The New Prophets of Capital

by Nicole Aschoff

  AGRA is an ongoing program and has generated sustained criticism from activists and political leaders around the world. In October 2014, representatives from six African countries and more than a dozen US food sovereignty groups convened the Africa–US Food Sovereignty Strategy Summit in Seattle. But the outcry against AGRA has had little impact, because the foundation has the resources to pursue any policy goals it wishes. It has used its money to gain support inside the UN and from numerous other foundations and private donors, and it is accountable to no one other than Bill and Melinda Gates. The Gateses play down their power by situating themselves within a global network of partners that includes farmers and community groups, but the farmers who would supposedly benefit from the program have almost no voice in it. Simon Mwamba of the East African Small-Scale Farmers’ Federation analogizes the situation: “You come. You buy the land. You make a plan. You build a house. Now you ask me, what color do I want to paint the kitchen? This is not participation!”42 Instead of asking farmers and community groups how the foundation could support and strengthen the existing farmer seed system, the Gateses propose to replace the system with a new private one in which production and distribution are guided by a profit motive.

  This is not just about voice. The absence of democratic mechanisms means that farmers have no way to stop a potentially devastating program. “On the assumption that commercially successful systems equal food security and social well-being,” AGRA is proposing that African farmers (most of whom are too poor to buy seeds at any price) buy and use genetically modified seeds, which they are not allowed to reuse or share, as they have done for thousands of years.43 There are serious ecological and developmental dangers in monoculture farming, and agro-ecologists worry about the growing crisis in US and European farming models. All of these problems are brushed aside in the AGRA initiative. The right of countries and their populations to food sovereignty is ignored. People from the West are experts, and African farmers are thought to be too poor and oppressed to come up with solutions and strategies.

  The example of education in the United States is much the same. The Gateses and other education reformers have decided that the public education system in this country is broken. They say this over and over. It’s broken, and they will fix it. But public education is not broken.

  Modern day education reformers justify their incursions into the public education system by arguing that student test scores are lackluster and that the persistent achievement gap between black and white students demonstrates that minority students in particular are failing. According to National Assessment for Education Statistics (NAEP) data, test scores in math and reading for all fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders have improved over the past few decades, in some cases dramatically. In fact, scores for disadvantaged, minority students have improved the most out of all groups, and most of this improvement occurred before the current testing craze. High school graduation rates are at an all-time high, and more students than ever are going to college. The black–white achievement gap has narrowed but not disappeared, largely because both black and white students’ test scores are improving. If one controls for income, the black–white achievement gap narrows even more. 44

  Stratification by income is actually the most striking trend in recent years. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students is substantially higher than it was three decades ago. Education reformers argue that there are good schools in poor neighborhoods, but household income and parental education levels are a major factor in life chances and educational attainment. Low-income students are seven times more likely to drop out of high school than high-income students.

  These facts and considerations are lost in the conversation, and education reformers have been remarkably successful in creating a new “crisis” in education. Over the past decade and a half education reformers have dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign to convince Americans that their public education system is broken. Eli Broad, a major funder of education reform, admits that “the goal of the ‘Ed in 08’ campaign [was] to create a sense of crisis among the American public, a Sputnik moment …” The American public has been whipped up, to be sure, with lots of help from the Gateses and their allies. Films like Waiting for Superman paint the public school system as a horrible, corrupt, broken mess. The film made the cover of New York magazine, became the centerpiece of a two-part Oprah special on failing schools, and was promoted by Bill Gates (who funded the film) in a cross-country speaking tour.45

  Crises in American schools seem to be a recurring phenomenon. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957, Americans were stunned. They quickly blamed US schools for turning out second-best math and science students. And at the peak of Japan-bashing in the 1980s, pundits blamed public schooling for the inability of Americans to compete with Asian manufacturing rivals. Historian Richard Hofstader shows that our inclination to blame schooling (and teachers and school boards) for things we don’t like reaches all the way back to the 1820s. But as Diane Ravitch, education historian and former “No Child Left Behind” advocate, argues, when reformers wax nostalgic about the good old days of schooling, they actually refer to a time when schools were racially segregated “were not required to accept children with physical, mental, or emotional handicaps; when there were relatively few students who did not speak or read English; and when few graduated from high school and went to college.”46

  All this is not to say that US education shouldn’t be improved, or radically re-envisioned, or that we shouldn’t be concerned about the significant income and racial gaps in achievement. It is simply to say that the public education system in the United States is not broken. The public has bought the media story of education in crisis, but when people are asked to rank their own schools—the ones their kids go to—more than three-quarters of parents say they love their schools and their teachers.47 The Chicago Teacher’s Union strike in 2012 had massive community support. After the radical Caucus of Rank and File Educators, led by Karen Lewis, won a run-off election to lead the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010, they built a new network of teachers, parents, and community members from the ground up to take a stand against concessionary demands and school closures. In September 2012, after failed negotiations with the city over enrichment programs and teacher layoffs, Lewis took the CTU out on strike for the first time in twenty-five years. The teachers, like many public sector unionists who go on strike, were vilified in the press, but with the support of their community network they stood their ground and won.

  Groups of parents and community members in cities like Newark and Washington DC are also incensed about school reform, and in particular the things that Cory Booker and Michelle Rhee have done to their schools. People don’t want Common Core standards. They don’t want to close schools and fire teachers. They don’t want vouchers and more testing. They don’t want public money to be used to privatize education. They realize that the problem with schools is really a problem with the economy. They realize that teachers and schools are not to blame for the fact that one in four children in this country grows up in poverty. In May 2013, 1,500 parents convened in Albany, New York, to protest high-stakes testing. A year later, hundreds of Camden, New Jersey, high school students walked out to protest teacher layoffs, while thousands of parents around the country in states like California, Washington, and Colorado are boycotting standardized tests.

  The response by parents, students, and communities is building, but they face an uphill battle, because despite their frustration and anger they have little say in the education reform process. The Gates Foundation is a private institution that is free to use its money as it sees fit. It’s not just Bill and Medinda Gates. Education reformers lobby Congress to pass legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of conservative legislators and business groups that writes sample legislation for political representatives to present to Congress and state legislatures. When Mark Zuckerber
g decided to donate $100 million to “fix” the Newark Public School System, the foundation board established to decide how to use the money had only a single community member on it—(former) Mayor Cory Booker.48 Foundations are not only unaccountable and undemocratic—they often also implement programs and structures that are undemocratic. One of the central goals pushed by education reformers is to eliminate elected school boards—as did former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002—the only voice for parents and communities to speak up about school reform.

  The restructuring of the economy over the past few decades, the slashing of income and capital gains taxes, and the elimination of estate taxes have given the super-elite more money than ever before. They are using this money to follow their dreams of changing the world. The American public is subsidizing their dreams, because every dollar these billionaires write off as philanthropic giving isn’t added to the public revenue. All this money adds up. As political economist and policy expert Robert Reich notes, “The US government spends more on subsidizing charitable donations than it does on Temporary Aid to Needy Families.”49 But the dreams of these foundations are not our dreams. We don’t have a say in shaping them. The foundations are unregulated and unaccountable. They set the agenda. There is no democratic process through which citizens get to decide what to do with the money. In the end, Melinda Gates is half-right. A few people are changing the world. But they are not the only ones who ever did. Big changes also come from people using democratic channels to advance radical programs for social change. Foundations don’t redistribute wealth, but social movements demanding that public wealth be used for the public good do.

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  1Randall Smith,”As His Foundation Has Grown, Gates Has Slowed His Donations,” New York Times, May 26, 2014.

  2Bill Gates, Harvard commencement speech, June 7, 2007.

  3Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008, p. 12.

  4Bill Gates, Harvard commencement speech.

  5Bill Gates, “A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century,” speech at the World Economic Forum 2008, Davos, Switzerland, January 24, 2008.

  6See www.gatesfoundation.org.

  7Melinda Gates, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar, Stanford Center for Professional Development, November 14, 2012.

  8Bill Gates, Harvard commencement speech.

  92014 Gates Annual Letter, http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/.

  10Phillip McMichael, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2008.

  11See http://files.amnesty.org/INGO/INGOAC.pdf.

  12Bishop and Green, Philanthrocapitalism, p. 21.

  13Joan Roelofs, “Foundations and Collaboration,” Critical Sociology 33: 3, May 2007, 479–504; see also G. William Domhoff, “The Ford Foundation in the Inner City: Forging and Alliance with Neighborhood Activists,” www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/ford_foundation.html.

  14David Bank, Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft, New York: Free Press, 2001.

  15Bill Gates, Davos speech, 2008.

  16Bill Gates, Davos speech, 2008.

  17Bishop and Green, Philanthrocapitalism.

  18Melinda Gates, Stanford seminar speech.

  19Bill Gates, “Mosquitos, Malaria, and Education,” TED Talk, February 2009.

  20“Public High School Four-Year on-Time Graduation Rates and Event Dropout Rates: School Years 2010–11 and 2011–12,” US Department of Education, NCES 2014–391; Lisa Dodson and Randy Albelda, “How Youth Are Put at Risk by Parents’ Low-Wage Jobs,” Center for Social Policy, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Fall 2012.

  21Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Picador, 2007.

  22“US Education Reform and National Security,” Independent Task Force Report No. 68, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2012.

  23Jason L. Riley, “Was the $5 Billion Worth It?” Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2011.

  24Jim Horn and Ken Libby, “The Giving Business: Venture Philanthropy and the NewSchools Venture Fund,” in Philip E. Kovacs, ed., The Gates Foundation and the Future of US “Public” Schools, New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 172–3.

  25Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error: The Hoax ofthe Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, New York: Knopf, 2013, pp. 16–17. Ravitch is an expert on public education and a fierce advocate for students. In this chapter’s discussion of education I draw heavily on her work and encourage readers to visit her blog, dianeravitch.net.

  26Ravitch, Reign of Error; Bill Gates, TED Talk.

  27Kovacs, The Gates Foundation and the Future of US “Public” Schools, pp. 172–3; Riley, “Was the $5 Billion Worth It?”

  28Nancy Fraser, “Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis,” in Calhoun and Derluguian, eds., Business as Usual.

  29Vicente Navarro, “Race or Class versus Race and Class: Mortality Differentials in the United States,” Lancet 336: 8725, 1990: 1238–40.

  30Sarah C. P. Williams, “Gone Too Soon: What’s Behind the High Infant Mortality Rate,” Stanford Medicine, Fall 2013; David Cecere, “New Study Finds 45,000 Deaths Annually Linked to Lack of Health Insurance,” Harvard Gazette, September 17, 2009.

  31Tom Paulson, “Gates Foundation Won’t Take a Stand on Universal Health Coverage,” Humanosphere, April 15, 2014;Carol Welch and Clint Pecenka, “Health in the Post-2015 Development Agenda,” Seattle: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2013.

  32Riley, “Was the $5 Billion Worth It?”

  33Bill Gates, “How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools,” Washington Post, February 28, 2011.

  34A longer version of this vignette is available at www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries.

  35Bill Gates, TED Talk, 2009.

  36Kathleen Megan, “Charter School Group Gears Up to Lower Suspension Rate,” Hartford Courant, July 8, 2013.

  37Erik. W. Robelen, “KIPP Study Finds High Student Attrition amid Big Learning Gains,” Education Week, September 24, 2008.

  38Eric Holt-Giménez, Miguel A. Altieri, and Peter Rosset, “Ten Reasons Why the Rockefeller and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations’ Alliance for Another Green Revolution Will Not Solve the Problems of Poverty and Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Food First Policy Brief No. 12, San Francisco: Food First, 2006.

  39For a good discussion of the Green Revolution and its problems, see McMichael, Development and Social Change.

  40Holt-Giménez, Altieri, and Rosset, “Ten Reasons.”

  41“Giving with One Hand and Taking with Two: A Critique of AGRA’s African Agricultural Status Report 2013,” Johannesburg: African Centre for Biosafety, 2013, www.acbio.org.za/images/stories/dmdocuments/AGRA-report-Nov2013.pdf.

  42See AGRA Watch, www.seattleglobaljustice.org/agra-watch/about-us/.

  43African Centre for Biosafety, “Giving with One Hand,” p. 18.

  44Robert Rothstein, March 8, 2011, www.epi.org/publication/fact-challenged_policy/.

  45Dana Goldstein, “Grading ‘Waiting for Superman,’” Nation, October 11, 2010.

  46Ravitch, Reign of Error, p. 33.

  47William J. Bushaw, “The Seven Most Surprising Findings of the 2012 PDK/Gallup Poll on Public Schools,” Education Week blog, August 23, 2012.

  48Maggie Severns, “Whatever Happened to the $100 Million Mark Zuckerberg Gave to Newark Schools?” Mother Jones, March 28, 2013.

  49Robert Reich, “A Failure of Philanthropy,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2005.

  5

  Looking Forward

  Capitalism both creates and destroys, and the past three decades have been no exception. Unprecedented generation of wealth, global integration, and technological innovation have been accompanied by a stratospheric rise in inequality, ever-expanding environmental destruction, and a loss of faith in capit
alism as the best possible system. Faith has been replaced by fatalism—most people recognize the deep problems associated with capitalism but doubt the possibility of a better way of organizing society.

  Despite their vast wealth and success, the new prophets of capital also recognize these problems, but they haven’t lost faith in the possibilities of capitalism. They believe that the solutions to our problems lie in refining the existing political and economic system, expanding the reach of capitalist markets, submitting more and more aspects of our lives to a market logic, and channeling our struggles for a better life through corporations.

  The solutions proposed by these new prophets are seductive and resonant. Most of us share the concerns of Sheryl Sandberg, John Mackey, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill and Melinda Gates, and we long for simple, feasible ways to improve society. But the stories and solutions they offer will not end inequality, poverty, alienation, oppression, or environmental degradation. They will not resolve the contradictions of capitalism. Instead, their solutions strengthen existing social relations of power and profit-driven structures of accumulation, and they in fact bolster the very forces that create these negative outcomes in the first place. Paradoxically, they are doing so by voicing grievances against capitalism, forcing the people, institutions, and structures that undergird it to evolve and temporarily work through crises, propping up and strengthening the system for the long haul.

  Does this mean that it is pointless to challenge capitalism? That all critiques of the status quo will be absorbed, displaced, or ignored? Capitalism can accommodate the powerful women, the eco-business practices, the essentialist principles, and fund vaccine projects without missing a beat. That is because these critiques and projects do not challenge the in-built drives of the production-for-profit system. But stories and ideas that truly challenge the for-profit architecture are not easy for the existing power structure to absorb, divert, or implement. Were they to be incorporated, they would change the system in fundamental ways, because they are irreconcilable with the status quo. These ideas lay the groundwork for thinking about a very different kind of society—one that is driven by the dictates of human need, not profit.