The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary

Movements, Histories & Motivations

By David E. Lowes

Fernwood Publishing Ltd and Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2006 David E. Lowes
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84277-683-4
CHAPTER 1

A

ACCOUNTABILITY is often used to denote an element or quality of DEMOCRACY that is equated with good governance, but the term generally means that those who hold and exercise a degree of POWER have a responsibility to explain and justify their conduct. Elected representatives, appointed officials and other public office holders are therefore required to demonstrate that they have discharged their duties appropriately. Issues raised by anticapitalists, for example, include the granting of EXPORT CREDITS to firms that supply military equipment to oppressive regimes or when aid is given to environmentally destructive projects like dam construction in which national companies have a financial interest. Accountability is often considered to be less effective than TRANSPARENCY, though, because it can only occur after a decision or action has taken place. The process of holding individuals, parties or governments answerable for their actions can be conducted in a variety of ways, including through media investigation or legal challenges in the courts, but it is considered to be the ultimate function of elections. In reality, however, the extent to which officials explain themselves to voters is extremely limited, while falling numbers of people bothering to vote in elections suggests that fewer see a vote cast once every few years as an adequate method of making a government and elected representatives keep their promises.

Those disenchanted by an electoral process that fails to deliver accountability either become apathetic or cynical, or in the case of the anti-capitalist movement they turn to extra-parliamentary opposition. The latter groups and individuals do so in order to make public their concerns and thereby put pressure on people and institutions that would otherwise be beyond reproach. In particular, attention is focused on the policies and practices of non-elected international institutions like the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND, the WORLD BANK and on CORPORATIONS and the impact that they have on working people, society and the environment. Faith in the responsibility of national governments is seriously undermined, for example, when domestic policy options are circumscribed by international institutions or by the threat of an international corporation to withdraw investment.

Similarly, large corporate donations to political parties appear to have an influence on policy decisions that ordinary members can only dream of. In Britain, for example, a change in the New Labour government’s policy of banning tobacco advertising occurred after a £1 million donation to the Labour Party from an interested person, although the money was returned after a public outcry. Similarly, in the USA, the collapsed and discredited energy corporation Enron had been a major donor to the presidential election campaign of George W. Bush and its officials were subsequently involved in deciding the administration’s energy policy. The principle of accountability is therefore equally relevant to membership organizations like political parties and trade unions — where there are demands for appointed officials and leaders to be directly responsible to rank-and-file members. Likewise, there are also demands for NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS to be accountable to donors, supporters and the people whom they aim to help. See also TAXATION.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Corporate accountability: http://www.corpwatch.org;www.corporatewatch.co.uk Governmental accountability in Canada: http://www.probeinternational.org Accountability for Africa’s problems: http://www.data.org

ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS) is

believed by the majority of medical opinion to develop as a consequence of contracting the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). First observed in the 1980s, the disease was given its current name in 1982, while HIV was identified by Robert Gallo and Jean Luc Montagnier in 1984 and named two years later. Due in part to the unpleasant, debilitating nature of the disease — if untreated, death results from a chronic attack on the immune system that renders it unable to combat even the most common infections — related issues raise particularly strong feelings.

The fact that the disease can be transmitted sexually is reason enough for conservative groups and individuals to stigmatize those infected according to their lifestyles; see Dennis Altman, AIDS and the New Puritanism (1987). Infection is therefore portrayed, in stereotypical fashion, as the result of heterosexual and homosexual promiscuity. Similarly, transmission between drug users who share unsterilized needles and syringes is considered to be the consequence of inappropriate behaviour. Sections of the MEDIA, for example, used to refer to AIDS as a ‘gay plague’, while religious fundamentalists consider it to be a punishment from their god.

Such simplistic and prejudicial views ignore the fact that the disease can also be transmitted from mother to child during birth, breastfeeding or while the baby is in the womb. Hospital patients and haemophiliacs have also been infected during blood transfusions and the use of infected blood products, although this is now rare due to the introduction of screening procedures. On the other hand, misconceptions and irrational views like the belief that HIV can be transmitted by breathing, touching, holding or shaking hands, hugging and kissing or by sharing cooking and eating utensils only serve to fuel discrimination.

The disease and its consequences are now a global problem, with over 42 million people estimated to be living with HIV in 2004 and 20 million deaths having resulted from AIDS-related illnesses. Today, children and heterosexual adults constitute the majority of people living with AIDS or HIV and live predominantly in developing countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, where access to treatment is limited. In Botswana, for example, more than 1.6 million people are infected and in Lesotho the figure is 330,000 out of a population of just under 1 million. Elsewhere, South Africa was estimated to have 4.7 million infected people in 2002, while in 2003 the numbers of infected people in Nigeria and Ethiopia were judged to be 3.7 million and 2.4 million, respectively. The same year 4.6 million people were estimated to be living with the disease in India and a further 1.5 million in China. Due to social and economic collapse in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, an estimated 1.7 million people had become infected by 2004, while the World Health Organization estimated the number of cases in Russia to have exceeded 257,000, Ukraine 500,000 and Estonia 3,700 in the same year.

The debates that rage around the prevention and treatment of AIDS/ HIV are recorded by Shereen Usdin, The No Nonsense Guide to HIV/AIDS (2003), and these reflect themes that motivate sections of the anti-capitalist movement. Although a cure or vaccine is not available at present, treatments exist that can delay the onset of AIDS. HIV, for example, can be treated with antiretroviral therapy to help repair the immune system, assuage associated symptoms and thereby increase the life expectancy and the quality of life of someone affected — even if their condition has already progressed to AIDS. Such therapy can also reduce the chances of the virus being transmitted from mother to newly born child. All this depends on a government’s willingness or ability to afford the levels of investment in health care necessary to fund such treatment. As Christine-Anne d’Adesky, Moving Mountains (2004), attests, lack of funding is still the main reason why most AIDS-related deaths occur in developing countries, where there is a particular need for health-care, sex education, employment and treatment funding. For some of these countries, spending is restricted by loan conditions imposed by the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND and the WORLD BAN K, while for others international debt repayments either exceed spending on health care or seriously restrict funds available for all welfare spending (see INTERNATIONAL DEBT).

Pharmaceuticals corporations from developed countries, like Eli Lilly in the USA, stand accused of profiteering at the expense of people living with HIV/AIDS. Campaigners allege that such CORPORATIONS set prices at levels poorer nations cannot afford and refuse to waive intellectual property rights to allow the production of cheaper generic drugs. International agencies like Médicins sans Frontières and Oxfam, for example, have campaigned for developing countries to be allowed to manufacture generic medicines. Their calls have met with limited success, but still face resistance from corporations that argue that generic products are less effective than their patented versions. Even when a government can afford to fund antiretroviral therapy, research and prevention measures, pressure has to be maintained to ensure those adequate standards of care and prevention are actually provided. Dissemination of information about safer sex, the dangers of sharing needles or the distribution of clean needles and syringes takes place in many developed countries and in Uganda, Zambia and Senegal. Such initiatives are undermined, however, by pronouncements like those of the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who claims that condoms do not prevent HIV infection.

Where governments fail to provide adequate levels of health care or are guilty of mismanagement, affected individuals, families and communities organize and participate in activist campaigns to make sure that their views are heard and their knowledge and experiences used to inform necessary change. In South Africa, for example, activists and organizations like the Treatment Action Campaign seek to ensure that affordable treatments are made available. Such groups also campaign to protect the RIGHTS of people who are living with HIV/AIDS, especially in relation to employment opportunities, health care and life insurance. Ultimately, the failure or refusal to listen to the concerns of those affected raises questions about the ACCOUNTABILITY of representatives of government — politicians, health officials, researchers, medical bureaucrats and doctors — and of pharmaceuticals corporation executives as well.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Activist oriented campaigns: http://www.actupny.org/indexfolder/links.html Statistics : http://www.avert.org/statindx

World development and global health crisis: http://www.worldbank.org/aids

United Nations HIV/AIDS Program: http://www.unaids.org

ACTIVISM/ACTIVIST are terms used to describe a person or group of people who take action in furtherance of a cause — writing letters or emails, attending protests, making speeches, joining boycotts or taking part in DIRECT ACTION and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE — to bring about environmental, political or social change. An activist can be a member of a campaigning organization — a NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION, political party or TRADE UNION, for example — but not a paid official. There is therefore a strict distinction between people who join an organization or become active in support of a particular cause so that they can create or pursue a career for themselves and those who are prepared to use their own time and resources unselfishly. Nevertheless, you do not have to belong to an organization to be an activist — many anti-capitalists are happy to be part of a movement that does not set standards or conditions for membership.

Numerous forms of activism and causes inspire people to become active. Historical examples include anarchists, communists, DIGGERS, ENRAGÉS, LUDDITES, socialists and those like the Chartists and suffragists who campaigned for an extension of the vote. Some of these causes, ideas and issues still motivate groups of people like students and workers to take action. Other themes are to be found on the pages of this tome, while still more are covered by Mike Prokosch and Laura Raymond in The Global Activist’s Manual (2002), and Randy Shaw, The Activist’s Handbook (1996), who adopt a specifically American context. In the spirit of anti-capitalism, the editorial collective Notes from Nowhere also provide further evidence of the activities and motivations of anti-capitalists in We Are Everywhere (2003). The Internet is also used as a resource and a tool for the development of networks, the distribution of information via email lists and the practice of HACKTIVISM.

At its most fundamental, activism can involve the practice of everyday life, as in the case of ‘conscious living’ outlined by Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity (1981). Elgin advocates reducing the level of consumption and therefore the need to sell one’s time for money — ideas often advocated by those concerned with ecological and environmental concerns and a possible antidote to ALIENATION. The downshifting of lifestyle and a respect for nature are also values to be found among anti-corporate activists, who advocate greater respect for the RIGHTS of consumers, as well as the employees of CORPORATIONS. In cultural terms, some activists work to create their own MEDIA, while the use of existing media to combat ADVERTISING and its domination of popular culture is termed Culture Jamming or sniggling — advocated by people like Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam (1999).

Examples of the practice include setting up pirate radio stations to transmit alternative ideas or the use of pop music by bands like Chumbawamba for the same purpose. In the latter case, the term ‘guerrilla communication’ is used to describe the use of a spectacle — a festival or gig — to PROTEST and change the opinions of observers — such as the dousing of Britain’s deputy prime minister at the Brit Awards. This type of activity bears comparison to the ideas of the SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL, which, during the revolts in France in May 1968, advocated the disruption of conventional media to create confusion.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Activists magazine: http://www.activistmagazine.com

Culture Jammer Encyclopaedia: http://www.sniggle.net

Global action database: http://www.agp.org

List of environmental organizations: http://www.envirolink.org

ADVERTISING is the paid promotion of a BRAND in order to stimulate demand and is usually part of an overall promotional strategy that can include publicity, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. Set up in 1843, Volney Palmer in Philadelphia, USA, is credited with being the first advertising agency. The emergence of such organizations was symptomatic of growing competition between companies during the nineteenth century, which, in turn, necessitated the development of new ways of obtaining and increasing market share. Then, with the proliferation of monopolies, CORPORATIONS faced the possibility that market prices would become fixed or change beyond their control. They therefore used advertising to promote a differentiation between products that would enable demand to be manufactured as a way of varying price and therefore maximizing profits.

According to economists there are two main types of advertising that can be used to achieve short- or long-term increases in sales, an increase in market share, improved awareness of brand or an improvement of image. These include ads that provide information about a commodity’s availability, uses, advantages, price, quality and terms of sale; and those that seek to persuade people that they want or need a particular brand. In practice, such differentiation is often difficult to define, especially where imagery is used to present a persuasive message, such as the presentation of cigarette smoking as a symbol of chic behaviour, freedom and independence. In this way, commodities are associated with things that are considered to be appealing, in order to make the product seem equally desirable, such as in the use of airbrushed female and male images, picturesque landscapes or the inclusion of buzzwords with a favourable association.

Advertising now intrudes into every realm of life on billboards, buses, bus stops, park benches and taxis on the street, as well as neon signs. At home, printed flyers are shoved through the door and telephone marketing invades privacy. Adverts also interrupt Internet use, radio listening, television and video viewing and appear in magazines and newspapers. At work, corporate logos appear on office stationery and on payslips, and even schools are used to advertise the corporations that sponsor them or provide ‘free’ curriculum materials. The same organizations seek to reinforce their message by broadcasting radio and television commercials that contain slogans, jingles and catchphrases designed to lodge in the memory and encourage people to buy a particular brand. Ironically, the ‘soap opera’ was specifically produced to facilitate a break in commercials, not the other way round, and now provides a vehicle for a form of covert advertising. This involves the placement of branded products so that they are visible in television programmes, films and other entertainment media and become associated with an actor, cast, movie or programme.

(Continues…)Excerpted from The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary by David E. Lowes. Copyright © 2006 David E. Lowes. Excerpted by permission of Fernwood Publishing Ltd and Zed Books Ltd.
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