While working in a hospital in the ’70s near the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Lorelei Decora, noticed that many women were having miscarriages—so many that hospital workers had to put extra beds in the hallways. Meanwhile, Madonna Thunder Hawk was working with continuously sick children at the Survival School, an American Indian Movement (AIM) alternative school, which supports… return to article
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Reader Comments (1)Page 1 of 1 pages“We did not worry if our work would upset funders; we just worried about whether the work would help our communities.”
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded argues that foundations perpetuate First World interests and free-market capitalism, thus preserving many of the problems radical activists wish to eradicate, such as the unregulated concentration of wealth.
So close, and yet so far. Do you see the contradiction?
The observations in this article and book are quite penetrating and refreshing, until they collide with the conventional leftist ideology. Capitalism, indeed!
The thrust of the article could be summarized as anti-bureaucratic, and is absolutely correct in its statements of this problem. But all organizations are subject to bureaucratization, which inevitably means that all organizations tend to become unimaginative and inefficent at best, and corrupt at worst. This is true not just of foundations, but of businesses, governments, churches, any organization.
There are exactly two such organizations that routinely are able to escape this stultifying trap: political democracies and capitalist enterprises. Democracies can throw the political bums out when they become unimaginative, inefficent, and corrupt, thereby creating discipline and constant renewal in the polity.
Capitalist enterprises work best in a democratic rule-of-law environment, and have their own internal disciplinary mechanism: profits, which create all the wealth we have and enjoy.
Leftists routinely want to bureaucratize both the government and the enterprises, and thus make them unimaginative, inefficent, and corrupt, like the Soviet Union. Good-bye, wealth.
It would be a lot smarter to work to help our communities by promoting the creation of wealth, within the community and generally. But leftist ideologues cannot think beyond their zero-sum game, and their own need for power. Right, Forget the Foundations (and the bureaucracies)!
Posted by scorp on Jul 22, 2007 at 9:24 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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