[News] Do Capitalists Fund Revolutions?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=13689
ZNet | Vision & Strategy

Do Capitalists Fund Revolutions?
Part 1 of 2
by Michael Barker; September 02, 2007

To date capitalists have financially supported 
two types of revolution: they have funded the 
neoliberal revolution to “take the risk out of 
democracy”,[1] and they have supported/hijacked 
popular revolutions (or in some cases 
manufactured ‘revolutions’) in countries of 
geostrategic importance (i.e. in counties where 
regime change is beneficial to transnational 
capitalism).[2] The former neoliberal revolution 
has, of course, been funded by a hoard of right 
wing philanthropists intent on neutralising 
progressive forces within society, while the 
latter ‘democratic revolutions’ are funded by an 
assortment of ‘bipartisan’ quasi-nongovernmental 
organizations, like the 
[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=NED 
National Endowment for Democracy] (NED), and 
private institutions like 
[http://wiki.zmag.org/George_Soros George Soros’ Open Society Institute].

The underlying mechanisms by which capitalists 
hijack popular revolutions has been outlined in 
William I. Robinson’s seminal book, Promoting 
Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and 
Hegemony (1996), which examines elite 
interventions in four countries – Chile, 
Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Haiti.[3] 
Robinson hypothesized that as a result of the 
public backlash (in the 1970s) against the US 
government’s repressive and covert foreign 
policies, foreign policy making elites elected to 
put a greater emphasis on overt means of 
overthrowing ‘problematic’ governments through 
the strategic manipulation of civil society. In 
1984, this ‘democratic’ thinking was 
institutionalised with the creation of the 
National Endowment for Democracy, an organisation 
that acts as the coordinating body for better 
funded ‘democracy promoting’ organisations like 
US Agency for International Development and the 
Central Intelligence Agency. Robinson observes that:

“
the understanding on the part of US 
policymakers that power ultimately rests in civil 
society, and that state power is intimately 
linked to a given correlation of forces in civil 
society, has helped shape the contours of the new 
political intervention. Unlike earlier US 
interventionism, the new intervention focuses 
much more intensely on civil society itself, in 
contrast to formal government structures, in 
intervened countries. The purpose of ‘democracy 
promotion’ is not to suppress but to penetrate 
and conquer civil society in intervened 
countries, that is, the complex of ‘private’ 
organizations such as political parties, trade 
unions, the media, and so forth, and from 
therein, integrate subordinate classes and 
national groups into a hegemonic transnational 
social order
 This function of civil society as 
an arena for exercising domination runs counter 
to conventional (particularly pluralist) thinking 
on the matter, which holds that civil society is 
a buffer between state domination and groups in 
society, and that class and group domination is 
diluted as civil society develops.”[4]

Thus it is not too surprising that Robinson 
should conclude that the primary goal of 
‘democracy promoting’ groups, like the NED, is 
the promotion of polyarchy or low-intensity 
democracy over more substantive forms of 
democratic governance.[5] Here it is useful to 
turn to Barry Gills, Joen Rocamora, and Richard 
Wilson’s (1993) work which provides a useful 
description of low-intensity democracy, they observe that:

“Low Intensity Democracy is designed to promote 
stability. However, it is usually accompanied by 
neoliberal economic policies to restore economic 
growth. This usually accentuates economic 
hardship for the less privileged and deepens the 
short-term structural effects of economic crisis 
as the economy opens further to the competitive 
winds of the world market and global capital. The 
pains of economic adjustment are supposed to be 
temporary, preparing the society to proceed to a 
higher stage of development. The temporary 
economic suffering of the majority is further 
supposed to be balanced by the benefits of a 
freer democratic political culture. But 
unfortunately for them, the poor and dispossessed 
cannot eat votes! In such circumstances, Low 
Intensity Democracy may ‘work’ in the short term, 
primarily as a strategy to reduce political 
tension, but is fragile in the long term, due to 
its inability to redress fundamental political and economic problems.”[6]

So while capitalists appear happy to fund the 
neoliberal ‘revolution’, or geostrategic 
revolutions that promote low-intensity democracy, 
the one revolution that capitalists will not 
bankroll will be the revolution at home, that is, 
here in our Western (low-intensity) democracies: 
a point that is forcefully argued in INCITE! 
Women of Color Against Violence’s (2007) book The 
Revolution Will Not Be Funded. Of course, 
liberal-minded capitalists do support efforts to 
‘depose’ radical neoconservatives, as 
demonstrated by liberal attempts to oust Bush’s 
regime by the Soros-backed Americans Coming 
Together coalition.[7] But as in NED-backed 
strategic ‘revolutions,’ the results of such 
campaigns are only ever likely to promote 
low-intensity democracy, thereby ensuring the 
replacement of one (business-led) elite with 
another one (in the US’s case with the Democrats).

So the question remains: can progressive 
activists work towards creating a more equitable 
(and participatory) world using funding derived 
from those very groups within society that stand 
to lose most from such revolutionary changes? The 
obvious answer to this question is no. Yet, if 
this is the case, why are so many progressive 
(sometimes even radical) groups accepting funding 
from major liberal foundations (which, after all, 
were created by some of Americas most successful capitalists)?

Several reasons may help explain this 
contradictory situation. Firstly, it is well 
known that progressive groups are often 
underfunded, and their staff overworked, thus 
there is every likelihood that many groups and 
activists that receive support from liberal 
foundations have never even considered the 
problems associated with such funding.[8] If this 
is the case then hopefully their exposure to the 
arguments presented in this article will help 
more activists begin to rethink their unhealthy relations with their funders’.

On the other hand, it seems likely that many 
progressive groups understand that the broader 
goals and aspirations of liberal foundations are 
incompatible with their own more radical visions 
for the future; yet, despite recognizing this 
dissonance between their ambitions, it would seem 
that many progressive organizations believe that 
they can beat the foundations at their own game 
and trick them into funding projects that will 
promote a truly progressive social change. Here 
it is interesting to note that paradoxically some 
radical groups do in fact receive funding from 
liberal foundations. And like those progressive 
groups that attempt to trick the foundations, 
many of these groups argue that will take money 
from anyone willing to give it so long as it 
comes with no strings attached. These final two 
positions are held by numerous activist 
organizations, and are also highly problematic. 
This is case because if we can agree that it is 
unlikely that liberal foundations will fund the 
much needed societal changes that will bring 
about their own demise, why do they continue 
funding such progressive activists?

Despite the monumental importance of this 
question to progressive activists worldwide, 
judging by the number of articles dealing with it 
in the alternative media very little importance 
appears to have been attached to discussing this 
question and investigating means of cultivating 
funding sources that are geared towards the 
promotion of radical social change. Fortunately 
though, in addition to INCITE!’s aforementioned 
book, which has helped break the unstated taboo 
surrounding the discussion of activist funding, 
another critical exception was provided in the 
June 2007 edition of the academic journal 
Critical Sociology. The editors of this path 
breaking issue of Critical Sociology don’t beat 
around that bush and point out that:

“The critical study of foundations is not a 
subfield in any academic discipline; it is not 
even an organized interdisciplinary grouping. 
This, along with concerns about personal 
defunding, limits its output, especially as 
compared to that of the many well-endowed centers 
for the uncritical study of foundations.”[9]

Despite the dearth of critical inquiry into the 
historical influence of liberal foundations on 
the evolution of democracy, in the past few years 
a handful of books have endeavoured to provide a 
critical overview of the insidious 
anti-radicalising activities of liberal 
philanthropists. Thus the rest of this article 
will provide a brief review of some of this 
important work, however, before doing this I will 
briefly outline what I mean by progressive social 
change (that is, the type of social change that 
liberal foundations are loathe to fund).

Why Progressive Social Change?
With the growth of popular progressive social 
movements during the 1960s in the US (and 
elsewhere), the global populace became 
increasingly aware of the criminal nature of many 
of their government’s activities (both at home 
and abroad) which fuelled increasing popular 
resistance to US imperialism. This in turn led 
influential scholars, working under the remit of 
the Trilateral Commission (a group founded by 
liberal philanthropists, see note [50]), to 
controversially conclude (in 1975) that the 
increasing radicalism of the world’s citizens 
stemmed from an “excess of democracy” which could 
only be quelled “by a greater degree of 
moderation in democracy”.[10] This elitist 
diagnosis makes sense when one considers Carole 
Pateman’s (1989) observation that the dominant 
political and economic elites in the US posited 
that true democracy rested “not on the 
participation of the people, but on their 
nonparticipation.”[11] However, contrary to the 
Trilateral Commission’s desire to promote 
low-intensity democracy on a global scale, Gills, 
Rocamora, and Wilson (1993) suggest that:

“Democracy requires more than mere maintenance of 
formal ‘liberties’. [In fact, they argue that 
t]he only way to advance democracy in the Third 
World, or anywhere else, is to increase the 
democratic content of formal democratic 
institutions through profound social reform. 
Without substantial social reform and 
redistribution of economic assets, representative 
institutions – no matter how ‘democratic’ in form 
– will simply mirror the undemocratic power 
relations of society. Democracy requires a change 
in the balance of forces in society. 
Concentration of economic power in the hands of a 
small elite is a structural obstacle to 
democracy. It must be displaced if democracy is to emerge.”[12]

In essence, one of the most important steps 
activists can take to help bring about truly 
progressive social change is to encourage the 
development of a politically active citizenry – 
that is, a public that participates in democratic 
processes, but not necessarily those promoted by 
the government. Furthermore, it is also vitally 
important that groups promoting more 
participatory forms of democracy do so in a 
manner consistent with the participatory 
principles they believe in. (For a major critique 
of ‘progressive’ activism in the US see Dana 
Fisher’s (2006) 
[http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5217%20%20 
Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots 
Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in 
America]. Similarly, also see my recent article 
[http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13436 
Hijacking Human Rights: A Critical Examination of 
Human Rights Watch’s Americas Branch and their 
Links to the ‘Democracy’ Establishment.])

Michael Albert is an influential theorist of 
progressive politics, and he has written at 
(inspiring) length about transitionary strategies 
for promoting participatory democracy in both his 
classic book 
[http://www.zmag.org/parecon/pelac.htm Parecon: 
Life After Capitalism] (2003), and more recently 
in Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism (2006). 
Simply put, Albert (2006) observes that: “A truly 
democratic community insures that the general 
public has the opportunity for meaningful and 
constructive participation in the formation of 
social policy.” However, there is no single 
answer to determining the best way of creating a 
participatory society, and so he rightly notes 
that Parecon (which is short for participatory 
economics) “doesn’t itself answer visionary 
questions bearing on race, gender, polity, and 
other social concerns, [but] it is at least 
compatible with and even, in some cases, perhaps necessary for, doing so.”[13]

Finally, I would argue that in order to move 
towards a new participatory world order it is 
vitally important that progressive activists 
engage in radical critiques of society. 
Undertaking such radical actions may be 
problematic for some activists, because 
unfortunately the word radical is often used by 
the corporate media as a derogatory term for all 
manner of activists (whether they are radical or 
not). Yet this hijacking of the term perhaps 
makes it an even more crucial take that 
progressives work to reclaim this word as their 
own, so they can inject it back into their own 
work and analyses. Indeed, Robert Jensen’s (2004) 
excellent book Writing Dissent: Taking Radical 
Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream reminds us that:

“
the origins of the word – radical, [comes] from 
the Latin radicalis, meaning ‘root.’ Radical 
analysis goes to the root of an issue or problem. 
Typically that means that while challenging the 
specific manifestations of a problem, radicals 
also analyse the ideological and institutional 
components as well as challenge the unstated 
assumptions and conventional wisdom that obscure 
the deeper roots. Often it means realizing that 
what is taken as an aberration or deviation from 
a system is actually the predictable and/or intended result of a system.”[14]

The Liberal Foundations of Social Change

Now that I have briefly outlined why progressive 
social change is so important, it is useful to 
examine why liberal philanthropy – which has been 
institutionalised within liberal foundations – 
arose in the first place. Here it is useful to 
quote Nicolas Guilhot (2007) who neatly outlines 
the ideological reasons lying behind liberal 
philanthropy. He observes that in the face of the 
violent labor wars of the late 19th century that 
“directly threatened the economic interests of 
the philanthropists”, liberal philanthropists realized:

“
 that social reform was unavoidable, [and 
instead] chose to invest in the definition and 
scientific treatment of the ‘social questions’ of 
their time: urbanization, education, housing, 
public hygiene, the “Negro problem,” etc. Far 
from being resistant to social change, the 
philanthropists promoted reformist solutions that 
did not threaten the capitalistic nature of the 
social order but constituted a ‘private alternative to socialism’”[15]

Andrea Smith (2007) notes that:

“From their inception, [liberal] foundations 
focused on research and dissemination of 
information designed ostensibly to ameliorate 
social issues-in a manner, how¬ever, that did not 
challenge capitalism. For instance, in 1913, 
Colorado miners went on strike against Colorado 
Fuel and Iron, an enterprise of which 40 percent 
was owned by Rockefeller. Eventually, this strike 
erupted into open warfare, with the Colorado 
militia murdering several strikers during the 
Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914. During that 
same time, Jerome Greene, the Rockefeller 
Foundation secretary, identified research and 
information to quiet social and political unrest 
as a founda¬tion priority. The rationale behind 
this strategy was that while individual workers 
deserved social relief, organized workers in the 
form of unions were a threat to soci¬ety. So the 
Rockefeller Foundation heavily advertised its 
relief work for individual workers while at the 
same time promoting a pro-Rockefeller spin to the massacre.”[16]

Writing in 1966, Carroll Quigley – who happened 
to be one of Bill Clinton’s mentors – [17] 
elaborates on the motivations driving the 
philanthropic colonisation of progressive social change:

“More than fifty years ago [circa 1914] the 
Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing 
political movements in the United States. This 
was relatively easy to do, since these groups 
were starved for funds and eager for a voice to 
reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The 
purpose was not to destroy, dominate, or take 
over but was really threefold: (1) to keep 
informed about the thinking of Left-wing or 
liberal groups; (2) to provide them with a 
mouthpiece so that they could ‘blow off steam,’ 
and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity 
and possibly on their actions, if they ever went 
‘radical.’ There was nothing really new about 
this decision, since other financiers had talked 
about it and even attempted it earlier. What made 
it decisively important this time was the 
combination of its adoption by the dominant Wall 
Street financier, at a time when tax policy was 
driving all financiers to seek tax-exempt refuges 
for their fortunes, and at a time when the 
ultimate in Left-wing radicalism was about to 
appear under the banner of the Third International.”[18]

One of the most important books exploring the 
detrimental influence of liberal foundations on 
social change was Robert Arnove’s Philanthropy 
and Cultural Imperialism (1980). In the 
introduction to this edited collection Arnove notes that:

“A central thesis [of this book] is that 
foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford 
have a corrosive influence on a democratic 
society; they represent relatively unregulated 
and unaccountable concentrations of power and 
wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in 
effect, establish an agenda of what merits 
society’s attention. They serve as ‘cooling-out’ 
agencies, delaying and preventing more radical, 
structural change. They help maintain an economic 
and political order, international in scope, 
which benefits the ruling-class interests of 
philanthropists and philanthropoids – a system 
which, as the various chapters document, has 
worked against the interests of minorities, the 
working class, and Third World peoples.”[19]

With the aid of Nadine Pinede, Arnove (2007) 
recently updated this critique noting that, while 
the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations’ 
“are considered to be among the most progressive 
in the sense of being forward looking and 
reform-minded”, they are also “among the most 
controversial and influential of all the 
foundations”.[20] Indeed, as Edward H. Berman 
demonstrated in his book 
[http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/ideologyofphilanthropy.htm 
The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and 
Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign 
Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy] (1983), the 
activities of all three of these foundations are 
closely entwined with those of US foreign policy 
elites. This subject has also been covered in 
some depth in Frances Stonor Saunders (1999) book 
Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War. She notes that:

“During the height of the Cold War, the US 
government com¬mitted vast resources to a secret 
programme of cultural propaganda in western 
Europe. A central feature of this pro¬gramme was 
to advance the claim that it did not exist. It 
was managed, in great secrecy, by America’s 
espionage arm, the Central Intelligence Agency. 
The centrepiece of this covert cam¬paign was the 
Congress for Cultural Freedom [which received 
massive support from the Ford Foundation and was] 
run by CIA agent Michael Josselson from 1950 till 
1967. Its achieve¬ments – not least its duration 
– were considerable. At its peak, the Congress 
for Cultural Freedom had offices in thirty-five 
countries, employed dozens of personnel, 
published over twenty prestige magazines, held 
art exhibitions, owned a news and features 
service, organized high-profile international 
con¬ferences, and rewarded musicians and artists 
with prizes and public performances. Its mission 
was to nudge the intelligentsia of western Europe 
away from its lingering fascination with Marxism 
and Communism towards a view more accommo¬dating of ‘the American way’.”[21]

So given the elitist history of liberal 
foundations it is not surprising that Arnove and 
Pinede (2007) note that although the Carnegie, 
Rockefeller, and Ford foundations’ “claim to 
attack the root causes of the ills of humanity, 
they essentially engage in ameliorative practices 
to maintain social and economic systems that 
generate the very inequalities and injustices 
they wish to correct.”[22] Indeed they conclude 
that although the past few decades these 
foundations have adopted a “more progressive, if 
not radical, rhetoric and approaches to community 
building” that gives a “voice to those who have 
been disadvantaged by the workings of an 
increasingly global capitalist economy, they 
remain ultimately elitist and technocratic institutions.”[23]

Based on the knowledge of these critiques, it is 
then supremely ironic that progressive activists 
tend to underestimate the influence of liberal 
philanthropists, while simultaneously 
acknowledging the fundamental role played by 
conservative philanthropists in promoting 
neoliberal policies. Indeed, contrary to popular 
beliefs amongst progressives, much evidence 
supports the contention that liberal 
philanthropists and their foundations have been 
very influential in shaping the contours of 
American (and global) civil society, actively 
influencing social change through a process 
alternatively referred to as either channelling [24] or co-option.[25]

“Co-optation [being] a process through which the 
policy orientations of leaders are influenced and 
their organizational activities channeled. It 
blends the leader’s interests with those of an 
external organization. In the process, ethnic 
lead¬ers and their organizations become active in 
the state-run interorganizational system; they 
become participants in the decision-making 
process as advisors or committee members. By 
becoming somewhat of an insider the co-opted 
leader is likely to identify with the 
organization and its objectives. The leader’s 
point of view is shaped through the personal ties 
formed with authorities and functionaries of the external organization.”[26]

The critical issue of the cooption of progressive 
groups by liberal foundations has also been 
examined in Joan Roelofs seminal book Foundations 
and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism 
(extracts of this book can be found online, 
[http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/maskofpluralism.htm 
click here]). In summary, Roelofs (2007) argues that:

“
the pluralist model of civil society obscures 
the extensive collaboration among the 
resource-providing elites and the dependent state 
of most grassroots organizations. While the 
latter may negotiate with foundations over 
details, and even win some concessions, 
capitalist hegemony (including its imperial 
perquisites) cannot be questioned without severe 
organizational penalties. By and large, it is the 
funders who are calling the tune. This would be 
more obvious if there were sufficient publicized 
investigations of this vast and important domain. 
That the subject is ‘off-limits’ for both 
academics and journalists is compelling evidence 
of enormous power.”[27] (To listen to Roelofs’ 
recent talk ‘The Invisible Hand of Corporate 
Capitalism’, which summarises the arguments 
presented in her book, 
[http://www.traprockpeace.org/edrussell/JoanRoelofs18April07AImedia.mp3 
click here]. )


To be continued


The concluding part of this article will examine 
how liberal foundations coopted the civil rights 
movement, promoted “iden¬tity politics” and 
“multiculturalism”, and influenced the 
development of the World Social Forum. Finally it 
will conclude by offering suggestions for how 
activists might begin to move beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.

Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at 
Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached 
at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au

References
[1] Damien C. Cahill, The Radical Neo-liberal 
Movement as a Hegemonic Force in Australia, 
1976-1996 (Unpublished PhD Thesis: University of 
Wollongong, 2004); Alex Carey, Taking the Risk 
out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and 
Australia (Sydney, N.S.W.: University of New 
South Wales Press, 1995); Sally Covington, Moving 
a Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic 
Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations 
(Washington, DC: National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 1997).
[2] Michael Barker, 
‘[http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/ept/politics/apsa/PapersFV/IntRel_IPE/Barker,%20Michael.pdf 
Taking the Risk Out of Civil Society: Harnessing 
Social Movements and Regulating Revolutions]’, 
Refereed paper presented to the Australasian 
Political Studies Association Conference, 
University of Newcastle 25-27 September 2006.
[3] Here it is important to note that in all four 
countries that Robinson examined, the ‘democratic 
transitions’ “were touted by policymakers, and 
praised by journalists, supportive scholars, and 
public commentators, as ‘success stories’ in 
which the United States broke sharply with 
earlier support for authoritarianism and 
dictatorship and contributed in a positive way to 
‘democracy,’ and therefore as ‘models’ for future 
US interventions of this type.”  William I. 
Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US 
Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1996),, p.114.
[4] Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, pp.28-9. For 
related online resources see, William I. 
Robinson, 
[http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/Assets/pdf/faustista.pdf 
A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the 
Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy 
in the Post-Cold War Era] (Westview Press, 1992)
[5] However, he does specify that it is important 
to note that the US “is not acting on behalf of a 
‘US’ elite, but [instead is] playing a leadership 
role on behalf of an emergent transnational 
elite”; and that the “impulse to ‘promote 
democracy’” essentially arises from the need “to 
secure the underlying objective of maintaining 
essentially undemocratic societies inserted into 
an unjust international system.”Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, p.20, 6.
Robinson also adds that: “A caveat must be 
stressed. US preference for polyarchy is a 
general guideline of post-Cold War foreign policy 
and not a universal prescription. Policymakers 
often assess that authoritarian arrangements are 
best left in place in instances where the 
establishment of polyarchic systems is an 
unrealistic, high-risk, or unnecessary 
undertaking.” Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, p.112.
[6] Barry Gills, Joen Rocamora, and Richard 
Wilson, Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power 
in the New World Order (London: Pluto Press, 1993), pp.26-7.
[7] Leslie Wayne, ‘And for His Next Feat, a 
Billionaire Sets Sights on Bush’, New York Times, May 31, 2004.
[8] Indeed as INCITE! note in their book The 
Revolution Will Not Be Funded: “We took a stand 
against state funding since we perceived that 
antiviolence organizations who had state funding 
had been co-opted. It never occurred to us to 
look at foundation funding in the same way. 
However, in a trip to India (funded, ironically, 
by the Ford Foundation), we met with many 
non-funded organizations that criticized us for 
receiving foundation grants. When we saw that 
groups with much less access to resources were 
able to do amazing work without funding, we began 
to question our reliance on founda¬tion grants.” 
Andrea Smith, ‘Introduction: The Revolution Will 
Not Be Funded’, In: INCITE! Women of Color 
Against Violence (eds.) The Revolution Will Not 
Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial 
Complex (South End Press, 2007), p.1.
[9] Annon, ‘Note on this Special Issue of 
Critical Sociology’, Critical Sociology, 33 (2007), p.387.
[10] Crozier, M., S. P. Huntington and J. 
Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the 
Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral 
Commission (New York: New York University Press, 1975), p.134.
[11] Carole Pateman, ‘The Civic Culture: A 
Philosophical Critique’, In: G. A. Almond and S. 
Verba (eds.) The Civic Culture: A Philosophical 
Critique (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1989), p.79.
[12] Gills, Rocamora, and Wilson, Low Intensity Democracy, p.29.
[13] Michael Albert, Realizing Hope: Life Beyond 
Capitalism (London: Zed Books, 2006), p.24, 185.
[14] Robert Jensen, Writing Dissent: Taking 
Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream 
(New York: Peter Lang, 2004), p.7.
[15] Nicolas Guilhot, ‘Reforming the World: 
George Soros, Global Capitalism and the 
Philanthropic Management of the Social Sciences’, 
Critical Sociology, Volume 33, Number 3, 2007, pp.451-2.
[16] Andrea Smith, ‘Introduction: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded’, p.4.
[17] Daniel Brandt, 
‘[http://www.namebase.org/news01.html Clinton, 
Quigley, and Conspiracy: What’s going on here?]’ 
NameBase NewsLine, No. 1, April-June 1993.
[18] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History 
of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p.938.
[19] Robert F. Arnove, ‘Introduction’, In: Robert 
F. Arnove, (ed.), Philanthropy and Cultural 
Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad 
(Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall, 1980), p.1.
[20] Robert Arnove and Nadine Pinede, ‘Revisiting 
the “Big Three” Foundations’, Critical Sociology, 
Volume 33, Number 3, 2007, p.391.
[21] Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the 
Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War (Granta Books, 1999), p.1.
For a useful review of Saunders’ book see, James 
Petras, 
‘[http://www.monthlyreview.org/1199petr.htm The 
CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited]’, Monthly Review, November 1999.
Also see Hugh Wilford, 
[http://books.google.com/books?id=e4kNqc_p6uYC&pg=PA290&lpg=PA290&dq=saunders+1999+who+paid+the+piper&source=web&ots=L3LA_r6CyN&sig=daN3MB1kohtWuz-dEqg233KB3Ow#PPP1,M1 
The CIA, the British Left, and the Cold War: 
Calling the Tune?] (London: Frank Cass, 2003); 
and Paul Wolf, ‘OSS and the Development of 
Psychological Warfare’. 
<http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/foundations.htm>http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/foundations.htm 

[22] Robert Arnove and Nadine Pinede, ‘Revisiting 
the “Big Three” Foundations’, p.393.
[23] Robert Arnove and Nadine Pinede, ‘Revisiting 
the “Big Three” Foundations’, p.422.
[24] Craig J. Jenkins, ‘Channeling Social 
Protest: Foundation Patronage of Contemporary 
Social Movements’, In: W. W. Powell and E. S. 
Clemens, (eds.), Private Action and the Public 
Good (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 206-216.
[25] Robert F. Arnove (ed.), Philanthropy and 
Cultural Imperialism; Donald Fisher, ‘The Role of 
Philanthropic Foundations in the Reproduction and 
Production of Hegemony: Rockefeller Foundations 
and the Social Sciences’, Sociology, 17, 2, 1983, 
pp. 206-233; Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public 
Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (Albany: State 
University of New York Press, 2003).; John 
Wilson, ‘Corporatism and the Professionalization 
of Reform’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 11, 1983, pp. 52-68.

Few researchers would argue that all foundations 
actively attempt to deliberately co-opt all 
social movements, although the larger ones like 
the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations have 
certainly successfully done this in the past. 
Craig Jenkins (1998, p.212) proposes his 
channeling thesis is more appropriate than the 
cooption model because it: (1) considers “that 
foundation goals are complex, ranging from 
genuine support of movement goals to social 
control” (a point the co-option thesis also 
acknowledges), (2) identifies the trend towards 
professionalization (a process also identified by 
the co-option thesis) and (3) this 
professionalization has led to greater 
mobilizations and successes than would have 
occurred otherwise. This last point is certainly 
debatable, as the history of social change seems 
to suggest that mass grassroots campaigns have 
far more progressive influence on political 
institutions than professional advocacy groups.

Deborah McCarthy (2004, p.254) suggests that the 
“social relations” approach to grantee/funder 
relations “presents a dialectical model in which 
both grantees and funders influence each other” 
as opposed to “the channeling and co-optation 
theories [which she argues] present a one-way 
model in which foundations influence grantees but 
not the other way around.” In response, I would 
argue that it is clear that foundation funding is 
dialectical, and it is important not to write off 
the work of those she presents as “one-way 
models” because clearly each funding relationship 
will vary from another, and the latter models 
benefit by incorporating the unequal power 
evident between funders’ and grantees. McCarthy 
(2004: 258) notes that activist/funders often 
have to trick their foundations to support 
environmental justice projects by using 
“terminology with issues that their foundation’s 
boards and donors already fund.” McCarthy 
discusses some ways in which activists and 
funders’ may begin to work around three major 
problems associated with foundation funding of 
the environmental justice movement which are: 
“programmatic emphases on project-specific 
grants, outcome-specific evaluation criteria, and 
short-term grants” (2004, p.263). See Deborah 
McCarthy, 
‘[http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2004.00089.x 
Environmental Justice Grantmaking: Elites and 
Activists Collaborate to Transform 
Philanthropy]’, Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 74, No. 2, 2004, pp.250–270.
[26] Raymond Breton, The Governance of Ethnic 
Communities: Political Structures and Processes 
in Canada (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990).
[27] Joan Roelofs, ‘Foundations and 
Collaboration’, Critical Sociology, Volume 33, Number 3, 2007, p.502.





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