WATCH: Capitalism as Pathology: The Guise of the Illusory “Green Economy”

 

 

“… for the Annex 1 nations, the UK and for Manchester the choice is the same. To begin immediate and deep reductions in emissions at the same time as transitioning towards a steady-state economy … Alternatively, we could continue with the eloquent rhetoric of green growth and win-win opportunities; reject integrity, placate our paymasters and embrace cognitive dissonance — but ultimately renege on our responsibilities to both the current and future generations.” Professor Kevin Anderson, November, 2012

 

“The World Bank Group will continue to be a strong advocate for international and regional agreements and increasing climate financing. We will redouble our efforts to support fast growing national initiatives to mitigate carbon emissions and build adaptive capacity as well as support inclusive green growth and climate smart development. Our work on inclusive green growth has shown that—through more efficiency and smarter use of energy and natural resources—many opportunities exist to drastically reduce the climate impact of development, without slowing down poverty alleviation and economic growth.” – Turn Down the Heat, World Bank Report, November 18, 2012

“without slowing down poverty alleviation and economic growth”

Delusion. Delusion. Delusion. Lies.

Growth: Capital has only one imperative, and that is to grow. Under the current economic system, the ultimate measure of success is profit. Corporations exist to maximize profits while externalizing costs. Waste, pollution, and ecological destruction are built into the system. A system that requires infinite growth cannot last forever on a finite planet defined by ecological and social limits. Market-driven growth is driving us, at unprecedented speed, toward collapse.

Poverty Alleviation: The very industrialized capitalist system which ensures global monetary wealth and power stay securely in the hands of the oligarchy is absolutely dependent upon, and cannot succeed without, continuous expanding raping, pillaging and degradation to our Earth and relentless exploitation of those most vulnerable.

The number of “urgent” reports/announcements to address the climate crisis in the month of November, 2012 by those who dominate (whereby we are assured, solving the crisis is compatible with continued growth) — appear to be a “signal” amongst the elites that the illusory “green” economy is hereby underway and officially launched.

Such reports (some well over 100 pages) with state-wide and global campaigns now unfolding (that have been strategically developed to further the ushering in of and global acceptance of “green capitalism”) do not happen overnight. Such documents, securing of funds, etc. take months to complete. One can safely assume that the ruling elite, in tandem with the non-profit industrial complex and the corporate-media complex having been working on rolling out the “green economy” onto the world stage since the Rio summit. What we witness now is the strategy being released, in waves in order to resonate.

What we are about to witness will be the greatest psyops of the 21st century.

Capitalism and humanity. Till death do we part.

http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/11/21/oligarchy-sends-signal-to-usher-in-the…

This video includes interviews with Yvonne Yanez, Edagardo Lander, Pablo Solon and Silvia Ribeiro. [For the original video in its entity please see: http://bit.ly/SY4tx9]

 

MUST WATCH: Dr Steve Best – The Paralysis of Pacifism

 

WKOG: An excellent lecture by Dr Steven Best. Not to be missed.

“The desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming its root causes. Therein lies our only hope.” — Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology

 

Conference: “The Paralysis of Pacifism: In Defense of Militant Direct Action and “Violence” for Animal Liberation” held by Prof. Steve Best in ex slaughterhouse of Aprilia – Italy – 06 September 2012.

Prof. Steve Best is a writer, speaker, public intellectual, and activist. Steven Best engages animal rights, species extinction, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media and culture, globalization, and capitalist domination. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso.

This conference has been organized by “Per Animalia Veritas” which is an organization that promotes antispecism as a radical revolution for a renewed cruelty-free and vegan society through militant activism.

To subscribe to Steve Best’s blog visit: http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/

“25 x 25” is a Big Fat Bio-Massacre

 

For a list of the key groups behind this bill view the 25x25_organization_endorsements. Environmental groups, corporations and regional partners include those such as Environmental Defence Fund, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Monsanto, National Wildlife Federation, World Watch Institute and Chrysler.

 

November 4, 2012

By Jeff Gibbs

Open Mike

“Some of my friends in the professional environmental movement have reacted as expected yesterday when I called them out for having allowed biomass burning to be a huge part of what Michigan is going to get under Proposal 3 or “25 x 25.”  Accusations and anger. It went down the same way when we stopped a local biomass plant from being built in Traverse City a few years ago: we got yelled at, several PR firms were hired to fight us, and most of the paid environmentalists sat on their hands.”

…

Let me tell you whose funding IS affiliated with fossil fuel money: “25 x 25.” Follow the money. Something called the “Green Tech Action Fund” in San Francisco has put up $1.3 million for the Michigan “25 x 25” campaign.  Who funds the Green Tech Action Fund? That would be “The Energy Foundation.” Who funds the “Energy Foundation?” That would be Pew Charitable Trust in part, which is Sun Oil or Sunoco. Who else helped fund “The Energy Foundation?” The Rockefeller Foundation. Who is the Rockefeller Foundation? That would be Exxon.

 

In Michigan right now ballot Proposal 3 known as “25 x 25” would require our state to get 25% of its electricity from “renewable” sources by the year 2025. “25 x 25” is being sold as all about solar panels and wind mills. It’s not. Far more than anyone suspects, it’s going to ramp up the dirtiest form of energy of all: biomass burning. Incinerating trees in the name of “green energy.” And it must be stopped if we care about climate change, clean air and thriving forests.

Yes that’s right, in the name of saving the planet and renewable energy we are about to make things worse. For those unfamiliar with biomass burning, it releases more carbon dioxide and more harmful particulates than even coal. Logging for biomass can drastically reduce biodiversity and set back a forest’s ability to sequester carbon dioxide for centuries. Most environmentalists oppose it. Or used to.

Michigan environmental groups promoting “25 x 25,” whose goals such as stopping climate change I otherwise support, have insisted there will not be much biomass burning. Their campaign shows images of wind and solar exclusively.

Clean Water Action

Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs

Green Energy Future

But this is what we are actually going to get. I call it a bio-massacre:

 

Massachusetts logging for biomass

Michigan trees chipped for biomass

New Hampshire biomass plant

Don’t believe it? It was hard for me grasp as well. Still, there was that little word “biomass” in the definition of renewable energy. So I decided to check for myself.

Here was my first stunner: the national “25 x 25” Steering Committee seems to be 100% agribusiness and logging interests. Ethanol and biomass. On their bios are found the words cattle, corn, biomass and forestry, not solar or wind.

The national “25 x 25” mission statement reflects this commitment to biofuels and biomass:

25x’25 Vision: By 2025, America’s farms, forests and ranches will provide 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States, while continuing to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed and fiber.

When questioned about national “25 x 25” being primarily big ag and big timber, Michigan “25 x 25” supporters responded saying they have little to do with the national organization. Really? That’s odd. Because the national “25 x 25” organization brags on their website that they have influenced state laws and they include Michigan as a place where good things are happening.

And then the Michigan 25 x 25 Jobs and Energy Report was released. It was produced at Michigan State University, our state’s agricultural college. It was written not by the solar and wind department, but by faculty from the Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics Department with a huge vested interest in biomass and biofuels.

The report projects a nearly 300% increase in biomass. The red line on the chart below indicates the projected increase in biomass plant staffing.

The authors of the report also aren’t shy about describing the new opportunities for their friends:

… the impact to the agricultural and forestry sector is anticipated to be… significant. Accounting for direct and indirect impacts due to feed stock procurement, transportation, logistics, storage etc., it is expected that biomass generation under a 25% RPS will result in nearly 12,000 job years.

(Please note: boosters of “25 x 25” routinely turn “job years” into “jobs” – e.g. one job for 25 years is 25 “job years.” This means 75,000 “job years” gets turned into 75,000 “jobs” when it should be more like 3,000.)

And just what is the aforementioned “feedstock procurement?” In large part, logging. Ah, the wonderful green jobs! Logging, trucking, installing air quality control equipment, using bulldozers to move around giant piles of wood chips lest they spontaneously combust like this fire at Biomass One in Oregon, or this entire biomass plant that exploded in flames.

So widely known (except to the public) is this new opportunity for “green energy” that “Biomass Magazine” has already alerted its readers. The magazine cautions though, that making “25 x 25” a constitutional amendment might be a mistake because it could draw “scrutiny and introduce more controversy than legislative action…” Yes that’s right, it’s easier to sell a bio-massacre beyond closed doors.

But there’s more. The burning of woody biomass isn’t all we’re going to get. The chart below reveals a big helping of biogas as well as biomass.

What are the other biogas and biomass sources besides trees and forests? Confined animal feed operations, landfill gases, burning garbage including old homes and tires, human and agricultural “waste.” All have serious issues and depend on enormous fossil fuel intensive systems. But those are not my main concerns – it’s the burning of the source of our clean air and clean water as “green energy” that is my nightmare. Only two great planetary systems are capable of soaking up the CO2, our forests and our oceans. It makes no sense to destroy either one of them.

But alas the bio-massacre isn’t just in our future. It’s the reality of “renewable energy” right now:

 

Burlington, Vermont biomass plant. Note whole trees looking like matchsticks in this photo prior to chipping.

–In Vermont, the biggest single contributor to climate change and air pollution is their “green energy” facility. An enormous biomass burner that only produces a fraction of the energy of a fossil fuel plant.

–There is at least 15 times more biomass burning RIGHT NOW in Michigan than solar and wind combined. Given this, is it ethical for “Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs” to ONLY show solar and wind on its photo “tour” of Michigan renewable energy? Here is what they won’t show you:

Cadillac, Michigan biomass plant

Enjoying Michigan’s sustainable state forests
–Michigan State University, the source of the “25 x 25” report, has no wind and almost no solar yet has already obtained a permit to toss 24,000 tons of trees annually into their coal plant to meet their “renewable energy” goals, a feat which will actually increase the CO2 coming from the smokestack.

–In Holland, Michigan the Sierra Club has been fighting to stop a coal plant expansion. But Holland’s “clean energy” plan is in large part biomass burning disguised as “combined heat and power.” (The word “biomass” isn’t mentioned until page 31 in the proposal. That’s not an accident.)

So why are we getting so much burning in the name of green if wind and solar are such miracles? That’s a story for another day. Suffice to say there are issues with solar and wind that cannot be wished away. One major problem is that right now wind supplies only about 0.3 percent of Michigan’s electrical energy. To ramp that up to provide a significant share of our electricity would take tens of billions of dollars and 50 times more wind turbines than currently exist. Anyone think that’s going to happen?

And so it all comes back to cutting and burning our forests for energy. They say we would never denude the land of trees, yet that is the most common way civilizations end. It doesn’t happen in a day or a year, but blow by blow, cut by cut. We went though this once before. The trees are now smaller, stressed, and far less in extent. We won’t survive doing it again.

 

Michigan logging scenes from 120 years ago

It makes no sense to stop the tar sands, fight fracking, or end the horror of mountaintop removal to protect the living planet, if we then incinerate the living planet for energy. Let’s get back to our “roots.” Save the trees. Stand with them against any “renewable energy” scheme like “25 x 25” that calls incinerating trees and forests “green energy.”

For more information about biomass burning go www.biofuelwatch.org.uk or to Partnership for Policy Integrity or this article I wrote.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 6TH, 2012, ELECTION DAY:

Some of my friends in the professional environmental movement have reacted as expected yesterday when I called them out for having allowed biomass burning to be a huge part of what Michigan is going to get under Proposal 3 or “25 x 25.”  Accusations and anger.

It went down the same way when we stopped a local biomass plant from being built in Traverse City a few years ago: we got yelled at, several PR firms were hired to fight us, and most of the paid environmentalists sat on their hands. Two people from the Sierra Club did show up a few times out of hundreds of meetings for which we were thankful but by NO means were the drivers of this movement.

The movement was initiated, advanced and completed by citizens. For the Sierra Club to claim otherwise is insulting and wrong. In the end, despite the attacks of biomass supporters, 99% of our community was against biomass burning and the plan was withdrawn.

Now the accusations by biomass supporters are wild and desperate once again. They imply that I, a producer for Michael Moore, producer of a film about the radical environmentalist Paul Watson, might be in bed with or somehow aiding the Koch brothers. It’s a common tactic for those unable to deal with facts to resort to innuendos and slurs.

Perhaps people who live in glass houses should hesitate to pick up stones.

Let me tell you whose funding IS affiliated with fossil fuel money: “25 x 25.” Follow the money. Something called the “Green Tech Action Fund” in San Francisco has put up $1.3 million for the Michigan “25 x 25” campaign.  Who funds the Green Tech Action Fund? That would be “The Energy Foundation.” Who funds the “Energy Foundation?” That would be Pew Charitable Trust in part, which is Sun Oil or Sunoco. Who else helped fund “The Energy Foundation?” The Rockefeller Foundation. Who is the Rockefeller Foundation? That would be Exxon.

Yes BOTH sides of the energy debate are funded by the same people: giant corporations, the 1%, fossil fuel and otherwise.

Now I am not saying that everyone who has accepted money that in part originated with big oil money is automatically up to no good. I AM saying that that the world’s most powerful corporations, their corporate foundations, fossil fuel interests, investment bankers, and the uber wealthy, are NOT going fund the revolution that ends the growth machine that is killing the planet.

But they will fund “renewable energy” that includes biomass, ethanol, biofuels, etc. despite the insanity of burning trees or food or garbage as energy.

To be clear I have zero funding from anyone. I am a citizen doing what a citizen should do: not trusting what I am told by those in systems who think they know better than everyone, but checking for myself. And speaking out.

It was no accident I used facts from “25 x 25’s” own reports because I knew they would try to deny the biomass burning reality of green energy in our state; inquiries about biomass burning have been met with denials every step of the way. But supporters of “25 x 25” cannot refute my core contentions—not without calling their own experts and data wrong.

THEIR forecast for three times more biomass burning comes from THEIR jobs and energy report. One of them is wrong; their experts or those in charge of rhetoric.

THEIR report indicates for at least ten times more biomass burning than solar panels and as much as wind. One of them is wrong; their experts or those in charge of rhetoric.

“25 x 25” also has not answered to why they mislead the public about what’s included in the definition of renewable energy. It’s indisputable that biomass burning is on the ballot proposal.

And if this gets in the Michigan constitution do you REALLY think green groups can control timber and agriculture interests who make billions from biomass and biofuels? Look how hard it is to stop fossil fuel plants, and now we want to add more biomass, biogas and biofuel plants?

“25 x 25” has also not answered why they wildly exaggerated the jobs report by turning “job years” into jobs thus misleading the public.

And I have to tell you that the more I look into the reality of biomass burning in Michigan the uglier it seems. When I heard rumors that toxic creosote laden railroad ties and old houses were being burned as green biomass I thought that be hidden from the public. But no, it’s being bragged about on their website. Apparently railroad ties are being brought in from as far away as Canada, since Canada does not want this toxic stuff being burned in their own backyard.

This should come as no surprise because for a long time the largest green energy facility in Michigan was the giant waste incinerator in Detroit. Instead of “clean coal” we have “clean trash burning.”

There might be a few cases where burning off landfill gases is better than letting it escape but calling this green and subsidizing it as renewable energy is wrong because it subsidizes a giant environmental mistake.

Claims have been made it’s going to be “farm waste” as biomass. Well, in Michigan the reality of biomass burning is indeed 99% burning trees supplemented with “waste” on occasion. But let’s talk about burning to stop climate change for a minute. Burning farm “waste” does indeed like burning anything release CO2. That’s just physics. The concept of turning “waste” to energy is highly flawed and dependent on waste streams from fossil fuel intensive farms and CAFO’s.

Michigan voters should turn down Proposal 3 which will put in BIOMASSS BURNING in our state constitution.  THAT is a green nightmare. And environmental groups paid to promote “25 x 25” ought to learn that attacking citizens who speak out, is the wrong way to go.

Minting Money in an NGO Way

by Anant Kumar

Global Minds

August 9, 2012

We want to open an NGO

In the past five-six years, many people, friends, and students showed interest and contacted me to take my advice about opening a Non Government Organisation (NGO). Most of these people were doing well in their life but their hearts were crying to help people and bring change in the society. They were moved by the poverty, illiteracy, etc, (as expressed by them) and determined to open an NGO to serve the people.

In reality, these people’s hearts were crying to bring changes in their own lives. They wanted to properly utilize their connections. The real motive and drive behind opening NGOs were interesting and it may be summarised, ‘if you do not own an NGO, please register one; if you are unemployed or an entrepreneur, register an NGO or many NGOs because it’s easier to set up and requires no investment in comparison to an industry’. Despite my advice and suggestions (do not open an NGO), most of these people opened an NGO which forced me to rethink ‘what was that strong drive which was stronger than my advice’. I thought to explore and examine the real motive behind it which is discussed below.

Motive behind opening an NGO

People are opening an NGO because it is a business with sure profit. Most of them were having contacts and were eager to use it. In their opinion, “if one has contacts at a right place, opening an NGO is one of the easiest ways of minting money”. One can mint money in an NGO way if either of the following is true. If you know a powerful person (a politician or a bureaucrat) so well that he will do business with you, if you know some non-resident Indian (NRI) whose heart is bleeding with love and care for India, if you have impressed the international funding agencies, or if you are a powerful person like a politician or a bureaucrat. “Many politicians cutting across party lines and bureaucrats are managing the affairs of NGOs. They run NGO by proxy (in the name of their wife, relative, or friends) while in service and take charge of the organisations after retirement”.   By opening an NGO, one can run a parallel government with the patronage of politicians and senior bureaucrats which can be inferred from the observation by the Panchayati Raj Minister of Odisha that:

“at one point of time, it was desired by the Planning Commission to encourage NGO participation in the socio-economic development process with the hope that there will be healthy competition between the government agencies and voluntary organisations. But finally, it has been observed that the NGOs are running a parallel government with the patronage of senior bureaucrats. A new regulatory mechanism has to be thought of to make the NGOs accountable”.

Many NGOs are against this government move to enact the legislation to ensure their accountability and transparency and introduce a measure to involve the elected representatives in their working.    Many heads or owners of NGOs are making profits with a catchy tagline – not-for-profit organisation. The NGO head’s lavish lifestyle, houses, property, foreign trips, and expenses on children educations makes thing complicated and contradicts their claims of social service. Financial management systems in most of these NGOs are weak which permits to mint money by improper ways such as less payment to staff whereas on paper they show full salary (cash back system with every salary cheque under the umbrella “contribution to the organisation” for welfare of employees). Sometimes, one staff is assigned to manage two or more programmes with two appointment letters but they get only one salary as other program’s salary has to be refunded in cash to the organisation. Alternatively, in many NGOs, staff work in projects and salary goes to the head of the NGO whose designation and roles were elaborated in project budget. For most of the government project, there is fixed share and commission by NGOs which goes to politicians, bureaucrats, and other officials. To influence the monitors or evaluators, even money and women are used by few organisations. In few organisations, two parallel financial management systems are in practice, one for themselves (in the name of General Fund) and other for the donors and auditors. Hence, it is difficult to find faults in their financial management system.

Many organisations are easily luring or impressing the donors by showcasing their work without doing anything. There are good numbers of consultants available to develop proposals, write reports, case studies and documentaries which can be sold to donors. Besides, nowadays many awards are also available which one can buy or manage for their organisation. One does not need to worry about transparency and accountability, particularly in respect of the funds received from various sources. One can spend a sizable portion of funds in personal asset building, air travel, and purchase of vehicles. Even most of the training opportunities, fellowships, conference participation and foreign trips are attended by the head of the family and their members. There are instances where donors have sponsored international fellowships and foreign trips to family members or for the senior bureaucrats. Although these trips are shown as training programmes, the real intent is to oblige the bureaucrats so they can grant a project or make a policy in donors or an organisation’s favour.

Under Societies Registration Act (1860), there is a mandate to have seven members in the governing body of the organisation having no blood relation to promote representation of diverse sections of the society. However, to defy this clause, many organisations heads have made their daughters-in-law or other family members the board members who are part of the family but not having direct blood relation. Mostly treasurer posts are confined within the family members and majority of the board members are kept out of fence and everything revolves around one or two members. Rest of the members remain silent signatory to validate the board decisions which they hardly aware of.

If one owns an NGO, they do not need to worry about their children’s career. Just transfer the special skills and prepare them to inherit the NGO. For instance, an NGO in Jharkhand, established in the beginning of 1970s, now is in the process of transferring the leadership to their sons. Interestingly, despite the fact that many staff have devoted decades in the same organisation but they will not get the leadership, title and ownership. In another organisation in Bihar, after the death of its secretary, his wife became the secretary, as his son was minor. After attaining 18 years of age, her son took over the secretary position. It shows that most of organisation’s leadership rotates in the family and board are customary and ornamental without having the real power. Similarly, one need not worry about dowry. According to a study “Expanding Dimensions of Dowry” carried out by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), “Several middle and upper income group families interviewed said that they were trying to organise an NGO for the prospective bridegroom because that is what he had demanded!” The AIDWA study has revealed that this trend is not limited to economically marginalized classes. The study says: they specifically demand NGOs that have been registered for three years – the eligibility criteria for overseas funding.

This situation is not only prevalent in Bihar, Jharkhand, or Odisha, the state of Uttar Pradesh also has the culture of giving dowry in the form of NGO. There are NGO owners who want to employ professionals to run their NGOs and earn money for them. These new professionals think that they are helping underdeveloped community but soon they realize that they have become the part of the “system”. Biswanath Dalei, a lecturer in a private college in Balasore, Odisha, is a harried man – running around to get an NGO registered within a month’s time. “Definitely, he is not in a tearing hurry to be of service to society. The fact is that his future son-in-law is demanding an NGO as dowry in lieu of Dalei’s inability to give Rs 100,000 in cash”. Nowadays, NGO buying and selling is increasingly emerging as a good business and one can buy an NGO in 10-20 thousand depending on how old it is or having FCRA or not.

Conclusion

The paper does not mean that all NGOs are money making entity. Many NGOs have set up examples of transparency. But there is still a long way to go. The only way to stop these people to become the part of minting money in an NGO way is to make strong legislation and monitoring body. Misuse of hundred and fifty years old Society Registration Act is common where anyone and everyone can register an NGO. Society Registration Act needs a thorough review and amendment. The existing legislation and monitoring bodies for NGOs are weak and powerless. There is a need of strong accreditation body to monitor and regulate NGOs to improve transparency, governance, and accountability. The government and planning commission needs to relook their policy on NGO partnership. The Government should also take the responsibility of the development of its people and should stop transferring their responsibility to NGOs in the name of public-private-partnership.

Acknowledgement:

Author is thankful to all those who shared their experience, provided relevant information, and helped in developing this paper. Their names are not mentioned as it might hamper their career.

 

Disclosure: The commentary is based on author’s discussion with various NGO staffs and development professionals. The views expressed in this paper are not against any individual or organisation. Therefore, name of NGOs are not mentioned in the paper.

(Photo © DR)

Opinions voiced by Global Minds do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Global Journal.

Return to Philanthropy?

New Left Project

October 31, 2012

by Michael Barker

 

Philanthropy, we are told, is to replace the welfare state: instead of attempting to redistribute wealth via taxation and democratic planning, austerity politicians are in the process of dispatching with what they view as an irritating relic of working class history. In its place we are informed that we should rely upon the charity of the greediest and most exploitative subset of society, our country’s leading capitalists. A group of individuals whose psychological temperament is better described as psychopathic rather than altruistic.^[1]

While many corporate executives may well have numerous commendable personal traits, their commitment to pursuing their own class interests — at the expense of the mass of humanity — necessarily means that they must master the means to mask their illegitimate power and actively encourage a sense of futility amongst the governed. The creation of non-profit corporations, otherwise known as philanthropic foundations, thereby serves a critical function for powerful elites:letting them distance themselves from their psychopathic for-profit offspring, and allowing capitalists to recast themselves as good Samaritans striving to work for the common good.

Under the ideological onslaught of the “Big Society”, philanthropy is now a big and highly profitable business in itself. Tens of thousands of individuals are employed in this booming industry whose very growth is inversely related to the cutting of much-needed public services. Yet this philanthropic sector is hardly new, and can trace its institutional history to the old charity organisations of the nineteenth century.

In fact to this day, the Charity Organization Societies that were initially formed in 1869 continue to be used as a misleading “institutional model to illustrate the alleged advantages of voluntarism over state benefits.”^[2] This is a model of manipulation that was quickly exported to the United States. In time these charity societies found their replacement through the institutionalisation of philanthropy in the form of dedicated foundations, which were quickly used as a weapon of capitalist reform against a militant and increasingly socialist working class.^[3]

For the past several decades the pro-capitalist ideology guiding the foundation-world has been gaining the ears of the rich and powerful in the UK, and its historical lessons are currently being reintegrated into the British ruling classes’ war against life. Groups at the forefront of this educative endeavour are numerous, but perhaps the most significant is the Association of Charitable Foundations, which was set up in 1989 — with grants given by their members amounting to £1.2 billion in 2005 alone.

A former senior executive at private equity company 3i plc, John Kingston, is the current chairman of the Association of Charitable Foundations, a position of authority he bolsters through serving as a board member of David Cameron’s recently launched Big Society Capital. Kingston is supported at the Association by his vice chair, Sara Llewellin, who is the chief executive of the leading liberal foundation — ostensibly “committed to funding and encouraging the promotion of social justice” — the “Big Society”

With the Association of Charitable Foundations being of fairly recent origin, an apt forerunner in the UK sis the Charities Aid Foundation. This Foundation was was formed in 1924 as the Charities Department of the National Council of Social Service, in order to encourage efficiency in charitable giving. In 1959, the Charities Department changed its name to become what is now known as the Charities Aid Fund (CAF); while the National Council of Social Service itself is now called the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

In late 2010, Dominic Casserley, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, became CAF’s chairman, only retiring from his position as the chairman of the major British charity Action on Addiction in 2012. Casserley’s predecessor at CAF was the former chief executive at the London-based investment bank SG Warburg & Company, Lord Cairns; while CAF’s current chief executive is John Low, an individual who in recent months stepped down from his position as the chairman of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) — the professional body for the third sector’s usually overpaid chief executives. Low also serves alongside the aforementioned Sara Llewellin on the board of trustees of Charity Bank, an organisation which helps financial investors “facilitate real social change.” The type of social change being facilitated equates with activities that enable and empower the ongoing priviatisation of public services, something that ACEVO chief executive Sir Stephen Bubb is certainly familiar with, given his recently revealed key role in the ongoing privatisation of the NHS.

The close relationship between capitalist enemies of public services and the promoters of voluntary work should come as no surprise. And a key addition to the ruling classes’ armory in their longstanding efforts to undermine the welfare provisions of the state is Dartington Hall Trust’s School for Social Entrepreneurs. This “School” was founded in 1997 by Michael Young, a former Director of the pro-capitalist Political and Economic Planning think tank, who is best known as being the man who coined the phrase “social entrepreneur.”^[4] Funding for this project came from HSBC Holdings plc, the National Lottery Charities Board and the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust.

The School for Social Entrepreneurs’ founding chairman was the late James Cornford (1935-2011), who just prior to his death acted as the chair of Dartington Hall Trust. Having been a policy wonk for the ruling class for decades, Cornford previously serving as the first Director (1989-94) of the New Labour think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research — the very think tank that helped provide the intellectual fodder to allow the Labour Party to dispatch its working-class roots. Another notable trustee of the School for Social Entrepreneurs is Vaughan Lindsay, who became the CEO of Dartington Hall Trust in 2004 after leaving an illustrious career in the corporate world, where he had most recently worked for healthcare privatizer McKinsey & Company.

Notably the current chairman of the Institute for Public Policy Research is James Purnell, who recently served as a board member of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. Blue Labour operative Purnell presently acts as a senior advisor for the world’s leading advisor on business strategy, Boston Consulting Group, and is a trustee of Citizens UK — a group whose “goal is to increase the power of communities to participate in public life.” Dismantling the welfare state being one way sure fire way in which to force increased public participation in public life.

Given the insidious way in which elite philanthropy works to defang and delimit the processes of beneficial social change, it is vital that progressives begin seriously to tackle the vexing questions surrounding the mostly unmentioned power of philanthropy, most especially that of liberal elites. Thankfully in the past few years this dialogue has gained much needed support from the publication of two books, Joan Roelofs’ Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003), and INCITE!’s The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007). However, the most important work still needs to be done: together we need to launch a popular debate about the corrosive influence of foundations on progressive social change, and then begin to propose and support alternative (sustainable) solutions to funding progressive groups all over the world.

Michael Barker is an independent researcher who currently resides in the UK and blogs at http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/.

For more New Left Project coverage of the Big Society project, see Emma Dowling’s series here, here and here.

 

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[1] Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004).

[2] Robert Humphreys, Poor Relief and Charity, 1869-1945: the London Charity Organization Society (Palgrave, 2001).

[3] Sheila Slaughter and Edward Silva, “Looking backwards: how foundations formulated ideology in the Progressive Period,” in Robert Arnove, (ed.), Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Boston, 1980).

[4] Asa Briggs, Michael Young: Social Entrepreneur (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p.328.

The Pathological Psychology of Western Capitalism

Exploring the psychic distortions that sustain the market system

ZNet

 

The many glaring ills of contemporary Western society have come into sharp focus in the socio-political and philosophical thought of the past two centuries. The cultural pathologies of modern Western society abound, embedded in every dimension of our lives, manifesting themselves in various forms pathological behavior. Within conventional psychological and psychoanalytic frameworks, such matters are often (perhaps mistakenly) treated as essentially individual phenomena. Poor mental health in society is a matter of individual maladjustment. In response to this hopelessly reductionist approach, Erich Fromm proposed the much more radical notion of a fundamental “unadjustment of the culture itself.” Perhaps conceiving of social pathology as an individual deviation from an otherwise healthy and well functioning whole is a false start. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that modern Western society is haunted by what Fromm called a “pathology of normalcy”– – when the “normal” functioning of society is itself a disturbing pattern of collective pathology.

In a culture in which the individual is enmeshed in a myriad of complex social structures, systems, and institutions wielding enormous force and influence over daily life, it is appropriate to at least critically address whether the social order itself is in fact sane. The general theme of the following analysis is that Western society is indeed trapped in this pathology of normalcy, rooted in what are fundamentally anti-human properties of capitalist social relations and economic and cultural institutions. It is both the concrete conditions of these arrangements and the values that underlie them that will shed light on the psychological state of contemporary Western society.

In Sane Society, Fromm highlights two conceptual frameworks, and their guiding assumptions, we should consider in making claims about the collective mental health of a society. Sociological relativism, the doctrine that a given society is “normal” inasmuch as it functions and thus rendering pathology an issue of poor individual adjustment, precludes objective criteria for evaluating the mental health of human beings. The much more bold perspective of normative humanism on the other hand affirms the existence of appropriate universal criteria for evaluating the mental health of all people, irrespective of cultural systems.(Fromm 21) Positing that human beings have natural basic needs and psychic qualities governing their mental and emotional functioning, the satisfaction of which is inherent in any reasonable measure of psychological well-being, normative humanism provides a measure against which we can analyze collective mental health and social pathology. The primary claims put forth above demand such a measure, which lie at the core of Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis. It is, as always, a question of human nature.

Humanistic psychoanalysis insists that an accurate conception of human nature can be deduced from the study of the concrete conditions of human beings and their evolutionary and social development.  The human being represents a unique break in the evolution of life, a qualitative leap constituting a life form fundamentally different from all before it. A transition from the passive existence of the purely instinctual creature to the self-directed consciousness of the modern human: a new, transcendent species when “life became aware of itself.” (30) Nature has thus endowed humanity with the unique faculties for creative expression, free spontaneous activity, self-awareness and reflection, constructive engagement with the world, capacities for empathy and cooperation. Human needs are inherently social; our growth and development is not an isolated, individual phenomenon. Biological survival and social development both depend upon our relations to others, and so it is in our relationships with others that we realize our humanity. However, the emergent psychic properties of self-awareness, reason, and imagination—at once liberating and destabilizing–of this new being disrupts the “harmony” of the natural animal world. The transcendent qualities of humanity paradoxically make it the least fit for the realm of nature, in which instinctual response rules. Humanity can not, as other animals do, live by physiological adaptation and genetic determination alone; rather, we must create our existence for ourselves. Fromm notes that “we are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security.”(33) It is to find a solution to this fundamental contradiction that motivates human existence.

Our evolutionary, biological origins render the range of potential instincts, traits, and behaviors in human nature seemingly endless; the crucial question is which of these instincts are the social order going to maximize (or minimize). A social system is not simply the sum of its parts; over time, complex systems of interacting institutions take on logics of their own, while the whole develops a dynamism not found in its constitutive parts. To determine the mental health of Western society, we must consider the concrete conditions of our modes of production and forms of social-political organization to come up with a generalizable personaility structure. To do so, Fromm develops the concept of the social character: “the nucleus of the character structure which is shared by most members of the same culture.” (Fromm 76) The social character is a kind of conceptual cultural prototype generated by the institutional and structural foundations of society. For any system to survive, it must develop a means of channeling the human energies within society in accordance with the needs of the system, into cognitions and behaviors that ensure the continued functioning of society. If it becomes a matter of conscious choice whether or not to adhere to dominant social patterns, the system could be endangered. In its purest and most effective form, the character structure operates at the unconscious level, ensuring people “want to act as they have to act, and at the same time finding gratification in acting according to the requirements of the culture.”(Fromm 77) As Adorno pointed out, “it is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces.” (Schmookler 118)

What is the social character of modern Western capitalist society? It must be deduced from analysis of the socio-economic institutions that govern our lives. All social institutions incentivize certain types of behavior while discouraging others.(Albert 65) What are the defining institutions of Western society? In capitalist society, the economic sphere is defined by three major institutional forces: private ownership, market allocation, and corporate divisions of labor. Embedded in a competitive class structure, these institutions dominate peoples’ lives and shape their values, attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Markets are the central institutions in capitalist society, organizing social activity according to their core values and projecting their power onto every dimension of human relationships. Prices and commodities are the language of markets and decisions are determined by a cold logic of material self-interest. Human beings in a market system engage in the social activities of production and consumption as atomized buyers and sellers in competition for scarce income and resources. The drive for profit is the dominant motivational force in market relationships, each actor advancing at the expense of another. Markets systematically subvert collective well-being by externalizing the costs of economic exchange onto others in society and the environment. Market pricing systems “lack concrete qualitative information and the obscuring of social ties and connections in market economies make cooperation difficult, while competitive pressures make cooperation irrational.” (Albert 66).

Private property breeds opposition by dividing society into owners and non-owners, with fundamentally divergent interests. It confers onto owners of capital disproportionate powers of decision making in the collective affairs of society, subordinating others to the interests of private wealth. Inherited wealth and power, disparate access to social resources and means of development, the erosion of cooperative values and common interest are the result of private ownership of productive social assets. Corporate divisions of labor divide the workplace, a central sphere of human activity in capitalist society, into hierarchies of disproportionate empowerment, quality of life, remuneration, and status. Unequal distribution of empowering circumstances, decision-making information, skills, confidence, and well being obstructs the healthy cognitive development of members of a corporate workplace.(Albert 46) The divisions of labor in capitalism fragment the mental and physical development of the human being. Specialization prohibits the worker’s interaction with the fruits of their labor as a whole. Sharp divisions of labor produce “individualism, narrowness of vision, and privatism” and detach people from each other and the public domain. (Benton 112) Holistic cognitive development is stunted by strict adherence to a single productive mode; rote, deadening, obedient work destroys one’s self-esteem and creative faculties. Indeed, the corporation has evolved into the dominant institution in Western capitalist society.

Borrowing from the psychologist Robert Hare, legal scholar Joel Bakan applies a diagnostic checklist of psychological traits to demonstrate, in human terms, the psychopathic nature of the modern corporation. The corporation: is irresponsible by endangering others in its inherently singular pursuit of profit, manipulative towards others in search for greater power and control, shamelessly grandiose in its self-conception, displays antisocial tendencies and a lack of empathy, and is remorseless in its wrongdoing.(Bakan 57) In human, social terms the corporation fails to live up to any reasonable measure of what we would consider to be a psychologically healthy human being. In these contexts, human behavior is molded in accordance with the role requirements (buyer, seller, owner, worker, etc.) of the institutions.

In capitalist society, people are conditioned by the requirements of the system to conceive of themselves and others in terms of economic utility. Production and consumption are heightened as the most natural and essential of human activities. From this develops a proliferation of materialist values; material goods are artificially infused with human dimensions, and life is experienced through the inanimate medium of the commodity. The productivist ideology of capitalism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, actually transforming people into the theoretical personality types of laissez-faire, capitalist doctrine. So how do people experience these activities, deceptively elevated to the status of a “natural law” by capitalist ideology (which in itself profoundly impacts our values)? As Michael Albert notes, “hierarchical work leaves different imprints on personalities. For those at the top, it yields an inquisitive, expansive outlook. For those at the bottom [the vast majority of people in capitalist society], it leaves an aggrieved and self-deprecating outlook” and induces hostility and aggression. Production is experienced as an estranged activity of the worker, devoid of any intrinsic value or self-fulfilling properties. For the great majority of society, work becomes a mechanical and mindless activity, and the worker a “perversion of a free being.”  “Labor’s product, confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer…the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.”(Marx 72) Ironically, despite its productivist ideological roots, in capitalist society work is conceived of as an essentially inhuman chore, to be abolished by technological development and automation. →

Paul Hawken’s Spiritual Business

Swans Commentary

November 5, 2012

by Michael Barker

 

According to his Web site, best-selling author Paul Hawken “has written six books” — many of which outline in considerable detail how corporations should promote a green or environmentally sustainable form of capitalism. Yet considering that his most recent book is titled Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming (Viking, 2007), it is ironic that Paul Hawken has his own significant blind spot; as his otherwise comprehensive resume (which is thirty pages long) has only recently been updated to mention the fact that he has actually published seven, not six, books, although the title of his first book still fails to make it onto his resume.

At first glance it would seem strange that someone could forget the publication of their first book: a book that Paul traveled half-way across the world to write, but arguably there might be a very good reason why he has expunged any mention of The Magic of Findhorn (Souvenir Press, 1975) from his past. No doubt this is because this book provides an uncritical celebration of New Age spirituality that glorifies intuitive thinking; supporting ideas that do not mesh well with his subsequent, ostensibly secular, efforts to reform the corporate world. Yet, as this article will demonstrate, despite his decision to underplay his more irrational literary endeavors there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Paul continues to work closely with the New Age community in his futile efforts to create a more loving, spiritually-enlightened, capitalism.

One can begin by pointing to Paul’s membership on the advisory council of the Garrison Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting the kind of positive thinking — very much in vogue at Findhorn — which “applies the transformative power of contemplation to today’s pressing social and environmental concerns…” Although the Institute has a separate board of spiritual advisors, other individuals who sit on their normal advisory board with Paul include New York Times bestseller Daniel Goleman; Mary Evelyn Tucker, who is the co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University; and Michael Lerner, who is a founding member of the Integral Institute — a business-minded organization whose mission “is to awaken humanity to full self-awareness.”

The Integral Institute’s Michael Lerner likewise serves alongside Paul and Daniel Goleman on the advisory council of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a center whose long-serving executive director, Mirabai Bush, is co-author, with Ram Dass of the New Age book Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service (Random House, 1991). Arthur Zajonc, the secretary of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, is similarly positioned in the heart of the US New Age community, as he is the former general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America (1994-2002) and president (since 1997) of the Lindisfarne Association.

Founded in 1972, Lindisfarne, whose work is closely related to that of Findhorn, refers to itself as “an association of scientists, artists, scholars, and contemplatives devoted to the study and realization of a new planetary culture.” Elite power-brokers have been involved in Lindisfarne from its not so humble beginnings, with their founding advisory board including the then-editor of The New York Times (Harrison Salisbury); while when Lindisfarne moved to Colorado (in 1979) it was Canadian businessman Maurice Strong who stepped up to the mark to help finance the move.

Here it is important to introduce Nancy Wilson Ross, a woman whose keen interest in Asian spirituality and art led her to write numerous books that played a critical role in introducing Buddhism to Western readers, her two earliest contributions being The World of Zen: An East-West Anthology (Random House, 1960) and Three Ways of Asian Wisdom (Simon & Schuster, 1966). Ross was a bona fide member of the ruling class and served as a founding board member of John D. Rockefeller III’s world-famous Asia Society (a position she maintained from 1956 until 1985). Moreover, it was through her connections to the Rockefeller clan that she initially brought the writings of Lindisfarne founder William Irwin Thompson to the attention of Laurance Rockefeller — who then proceeded to help Thompson launch Lindisfarne on its merry way to global fame. Ross, who was a member of the Zen Center in San Francisco, also ensured that the Zen Center worked in close association with Lindisfarne, a Zen Center that counts Paul Hawken among its long-serving members and major benefactors.

It seems that Paul has always worked hard to prove that spiritual and environmental interests are compatible with capitalism. For example, in 1966 he founded the United States’ first natural food company (Erewhon Trading Company), and in 1979 was the founder of Smith & Hawken — which was the first company to participate in a debt-for-nature swap in partnership with the free-market environmental outfit Conservation International (of which Paul has served as a board member). More recently, in 2002, Paul created the Natural Capital Institute (now known as WiserEarth); in 2005, he co-founded the Highwater Global Fund, a leading environmental and social global public equity fund; and a few years ago (in 2009) he co-founded a solar research and development venture called OneSun Solar.

Alongside Paul, the other co-founder of OneSun Solar is biologist Janine Benyus, who is a board member of Natural Capitalism Solutions, a group whose stated “mission is to educate senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society about the principles of sustainability.” Founded by Hunter Lovins, this latter organization is based on the principles presented in a book she co-wrote with Paul and her husband Amory Lovins entitled Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little Brown and Company, 1999).

In keeping with their longstanding commitment to green capitalism, in 1982 Paul’s coauthors Hunter and Amory Lovins founded the green think-tank and consultancy Rocky Mountain Institute, which has worked with all manner of large and small companies including Royal Dutch Shell and Walmart, and with governmental clients such as the Pentagon. Standout trustees of the Rocky Mountain Institute include Suzanne Farver (who is the treasurer of the Spiritual Paths Foundation) (1) and lead trustee, Suzanne Woolsey (who is married to the former head of the CIA, James Woolsey); while a significant emeritus trustee is David Orr, who is a board member of Natural Capitalism Solutions. David Orr was a 2008 fellow at the Lindisfarne Association, and is a board member of numerous deep-green organizations such as the Center for Ecoliteracy and the David Brower Center, and he formerly served alongside Paul on the advisory board of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. (2)

A particularly notable member of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics is the winner of the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, John Todd. (3) Todd is a fellow of both the Findhorn Foundation and Lindisfarne Association, (4) and is the author of two natural wastewater treatment patents with Findhorn Foundation chairman Michael Shaw. Todd likewise resides with Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins (among others) on the advisory board of an entrepreneurial non-profit organization known as Sustainable Settings. One of the two emeritus directors of Sustainable Settings is Ben Walton, who is a board member of the right-wing Walton Family Foundation.

They none-too-mysterious connections keep piling up, and Paul is counted as a member of the international advisory board of the Women’s Earth Alliance, which is a project of the late David Brower’s Earth Island Institute. Here Paul is accompanied by deep-green eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, who is a patron of the Findhorn-connected WYSE International and serves on the council of sages of the California Institute of Integral Studies; (5) and they are joined by controversial environmental activist Vandana Shiva, who is an associate of the Gaia Foundation — a group that was co-founded by Findhorn Foundation trustee Edward Posey OBE and Findhorn Foundation fellow Liz Hosken.

Likewise, Paul maintains ties to other deep-ecology activists through his presence on the advisory board of the Green World Campaign, which promotes “holistic ways to work for the health of our shared biosphere and the harmony of our global village.” The most significant fellow advisor to the Green World Campaign is philanthropist, Peter Buckley, who is the former CEO of Esprit-Europe, board member of Doug Tompkins’s Conservation Land Trust, co-founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy, and founder of the David Brower Center.

Finally, Paul serves on the advisory board of the Center for a New American Dream, which aims to help Americans “to reduce and shift their consumption to improve quality of life, protect the environment, and promote social justice.” Other spiritually-interesting members of their advisory board include Hunter Lovins, Joanna Macy, and Norman Myers, who is a former member of the Auroville Foundation’s international advisory board (for critical comment, see footnote #5).

This article has traced out some of the ties between Paul Hawken’s greening of corporate power and the diverse circle of New Age environmental activists closely associated with the magical Findhorn community, which as observed at the start of this winding article was the topic of celebration in Paul’s first book. However, from a critical perspective it is obvious that neither magical thinking, nor its equally irrational counterpart, green capitalism, are going to provide any useful solutions to the serious problems facing human civilization. By outlining the overlapping nature of some of the groups that Paul presently works with that inevitably help mystify the true extent of capitalism’s inherent destructiveness, it is hoped that more concerned individuals will begin to explore the necessity of adopting truly radical solutions that address the root causes of our societies problems. The primary problem being capitalism, and with one prominent alternative being socialism. (6)

 

 

WATCH: Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism

Published on Oct 2, 2012 by Stop Porn Culture

WATCH: Arundhati Roy Discussing Funding, Capitalism and NGOs

In this lecture *excerpt, Arundhati Roy describes the intersection between foundation and corporate funding, capitalism and the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

*To view lecture (Arundhati Roy: Capitalism – A Ghost Story | 4th Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Trust Lecture) in it’s entirety, visit this link:  http://youtu.be/qv8l9AKZanQ

 

Miseducation and the New Slavery

Ceasefire Magazine

By Michael Barker

October 25, 2011

 

Ruling class philanthropists have maintained a long history of subsuming educational needs to capitalist growth prerogatives. Learning from this toxic history is imperative, which is why Donald Spivey’s contribution, Schooling for the New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915 (Greenwood Press, 1978), is so important.

In this book Spivey examined how industrial education served as “a major force in the subjugation of black labor in the New South” in the United States, paying particular attention to the influence of Northern industrialists-cum-philanthropists who guided such “progress.” [1]

A good place to begin is with the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau at the end of the Civil War. Ostensibly set-up to aid and protect freedmen, the Bureau actually served “as a conservative bulwark against black self-assertion.” This however did not mean that all of the white men staffing the Bureau acted to circumscribe black freedom, and Charles B. Wilder – who was appointed the first superintendent of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Hampton, Virginia – was just one exception who “sided with the blacks in their complaints and paid for it.”

Indeed, Wilder’s commitment to black freedom, not servitude, meant he was soon ousted from his position and replaced by a “strong supporter of  Bureau philosophy and policy,” General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Here was the ideal man for the job: “Freedmen as a class,” General Armstrong declared, “are destitute of ambition; their complacency in poverty and filth is a curse; discontent would lead to determined effort and a better life.” [2]

By the end of 1867 Armstrong had moved into the educational arena. The General had arrived at the opinion that the freedmen presented a problem that could only be solved through proper schooling. The “only thing is to educate them [blacks] ,” he declared; “there is no other escape from a fearful band of evils that their ignorance will otherwise entail upon the country.” (p.11)

To impart the requisite education upon blacks, in 1868, General Armstrong with the aid of the Freedman Bureau and the American Missionary Association founded the Hampton Normal Institute in Hampton, Virginia.

Through industrial education, the General hoped to control the blacks, not raise them to a level of parity with whites. Armstrong proceeded with the greatest amount of care. “The darky,” he confided, “is an ugly thing to manage.” He was careful to give his students a limited education, just enough to fit them to their prescribed station in society and no more. “Over education” the Founder defined as one of the salient “dangers with the weak races. … For the average [black] pupil,” he contended, “too much is as bad as too little.” (p.26) →