compromise

Medialens, the excellent media-watchdog, is having another go at George Monbiot - the excellent environmentalist and Guardian correspondent. On the environment, and probably on most other issues, you couldn't put a rizla between them. And that is not something you could say about almost any other mainstream journalist.

So why fight? Why pick on the differences between the positions rather than joining forces on the common issues? Why not - for the moment at least - tolerate the differences in order to win the bigger battles?

This is not just about Medialens and George Monbiot - or even about Medialens and the Guardian, which is the real battleground. It is about anyone working for social change, how we work with institutions or individuals that do not fully share our values, and how much we compromise on what seem to be fundamental points of principle. Why, for example, does antarchia criticise the ngo-businesses and human rights educators, all of whom are apparently working towards the same good and noble goals?

The ngo-businesses, just like the mainstream media, have numbers on their side. The BBC (and probably the Guardian) reaches millions; Medialens maybe reaches thousands. Save the Children, Amnesty International, the Council of Europe (a business, if not an ngo-business) reach out to - and spend - millions (mostly on themselves). A lone ant reaches tens or hundreds at the most.

So should we join the colony?

Not easy to answer, and it depends partly on what you are fighting against (or maybe for). In the new world, for example - do we want huge ngo-businesses, based in London, Strasbourg or New York, eating up the vast majority of the resources we manage to squeeze out of governments or individuals for those in dire need? Do we want media corporations, dependent on advertising revenue from the aviation and motor industries? If we do - then we should probably work with them now. If we don't, then we need to ask whether their existence now is actually the best way of ensuring an end to the status quo; whether it is the best way of ensuring their non-existence some time in the future. That seems unlikely, but maybe it is worth discussing.

Another question is whether we have an alternative model that would work better. We can admit that SCF, Oxfam, AI, the COE are massive resource drains, often compromising on points of principle in order to retain their influence; but they do some good, undoubtedly, and what can we suggest instead? That point needs answering, and I shall (not now). For the moment, let's also note the 'bad' that a lot of these structures encourage as well: partly in terms of monopolising the resources for their London offices and European salaries, but also in terms of propping up and failing to challenge the very system they rely on for their own existence.

A third question is whether, given the dominance of the ngo-businesses (and the media corporations) the lone ants can actually do anything to dilute their might - even if they can propose a different model once the might is gone. Medialens - and programmes like Democracy Now or FAIR in the US - appear to show that in the world of media, they can. I am less sure at the moment if that is true for the ngo-businesses - but time may tell.

And then perhaps the biggest question is whether our energies are best spent fighting the people or organisations closest to our own ideals; whether we spare them, let them do their good (and their bad) and move to other battlegrounds; or whether we try to swallow the differences and work with them.

No answers, really, and I suspect that every case needs to be decided individually. Three tentative responses to that last general point:

Sometimes the 'collaborators' in the opposite camp - the Monbiots in the mainstream press - can do more damage than the right-wing idiots we can simply laugh off. The Monbiots give credibility to the mainstream media, and promote the idea that no opinions and no issues are out of bounds. In that way, they (possibly) sustain the mainstream media. And in the same way, human rights educators working with the government give credibility to the government; the good work done by Amnesty campaigners gives credibility to the enormous and extravagant executive structure sitting in East London; and Oxfam's good work in reducing poverty gives credibility to Blair's pretence that he was trying to do the same.

Secondly, sometimes these huge ngo or media corporations themselves do more damage than good. That is clearer in the case of the media corporations - but I do wonder if we are looking at the balance sheet correctly in the case of the ngo-businesses. The question is not: what if Amnesty International disappeared and there was nothing? It surely ought to be: what if AI disappeared, or became leaner, or moved its operations, and resources were transferred to other efforts?

Finally - and this may in the end be the decisive point - there is always the question of whether, if we join the colony, we can continue to look at ourselves in the mirror (Michael Albert's expression, from here). Sometimes those compromises are just too difficult to make. Should we force ourselves to make them? Should we try harder to work with or for organisations whose overall values we cannot quite share, just because they have the might, and because our presence may make their mighty impact less bad than if we were to refuse to cooperate.

No answers. But I tend to think not.