Tom Dale and Anne-Marie O’Reilly, members of the Oxford University People & Planet group until 2006, write:
Anne-Marie O’Reilly
We all agree that “People & Planet is a student network working to create a more just and sustainable world by campaigning on poverty, human rights and the environment”. But isn’t it somewhat worrying that, according to its current rhetoric, the Conservative party could declare common cause with us? Whatever the level of cynicism behind the new Conservative approach, the fact remains that everyone recognises some level of injustice and unsustainability in our world. Our common identity should come from a particular analysis of the factors that create the situation and the actions we can take to tackle them.
This call for cohesion doesn’t mean we give up our group autonomy or become an elite organisation; it’s great that groups disagree and that people can engage in campaigns at lots of different levels. The space to be creative and explore our own answers is allowed and is essential if The Forum is to be a democratic event. That people can engage with our campaigns at any level means that we do not become exclusive, and people are likely to be drawn into deeper understanding as their engagement increases.
But what understanding? We feel that there is a distinct lack of political analysis and discussion throughout the network.
None of us believe that we can change the world by good will alone, so we need to have a relatively good understanding of the issue we are campaigning on. But it’s questionable whether an issue-based analysis really equips us with the materials we need to actually change the world. P&P campaigning was issue-based in the run up to the G8 2005 - we addressed Trade, AIDS and Climate Change. But the lack of commitment to tackling trade injustice and climate change at the G8 seems attributable to one factor: it is not in the political interests of the world’s most powerful leaders to actively tackle these problems, neither is it in the interests of the corporations who underpin their economies and mount powerful lobbies on these issues.
That we won the AIDS campaign was great, but it was a relatively easy concession for them to make. Two days into the G8 meeting America reneged on committing to universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010. By the time the commitment was reinstated, guess what? There was no time to make further progress.
This suggests that if we are genuinely committed to changing the world we need to try and understand the interests and power relations at work, not just the factors relating to a given issue. Is it the case that we could never have achieved success on trade justice or climate change, and if so what would be a more effective use of our time? If we don’t have any answers, we should be honest about the fact we need to work some out. Then we need to dedicate some time to doing just that.
In a pamphlet a few members of Oxford P&P put together we argued that power and incentives can often be shown, by examination of issues such as AIDS, climate change and world trade, to be strongly distributed according to the structure of international capital. If we take it that groups of people within this structure, depending on their position in it, have differing power and interests, then we posit classes. So our analysis of the world will involve analysis of the current global economic system: capitalism.
This isn’t to suggest that we need to fall headlong into the culture and practise of the ‘anti-capitalist movement’. It too has its problems: in the UK, the anarchist movement is characterised by a lack of willingless to develop an analysis and therefore an effective strategy for change. However, once the need for understanding the world is recognised, we need to recognise the importance of reflection on how we go about changing things as well. We should consider all options: working with electoral parties, the importance of the labour movement, and so on.
One thing we can be certain of is this: whatever our solution is, it will necessarily have to involve power. Power should not be crudely understood, and there are many different ways of having power (J.K. Galbraith talked about personality, property and organisation, Hannah Arendt talked of ‘communicative power’). But if we have agreed that there are powerful interests with pernicious interests, persons whose interests and power arise from their relation to the structure of society in general, then we cannot hope to finally countervail against them without being able to resist their projects, and establish ones of our own.
The autonomous structure of groups in the P&P network means that we have the freedom and capacity to think hard about an analysis and putting it into practise. And the democratic structure of the network means the outcome of our discussions can feed directly into the work the office does to support us. So to conclude: we must understand the world in order to change it. And here are a few thoughts about what will be necessary for P&P to do so:
For groups
Groups need to ensure that their campaigning activities are informed by rigorous discussion of what they hope to achieve, how, and whether this is the most effective use of their time. We shouldn’t feel guilty about dedicating more time to discussion, it is important if we are to be effective. Some suggestions of ways to go about this include:
Regional days where issues are debated, alternative political analyses examined and our own proposals are developed.
Talks by a wide range of speakers (drawn from beyond the NGO-world) followed by discussions at a few meetings a term.
We could set up reading groups, or watch radical films to inform discussion.
For the network as a whole
As a network, we need to encourage a discursive culture and share our ideas with each other:
This journal is one excellent way groups can contribute to an ongoing, in-depth discourse.
Everything can be discussed on the network web forum.
We should set aside time at Shared Planet, the Summer Gathering and The Forum to work out bases of consensus on which we wish the office and the network to operate.
For the office
The office should also take responsibility for moving in this direction:
It should facilitate communication between groups.
It should encourage a discursive culture in the network by offering workshops and opportunities for discussion on different political analyses.
Its literature should address the following:
- Disadvantaged people in the Global South/Majority World are political agents, and our solidarity with them should be such as to recognise and encourage this.
- Action or inaction which is calamitous for large sections of humanity does not just happen. It happens because for other (generally speaking, smaller, wealthier) sections of humanity the action or inaction is beneficial. We should try to identify who benefits, and how it is that they have the power that they do.
We should further seek to identify why it is that these people have the interests they do, and also why they have the power to, so frequently, achieve their will.
At the moment, the office’s organisational strategy commits it to working solely on ‘global, not local or student-specific issues’. However, a global movement for justice cannot honestly separate itself from national and local movements for the same. We must not encode this into P&P’s ambit of operation. First, because it is tactically injudicious for movements not to support, and learn from, each others’ strength; secondly because it confines us to a middle-class (and upward) constituency; third, because it is - according to the analysis outlined in the Where Now? pamphlet - not true to say that they face fundamentally distinct problems. Not all struggles are connected, but very many are.
So our slogan is this: We must understand the world in order to change it.
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