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Bill Gates, Philanthropy, & Social Engineering?
Michael Barker
Like many of the world’s richest businessmen, Bill Gates1
believes in a special form of democracy, otherwise known as plutocracy. That
is, socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Following in the footsteps
of John D. Rockefeller’s and Andrew Carnegie’s charitable foundations,
Gates, like most capitalists, relies upon the government to protect his business
interests from competition, but is less keen on the idea of a government that
acts to redistribute wealth to the wider populous. For powerful capitalists such
as Gates, the State is merely a tool to be harnessed for profit maximization,
and they themselves, having acquired their wealth by exploiting and manipulating
the economic system, then take it upon their own shoulders to help relieve global
inequality and escalating poverty. As one might expect, their definitions of
the appropriate solutions to inequality neglect to seriously challenge the primary
driver of global poverty, capitalism. For the most part, the incompatibility
of democracy and capitalism remains anathema. Instead, those capitalist philanthropists
fund all manner of ‘solutions’ that help provide a much needed safety
valve for rising resistance and dissent, while still enabling business-as-usual,
albeit with a band-aid stuck over some of the more glaring inequities.
With huge government-aided financial empires resting in the hands of a small
power elite, the ability of the richest individual philanthropists to shape global
society is increasing all the time, while the power of society to influence governments
is being continuously undermined by many of these powerful philanthropists. This
situation is problematic on a number of levels. Democratic governments rely on
taxes to stabilise existing structures of governance. Yet, profiting from specifically
designed legislation, billionaire capitalists are able to create massive tax-free
endowments to satisfy their own particular interests. This process in effect
means that vast amounts of money are regularly ‘stolen’ from the democratic
citizenry, whereupon they are redistributed by unaccountable elites, who then
cynically use this display of generosity to win over more supporters to the free-market
principles that they themselves do their utmost to protect themselves from. Bill
Gates’ Microsoft Corporation and his associated liberal foundation, the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the largest of its kind in the world), is
only one of the more visible displays of capitalism’s hypocrisy.
I – Capitalists cum Philanthropists: the roots of Gates’ philanthropy
At this present historical juncture, neoclassical free-market
economic doctrines are the favored means of promoting capitalism by business
and political elites. In many respects this neoliberal dogma has been adopted
by a sizable proportion of the citizenry of the world’s most powerful countries,
arguably against the citizenry’s own best interests. This widespread internalisation,
but not necessarily acceptance, by the broader populous of the economic theories
that consolidate capitalist hegemony over the global market did not happen naturally,
but actually required a massive ongoing propaganda campaign to embed itself in
the minds of the masses. The contours of this propaganda offensive have been
well described by Alex Carey who fittingly observed that: “The twentieth
century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance:
the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate
propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”2
There are many reasons why corporate giants engage in liberal philanthropic endeavors:
one is to have a direct influence on political decisions through what has been
termed political philanthropy3, but another important reason is that such charitable
efforts help cultivate a positive image in the public’s mind that serves
to deflect criticism while also helping expand their market share. However, although
liberal foundations like the Gates Foundation may engage in ostensibly ‘progressive’ activities,
this does not mean that the capitalist enterprises from which their endowments
arise (e.g. Microsoft) refrain from engaging in common antidemocratic business
practices. So while the Gates Foundation directs some of its resources to progressive
grassroots initiatives, its corporate benefactor actually works to create fake
grassroots organisations (otherwise known as astroturf groups) to actively lobby
through covert means to protect corporate power.
For instance, in 1999 Microsoft helped found a group called Americans for Technology
Leadership – a group which describes its role as being “dedicated to
limiting government regulation of technology and fostering competitive market
solutions to public policy issues affecting the technology industry.”4 In
2001, Joseph Menn and Edmund Sanders alleged that Americans for Technology Leadership
orchestrated a “nationwide campaign to create the impression of a surging
grass-roots movement”5 to help defend Microsoft from monopoly charges. The
founder of this front group, Jonathan Zuck, also created another libertarian
group in 1998 called the Association for Competitive Technology, a group which
was part sponsored by Microsoft to fight against the anti-trust actions being
pursued against Microsoft in the United States. Such antidemocratic campaigns
waged via front groups and astroturf organisations, however, were just one part
of Microsoft’s democratic manipulations. This is because, as Greg Miller
and Leslie Helm demonstrated (in 1998), this was just one part of a programmme
that Microsoft and PR giant Edelman had been planning as part of a “massive
media campaign designed to influence state investigators by creating the appearance
of a groundswell of public support for the company.”6 None of this should
be surprising as in 1995 it was also revealed how Microsoft were using “consultants
to generate computer analyses of reporters’ articles, enlist industry sources
to critique writers they know and – less frequently – provide investigative
peeks into journalists private lives.”7 In the rare spate of critical articles
surfacing in the late 1990s, it was also shown that Microsoft had made a $380,000
contribution to the conservative corporate-funded astroturf group Citizens for
a Sound Economy (now known as FreedomWorks).8 Unfortunately, these examples only
represent the tip of the iceberg of Microsoft’s democracy manipulating activities.
II – The Gates Foundation: Microsoft’s ‘Charity’
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has its roots in two
of Gates’ earlier philanthropic projects: the William H. Gates Foundation
and the Gates Library Foundation. Understanding the complete backgrounds of the
Gates Foundations’ is critical to comprehending the political nature of
their work.
Formed in 1994 by Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, the William H. Gates
Foundation was managed by Bill Gates’ father, William H. Gates Sr.9 Presently
acting as the co-chairman of the Gates Foundation, Gates Sr. has had a successful
career establishing one of Seattle’s leading law firms, Preston Gates and
Ellis (which in 2007 became K&L Gates), whose work is closely tied to Bill
Gates’ corporate/philanthropic network. Gates Sr. is also a director of
the food giant Costco where he sits on their board of directors alongside Charles
Munger, the former vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. In 2003, Gates Sr.
co-founded the Initiative for Global Development, which is a national network
of business leaders that ostensibly champion “effective solutions to global
poverty.” The dubious level of commitment this group has to truly solving
global poverty can perhaps be best ascertained by the fact that the two co-chairs
of the Initiative’s leadership council are the two former Secretaries of
State, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell. Albright, Powell, and Gates Sr. also
serve as honorary chairs of another arguably misnamed ‘democracy’-promoting
project called the World Justice Project which happens to obtain financial backing
from two key weapons manufacturers, Boeing and General Electric. This project
also receives support from Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, amongst others.
In 1995, Gates Sr. invited the longstanding birth control/population activist
Suzanne Cluett to help him distribute his foundation’s resources. She then
remained with the Gates’ philanthropies as associate director of global
health strategies until her death in 2006. Prior to joining the Gates’ philanthropies,
Cluett had obtained much experience in population control related programming
as she had spent 16 years as administrative vice president for the Program for
Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). The Gates Foundation’s focus here
places it in a direct line with that of the Ford and Rockefeller foundations’,
which have a long history of promoting population control research around the
world in line with U.S. imperial interests.
Describing itself as an “international, nonprofit organization that creates
sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling communities worldwide to
break longstanding cycles of poor health”, PATH had, in 2006, a total income
of just over $130 million, of which 65% was derived from foundations – most
of which it obtained from its major funding partner, the Gates Foundation. In
1995, PATH’s president, Gordon Perkin, was first approached by Gates Sr.
for his advice on family planning issues. This relationship then blossomed over
the years and eventually, in late 1999, Perkin’s stepped down as PATH’s
president and became the head of the Gates Foundation’s new Global Health
Program. This was not the first time that Perkins had directly worked on population
control issues for liberal foundations, as in 1964 he joined the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America as an associate medical director – a group that was
well supported by Ford and Rockefeller monies – and just two years later
he moved to the Ford Foundation to work on population issues in Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Mexico and Brazil, where he stayed until he
created PATH in 1977.
Given that the two key policy advisors recruited by the William H. Gates Foundation
first worked with the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), it
is interesting to note that another PATH board member, Steve Davis, who formerly
practised law with Preston Gates and Ellis, presently serves as a director of
Global Partnerships. Global Partnerships is yet another group that says it is
dedicated to “fight[ing] against global poverty,” in this case through
microfinance schemes, and has recently begun working closely with the Grameen
Foundation, another microfinance group that receives major funding from the Gates
Foundation.
The second of Gate’s initial two foundations was founded in 1997 as the
Gates Library Foundation, in the foundations own words, to “bring computers
and Internet access to public libraries in low-income communities in the United
States and Canada.” In 1999, the foundation then changed its name to the
Gates Learning Foundation. Prior to the merger into the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, the Gates Learning Foundation was headed by Patricia Stonesifer,
who is presently the CEO of the Gates Foundation; Stonesifer previously worked
for Microsoft Corporation (1988-97), and also ran her own management consulting
firm.
Board members of the Gates Learning Foundation also included Gilbert Anderson,
who at the time served as a trustee of the Seattle Public Library; Vartan Gregorian,
who was, and still is, the president of the Carnegie Corporation; and William
H. Gray III, who was the president of the United Negro College Fund from 1991
until 2004, and presently sits on the public advisory committee of the Population
Institute, and has been a director of the Rockefellers’ JPMorgan Chase since
1992. Considering the extensive links that exist between Gray’s United Negro
College Fund and various liberal philanthropists, it is important to briefly
consider the history of the Fund’s work:
Founded in 1944, with critical aid provided by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,10 the
United Negro College Fund describes itself as the “largest and most successful
minority higher education assistance organization” in the U.S., having distributed
over $2.5 billion of grants since its creation. Crucially, the Fund has obtained
massive support from liberal foundations and in 1999 alone they received over
$1 billion from the Gates Foundation. In 2000, UNCF received $1 million from
the world’s leading military contractor, Lockheed Martin Corporation. The
recently retired chairman of Lockheed Martin, Vance D. Coffman has also served
on the board of directors of the Fund.11
Returning to the Gates Learning Foundation, their former director of strategy
and operations, Christopher Hedrick, formerly managed the national philanthropic
programs for Microsoft, and was “responsible for developing the growth of
the company’s partnership with the United Negro College Fund”, and
also happens to be a former treasurer of the Program for Appropriate Technology
in Health. In 1999, Hedrick founded the consulting firm, Intrepid Learning Solutions.
Nelson A. Rockefeller Jr. acts as their executive vice president, while their
board of directors includes amongst their members Steve Davis, who, as outlined
in relation to the population control focus of the William H. Gates Foundation,
is also on the board of PATH and a director of Global Partnerships. Finally,
in late 1998, the director of finance and administration of the Gates Learning
Foundation was Terry Meersman who, amongst his many jobs in philanthropy, formerly
served as the Venture Fund Program Officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts – a
major funder of environmental projects which has been heavily critiqued by progressive
commentators.12
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
In 2000, Bill and Melinda Gates established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
which is based on the stated belief that “every life has equal value,” to “help
reduce inequities in the United States and around the world.” The Gates
Foundation points out that its 15 guiding principles “reflect the Gates
family’s beliefs about the role of philanthropy and the impact they want
this foundation to have.” Thus it is important to briefly examine these
principles to get an idea of the type of work that the foundation believes it
is engaged in.
Many of those guiding principles suggest that the foundation respects the role
of the community in dealing with social problems, thus they observe that: “We
treat our grantees as valued partners, and we treat the ultimate beneficiaries
of our work with respect”; “We treat each other as valued colleagues”; “We
must be humble and mindful in our actions and words”; and crucially they
note that, “Philanthropy plays an important but limited role.” Yet,
as one might expect of the world’s largest foundation, there are limits
on the respect they have for the beneficiaries of their work, as although they
suggest that philanthropy should play a “limited role” this is not
borne out by the fact that in 2007 alone the Gates Foundation distributed over
$2 billion. Indeed, other principles that guide the foundation’s work which
suggest their acknowledgement of a social engineering role for the foundation
include: the foundation will be “driven by the interests and passions of
the Gates family”; “We are funders and shapers”; “Our focus
is clear”; “We advocate – vigorously but responsibly – in
our areas of focus”; and “Meeting our mission... requires great stewardship
of the money we have available.” Thus, given the huge amounts of money involved,
it is hard to reconcile the foundation’s vision of itself as “funders
and shapers” with their final guiding principle, which is: “We leave
room for growth and change.” Clearly the Gates Foundation is a powerful
force for change, and, judging by the previous historical achievements of the
major liberal foundations, it is likely to be a rather antidemocratic and elitist
force for change.
People and Projects
Since the formal consolidation of the Gates philanthropies in late 1999,
the most significant change at the Gates Foundation has been the massive influx
of capital that they received from Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is the CEO
of the investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (a position he has held since
1970) and presently serves alongside Melinda Gates on the board of directors
of the Washington Post Company.13 This Gates/Hathaway/media connection is further
bolstered by the presence of Thomas Murphy and Donald Keough on Berkshire Hathaway’s
board, as until he retired in 1996 Murphy was the CEO of Capital Cities/ABC (which
was bought by Disney that year), while Keough presently serves as a director
of IAC/InterActiveCorp. Bill Gates also joined the Berkshire Hathaway board of
directors in 2004, while former Microsoft employee Charlotte Guyman presently
serves on Hathaway’s board as well. Finally, Charles Munger, who has been
the vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway since 1978, currently sits alongside William
H. Gates Sr. on Costco’s board of directors.
In part, the close working relationship that exists between the Gates family
and Warren Buffett helps explain why in 2006 Buffett announced that he was going
to leave most of his substantial personal earnings from Berkshire Hathaway – that
is, $31 billion – to the Gates Foundation. To put this donation in perspective,
at the time of the announcement the Gates Foundation, which was already the largest
liberal foundation in the world, had an endowment that was worth just under $30
billion. Thus, as one might expect, Buffett now plays an important role in helping
direct the work of the Gates Foundation.
III – Bill Gates Engineers Another Green Revolution
In late 2003, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was strongly criticised by
international charities, farmers’ groups, and academics14 as a result of
a $25 million grant it had given to “GM [genetically modified] research
to develop vitamin and protein-enriched seeds for the world’s poor.”15
This money supported research by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture,
and the International Food Policy Research Institute, two groups which played
an integral role in the first Ford and Rockefeller Foundation-funded (so-called)
Green Revolution. Both of these organisations are also part of the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a group of global public
institutes that is “widely accused of being a creature of its two major
funders – the US and the World Bank.”16 However, although linked to
the World Bank, CGIAR was formed as a result of a “series of private conferences
held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy”,
and its work has been strongly supported by all manner of liberal foundations.
As John Vidal points out, there are also “reasons to believe that the Gates
food agenda is now being shaped by US corporate and government interests.”17
This is because in regard to their support for CGIAR the Gates Foundation chose
to partner with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and USAID; “two of the
most active pro-GM organisations in the world.”18
Given this corporate influence it is poignant to reflect on the large number
of ties that the Gates Foundation’s current leadership has to various biotechnology
ventures: Melinda Gates has served on the board of directors of drugstore.com;
the president of the Gates Foundations global health programs, Tachi Yamada,
formerly acted as the chairman of research and development at the global drug
company, GlaxoSmithKline (2001-06); the president of the Gates Foundations global
development program, Sylvia Burwell, is a director of the Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa; their chief financial officer, Alexander Friedman, was
the founder and president of Accelerated Clinical, a biotechnology services company;
the Gates Foundation’s managing director of public policy, Geoffrey Lamb,
formerly held several senior development positions at the World Bank and is the
chair of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative; while Jack Faris, who formerly
served as the Gates Foundation’s director of community strategies, has since
February 2005 been the president of the corporate lobby group the Washington
Biotechnology and Biomedical Association.
In addition, given the key role played by liberal philanthropy (most notably
the Rockefeller Foundation) in promoting the initial Green Revolution, it is
noteworthy that many important people at the Gates Foundation are directly connected
to the Rockefeller philanthropies: Tachi Yamada is also a former trustee of the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the two chairs for the Gates Foundations advisory
panels for their U.S. Program and their Global Development Program, Ann Fudge
and Rajat Gupta, respectively, both serve as Rockefeller Foundation trustees;
while Henry Cisneros, a former Rockefeller Foundation trustee, sits on the Gates
Foundations U.S. Program’s advisory panel. Those connections to both the
Rockefeller philanthropies and to the biotechnology industry cast an ominous
shadow over the Gates Foundation’s activities in this area.
Former Rockefeller Foundation president, George Harrar, has been credited as
being the “architect of the Foundation’s agricultural programs, beginning
in Mexico during the 1940s, and was in large part responsible for the so-called
Green Revolution”.19 Harrar also played a key role in the founding of the
aforementioned Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Summing
up the problematic ideology of the Green Revolution and Harrar’s position,
Eric Ross wrote in 1996 that:
“The threat of Malthusian crisis [that population tends to increase faster
than food supply] justified the central premise of the Green Revolution, that,
if there was not enough land to go around, peasant agriculture could not yield
sufficient increases in food. In the process, it side-stepped the important question
of whether land was truly scarce or just unequally distributed. It also concealed
another agenda. J. George Harrar... observed in 1975 that ‘agriculture is...
a business and, to be successful, must be managed in a businesslike fashion.’ Thus
he was acknowledging that the Green Revolution was not just about producing more
food, but helping to create a new global food system committed to the costly
industrialization of agricultural production. Throughout much of the world, Malthusian
logic, hand in hand with the new technologies of the Green Revolution, helped
to put land reform on hold.”20
Indeed, the whole idea of the Green Revolution is problematic because although
the “chief public rationale” for it was supposedly humanitarianism,
a good case can be made that the logic undergirding this revolution was Malthusian
not humanitarianism.21 As critical scholars like Eric Ross have pointed out,
the Green Revolution should be considered to be an “integral part of the
constellation of strategies including limited and carefully managed land reform,
counterinsurgency, CIA-backed coups, and international birth control programs
that aimed to ensure the security of U.S. interests.”22 This little-heard
of critique of the Green Revolution is supported by the work of other writers
(e.g. Susan George and Vandana Shiva) who have demonstrated that the so-called
revolutionary changes promoted by the Green Revolution actually increased inequality,
and in some cases even hunger itself. Ross concludes that support for the ‘new’ Green
Revolution only serves to “accelerate the emergence of a globalized food
system” which will ultimately “only enhance a world economy in which
the rural poor already have too little voice or power.”
Bearing this history in mind, it is consistent, but alarming nevertheless, that
the president of the Gates Foundation’s global development program, Sylvia
Burwell, is a director of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa – an
Alliance that was founded in 2006 by the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations. The
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa describes itself as a “dynamic,
African-led partnership working across the African continent to help millions
of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and
hunger.” Yet in a manner eerily reminiscent of critiques of the initial
Green Revolution, in 2006 Food First observed that: “Because this new philanthropic
effort ignores, misinterprets, and misrepresents the harsh lessons of the first
Green Revolution’s multiple failures, it will likely worsen the problem” it
is supposedly trying to address.23
It is critical to acknowledge that, in large part, the modern day environmental
movement grew out of the population control movement in the late 1960s and so
environmental organisations are also well enmeshed in this web of philanthropic
causes and democracy manipulators.24 These links are best represented through
the person of Walter Falcon. From 1979 until 1983 Falcon chaired the board of
trustees of the Agricultural Development Council – a group that was established
in 1953 by the influential population control activist John D. Rockefeller 3rd.
When this group merged with two other Rockefeller-related agricultural Programs
to form what is now known as Winrock International, Falcon continued to serve
on their board of trustees.25 The Falcon-environmental connection, however, comes
through his presence on the board of trustees (from 2001 until 2007) of the Centre
for International Forestry (CIFOR), a CGIAR member organisation whose mission
suggests that they are “committed to conserving forests and improving the
livelihoods of people in the tropics.” In 2006, this group had a budget
of just over $14 million, of which just over 9% came from the World Bank (their
largest single donor), while in the same year the Ford Foundation provided them
with just under $0.4 million in restricted funds.26
Since 2006, CIFOR’s director general has been Frances Seymour, who is a
member of the elite planning group the Council on Foreign Relations, and prior
to heading CIFOR had been responsible for providing leadership for the World
Resources Institute’s engagement with international financial institutions
(like the World Bank).27 Earlier still, Frances had spent five years working
in Indonesia with the Ford Foundation, and had also worked on USAID-funded agroforestry
projects in the Philippines. Another notable trustee of CIFOR is Eugene Terry,
who was formerly the director general of the West Africa Rice Development Association
before going on to work at the World Bank. Terry is also chair of another CGIAR
member organisation called the World Agroforestry Centre that was founded in
1978 and obtains funding from the World Bank/Ford/Rockefeller/USAID/World Resources
Institute funding consortium. Moreover, Terry is now the implementing director
of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), a Nairobi-based group
that was formed in 2002 with Rockefeller and USAID28 funding to lobby for greater
uptake of GM crops in Africa. Although not advertised on their website, the Foundation
receives support from four of the world’s largest agricultural companies:
Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, and DuPont.29
Other than via Eugene Terry, the Centre for International Forestry can be connected
to agribusiness giant Syngenta through CIFOR trustee Andrew Bennett who is the
former executive director (now just board member) of the Syngenta Foundation
for Sustainable Agriculture. Terry joins Bennett on the Syngenta Foundation board
of directors. Another notable director of the Syngenta Foundation is the president
and CEO of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development, Klaus Leisinger.
The Novartis Foundation joins the Gates Foundation and World Bank/Ford/USAID
types in funding the work of a key population control group, the Population Reference
Bureau. This US-based group was founded in 1929, a period in history that fully
embraced the necessity of eugenics, and is now headed by William Butz, who had
previously served as a senior economist at the imperial think tank, the RAND
Corporation.
Last but not least, Syngenta and their Syngenta Foundation, along with USAID,
Dupont, and the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, support a global project called
the Global Crop Diversity Trust which aims to “ensure the conservation and
availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide.” The aims of
this project are somewhat contradictory, because the attempts of the aforementioned
groups to foist a GM monoculture upon the world are already working to endanger
the regular supply of adequate food resources into the future, and are threatening
the livelihoods of the majority world’s farming communities. Thus it is
clear that the main reason why this project aims to safeguard genetic diversity – by
safeguarding seeds in an underground vault buried beneath a mountain on the island
of Svalbard (Norway) – is first and foremost to protect the profits of the
agribusinesses that are forcing GM crops upon the world.
The person who currently chairs the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s board
of directors is none other than the former president of the Ford and Rockefeller
Foundations’ Population Council, Margaret Catley-Carlson30; other directors
include Lewis Coleman, who since 2001 has been a director of one of the world’s
largest military contractors, Northrop Grumman, and is vice-chair of the controversial
GM-linked environmental group Conservation International; Ambassador Jorio Dauster,
who is the board chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel; Adel El-Beltagy, who serves on
the executive council of CGIAR; and Mangala Rai, who is a trustee of the International
Rice Research Institute, a former member of CGIAR’s executive council, and
a former trustee of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center; while
the Global Crop Diversity Trusts’ executive director, Cary Fowler, is also
a former board member of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center is yet another key group
that pushed along the last Green Revolution as it was established in the 1940s
in co-operation with the Mexican government by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.
One of the main proponents of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, was director
of this Center’s International Wheat Improvement Program, and, in reward
for his ‘revolutionary’ work, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1970.31 Borlaug has also long been connected to the population lobby, as from
1971 onwards he served as the Director of the U.S.’s Population Crisis Committee
(now known as Population Action International)32, and he presently serves on
the international advisory committee of the Population Institute.
Conclusion
Social engineering by elite philanthropists of any hue is not a phenomenon that
is compatible with democracy. In fact, the ongoing, and escalating, philanthropic
colonisation of civil society by philanthropists poses a clear and present danger
to the sustainability of democratic forms of governance. The Gates Foundation
only represents the tip of the iceberg of the world of liberal philanthropy,
and thousands of other foundations pursue similar agendas across the globe, albeit
on a smaller scale. For example in 2006, in the U.S. alone, there were over 71,000
grant making foundations which together distributed just under $41 billion. This
massive figure also represents the greatest amount of money ever distributed
by foundations, a figure that has been rising steadily over the years, and had
just ten year earlier only amounted to some $14 billion.
Consequently, given the longstanding influence that all manner of philanthropic
foundations have had on global politics, it is concerning that most political
scientists have downplayed their importance in shaping the global polity, while
others sometimes admit to the power they exert but simply consider it to be a
good thing. By examining the backgrounds of many of the people involved with
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and by demonstrating the Foundation’s
involvement in promoting the new Green Revolution, the world’s most powerful
liberal foundation, while professing to promote solutions to global poverty,
can be seen to pursue an agenda that will aggravate such systemic problems.
These ‘solutions’, however, do exist, and the social engineering of
elites is not always all pervasive. Indeed, one important way in which concerned
citizens may begin to counter the insidious influence of liberal elites over
civil society is to work to dissociate their progressive activism from liberal
foundations. At the same time it is critical that they also work to create sustainable
democratic revenue streams to enable their work to continue. This of course will
be the hardest part for progressive activists who have long relied upon the largess
of liberal philanthropists, but it is a necessary step if they are to contribute
towards an emancipatory project that is separated from, and opposed to, the corrosive
social engineering of liberal elites.
Michael Barker is an independent researcher who currently
resides in Australia. His other work can be found at: http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com
The original version of this article was presented as a refereed paper at the
2008 Australasian Political Science Association conference, and, with much greater
detail on the connections and roles of individuals, corporations and philanthropic
organisations, can be accessed in full on Zmag: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18198
Notes
1. For further details and individuals and organisations
throughout this article see e.g. www.sourcewatch.org
2. Alex Carey, ed. Andrew Lohrey, Taking the risk out of democracy, University
of Illinois Press, 1997, pg. 18
3. Sims estimated that the “corporate outlay on political philanthropy in
the 2000 election cycle in the U.S. was... a minimum of $1-2 billion. This compares
to roughly $200 million on PAC contributions and $400 million on soft money contributions” (pp.167-8).
Gretchen Sims 2003, ‘Rethinking the political power of American business:
the role of corporate social responsibility’, Unpublished PhD Thesis: Stanford
University.
4. See http://www.techleadership.org/sections/view/About%20Us (Accessed April
2009.)
5. Joseph Menn and Edmund Sanders, ‘Lobbyists Tied to Microsoft Wrote Citizens’ Letters’, The
Los Angeles Times, 23/8/01, reprinted with permission. http://www.josephmenn.com/print_microsoft.html(Accessed April 2009.)
6. Greg Miller and Leslie Helm 1998. ‘Microsoft Tries to Orchestrate Public
Support’, Los Angeles Times, 10/4/98, p. A1.
7. M. Moss, ‘Reverse Gotcha: Companies are paying big fees to get news about
beat reporters’, Wall Street Journal, 10/11/95, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ozt53a00(Accessed April 2009.)
8. Microsoft representative, Thomas Hartocollis, serves on the board of directors
of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship – a group that
is funded by various conservative foundations and to teach children about the
benefits of capitalism.
9. In 1999, the William H. Gates Foundation was renamed the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, and the foundation moved from offices located in Bill Gates
Sr.’s basement to a site in Seattle (Washington).
10. Gasman, M., 2004, ‘Rhetoric Vs. Reality: The Fundraising Messages of
the United Negro College Fund in the Immediate Aftermath of the Brown Decision.’ History
of Education Quarterly, 44, p.74.
11. The late Christopher F. Edley Sr., who served as the president of the United
Negro College Fund from 1973 to 1990 had prior to this appointment acted as a
Ford Foundation program officer.
12. http://www.counterpunch.org/pace10092004.html
13. Ronald Olson also serves on the boards of both the Washington Post Company
and Berkshire Hathaway.
14. John Vidal, ‘Innocents abroad?’, The Guardian, 16/10/03,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/oct/16/food.microsoft?commentpage=1(Accessed April 2009.)
15. John Vidal, see above.
16. John Vidal, see above.
17. John Vidal, see above.
18. John Vidal, see above; for a critical overview of the U.S. involvements in
GM developments, see Brian Tokar, Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade,
and the Globalization of Hunger, Burlington VT: Toward Freedom, 2004.
19. http://www.rockfound.org/library/annual_reports/1980-1989/1982.pdf
20. Eric B. Ross, ‘Malthusianism and Agricultural Development: False premises,
false promises’, Biotechnology and Development Monitor No. 26, March
1996, www.biotech-monitor.nl/2607.htm (Accessed April 2009.)
21. Michael Barker, 2008, ‘The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism:
Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection’, Capitalism Nature Socialism,
19, 2, pp15-42.
22. Eric Ross, 1998, The Malthus Factor: Population, Poverty, and Politics
in Capitalist Development, London: Zed Books, p.448.
23. Food First Policy Brief No.12 Posted 10/10/06, http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1527(Accessed April 2009.)
24. Michael Barker, 2008, ‘The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism:
Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection’, Capitalism Nature Socialism,
19, 2, pp15-42.
25. From 1991 until 1998, Falcon directed Stanford University’s Freeman
Spogli Institute for International Studies, and although he only presently serves
on their executive committee, the Institute’s current deputy director, Michael
McFaul, is presently involved with two well known democracy manipulating organizations,
Freedom House (where he is a trustee), and the National Endowment for Democracy’s
International Forum for Democratic Studies (where is a board member).
26. See CIFOR Annual Report 2006: Building on success. CIFOR Annual Report. 60p.
CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia. ISBN: 978-979-14-1216-2, http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/Publications/Corporate/AnnualReports/ (Accessed
April 2009.)
27. The World Resources Institute is a corporate-styled environmental group,
whose founders included Jessica Tuchman Mathews who served as their vice president
from 1982 through to 1993, and is now the president of the misnamed Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and is a member of both the Council on Foreign
Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Jessica also served on the editorial
board of The Washington Post in the early 1980s.
28. USAID states that U.S. foreign aid helps in “furthering America’s
foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving
the lives of the citizens of the developing world.” Mukoma Ngugi, ‘African
Democracies for Sale,’ 7/2/07, http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/2109 (Accessed
April 2009.)
29. See Justin Gillis, ‘To Feed Hungry Africans, Firms Plant Seeds of Science,’ Washington
Post, 11/3/03, http://www.grain.org/bio-ipr/?id=303 (Accessed April 2009.)
30. For details about the Population Council’s elitist work, see Michael
Barker, ‘The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism’.
31. Norman Borlaug is connected to various other groups including the International
Food Policy Research Institute (where he served as a trustee between 1976 and
1982), Winrock International (where he as a trustee between 1982 and 1990), and
Population Communications International (where is he was the director between
1984 and 1994).
32. Norman Borlaug presently serves on the Population Action International’s
council alongside Robert McNamara, an individual who in 1968, while serving as
a Ford Foundation trustee Robert S. McNamara ‘‘emphasized the central
importance of curbing population growth’’ in his inaugural speech as
the World Bank’s new president.
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