A Critique of NGOism
A Critique of NGOism
– Francie
“Counting marketable achievements such as how many leaflets were distributed, or the quantity of funds raised, prevents us from reflecting on what changes have been achieved, or the strength of our resistance to corporates or government, or, more realistically, from analysing our effectiveness long-term in a struggle against power that isn’t meant to come with quarterly ‘successes.’
I ’ve spent three years heavily involved in the Save Happy Valley campaign,1 over a period of time where the ‘climate change debate’ has come to prominence in the political sphere, and the last year and a half working in a paid position at SAFE.2 Both have set me thinking about the way non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operate and their role in reinforcing the status quo. I’ve also thought lots about the recent Greenpeace campaign Be The Change. NGOs often mirror the very transnational corporations they claim to oppose, engage in self-promotion and reduce ‘activism’ to donating money or spending it ethically. They create ‘campaigns’ that, by definition, fail to tackle structural problems.
This article is a necessarily brief and preliminary exploration of these key issues, but I hope simply to continue a conversation on what we might want organising in Aotearoa to look like. Mirroring Transnational Corporations12
Few indeed are the charities that have deliberately put themselves out of business. On the contrary, a few almost all in the rich world, and particularly in the US – have gone global and grown so vast as to acquire an identity all of their own: ‘bingos.’ It’s as if we’d regressed to the days of the grand imperial charities of Victorian Britain, or the foundations of the American robber barons like Carnegie and Rockefeller...
The inescapable effect is to remove human agency from the people who are supposed to benefit from their work...
[BINGOs] have become powerful, self-righteous institutions, focused intently on the positive. Their revenues and assets now run into hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars. They employ thousands of staff in dozens of countries. Efficiency and professionalism outrank commitment and insight in avowedly ‘corporate’ cultures. Branding is everything. Image is priceless. Growth is good. Bit by bit, the interests of the institution merge with those of its ‘stakeholders’ and ‘customers’ – so that all can expand quite happily together, in size or number as appropriate. (New Internationalist)3
Even New Internationalist, that stalwart of NGOist ‘radical’-liberal journalism, critiques Big International NGOs.4 This article will contend that much of the same critique – and a broader one – can apply for NGOs of any size, and for NGOist activism. Activists organising either inside, or in ways that reflect and intersect with,5 the NGO structure and politics may not be World Vision or Greenpeace but still generally re-inforce the status quo. Many BINGOs operate without borders. They go into areas without knowledge of the different ways people do things in those places, and without knowledge of the situation there. This also occurs within Aotearoa where, for example, environmental organisations will ask who’s polluting the land but not whose land they stand on. They design campaigns to fulfil their own NGO agenda, rather than a community based one. This distorts existing community work by appropriating community issues.
NGOs generally operate with a corporate structure (e.g. with a Director, a hierarchical pay scale and a corresponding hierarchy of decision making power). Often, it is marketing managers who get to determine what campaigns can be run and thus what changes the NGO hopes to work towards.
Even NGOs that were originally set up with a radical purpose increasingly mirror the transnational corporations / government / system they intended to resist. Direct cooption (e.g. membership on governmental committees, consultation meetings with corporate boards, and compromises with and funding from oppressive agents) is best resisted by a collective strength, solidarity and decision making process. These, again, are undermined by a corporate structure. We are concerned about TNCs, capital and the state, and surely we should be concerned about these NGOist trends too.
NGO Promotion and the defining of activism as money
In 2007, Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand, inconjunction with Forest & Bird6 and Oxfam (both conservative NGOs) organised Be The Change.7 This included a webforum where people could register to ‘be counted as someone who has joined the fight against climate change,’ make pledges for actions they would take to ‘help stop climate chaos,’ submit suggestions for new pledges, and a bus tour up the country that included school talks. The focus was on things people could do as individuals to ‘reduce [their] contribution to climate change.’8
This reduces activism to recycling your cans, turning off your lights, or buying a hybrid car (and in other campaigns, buying free range eggs, wearing a little “Make Poverty History” wristband, or boycotting Nestle9).
Consumer based action simply reinforces the capitalist market-based economic system we live under. It strengthens the neoliberal premise that the individual is god, and that you have a ‘choice’ about everything.10 In framing and narrating things this way, NGOs like Greenpeace and SAFE obscure the fact that it is industry and the state that perpetuate the appalling treatment of animals, and the desecration of the environment, and obscure the connection between these and all other forms of exploitation.
By turning to market based ‘solutions,’ NGOs simply reinforce the very structures that have created the problems, and muddy the view for those who may want to try and look at things differently. Consumer based actions are ineffective at changing the root causes of climate change, exploitation of animals, disparities in wealth, or baby milk marketing. They don’t challenge oppression. Rather, I would contend that a large component of the impetus behind a campaign like Be The Change is to raise the profile of the NGO, and directly, or indirectly, raise funds. I have sat in on conversations at SAFE where the entire premise of the conversation has been profile and branding. I have perpetuated it myself, at Save Happy Valley meetings where I’ve said of an otherwise ineffective action or expenditure, “oh well, at least we get our name out there.”
Self-promotion and fundraising are allowed to outweigh the importance of the issue, or of an analysis of what is and is not an effective strategy. Recently I was in a conversation with a key staff member at SAFE who candidly said: “all we do these days is raise profile and raise awareness.” In the discussion that followed he outlined the logic as to why he continues to do this even though it would be easy to find it appalling. Animal rights organisations can challenge the Government but the Government doesn’t care. Business can pay for infinitely more lobbying time than an NGO can. Even the ‘phasing out of cages’ that has been ‘achieved’ so far doesn’t mean anything. Millions of hens will continue to live out their short lives in appalling conditions, locked inside cages that are a little bit bigger and have ‘enhanced’ features like one perch. SAFE, here, chooses to turn to consumer action (e.g. encouraging people to avoid battery hen eggs, promoting veganism), and this is ‘achieved’ through raising awareness, including raising profile.
Obviously, this is based on a view of the state as neutral arbiter (or at least relies on that construct whether or not it is believed). It also falls back to consumer activism. NGOism tends to do exactly this, limiting the options to either lobbying the state or reinforcing neoliberal capitalism. Aid agencies like World Vision use poster children to individualise issues, obscure any political analysis, promote a simple process of guilt then abdication of guilt, and conjure pity rather than compassion11 for the people pictured.
The obsession with funds displayed by World Vision and across the board is repulsive. There are entire jobs in NGOs based on fundraising, street-collecting, grant applications, securing corporate sponsorship and membership recruitment. Although giving money may be a good way for people to support a movement they cannot be as actively involved in as they want, it cannot be the focus of change. Whether NGOs seek funding from large corporates that resemble their opposition, or from government agencies, or from well-off individual benefactors, the logic is the same: ‘wealthy people should be the donors, and thus, inevitably, the controllers of social justice struggles.’12
At SAFE over recent years, there has been a shift so that the entire purpose of
membership is now to make money. Had I continued my employment, I would have
begun work in membership recruitment: that is, ringing recently lapsed members ask-
ing “Do you want to stay on the membership database?”
“No.”
“Then Goodbye.”
“Oh, yes, I do actually.”
“Then pay up, ideally as regular giver.”
“Look, I love your work but I really can’t afford the $40/year membership..”
“Well....Membership is about to increase. You see, ideally each of our members
would be contributing $120 per annum. We’ll change you to a non member but we’ll
be watching to see if you make a donation. And if you don’t within four months, then
you’re gone.”
There was to be no option to keep sending them campaign information (these are
ex-members after all, people who have made at least a financial, and often an actual contribution to SAFE’s work), and maybe drop old supporters who hadn’t made any contact for years. I was told, no, the purpose is not to cut costs, it is to increase income.
This is from an organisation that has had an exponential increase in the money it draws in from it’s annual appeal, now over $165,000 per annum. To put it simply, SAFE wanted members for their money. So, a ‘membership recruiter’ like me would be asking someone to fork out $120 a year so that I could continue being employed to chase them up for the $120 for the next year. It is not that SAFE wanted the money to do good work, including having an actively engaged membership in cities across the country who could do campaign support / stalls / education, or even individual members who could at least write letters, run film nights, or find out about a vivisection lab nearby (let alone autonomous local groups taking direct action or intersecting resistance to animal abuse with other struggles). The argument is obnoxious for its cicularity.
When you work in an NGO office, you hear of volunteers complaining that the key ‘achievements’ are all about money, that people on the street complain you are not doing enough, that other people in the so-called ‘movement’ you are in are critiquing you for going liberal or for selling them out. Maybe it’s about time the people inside these NGOs listened up. Indeed, ‘to radically change society, we must build mass movements that can topple systems of donimation, such as capitalism. However, the NPIC [Non-Profit Industrial Complex] encourages us to think of social justice organising as a career; that is, you do the work if you can get paid for it. However a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people.’13
Counting marketable achievements such as how many leaflets were distributed, or the quantity of funds raised, prevents us from reflecting on what changes have been achieved, or the strength of our resistance to corporates or government, or, more realistically, from analysing our effectiveness long term in a struggle against power that isn’t meant to come with quarterly ‘successes.’ Aziz Choudry (2007) writes, of the recurring pattern whereby non-Indigenous activists and organisations tend ‘to only support Indigenous People’s sruggles during visible crises: Many scholarly, NGO and activist accounts fail to recognise the significance of low-key, long-haul political education and community organising work, which goes on “below the radar” of externally located observers, who base their theories and understandings on websites, media reports, the activities and statements of large, well-resourced NGOs, and apparent “explosions.”’14
Arguably, the only prominent activity that people are encouraged (by NGOs and many activists) to make an active, longterm commitment to is, scarily, ‘consumer activism.’ In addition to the criticisms perviously noted, buying your way into ‘solutions’ such as GE Free, organics, or a hybrid car is only an option for a very small subset of people. Likewise, insulating your home is only available to those who can afford it – and who owns their own home these days anyway? From the beginnings of ‘Fair Trade’ promoted by entities like Trade Aid, to the niche marketing of fair trade coffee / sugar / cocoa, to actions promoted by the Green Party, to veganism, to anarcha-feminists making their own pads, to much of the “top 10 things you can do to save the planet” that define the green movement, spending your money ‘ethically’ is promoted as a political action. I contend it couldn’t be further from one! Failing to tackle the structural issues
The existence of offset schemes presents the public with an opportunity to take a ‘business as usual’ attitude to the climate change threat. Instead of encouraging individuals and institutions to profoundly change consumption patterns as well as social, economic and political structures, we are being asked to believe that paying a little extra for certain goods and services is sufficient.
For example, if one is willing to pay a bit more for ‘offset petrol’ one doesn’t have to worry about how much is consumed, because the price automatically includes offsetting the emissions it produces.
[There are] problems with the impermanence of carbon storage in plantations, and ... hypothesising what emissions have been avoided by renewable energy projects and emissions reduction schemes amounts to little more than guesswork. (Carbon Trade Watch).15
Offsets allow extraction of oil, coal and gas to continue, which in turn increases the amount of fossil carbon that is released into the active carbon pool disrupting the cycle. That is why campaigners argue that genuine solutions to climate change require us to keep fossil carbon (oil, coal and gas) in the ground. (New Internationalist).16
Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punchline: “It’s easy to be healthy – smoke one less cigarette a month.”
We know without a moment’s reflection that this campaign would fail. The target is so ludicrous, and the disconnection between the images and the message is so great, that most smokers would just laugh it off. (George Marshall).17
There are some useful and concise critiques of carbon trading schemes and carbon offsetting available on the internet, including the three just cited. I won’t elaborate further on their content; suffice to say that both carbon trading and carbon offsetting are ‘pressure valve release’ strategies designed by industry to kid us into believing that climate change is being addressed while capitalism continues unchallenged. Just like many see through the ‘carbon sequestration’ greenwash that Solid Energy pump out, so too must we see through biofuels, green account- ing, carbon neutrality, the state’s commitment to climate change, CarboNZero and so forth. These are all designed to reinforce neoliberal capitalism. Meridian spouts greenwash and it’s irritating.18
Greenpeace spouts greenwash – for example by publishing magnets that encourage people to switch to Meridian – and people buy it. When it comes to framing, corporate NGOs are worse in some ways than industry. They take upall the public space and cause severe damage. The Government must be laughing itself silly that Greenpeace paid for a tour around the country that effectively told people to do what the Government’s policy says: take individual action, it’s okay, the state is responsive to public lobbying, we’re dealing with climate change and we’ll mitigate everything else. People either buy into this (with their new light bulbs or their monthly donation), or they can see how cynical and self-engaged NGOs are and so they disengage. Either way, nothing changes. For an example of the ludicrous nature of suggestions to address climate change that fail to mention collectively resisting capitalism: in the United Kingdom,19 WWF states that ‘CO2 emissions would be reduced by 0.45 million tonnes... if everyone put an insulation jacket on their hot water tank’20 [emphasis added]. That was all of 0.45 million tonnes. Yet in 2006, 557 million tonnes of Carbon dioxide were emitted (and that excludes Land Use Change and Forestry, plus Methane and Nitrous Oxide emissions).21
So just like we must ask, what are NGOs conveying when their ‘campaigns’ are premised around money; we must also ask, what does it say if anyone (NGO or activist) frames ‘activism’ as individual action. Say goodbye to that great feminist notion that ‘the personal is political.’ This is meant to mean that what we experience and get to ‘choose’ in our everyday lives is shaped and pre-constrained by societal structures and the political system we live under. What seems to be a personal choice is deeply politically influenced. Instead, everything is back on the individual (and even that saying has been turned on its head). For example, people choose one oil company over another to try and feel less guilty! There is no such thing as a good oil company. Boycotting your $40 a week to go elsewhere really isn’t going to change anything. What does a ‘campaign’ like Boycott Shell or Be The Change say to people? That you are individually responsible and thus it is your fault if nothing changes (i.e. it’s not about corporates / state / capitalism / imperialism). It’s you, you bad person, you didn’t recycle your number 2 plastics.
NGOs also perpetuate a model of single issue politics. Armstrong and Prashad (2005) state that “NGOization” means “each of our groups carves out areas of expertise or special interest, gets intensely informed about the area, and then uses this market specialisation to attract members and funds. Organisations that ‘do too much’ bewilder the landscape.”22 How many times have you heard it lambasted that climate change is the single most important issue facing the globe (or humanity) today? What about colonisation and capitalism? What about the veryeconomic and political structures that got us to this place? What about the fact that right now there are already people without freshwater (which we are so worried about is coming for ‘us’)? Furthermore, the ‘white progressive economic nationalist frame’23 is prominent. NGOs seem determined to seperate ‘their’ issues from the global context or an analysis of state and capital. I am most certainly writing this in my own ca- pacity but I will just traverse a few of my experiences of Save Happy Valley. This is an activist entity that I wouldn’t define as an NGO (although I did find the definition in a recent Coal News humorous: “SHV is rather unusual as an environmental NGO in that most of its members don’t come from a background in the green movement (eg, members of F&B, local conservation groups, Green Party, etc).”)24 However, during the time I was actively involved we did intersect heavily with these NGOs, and spent a large amount of time a long way down a self-policing /self-moderating path (e.g. concerns about doing train blockades, not critiquing Department of Conservation for the first two years of our campaign so as not to upset more long-term liberal green activists, watering down beyond recognition a declaration that Happy Valley was an autonomous zone).
We frequently ‘toned down’ our politics in ways that surprised many of us upon reflection (e.g. meeting the Green Party on Parliament steps dressed as akiwi, then going inside for discussions with the the Conservation Minister). We readily used the system’s tools, such as the corporate media and the Court system, including taking a court case against corporate spies, printing 16000 postcards to MPs, only meeting with miners and West Coast locals occassionally, criticising Solid Energy’s activities as ‘illegal,’ encouraging people to write submissions, talking about and largely treating Non Violent Direct Action as a last resort, reducing plans to nothing more than media stunts. This was despite making several express commitments to only using such tools where they aligned with our (at times fairly clear) strategy. We organised strategy talks run by self-purported ‘experienced activists’ who told us to focus on kiwi and media rather than politicisation.
We allowed significant role centralisation (with myself a major culprit).I’ve done the whole “We are working so hard here, how dare you criticise xyz,” and I have excelledat the ‘pragmatic decision making’ where you com- promise your politics because ‘it just has to be done,’ the media’s calling, this is a way of talking that ‘people will understand.’ But I would say now, at least we can critique what we do!
I have struggled writing this; first because even our active critiquing is so often limited inside the NPIC / NGOism / ‘activist’ framework. For example, in Save Happy Valley, we would only (if at all) critique an action based on its effectiveness as activism – rather than ever looking at was Save Happy Valley effective? Are single issue environmental campaigns effective? If we are deciding to fight them then what work can we do that is at least aligned with our broader political understandings? More often than not, though, our decision making was based on “Will this annoy X?” or “Will this please Y?” (The public, local greenies, an MP, other members of Save Happy Valley, Solid Energy). Writing this piece, I find it hard to critique ‘ourselves,’ because we have drawn us up a subculture, been to a dozen hui where we’ve talked of allies, seperated ourselves from the rest of the world and so we are afraid of reprisal from each other lest we be left out in the rain. A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.... To this section belong the economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind.
(Marx and Engels)25
NGOism, and NGOist activism, are problematic not only because it is ineffective, but because it actively stops any real work for change. A challenge for us could be how to engage in (our) communities and collectively figure out how to change the real parameters. And of course, a simple step would be that we could start by organising outside of NGOs! For example, if you share this critique,26 and you are going to continue working for an NGO, I’d encourage you to just treat it as a job. Do your real work elsewhere. Don’t use up your own time trying to defend them. The dominant Judaeo-Christian heritage means we are frequently driven to ‘do something,’ yet often rushing off to the next activism campaign is simply colluding with (and thus pro- tecting) capitalism. If we decide we want to do things differently (and so little is going on that operates outside of NGOist activism that we could at least try organising differently) a starting point may be to reflect on our practice and use that to inform our theory, which in turn informs our practice, which informs our theory...
‘Empowerment of people should be a primary goal for anarchists.’ 27 (Sam Buchanan)
1 ‘Campaign to save a West Coast valley from open-cast coal mining’ by the state owned enterprise Solid Energy. Started 2004, ongoing.
www.savehappyvalley.org.nz
2 Second largest animal welfare organisation in New Zealand, with a more rights based focus than the RSPCA. ‘Actively involved in cam-
paigns to protect the welfare of all animals.’ Setup over 75 years ago. www.safe.org.nz
3 Ransom, D. 2005.‘The Big Charity Bonanza,’New Internationalist, Issue 383. Retrieved 3/4/08 from http://newint.org/features/2005/10/01/
keynote/
4 Big international NGOs are ‘tax-exempt’ (charitable) international organizations, or ‘non-profits,’ that have gone transnational.
5 A similar notion to that of ‘careerist activism.’
6 Of the ‘Treaty of Waitangi claim (WAI262) against the New
Zealand government over native flora, fauna, traditional knowl-
edge, and intellectial property,’ Choudry writes: ‘Several non-Maori
environmental NGOs opposed this Maori Treaty claim, notably
the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, viewing themselves
and the New Zealand government to be the rightful guardians of
Aotearoa/New Zealand’s biodiversity’! He asks why trust ‘a neolib-
eral state that had privatised, commodified, and commercialised as
much of the country as it could, instead of Indigenous Peoples that
continued to protect what remained of their territories’ biodiversity.’
(Choudry, A. 2007, Transnational Activist Coalition Politics and the
De/Colonisation of Pedagogies of Mobilisation: Learning from Anti-
neoliberal Indigenous Movement Articulations, p. 109).
7 I am using Be The Change as an example both because it is a
succinct way to explain a critique of NGOism, and because I came
across it time and again as a result of my own involvement in work
against coal mining.
8 Become the solution. Be the change. Greenpeace 2007. Retrieved
14/04/08 from http://www.bethechange.org.nz/
9 Many of these (such as boycotts) also reinforce the myth that the
market runs on supply and demand. In reality, the market is shaped
by a range of factors, including the creation of artifial demand (e.g.
advertising) and artificially inflating real demand, e.g. through sub-
sidies, or making products that will break in a year or two. This is es-
pecially relevant in the animal rights ‘movement,’ which is currently
encouraging people to go vegetarian for the environment. In reality,
millions of tonnes of meat gets disposed of ever year, so not eating a
few kilograms of it won’t change the initial production.
10 Cookson, L., anti-globalisation activist (GATT Watchdog, Cor-
so, Arena) personal communication, Christchurch, 26/09/07
11 A distinction drawn in Arendt, H. (1977) On Revolution. New York: Penguin.
12 Smith, A. 2007. ‘Introduction’ in in INCITE! Women of Colour Against Violence (eds), The Revolution Will
25 Marx, K., Engels, F., Stedman, G. & Moore, S. 2002. The Communist Manifesto
(1848). Penguin Classics. p. 252.
26 And I realise many do not; for example in a recent Auckland Anarchist there was
an article that even went so far as to claim membership recruitment for Greenpeace
could point ‘in the direction of workers power’ and thus count as creating Anarchy.
I do my bit to create Anarchy one phone call at a time. Retrieved 14/04/08 http://anar-
chism.net.nz/node/39
27 Sam Buchanan. 1999. Anarchy: The Transmogrification of Everyday Life. CEC,
Wellington. p. 20 Not Be Funded. South End Press, Cambridge. p. 9
13 Smith, A. 2007. ‘Introduction’ in in INCITE! Women of Colour
Against Violence (eds), The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. South
End Press, Cambridge. p. 10
13 Smith, A. 2007. ‘Introduction’ in in INCITE! Women of Colour
Against Violence (eds), The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. South
End Press, Cambridge. p. 10
14 Choudry, 2007. p. 110
15 Carbon Trade Watch. 2007. The Carbon Neutral Myth: Offset Inudlgences for your Climate Sins. Retrieved 14/04/08 from
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/carbon_neutral_myth.pdf
16 Jutta Kill. 2006. ‘10 Things You Should Know About Tree Offsets,’ New Internationalist, Issue No. 391, Retrieved
14/04/08 from http://www.newint.org/issues/2006/07/01/
17 George Marshall. 2007. ‘Can this really save the planet?,’ The Guardian, 13 Sept 2007. Retrieved 14/04/08 from http://
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/13/ethicalliving.climatechange
18 Meridian claims to have certified ‘carbon neutral electricity.’ They are
currently seeking resource consent for the Mokihinui dam on the West
Coast which would create a 14km long lake up this amazing river. Their
transmission line would cut across 29km including through Happy Valley
in the upper Waimangaroa Valley (http://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/Our-
Projects/Mokihinuihydroproposal/default.htm). Even GE giant Monsanto
claims to be “reducing agriculture’s impact on our environment” (http://
www.monsanto.com/).
19 Home of companies like Carbon Neutral Company, and activist groups
like Plane Stupid.
20 http://www.wwf.org.uk/researcher/issues/climatechange/0000000006.
asp#17
21 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/globatmos/
gagccukem.htm
22 p. 184, cited in Choudry, 2007, p. 102
23 Choudry, 2007, p. 101. Choudry notes that ‘the dominant
frame for most “anti-globalisation” campaigns typically identifies
transnational corporations, powerful governments like the US and
domestic business and political elites as engines of neoliberalism, but
essentially proposes a program of reforms and strengthening of so-
cial democatic governance as a solution. This frame advocates nostal-
gia for a Keynesian welfare state, retooling the national government,
re-regulation of the economy, tighter controls on foreign investors,
more social spending and more public consulatation, participation,
and transparency around policy-making. Underpinning this are
assumptions about supposedly universal and shared “Canadian” or
“Kiwi” values that must be reclaimed to (re)build a fairer society’ (p.
100 – 101). It is this that he terms the white progressive economic
nationalist position. He continues: ‘largely missing from this domi-
nant frame is any genuine acknowledgement of the colonial under-
pinnings of Canadian [or the New Zealand] state and society, the
ongoing denial of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to self-determination,
and the highly racialised construction of Canadian [or New Zea-
land] citizenship and state’ (p. 101).
24 Lusk, P, long-time West Coast environmental activist (Buller
Conservation Group, West Coast Forest and Bird, Riverwatch, for-
merly Save Happy Valley Coalition, etc.). Coal News 26, email re-
ceived 10/04/08.
25 Marx, K., Engels, F., Stedman, G. & Moore, S. 2002. The Communist Manifesto
(1848). Penguin Classics. p. 252.
26 And I realise many do not; for example in a recent Auckland Anarchist there was
an article that even went so far as to claim membership recruitment for Greenpeace
could point ‘in the direction of workers power’ and thus count as creating Anarchy.
I do my bit to create Anarchy one phone call at a time. Retrieved 14/04/08 http://anar-
chism.net.nz/node/39
27 Sam Buchanan. 1999. Anarchy: The Transmogrification of Everyday Life. CEC,
Wellington. p. 20