thoughts from an aspiring bay area marxist

Neo-liberalism

People talk about neo-liberalism a lot these days. Most folks who use that word don’t seem to like neo-liberalism too much, but despite the word’s constant use, it often goes undefined. So let’s start with a definition. Neo-liberalism, or the new liberalism, is a term coined by Milton Friedman in his book, Freedom and Capitalism. Friedman calls neo-liberalism a return to the classical economists of capitalism — David Ricardo, Adam Smith, etc. Basically, the idea is that capitalism is the best possible economic model for human society, and it works best when left totally unregulated. But the important aspects for us are the policy prescriptions that Friedman championed: privatization of public resources, deregulation of the private sector, and cuts to social services.
As David Harvey often points out, these policy prescriptions, taken together, and analyzed from their emergence within a specific point in the development of capitalism, represent a concerted attack on the power of working class and poor people, and the consolidation of class power in the hands of the wealthy. In the 1920s, Ricardo’s and Smith’s ideas were being pretty well heeded: the owners of capitalism were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted. In the 50 years between the stock market crash that ended the dominance of classical economic liberalism and Reagan’s defeat of the Air Traffic Controller’s strike that signaled the beginning of economic neo-liberalism, workers made great strides in gaining access to high quality education, creating strong social security nets, and ensuring public oversight of the doings of very wealthy. Since 1981, many of those steps have been undone.

The Non-Profit
Non-profits, or not-for-profit organizations, have played an interesting role in many of these stages of capitalism. In the late 1800’s, as industrial capitalism became dominant, wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller needed ways to avoid paying taxes on the vast sums of money they were making.
So they invented foundations. When Andrew Carnegie had finished firing Gatling guns into crowds of workers on strike from his iron plants so they would stop complaining about their kids starving, he would show his gratitude for their submission by having his foundation build the town a library or a new school. And he would write it off his taxes. As foundations became popular among the very rich, groups began springing up to take advantage of this organization of excess wealth. The non-profit was born.  During the sixties, as workers around the world fought for power, the non-profit became an even more important tool. In America, as groups like the Black Panthers and Malcolm X’s Organization of African-American Unity developed new analyses of class power, the non-profit was relied upon heavily to divert revolutionary struggle over the control wealth, and the means of producing it, into more reformist struggle. The Ford Foundation in particular threw huge sums of money to the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), with the explicit aim of turning the civil rights movement away from revolution.

In our own time, foundations continue to provide tax shelters for the very wealthy, very large non-profits continue to shift the focus of social struggles, but in the context of neo-liberalism, we have a new kind of non-profit — the NGO. NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, are called such because they do work often considered to be the responsibility of government.  As Milton Friedman’s calls to deregulate, privatize, and cut social spending are answered with a heavier and heavier hand, NGOs are springing up to fill the gaps left when the state leaves. As L.A. cuts it’s funding to public schools, Green Dot, a huge non-profit funded by the Eli Broad Foundation (it’s easy to see why Eli had some extra cash, he’s on the board at AIG, the folks who got an $80 billion bailout with your tax dollars), is opening 12 privately controlled, tax-payer funded charter schools. As governments around the world are forced to shut down breakfast and lunch programs due to IMF mandated neo-liberal reforms, OXFAM International is expanding its food program to never-before seen levels. As U.S. Presidents one after another destroy the institutions designed to regulate things like the derivatives trade, many finance corporations are starting side-project non-profits to do “public education”, or provide “insider’s advice” and “an objective eye.” Charles Schwab has one, as does Lexington Finance Capital.

Labor Ideology

Now whether these shifts are good or bad is up to you to decide. However, the thing I’m most interested in is the shifting ideologies of the workers conducting the labor that is now being transferred to the Non-Profit and NGO sector. If you’re like a lot of college folks, you probably know somebody who works for a non-profit. And you may or may not know somebody who works for the government in some capacity. The odds are really good that the public worker is in a union and the non-profit worker is not. Public workers have one of the highest levels of union density of any sector in the U.S. Economy. Non-profit workers have one of the lowest. Who ever heard of a non-profit worker in a union?! Non-profits are the ones “doing the most good”. (You’ve seen the Salvation Army trucks, right?) They don’t need unions! Unions are for stopping big corporations!

It’s been interesting to watch my friends graduate and move on to jobs around the country. Many have gone on to jobs in the non-profit sector. Not one has gotten a job in the public sector. For many of them the ideology that organizes their relationship to their jobs goes something like this: “My job could be better, but at least I get paid to do something I mostly believe in, so it could be worse.” This seems to me to be the dominant ideology of non-profit labor, and a central organizing ideology of labor generally in neo-liberal capital. This is very different from the ideology of many workers in the public sector. For many teachers, postal service workers, clerks and technicians, and service workers, the recognition that the government won’t help people unless it’s forced to is a basic part of their experience on the job. That’s why they have unions: so that they can collectivize their power and make sure they have some say over what happens at work.
This drastic shift points to some interesting conclusions. This shift of the labor of unionized public servants to non-union non-profit labor is consistent with the general attack on workers and workers’ power that is an underlying feature of neo-liberalism generally. Furthermore, this transformation of labor means that workers as a class have less say over the institutions they depend on. This shift in ideology has far-reaching consequences. The elevation and expansion of non-profit workers into what was once the “public sector” is also about setting an example. Why should any worker deserve a union to get help for their problems? Shouldn’t they just seek out help from the non-profit?
There are lots of non-profits that do really important work around the world; I in no way want to undermine that fact. But you know what would make their work better, more responsive to the needs of communities, stronger in the face of cutbacks? You guessed it! THE UNION MAKES US STRONG!