blake 3:17
17th December 2006, 23:29
From the huron-pirg document: (http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=1122)
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES OF THE ANTI-CORPORATE STRATEGY
There are three strategic objectives of the anti-corporate strategy. The first objective is to create a large and growing mass movement of active and vocal opposition to the war, by agitating among workers and students, the poor and the unemployed. The second objective is to win wider layers of those people to a radical critique of capitalism, or at least of the power of corporations (or the ‘corporate agenda’), as it operates at home and abroad. And the third objective is to create or intensify divisions within the corporate elite concerning whether the war’s costs to their interests are outweighed by its benefits.
This strategy is based on two assumptions. The first assumption is that the most powerful sector of our society is the corporate elite, and that therefore the anti-war struggle is ultimately a class struggle: a struggle against a corporate agenda aiming to reap benefits from imperial warfare. The second assumption is that sections of the corporate elite can be led to turn against a war policy if they feel that the opposition to that policy is driving large numbers of workers, students, poor and unemployed people to begin to question, not just the war policy itself, but the corporate power served by that policy. In short, the strategy flows from the thought that, if opposition to the war can be made to develop into a wider critique of the whole range of policies that serve, not human need but corporate greed, then that opposition can pose a real threat to the corporate elite: a threat great enough to provoke elite defections to the anti-war side.
The corporate elite will never be led to oppose a war on moral grounds, on humanitarian grounds, or by the force of rational arguments. The capacity of activists to influence their decision-making is always indirect: by creating a level of dissent, both wide enough (encompassing masses of people) and deep enough (opposing not just a particular policy, but the whole corporate agenda and the corporate power structure that imposes that agenda), that the corporate elite has grounds to worry that its position of unquestioned privilege and societal ‘hegemony’ or leadership is being placed in jeopardy by the war policy that is fuelling this dissent.
So, the anti-corporate strategy aims, first, to mobilize and politicize masses of workers and students, poor and unemployed people, to speak out and protest against the war. Second, it seeks to educate and ultimately radicalize those politicizing people by demonstrating to them that the war is rooted in the greed of corporations and the servility of the state in relation to those corporate interests. And, third, as the movement grows and more people begin to turn against the corporate agenda and develop a willingness to oppose it and demand that governments refuse to serve it, the anti-corporate strategy aims to cause sections of the corporate elite to defect from the pro-war camp, out of fear that their privileges are threatened by the growing and deepening opposition to corporate power being fuelled by anti-war sentiments.
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES OF THE ANTI-CORPORATE STRATEGY
There are three strategic objectives of the anti-corporate strategy. The first objective is to create a large and growing mass movement of active and vocal opposition to the war, by agitating among workers and students, the poor and the unemployed. The second objective is to win wider layers of those people to a radical critique of capitalism, or at least of the power of corporations (or the ‘corporate agenda’), as it operates at home and abroad. And the third objective is to create or intensify divisions within the corporate elite concerning whether the war’s costs to their interests are outweighed by its benefits.
This strategy is based on two assumptions. The first assumption is that the most powerful sector of our society is the corporate elite, and that therefore the anti-war struggle is ultimately a class struggle: a struggle against a corporate agenda aiming to reap benefits from imperial warfare. The second assumption is that sections of the corporate elite can be led to turn against a war policy if they feel that the opposition to that policy is driving large numbers of workers, students, poor and unemployed people to begin to question, not just the war policy itself, but the corporate power served by that policy. In short, the strategy flows from the thought that, if opposition to the war can be made to develop into a wider critique of the whole range of policies that serve, not human need but corporate greed, then that opposition can pose a real threat to the corporate elite: a threat great enough to provoke elite defections to the anti-war side.
The corporate elite will never be led to oppose a war on moral grounds, on humanitarian grounds, or by the force of rational arguments. The capacity of activists to influence their decision-making is always indirect: by creating a level of dissent, both wide enough (encompassing masses of people) and deep enough (opposing not just a particular policy, but the whole corporate agenda and the corporate power structure that imposes that agenda), that the corporate elite has grounds to worry that its position of unquestioned privilege and societal ‘hegemony’ or leadership is being placed in jeopardy by the war policy that is fuelling this dissent.
So, the anti-corporate strategy aims, first, to mobilize and politicize masses of workers and students, poor and unemployed people, to speak out and protest against the war. Second, it seeks to educate and ultimately radicalize those politicizing people by demonstrating to them that the war is rooted in the greed of corporations and the servility of the state in relation to those corporate interests. And, third, as the movement grows and more people begin to turn against the corporate agenda and develop a willingness to oppose it and demand that governments refuse to serve it, the anti-corporate strategy aims to cause sections of the corporate elite to defect from the pro-war camp, out of fear that their privileges are threatened by the growing and deepening opposition to corporate power being fuelled by anti-war sentiments.