[Marxism] Biz-War

["Funke Jayson J" <funke.jj@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I came across this paper, Biz-War: Origins, Structure and Strategy of 
Foundation-NGO Network Warfare on Corporations in the United States, by Jarol 
Manheim, on the NGO Watch site. NGO Watch is a joint project of the American 
Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society, and claims "In an effort to 
bring clarity and accountability to the burgeoning world of NGOs, AEI and the 
Federalist Society have launched NGOWATCH.ORG. This site will, without 
prejudice, compile factual data about non-governmental organizations. It will 
include analysis of relevant issues, treaties, and international organizations 
where NGOs are active. There will be cross-referenced information about 
corporations and NGOs, mission statements, and news about causes and campaigns. 
There will be links to NGOs and to articles and authors of interest."

I have included the Abstract and introduction of the paper and a link to the 
entire document. IT IS WELL WORTH READING because the paper offers the Right's 
interpretation of the Left and it's strategies. 


ABSTRACT

Though it has deeper roots, the use of sophisticated anti-corporate campaigns 
by a growing, and increasingly influential, network of private foundations and 
progressive-left activist NGOs in the United States has a clear and relatively 
concise history dating to the first days of the Reagan administration. This 
paper will provide an overview of this history with a particular emphasis on 
the principal structural components of the anti-corporate network and on the 
strategic imperatives that have guided its development. It will include a brief 
treatment of the underlying theory of the anti-corporate campaign and an 
examination of its evolution from applications in labor organizing and 
collective bargaining to the contemporary focus on broad issues of corporate 
governance and social responsibility. 


It is the argument of this essay that the contemporary "progressive" or 
"progressive populist" movement in the United States, designed to replace the 
Liberalism whose demise was the object and accomplishment of the Reagan 
Revolution, is the product of a series of strategic experiments and decisions 
by activists in organized labor and elsewhere on the Left, guided both by their 
antipathy to the business community and by their understanding of the forces 
that contributed to the earlier resurgence of the American Right. 

This is an argument, not about competing ideologies per se, but about the 
strategies and tactics by which one set of ideologues - on the Left - has 
chosen to contend with its competitors to the Center and Right. It is comprised 
of five elements. They include (1) a guiding empirical theory of social, 
political and economic organization; (2) selection of nomenclature and 
construction of an enemy; (3) construction of an institutional 
counter-structure; (4) development and adaptation of a strategy of attack; and 
(5) the waging of a "social netwar" against the identified target - the 
corporation as a political and economic institution. We will examine each of 
these in turn. Collectively, they amount to a new and now pervasive form of 
conflict between labor and the Left, on the one hand, and the corporate 
establishment, on the other - a phenomenon I have labeled Biz-War. 

Full paper at: http://www.aei.org/docLib/20030612_manheimpub.pdf

Jayson Funke 
  
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