Notes on Strategy for Minimizing the Harms of Nanotechnology

Notes on Strategy for Minimizing the Harms of Nanotechnology:

Some Problems & Opportunities

March 22, 2003

Peter Montague

phone 732-828-9995

(Most of what I have to say pertains only to the U.S. because that is the only culture I know well.)

I. Some Problems We Face

1) The relentless, unquestioned drive for "innovation at any cost," which is itself propelled by the need for "growth at any cost," means nanotech is destined to expand without limit.

1a) Capitalism requires constant growth. If I loan you $1000 expecting a return of 5%, that 5% must come from some physical place. (Even a "service economy" is grounded in physical resources.) The need for growth to provide a return on investment gives rise to the "growth at any cost" and "innovation at any cost" culture.

1b) Growth serves an additional important purpose in the U.S. We depend on growth (rather than social policy arrived at through political negotiation) to distribute economic benefits. Instead of determining (and then distributing) "fair" shares of the economic pie, we depend on the growth of the entire pie to increase the benefits to those holding only small slices. The assumption is that, if your small piece of the pie if growing in absolute terms, even if it is remaining proportionately small, you will remain loyal to the elites who control the system. Thus the "growth at any cost" culture is an essential component of distributive justice in the U.S. Instead of sharing, we promote growth.

1c) To support and legitimize the "growth at any cost" culture, we have the "religion of progress" that has gripped the Eurocentric portions of the world for more than 200 years. If the world is a place of steady progress from worse to better, then any innovation is assumed to represent "progress" toward something better. Opposing progress is heresy.

Thus myths and stories of innovation, growth and progress create the "legitimizing ethos" of U.S. culture and increasingly of all other cultures that we touch.

1d) The forces of globalization (which I define as the right of capital to move across all borders without restriction) have outflanked the traditional forces that have opposed unfettered capitalism since its inception. Communism, social democracy, economic nationalism, trade unionism, and democratic government have all been rolled back by a tide of neoliberalism during the last 30 years.

1e) The industrialized countries are running short of the raw materials that fuel growth, so they have created the "free trade" regime to eliminate restrictions on capital movement, to make it easier to penetrate foreign markets and extract needed goods -- and to sell surplus product. One consequence is a competitive "race to the bottom" for social, economic, and environmental standards, resulting in growing poverty, inequality, volatility, degradation of democracy, and environmental damage. The "race to the bottom" is taking its greatest toll on women, racial and ethnic minorities, and indigenous people.

2) The widespread belief that "there is no alternative" leads to resignation (or even despair) and paralysis.

(Therefore one of our most pressing needs is for a plausible blueprint for an alternative economy that does not require constant growth; see, for example, David Schweickart, After Capitalism (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; ISBN 0-7425-1300-9.)

(We also therefore need a fairly simple 10-point or 15-point platform that outlines our aims succinctly and clearly in a way that is not preachy, overbearing, excessively didactic, frightening or sleep-inducing. Carolyn Raffensperger has suggested that we need our own document something like Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" -- see .)

3) In the U.S., many people don't vote their own interests because they aspire to being rich and so they vote to protect and enforce the privileges and powers of the rich. See Appendix A, "The Triumph of Hope over Self-Interest."

4) In the past 30 years, the U.S. has seen a conservative religious revitalization, and Christian fundamentalists now control one of the two major political parties. Furthermore, perhaps as many as 70 million (25%) Americans believe that whatever happens on earth does not matter very much because soon -- within their or their children's lifetimes -- they will be "raptured" to heaven (and everyone else will be sent to hell) as part of Christ's second coming. (See, for example, Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986); ISBN 0-88208-210-8). People who hold these beliefs may still care about what happens to their children and their families, but environmental destruction, erosion of democracy, war in the Middle East and other "big issues" may not seem compellingly important. (Indeed, war in the Middle East may even seem like a step in the desired direction.)

5) The wealthy designed the corporation as their preferred instrument for consolidating their wealth and power, and they have given it the rights and protections of individuals under law. As a result, 1% of Americans now own about 60% of all business assets and wield power and control that is difficult for most people to even imagine. (See Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority; America's Best Kept Secret (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000; ISBN 0-8014-3637-0).

6) Having consolidated their wealth and power, the corporate elite are now in their third decade of subverting all of the institutions of democracy in the U.S. -- schools, labor unions, the media, law-making and policy-making bodies, and elections (of judges, legislators, governors and presidents). This tendency is now spreading world-wide as the U.S. promotes its version of "democracy," a thinly-veiled cover for corporate control.

7) We currently don't have enforceable international codes of conduct for corporations, limiting their ability to dictate conditions to communities and countries. (Such higher-level regulation is essential for taming the forces of globalization. However, it does not necessarily imply that a centralized supranational power is the only way to accomplish the goal. It could be done by increasing the power of states and civil society organizations vis a vis corporations everywhere, strengthening the non-market functions that protect people and the planet.)

8) In her book, Mobilizing Resentment, Jean Hardisty (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999; ISBN 0-8070-4316-8) describes five factors that help explain the resurgence of the right in the U.S.:

8a) A well-funded and well-organized network of right-wing organizations working in collaboration (with, I note, a fairly simple agenda -- get government off our backs and to that end cut taxes; privatize everything possible; deny the existence of a "public good"; establish a hereditary ruling class and a hereditary underclass; curb free speech and outlaw objectionable lifestyles; promote mindless patriotism and greatly increase the power and funding of the military; manufacture scares and provoke threats, as needed, to deflect attention from what's really going on).

8b) A conservative religious revitalization;

8c) Economic changes that have caused widespread hardship and insecurity;

8d) Specific racial resentments in the context of a fundamentally racist culture;

8e) Social stress as the result of rapid social change.

9) The way social change is funded in the U.S.: One of the most important things that has strengthened the right and weakened the left politically is the different pattern of progressive vs. right-wing funding. The right-wing funders have invested in the building blocks or skeletal structure of their movement, such as publications, research centers, think tanks, and academic fellowships and chairs designated for rightist scholars, campus organizations, and youth groups. Liberal and Progressive foundations have primarily funded social service programs and advocacy programs that promise to ensure better living conditions and promote equality and tolerance, similar to humanitarian aid. While such aid is needed after the social service cuts of the Reagan-Bush years, the right's funders have gotten greater political mileage for each dollar invested because the organizations and individuals whom they funded focused on a strategic plan for seizing power. Progressive funders have not traditionally funded strategy sessions.

10) Eurocentric cultures favor scientific ways of thinking over all other ways, which leads to a reductionist approach to problems, rather than to integrated systems thinking. As a result, few of us are accustomed to "big picture" analysis.

11) Although it may seem irrelevant to some, all the nations of North America were built on policies of genocide and subjugation of enslaved (and/or indentured) peoples, producing societies in which an undercurrent of domination and violence is always present and tolerated, and in which destruction of nature, cultures, traditions, ways of life and whole peoples is accepted as normal and desirable or at least necessary. Domination of women by men, non-whites by whites, children by adults, non-Christians by Christians, and nature by humans are all part of the same cultural fabric, I believe. If domination and subjugation are acceptable (even necessary), then so is violence.

12) Many activists in the U.S. are not familiar with the lessons to be learned from previous social change movements -- anti-slavery, women's rights, the public health movement, labor, civil rights, and so on.

13) Please add your own items to this list:

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II. Some Opportunities We Can Consider

(Many ideas here were taken from Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith, Globalization From Below (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2000; ISBN 0-89608-622-4) -- but don't blame these authors for what I've written here. I swiped their work and may have distorted it.)

1) People of good will across the globe are getting together to resist corporate "globalization from above." They are using a Lilliput strategy to tie down Gulliver: building solidarity among people at the grass-roots level. A worldwide movement for "globalization from below" is visible in its early stages of construction. This is much more than a "just say no to globalization" movement -- it is concerned with reversing the negative effects of globalization on poverty, the environment, human rights, and democracy.

One of the movement's challenges is to develop and highlight positive objectives, to move from resistance to transformation.

1a) One of the movement's unifying goals is to bring about sufficient democratic control over states, markets, and corporations to permit people and the planet to survive and begin to shape a viable future.

1b) Globalization from below will succeed if it can unify diverse groups that are hurt by globalization into a cooperating force.

1c) The movement has already had significant victories -- stopping the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and forcing the adoption of a treaty on genetically engineered products.

2) Social Movements Can Flourish Everywhere

2a) Social movements can be understood as the collective withdrawal of consent from established institutions. Therein lies their power.

2b) "Social movements may lack the obvious paraphernalia of power: armies, wealth, palaces, temples, and bureaucracies. But by linking from the nooks and crannies, developing a common vision and program, and withdrawing their consent from existing institutions, they can impose norms on states, classes, armies, and other power actors." --Globalization from Below, pg. 25.

3) The burgeoning movement for "globalization from below" shares certain goals already; it

(a) generally agrees that the Bretton Woods institutions must be opposed;

(b) supports the UN;

(d) supports programs that give local people more control over their own lives and resources, and supports the organization of workers and oppressed people in civil society even when they are opposed by their national governments;

(e) supports international solidarity and organizing. --Globalization from Below, pg. 38 -- but see also the areas of disagreement listed on pg. 39

4) The "globalization from above" regime is highly vulnerable because it violates the interests of the great majority of the world's people. It lacks political legitimacy. Therefore, people have an obligation to "alter or abolish" it.

5) We have several good historical examples that demonstrate clearly how technological developments unfold: petrochemical, nuclear, biotech. These technologies have caused great harm, have widened the gaps between rich and poor, have destabilized the world, and have consolidated power in the hands of a few -- and in so doing they have given us a roadmap that describes the likely trajectory of nanotech. We can learn really useful lessons from the histories of these technologies.

6) Under the U.N. Charter on the Economic Rights and Duties of States, governments have an obligation to protect the human rights of their citizens. International agreements on human rights give us a basis for seeing (and claiming) how things should be. Human rights have been spelled out in the following areas: labor, social, environmental, economic, political, and cultural rights.

7) There is widespread recognition that the transnational corporation is the key institution that consolidates and facilitates the power of wealth. It has weakened (even displaced and usurped the authority of) governments, and has empowered unaccountable international institutions to achieve the purposes of global capital. Few people in the movement need to be convinced that this is so.

8) "These concepts legitimate a withdrawal of consent of the kind that... provides the underlying power of social movements." -- Globalization from Below, pg. 45.

9) A common vision is at the early stages of development, and a common agenda is emerging. See Globalization from Below pgs. 48, 55, 111 and Chapter 6. (And see "what the vision is not", pg. 62.) Globalization from below is a movement to implement widely shared global norms (that have been spelled out in numerous U.N. human rights documents).

10) A major challenge is to develop an alternative economic strategy based on the idea that work should meet social needs in environmentally sustainable ways. This does not prevent us from seeking full employment policies, but they cannot be full employment policies based on growth of material throughput. Globalization from Below suggests that they be full employment policies based on an alternative development path: the environmental reconstruction of society, to produce goods and provide services in ways consistent with the biological limits of the planet. Again, see David Schweickart, After Capitalism (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; ISBN 0-7425-1300-9.)

11) A central objective of the movement must be elimination of third-world poverty and giving the third world equal power in shaping the global future.

12) Some of the needs for building of a movement of global solidarity are described in Globalization from Below, pgs. 56-58. In a nutshell: (a) a joint north-south attack on structural adjustment programs; (b) make sustainable development in the third world a top priority; (c) include third world countries in decisions about the global economy; (d) develop trade rules intended to help poor countries; (e) develop minimal human rights, labor, environmental and social standards that apply to all countries so that no one is forced to compete by abusing their people and their environment -- and the primary targets of these rules should be corporations; (f) allow governments to set rules for corporate behavior; (g) resources should be deliberately transferred from the rich to the poor, starting with a Tobin tax on financial transactions with proceeds devoted to investment in poor countries; (h) policies that promote access to knowledge and technology for poor countries, loosening the restrictions of "intellectual property rights."

13) The globalization from below movement assumes that the problems of globalization can only be solved through a profound shift of wealth and power and it assumes that the needed changes will not originate with the purveyors of globalization from above, but rather must be won by the united action of those who are challenging the power of elites.

14) Many, many people now know that protection of the environment is a prerequisite to human rights and even human existence.

15) New technologies (computers, video cassettes, mobile phones, the internet) make possible new forms of communication, organization, and action. NGO "swarms" can -- in the words of The Economist -- sting a victim to death. (A coalition communicating by text messaging on mobile phones brought about regime change in the Philippines. The Solidarity movement in Poland relied on video cassettes to get its message out.)

Advocacy networks can now assert power in many arenas. Conventional NGOs, local social movements, foundations, the media, churches, trade unions, consumer organizations, intellectuals, parts of regional and international inter-governmental organizations, and parts of the executive or legislative branches of governments can now cooperate in ways that were impossible even 10 years ago.

16) Some Needs of the movement (from Globalization From Below, pg. 90):

a) Creating venues in which to debate and sort out long range objectives in ways that are insulated from immediate tactical decisions so that short-term tactical needs don't determine the ways in which long-term objectives are defined. Such discussions must include representation of all those who will ultimately be needed to achieve the movement's objectives.

b) Establishing vehicles for self-critical reflection on the movement by its participants.

c) Strengthen "linking organizations" whose function is to build unity among different parts of the movement.

d) Develop means to grant and withhold legitimacy from people active as representatives of the movement...

e) Open avenues for new groups and new people to link with and participate in the movement...

f) Establish means for grass-roots groups around the world to make direct links less mediated by traditional NGOs by, for example, ensuring internet access and training to impoverished groups.

g) Develop ways to link internationally the big protest movements represented by national general and mass strikes.

h) Establish an annual day and week for coordinated events all over the world to show the global movement for globalization from below, in all its diversity, to itself and to the world.

17) The principle strategy of the movement for globalization from below has been to identify the violation of generally held norms, demand that power actors conform to those norms, and threaten the bases of consent on which they depend if they fail to do so. This can be summed up as "fix it or nix it" -- "either you fix what's wrong, or we'll nix it."