition by private equity companies.

There is now a growing body of evidence that demonstrates conclusively that for-profit corporate run nursing homes deliver lower quality care than not-for profit nursing homes.

A study in the British Medical Journal  compared quality-of-care measurements in 82 individual studies that collected data from 1965 to 2003 involving tens of thousands of nursing homes, mostly in the United States. It found that

The authors' meta-analysis, i.e. their integration and statistical analysis of the data from the multiple studies, shows that nonprofit facilities delivered higher quality care than for-profit facilities for two of the four most frequently reported quality measures: (1) more or higher quality staffing and (2) less prevalence of pressure ulcers, sometimes called bedsores.

The results also suggest better performance of nonprofit homes in two other quality measures: less frequent use of physical restraints and fewer noted deficiencies (quality violations) in governmental regulatory assessments.

"The reason patients' quality of care is inferior in for-profit nursing homes is that administrators must spend 10 percent to 15 percent of revenues satisfying shareholders and paying taxes..... For-profit providers cut corners to ensure shareholders achieve their expected return on investment."

Privatization of the care of vulnerable people

images by Simon Bosch, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald

State and Federal Governments of all persuasion continue their love affair with "market based approaches" to the provision of health services and human and community services. 

These market based approaches take many forms, including privatization and contracting out of government services, competitive tendering of services to not-for- profit and for profit agencies, increasing use of for-profit providers and the private sector  to provide services, use of user pay and cost recovery principles, the application of business metrics and the imposition of corporate management models and approaches that have their origins in the for- profit business context.

But they all are predicated on the assumption that applying market principles to the delivery of health and human and community services will drive innovation, deliver greater efficiency and better quality services and save Governments money.

Adele Horin's piece in the Sydney Morning Herald Sad Truth behind Closed Doors is further evidence of the dangers of relying on market based and for- profit approaches in the delivery of health and human services. Horin shows that a reliance on market based approaches is a threat to the health and well being of vulnerable people. 

Horin argues that the reliance on for- profit providers of boarding houses  to accommodate and support people with mental illness has failed to protect and improve the lives of  vulnerable people. Horin draws on the work of Sydney academic Gabriel Drake who calls the rise of licensed boarding houses in Sydney, as "the privatisation of the back wards". 

In a study of inner Sydney licensed boarding houses, Drake describes a situation where large numbers of people with only their disability in common,  live together with little to do, receive poor mental and physical health care, and have few chances to learn skills. Their pension is handed over. They can't afford a bus fare. They become highly dependent on the boarding house owner.

Horin describes how the failure by Governments to provide the funds  and support to people with mental illness who were "de-institutionalized" and moved out of large psychiatric institutions meant that they were thrown to the vagaries of the "market"

And so hundreds moved into the boarding houses which were run for profit with minimal or no accountability or monitoring. People with sometimes serious conditions, such as schizophrenia, went from the state being in charge of their welfare to a boarding house owner.

The state passed a law to license boarding houses that accommodated people with psychological or intellectual disabilities. But three Ombudsman's reports in nine years - two of them secret and the latest delivered to the Minister for Disability Services last month - testify to the failure of the responsible government department, Ageing, Disability and Home Care, to do its job of inspecting and monitoring the boarding houses properly.

A weak law, and some aggressive licensees, did not help the hapless bureaucrats in their role of protecting and improving the lives of the vulnerable residents.

It is time the state government took a serious look at boarding houses, both the licensed kind, and the unlicensed, which cater to a slightly different clientele of poor, single tenants often with alcohol and gambling addictions.

Economists who document the failure of market driven reform in Australia

John Quiggin is one of a growing number of Australian economists who continue to make the case that the market-based reforms imposed by Federal and State Governments over the last two decades have not delivered the anticipated benefits for consumers and ordinary citizens, and in many cases have been unmitigated failures.

Market led reform assumes that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem.

Other important contrarian economic voices about market driven neoliberal reform championed by mainstream economists and Australian governments of all persuasions can be found on the pages of Dissent, the excellent journal edited by the Age and Sydney Morning Herald economics writer Kenneth Davidson and in the Journal of Australian Political Economy produced out of the University of Sydney. Bloggers such as Billy Blog (Bill Mitchell) also provide important critiques of mainstream economics, as do academic economists and public commentators such as Con and Betty Walker.

In today's Australian Financial Review John Quiggin argues that:

The failure of reform is most dramatically evident in the infrastructure sector, and particularly for utilities such as electricity, telecommunications and water.

Quiggin argues that the benefits of market led reform that were promised by its proponents have not resulted. Whilst there were some benefits in the short term, in the longer term the proposed benefits for consumers and society have not been sustained. Prices have not lowered but increased. Supposedly, allowing the market to rip would bring more choice and better quality of service. Neither have happened.

As Quiggin points out, the privatization of telecommunications and electricity have been unmitigated failures for consumers and society. Electricity price inflation has reached double digit levels and the break up of electricity utilities into separate generation, distribution and retail sectors has created massive new problems.

Quiggin argues that it is time for policy makers, politicians and commentators to accept that the mantra of market led reform has been a complete failure in the infrastructure sector. He writes that:

Faith in reform has proved utterly impervious to contrary evidence. The only answer to the failure of reforms has been to conclude that more reform in needed.

But as John Quiggin notes the lure of market led reform is still all powerful:

Despite this and other failures, the incantation of ‘reform’ retains its magical power. The politically and economically disastrous privatisation program in NSW was justified entirely on the basis that it was needed in order that reform could continue.

It is, perhaps, too much to ask that such an appealing word should be abandoned. But can’t we at least admit that the 1980s reform program has had its day, and look for some reforms more appropriate to the 21st century?

The failure of market driven neoliberal reform in the infrastructure sector (water, telecommunications, utilities, and public infrastructure) and in many other areas of Australian social and economic life, including health, housing, social welfare, retirement incomes, aged care, education, child care, human and community services and the environment and climate change, are core themes in Australian journals such as Dissent and  the Journal of Australian Political Economy, which in each edition document the harm that has been done by market driven neoliberal reform in this country.

More Australians need to support and read the important work done by economists such as John Quiggin, Bill Mitchell, Con and Betty Walker and all those associated with journals such as Dissent and The Australian Journal of Political Economy.

Debra Allcock Taylor: Why not-for- profits don't need to be more businesslike

I have long been a critic of those who argue that not-for-profit and civil society organisations should become "more businesslike" and operate more like business and remodel themselves along business and market lines. It is in my view a ludicrous and dangerous claim.

The claim reflects a naive understanding of not-for-profit  organizations and is predicated on a false assumption that not for profits are run by well intentioned amateurs who need a dose of "business thinking" to be more effective and effective. My view has always been that the reverse is in fact true.

Business and corporations would in fact benefit more from the values, principles and practices of many not-for profit and civil society organizations.

So I was interested in this piece by Debra Allcock Tyler ( Director of the UK Based Directory for Social Change) which appeared in the UK Third Sector News.

Charities are good at what they do, and business should learn from us

By Debra Allcock Taylor

Nick Hurd's recent assertion that charities should learn from businesses is the wrong way round, says our columnist.

I like and respect Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society. I really do. But I find myself in the grip of an overwhelming desire to bash him over the head with a copy of the Charities Act 2006 after his recent remarks in this magazine. He said: "The sector has to open its mind to absorbing skills from the private sector because it clearly needs more business skills."

Have people forgotten the recent financial crises already? Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I don't think it was expenditure on grants for charity bodies that brought the world's financial markets to its knees, was it? Was the banks' decision to extend credit to a sub-prime market a good business decision, or just greed? Was it good business to have the hedge funds underpinning so much of the financial economy?


It is estimated that, at the height of the financial crisis, about 95 firms in the UK were going bankrupt every day, some 20 per cent more than during the 1990s recession.

With the coalition government opening up the public services to competition and private providers to a much greater extent than any of its predecessors, one can't help but wonder if business models really are the most appropriate mechanism.

This culture of commoditising social needs - characterising our needy citizens as consumers of a public sector product - is, I think, dangerous. Vulnerable people aren't consumers. They're vulnerable people. And we are really skilled at helping them.

So why do people who don't run charities keep telling us how to do it? What precisely are these business skills that we apparently need? The ability to deliver excellent services to vulnerable people on tuppence ha'penny? The ability to convince people to give of their time and money for no other reason than it's the right thing to do?

There are probably some badly run charities, of course, but in my experience they are the exception rather than the rule.

So I have to ask, what is this constant exhortation to ape the private sector really all about? Is this just a euphemism for becoming inappropriately competitive; focusing on revenue rather than cause and becoming bigger, because that's what drives companies?

Forgive the sexism, but it's a bit of a macho paradigm, isn't it? It's the size that counts? Well, I don't think it's about how big you are or how much cash you flash. It's about being good at what you do.
Bulldog Rescue & Rehoming survives on less than £25k a year and does what it says on the tin: a wonderful job with an army of volunteers who simply care about what they do. It doesn't need to become Bulldog and Budgerigar Rescue & Rehoming.

Be open to new ideas and ways of working. But charities - I beg you, ignore those calls to be more like businesses. You're absolutely great at what you do when you remember you're charities. Frankly, I think business has more to learn from you.

NGO's: are they the trojan horse for corporate, market and state power?

David Harvey in his book A Short History of Neoliberalism:

The rise of advocacy groups and NGOs has...accompanied the neoliberal turn and increased spectacularly since 1980 or so. The NGOs have in many instances stepped into the vacuum in social provision left by the withdrawal of the state from such activities. This amounts to privatization by NGO. In some instances, this has helped accelerate further state withdrawal from social provision. NGOs thereby function as "Trojan horses for neoliberal globalization."

 Mike Davis in The Planet of Slums:

"Third World NGOs have proven brilliant at co-opting local leadership as well as hegemonizing the social space traditionally occupied by the Left. Even if there are some celebrated exceptions--such as the militant NGOs so instrumental in creating the World Social Forums--the broad impact of the NGO/"civil society revolution"...has been to bureaucratize and deradicalize urban social movements."

Honoring those who work for a better world

 " Most of the real work on this planet is not done for profit: it’s done at home, for each other, for affection, out of idealism, and it starts with the heroic effort to sustain each helpless human being for all those years before fending for yourself becomes feasible."
Rebecca Solnit

French film Director Bertrand Tavernier's  film It All Starts Today  is a beautiful testament to the commitment and humanity of teachers (and other front line workers) who work with families and children suffering the consequences of neo-liberal market  and economic "reform". 

Like Pierre Bourdieu's  book The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society  Tavernier's film documents the new forms of social suffering that characterize not just French society, but the economies and societies of the western world.

Tavernier's deeply moving film tells the story of a kindergarten teacher in an impoverished region of France struggling to educate children of families devastated by unemployment, grinding poverty, deprivation, depression and economic hardship. These are children whose families are the casualties of neo-liberal market reform and economic and corporate restructuring.

The film shows the heroics and dedication of teachers, education aides, volunteers, health workers and social welfare workers who give themselves fully and devote their lives to improving the well being of the children and families in their care. 

In France, as in Australia, they do this despite poor pay and conditions, budget cutbacks and hostility, indifference and neglect from elected officials, politicians, some government agencies and workers, business groups and those who hold power.

 In Australia we accord little respect and honor to those front line workers and volunteers who work for a better world. We forget and ignore the teachers, child care workers, teachers aides, carers, aged care and disability workers, social welfare workers, aboriginal health workers, volunteers, family support workers, refuge workers, domestic violence counselors and millions of  other front line welfare and community workers who dedicate themselves to the care and well being of others, and who through their efforts make our society and communities better places.

Instead they are usually berated and stigmatized, labeled as do-gooders and bleeding hearts, or dismissed as rent seeking, vested interests who breed dependency and a welfare mentality in people.

No, in Australia we honor soldiers who fight in imperial wars, celebrities caught in the glare of their own importance, sportsmen who are paid exorbitantly and businessmen and corporations who pursue and accumulate wealth and power at the expense of the common good.

Jim Johnson has taken up a similar theme in a recent post on his excellent blog Notes on Politics, Theory and Biography and I thank him for his insights:

"I find it obsequious and cloying to hear the radio show hosts and politicians offering a "Thank you for your service" whenever they encounter a veteran or military personnel. What about the social workers and parole officers and teachers and, yes, scientists and artists, who work in underpaid professions for years and decades in order to contribute to a better world? After all, they could be out there peddling sub-prime mortgages (or some other form of snake oil) and making real money. When was the last time you heard someone - anyone - publicly thank those folks for their service? No, instead we are taking aim at them (the teachers and parole officers are, after all members of those dastardly public sector unions) in the misguided quest for fiscal responsibility"

Eric Hobsbawn: The world's greatest historian is 93 and still going strong

Thanks to Jim Johnson's always excellent blog Notes on Politics, Theory and Photography (which I read every day) I was alerted to this interview with 93 year old British historian Eric Hobsbawm in the UK Guardian. Hobsbawn is recognized as one of the finest English speaking historians of all time.

Hobsbawm's book The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 is  perhaps the finest history books I have read on the history of the 20th Century.

The Guardian interview serves as an opportunity for Hobsbawn to explore the themes and ideas contained in his new book  How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism. Some quotes from the interview are below:

"On the other hand, I think there's a risk in assuming, as neoliberals and free marketeers do, that there's only one type of capitalism. Capitalism is, if you like, a family, with a variety of possibilities, from the state-directed capitalism of France to the free-market of America." 

"How to Change the World is an account of what Marxism fundamentally did in the 20th century, partly through the social democratic parties that weren't directly derived from Marx and other parties – Labour parties, workers' parties, and so on – that remain as government and potential government parties everywhere. And second, through the Russian Revolution and all its consequences.

"The record of Karl Marx, an unarmed prophet inspiring major changes, is undeniable. I'm quite deliberately not saying that there are any equivalent prospects now. What I'm saying now is that the basic problems of the 21st century would require solutions that neither the pure market, nor pure liberal democracy can adequately deal with. And to that extent, a different combination, a different mix of public and private, of state action and control and freedom would have to be worked out.  What you will call that, I don't know. But it may well no longer be capitalism, certainly not in the sense in which we have known it in this country and the United States"

Market mechanisms and the destruction of the Murray Darling Basin

Bruce Haigh on the madness of using market mechanisms to manage water in the Murray Darling Basin and the need for a radically different approach to the management of Australia's water resources:

"The management of water should not be left to markets where the pursuit of profit has water abused, devalued and often powerless with respect to sustainability. Water needs a voice and a value beyond the market. At the moment it comes a very poor second in calculations relating its use - agriculture and industry have the upper hand and water is required to comply".

"The National and Liberal Parties presided over the slow decline of rural Australia. They had the opportunity to reverse this during almost 12 years of government. They declined to do so and as a result many jobs were lost and economic opportunities that may have come through the provision of better services and infrastructure were not created, but were lost. This neglect saw the rise of rural Independents who now hold the balance of power". 

The rising power of European citizens

In recent days protests against government austerity measures, harsh public spending cuts and corporate culpability for the financial and economic crises have occurred in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Spain, France, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Poland.

Here is Richard Wolff on the significance of the street protests sweeping Europe over recent days.

"These are historic days and weeks in Europe. Unprecedented trade union unity across industries, unions, and countries -- with massive support from students, retirees, churches and public opinion polls -- directly confronts governments, demanding an end to making ordinary people pay for a capitalist crisis. The terms of public debate, policy and social change are shifting in directions not seen or believed possible in Europe for decades."

The new political landscape

So we have a minority Labor government with the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate, and the House of Representatives controlled to a large extent by five Independents with strong views and big ideas that challenge the prevailing pro-market and pro-business ideology of the two main parties. 

Now we might start to see a greater focus on community and human needs and the public good in regional and metropolitan areas, rather than the narrow focus on corporate, business and private interests that has dominated public policy and economic decision making for two decades.

No wonder the corporate controlled media is in a frenzy.

For an alternative perspective on economic policies- read Billy Blog

Bill Mitchell's blog Billy Blog-alternative economic thinking is an excellent site to read about the myths and propaganda promulgated by mainstream economists, economic commentators in the media and most politicains and political commentators. 

As a non-economist interested in economic matters I greatly appreciate Billy blog's sustained critique of neoliberal and neo-conservative market economics.

Reading one of his latest posts about the standard myths that dominate most neoliberal economic thinking I found this:

"The overwhelming sentiment of the business community and the conservative nature of our political system (and its participants) leads to a largely anti-government swell of opinion which is continually reinforced by the media – the “debt-deficit hysterics”. The neo-liberal expression of this over the last three decades has overwhelmingly imposed massive political restrictions on the ability of the government to use its fiscal policy powers under a fiat monetary system to ensure we have full employment.

We now accept very high unemployment and underemployment rates as a more or less permanent feature of our economic lives because of the political constraints imposed on government"

Fremantle event on the harms done by markets and corporations

Great to see this event The Global Economy and Human Wellbeing  being run by Rob Lambert* at the Edmund Rice Centre for Social Justice in Fremantle this Saturday 4 September, 2010 between 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM.

The event is designed to provide people with a deeper understanding of what global free markets are doing to persons, families and societies;  the nature of corporate restructuring of work, and its social and psychological impacts for families and communities; - basic analytic techniques of ‘political economy’ necessary for understanding these changes; - the values underlying these changes, and how they might be ethically assessed; and - how to envisage (imagine) alternative models of work, and the process of realising such change.

 *Winthrop Professor Rob Lambert is based at the University of Western Australia’s Business School, where he specialises in labour studies. He is co-author of the award-winning book, Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (Oxford, Blackwell, 2008),a critique of the free market economy that identifies destructive impacts for the environment, society, families and persons. Rob is the founder and coordinator of the Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR), founded some 20 years ago. This movement brings together democratic trade unions across 15 countries and four continents in the global south. Rob has a background as a South African activist, and was National Secretary of the South African Young Christian Workers and then advisor to the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference before coming to Perth.

Why we need more not less public investment in public services and public infrastructure

Interesting to read a recent US study that found that the most effective option for creating jobs and building a prosperous regional and state economy is for governments to spend and invest more in public services and public infrastructure.

Disputing the idea promulgated by pro-business and pro-market politicians and advocates that funding public services and economic development are competing interests the study found that:

" The tax cuts and business subsidies approach to economic development will do little to create jobs in the short run and is not the most effective to generating growth over the long term".

The study found that investing public funds in public services, such as education and health and in public assets and public infrastructure is the best approach for state and local development, and raises gross state product, expands productive capacity, increases employment and raises personal income.

The study found that providing incentives to corporations and business such as tax breaks, public subsidies, employment subsidies and other forms of business incentives are not effective and are often counterproductive because they deplete resources that could be spent on education and investments in public services and public infrastructure. 


Strategies that shift resources and assets from the public sector to the private sector- privatization, marketization and corporatization- reduce costs and increase corporate and business profits but are not effective in terms of state and local development.

The study concludes:

Instead of trying to lure firms with deals and lower corporate taxes, an approach to economic development that builds the skills of the current and future workforce, improves the physical infrastructure of regions, and makes communities more attractive places for families and firms represents a more effective use of a state’s scarce resources.

Book Review: Michael Edwards SSmall Change: Why Business Won't Save the World

"No lasting change has been successful without large numbers of people acting consciously and collectively around human values of solidarity and social justice, not market values. Markets are great ways to do some things, but not to fashion communities of caring and compassion"
Michael Edwards Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World.

On one of my other blogs on civil society and the NGO world I have published a review of Michael Edwards's latest book, which is one of the best books I have read in 2010. In the book Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World Michael Edwards questions the wisdom of applying business and corporate thinking in the world of NGOs and civil society.

Small Change is a wise and radical book that challenges many of the taken for granted assumptions that dominate thinking and practice in the world of not-for-profits and civil society. Edwards argues that business and market thinking has too much influence over not-for-profit organisations and civil society groups.

Edwards rejects the role of markets, business and business thinking as solutions for the social ills of society and the challenges facing the not-for-profit and civil society sector. He contends that civil society and NGO groups must turn away from the lures of the market and business and reassert the importance of independent citizen action. He is deeply skeptical about importing business approaches into the nonprofit sector.

You can read the full review here.

Neoliberalism in Australia

Listed to an important program on Radio National's Late Night Live with Phillip Adams talking with David McKnight and Richard Dennis on the topic "Is neo-liberalism Dead in Australia".

The program was built around the new book edited by David McKnight and Robert Manne titled "Goodbye to All That: On the Failure of Neoliberalism and the Urgency of Change".

Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute argued that neo- liberalism is well and truly alive in Australia. His view is that at the level of macro-economic policy there has been a small departure away from neoliberalism, exemplified by the Rudd Government's stimulus package and its willingness to intervene in the economy to respond to the global economic crises. However, Denniss argues that at the level of micro-economic policy the hold of neoliberalism over the Rudd Government is a strong as ever, if not stronger than before the global crises.

Issues to do with neoliberalism and the domination of 'market based thinking' are the focus of another blog I edit- Challenging the Market- which is a project of the WA Social Justice Network