Notes on Strategy for Minimizing the Harms of Nanotechnology:
Some Problems & Opportunities
March 22, 2003
Peter Montague
peter@rachel.org
phone 732-828-9995
(Most of what I have to say pertains only to the U.S. because that is the only culture I know well.)
I. Some Problems We Face
1) The relentless, unquestioned drive for "innovation at any cost," which is itself propelled by the
need for "growth at any cost," means nanotech is destined to expand without limit.
1a) Capitalism requires constant growth. If I loan you $1000 expecting a return of 5%, that 5%
must come from some physical place. (Even a "service economy" is grounded in physical
resources.) The need for growth to provide a return on investment gives rise to the "growth at any
cost" and "innovation at any cost" culture.
1b) Growth serves an additional important purpose in the U.S. We depend on growth (rather than
social policy arrived at through political negotiation) to distribute economic benefits. Instead of
determining (and then distributing) "fair" shares of the economic pie, we depend on the growth of
the entire pie to increase the benefits to those holding only small slices. The assumption is that, if
your small piece of the pie if growing in absolute terms, even if it is remaining proportionately
small, you will remain loyal to the elites who control the system. Thus the "growth at any cost"
culture is an essential component of distributive justice in the U.S. Instead of sharing, we promote
growth.
1c) To support and legitimize the "growth at any cost" culture, we have the "religion of progress"
that has gripped the Eurocentric portions of the world for more than 200 years. If the world is a
place of steady progress from worse to better, then any innovation is assumed to represent
"progress" toward something better. Opposing progress is heresy.
Thus myths and stories of innovation, growth and progress create the "legitimizing ethos" of U.S.
culture and increasingly of all other cultures that we touch.
1d) The forces of globalization (which I define as the right of capital to move across all borders
without restriction) have outflanked the traditional forces that have opposed unfettered capitalism
since its inception. Communism, social democracy, economic nationalism, trade unionism, and
democratic government have all been rolled back by a tide of neoliberalism during the last 30
years.
1e) The industrialized countries are running short of the raw materials that fuel growth, so they
have created the "free trade" regime to eliminate restrictions on capital movement, to make it easier
to penetrate foreign markets and extract needed goods -- and to sell surplus product. One
consequence is a competitive "race to the bottom" for social, economic, and environmental
standards, resulting in growing poverty, inequality, volatility, degradation of democracy, and
environmental damage. The "race to the bottom" is taking its greatest toll on women, racial and
ethnic minorities, and indigenous people.
2) The widespread belief that "there is no alternative" leads to resignation (or even despair) and
paralysis.
(Therefore one of our most pressing needs is for a plausible blueprint for an alternative economy
that does not require constant growth; see, for example, David Schweickart, After Capitalism
(Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; ISBN 0-7425-1300-9.)
(We also therefore need a fairly simple 10-point or 15-point platform that outlines our aims
succinctly and clearly in a way that is not preachy, overbearing, excessively didactic, frightening or
sleep-inducing. Carolyn Raffensperger has suggested that we need our own document something
like Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" -- see
http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html .)
3) In the U.S., many people don't vote their own interests because they aspire to being rich and so
they vote to protect and enforce the privileges and powers of the rich. See Appendix A, "The
Triumph of Hope over Self-Interest."
4) In the past 30 years, the U.S. has seen a conservative religious revitalization, and Christian
fundamentalists now control one of the two major political parties. Furthermore, perhaps as many
as 70 million (25%) Americans believe that whatever happens on earth does not matter very much
because soon -- within their or their children's lifetimes -- they will be "raptured" to heaven (and
everyone else will be sent to hell) as part of Christ's second coming. (See, for example, Grace
Halsell, Prophecy and Politics (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986); ISBN 0-88208-2108). People who hold these beliefs may still care about what happens to their children and their
families, but environmental destruction, erosion of democracy, war in the Middle East and other
"big issues" may not seem compellingly important. (Indeed, war in the Middle East may even
seem like a step in the desired direction.)
5) The wealthy designed the corporation as their preferred instrument for consolidating their wealth
and power, and they have given it the rights and protections of individuals under law. As a result,
1% of Americans now own about 60% of all business assets and wield power and control that is
difficult for most people to even imagine. (See Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority;
America's Best Kept Secret (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000; ISBN 0-8014-3637-0).
6) Having consolidated their wealth and power, the corporate elite are now in their third decade of
subverting all of the institutions of democracy in the U.S. -- schools, labor unions, the media, lawmaking and policy-making bodies, and elections (of judges, legislators, governors and presidents).
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This tendency is now spreading world-wide as the U.S. promotes its version of "democracy," a
thinly-veiled cover for corporate control.
7) We currently don't have enforceable international codes of conduct for corporations, limiting
their ability to dictate conditions to communities and countries. (Such higher-level regulation is
essential for taming the forces of globalization. However, it does not necessarily imply that a
centralized supranational power is the only way to accomplish the goal. It could be done by
increasing the power of states and civil society organizations vis a vis corporations everywhere,
strengthening the non-market functions that protect people and the planet.)
8) In her book, Mobilizing Resentment, Jean Hardisty (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999; ISBN 0-80704316-8) describes five factors that help explain the resurgence of the right in the U.S.:
8a) A well-funded and well-organized network of right-wing organizations working in
collaboration (with, I note, a fairly simple agenda -- get government off our backs and to that end
cut taxes; privatize everything possible; deny the existence of a "public good"; establish a
hereditary ruling class and a hereditary underclass; curb free speech and outlaw objectionable
lifestyles; promote mindless patriotism and greatly increase the power and funding of the military;
manufacture scares and provoke threats, as needed, to deflect attention from what's really going
on).
8b) A conservative religious revitalization;
8c) Economic changes that have caused widespread hardship and insecurity;
8d) Specific racial resentments in the context of a fundamentally racist culture;
8e) Social stress as the result of rapid social change.
9) The way social change is funded in the U.S.: One of the most important things that has
strengthened the right and weakened the left politically is the different pattern of progressive vs.
right-wing funding. The right-wing funders have invested in the building blocks or skeletal
structure of their movement, such as publications, research centers, think tanks, and academic
fellowships and chairs designated for rightist scholars, campus organizations, and youth groups.
Liberal and Progressive foundations have primarily funded social service programs and advocacy
programs that promise to ensure better living conditions and promote equality and tolerance,
similar to humanitarian aid. While such aid is needed after the social service cuts of the ReaganBush years, the right's funders have gotten greater political mileage for each dollar invested
because the organizations and individuals whom they funded focused on a strategic plan for seizing
power. Progressive funders have not traditionally funded strategy sessions.
10) Eurocentric cultures favor scientific ways of thinking over all other ways, which leads to a
reductionist approach to problems, rather than to integrated systems thinking. As a result, few of us
are accustomed to "big picture" analysis.
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11) Although it may seem irrelevant to some, all the nations of North America were built on
policies of genocide and subjugation of enslaved (and/or indentured) peoples, producing societies
in which an undercurrent of domination and violence is always present and tolerated, and in which
destruction of nature, cultures, traditions, ways of life and whole peoples is accepted as normal and
desirable or at least necessary. Domination of women by men, non-whites by whites, children by
adults, non-Christians by Christians, and nature by humans are all part of the same cultural fabric, I
believe. If domination and subjugation are acceptable (even necessary), then so is violence.
12) Many activists in the U.S. are not familiar with the lessons to be learned from previous social
change movements -- anti-slavery, women's rights, the public health movement, labor, civil rights,
and so on.
13) Please add your own items to this list:
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II. Some Opportunities We Can Consider
(Many ideas here were taken from Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith,
Globalization From Below (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2000; ISBN 0-89608-622-4) -but don't blame these authors for what I've written here. I swiped their work and may have distorted
it.)
1) People of good will across the globe are getting together to resist corporate "globalization from
above." They are using a Lilliput strategy to tie down Gulliver: building solidarity among people at
the grass-roots level. A worldwide movement for "globalization from below" is visible in its early
stages of construction. This is much more than a "just say no to globalization" movement -- it is
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concerned with reversing the negative effects of globalization on poverty, the environment, human
rights, and democracy.
One of the movement's challenges is to develop and highlight positive objectives, to move from
resistance to transformation.
1a) One of the movement's unifying goals is to bring about sufficient democratic control over
states, markets, and corporations to permit people and the planet to survive and begin to shape a
viable future.
1b) Globalization from below will succeed if it can unify diverse groups that are hurt by
globalization into a cooperating force.
1c) The movement has already had significant victories -- stopping the Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI) and forcing the adoption of a treaty on genetically engineered products.
2) Social Movements Can Flourish Everywhere
2a) Social movements can be understood as the collective withdrawal of consent from established
institutions. Therein lies their power.
2b) "Social movements may lack the obvious paraphernalia of power: armies, wealth, palaces,
temples, and bureaucracies. But by linking from the nooks and crannies, developing a common
vision and program, and withdrawing their consent from existing institutions, they can impose
norms on states, classes, armies, and other power actors." --Globalization from Below, pg. 25.
3) The burgeoning movement for "globalization from below" shares certain goals already; it
(a) generally agrees that the Bretton Woods institutions must be opposed;
(b) supports the UN;
(c) supports programs that help national governments counteract the power of global economic
forces;
(d) supports programs that give local people more control over their own lives and resources, and
supports the organization of workers and oppressed people in civil society even when they are
opposed by their national governments;
(e) supports international solidarity and organizing. --Globalization from Below, pg. 38 -- but see
also the areas of disagreement listed on pg. 39
4) The "globalization from above" regime is highly vulnerable because it violates the interests of
the great majority of the world's people. It lacks political legitimacy. Therefore, people have an
obligation to "alter or abolish" it.
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5) We have several good historical examples that demonstrate clearly how technological
developments unfold: petrochemical, nuclear, biotech. These technologies have caused great harm,
have widened the gaps between rich and poor, have destabilized the world, and have consolidated
power in the hands of a few -- and in so doing they have given us a roadmap that describes the
likely trajectory of nanotech. We can learn really useful lessons from the histories of these
technologies.
6) Under the U.N. Charter on the Economic Rights and Duties of States, governments have an
obligation to protect the human rights of their citizens. International agreements on human rights
give us a basis for seeing (and claiming) how things should be. Human rights have been spelled out
in the following areas: labor, social, environmental, economic, political, and cultural rights.
7) There is widespread recognition that the transnational corporation is the key institution that
consolidates and facilitates the power of wealth. It has weakened (even displaced and usurped the
authority of) governments, and has empowered unaccountable international institutions to achieve
the purposes of global capital. Few people in the movement need to be convinced that this is so.
8) "These concepts legitimate a withdrawal of consent of the kind that... provides the underlying
power of social movements." -- Globalization from Below, pg. 45.
9) A common vision is at the early stages of development, and a common agenda is emerging. See
Globalization from Below pgs. 48, 55, 111 and Chapter 6. (And see "what the vision is not", pg.
62.) Globalization from below is a movement to implement widely shared global norms (that have
been spelled out in numerous U.N. human rights documents).
10) A major challenge is to develop an alternative economic strategy based on the idea that work
should meet social needs in environmentally sustainable ways. This does not prevent us from
seeking full employment policies, but they cannot be full employment policies based on growth of
material throughput. Globalization from Below suggests that they be full employment policies
based on an alternative development path: the environmental reconstruction of society, to produce
goods and provide services in ways consistent with the biological limits of the planet. Again, see
David Schweickart, After Capitalism (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; ISBN 07425-1300-9.)
11) A central objective of the movement must be elimination of third-world poverty and giving the
third world equal power in shaping the global future.
12) Some of the needs for building of a movement of global solidarity are described in
Globalization from Below, pgs. 56-58. In a nutshell: (a) a joint north-south attack on structural
adjustment programs; (b) make sustainable development in the third world a top priority; (c)
include third world countries in decisions about the global economy; (d) develop trade rules
intended to help poor countries; (e) develop minimal human rights, labor, environmental and social
standards that apply to all countries so that no one is forced to compete by abusing their people and
their environment -- and the primary targets of these rules should be corporations; (f) allow
governments to set rules for corporate behavior; (g) resources should be deliberately transferred
from the rich to the poor, starting with a Tobin tax on financial transactions with proceeds devoted
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to investment in poor countries; (h) policies that promote access to knowledge and technology for
poor countries, loosening the restrictions of "intellectual property rights."
13) The globalization from below movement assumes that the problems of globalization can only
be solved through a profound shift of wealth and power and it assumes that the needed changes will
not originate with the purveyors of globalization from above, but rather must be won by the united
action of those who are challenging the power of elites.
14) Many, many people now know that protection of the environment is a prerequisite to human
rights and even human existence.
15) New technologies (computers, video cassettes, mobile phones, the internet) make possible new
forms of communication, organization, and action. NGO "swarms" can -- in the words of The
Economist -- sting a victim to death. (A coalition communicating by text messaging on mobile
phones brought about regime change in the Philippines. The Solidarity movement in Poland relied
on video cassettes to get its message out.)
Advocacy networks can now assert power in many arenas. Conventional NGOs, local social
movements, foundations, the media, churches, trade unions, consumer organizations, intellectuals,
parts of regional and international inter-governmental organizations, and parts of the executive or
legislative branches of governments can now cooperate in ways that were impossible even 10 years
ago.
16) Some Needs of the movement (from Globalization From Below, pg. 90):
a) Creating venues in which to debate and sort out long range objectives in ways that are insulated
from immediate tactical decisions so that short-term tactical needs don't determine the ways in
which long-term objectives are defined. Such discussions must include representation of all those
who will ultimately be needed to achieve the movement's objectives.
b) Establishing vehicles for self-critical reflection on the movement by its participants.
c) Strengthen "linking organizations" whose function is to build unity among different parts of the
movement.
d) Develop means to grant and withhold legitimacy from people active as representatives of the
movement...
e) Open avenues for new groups and new people to link with and participate in the movement...
f) Establish means for grass-roots groups around the world to make direct links less mediated by
traditional NGOs by, for example, ensuring internet access and training to impoverished groups.
g) Develop ways to link internationally the big protest movements represented by national general
and mass strikes.
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h) Establish an annual day and week for coordinated events all over the world to show the global
movement for globalization from below, in all its diversity, to itself and to the world.
17) The principle strategy of the movement for globalization from below has been to identify the
violation of generally held norms, demand that power actors conform to those norms, and threaten
the bases of consent on which they depend if they fail to do so. This can be summed up as "fix it or
nix it" -- "either you fix what's wrong, or we'll nix it."
However, a "fix it or nix it" strategy raises difficult questions about what constitutes "fixing it."
18) "Good demands unify supporters; divide opponents; help neutralize counter-attacks; embody
parts of widely accepted norms; and represent a good so obvious that the public would naturally
tend to scorn anyone who refused to concede it." Globalization from Below, pg. 111.
19) "Ultimately, the ability of people to organize themselves to control political institutions is the
only guarantee of democratic accountability, whether at local, national, or global levels."
(Globalization from Below, pg. 137, note 19.)
20) There are 50 million "cultural creatives" in the U.S. who are looking for different ways of being
in the world, but getting them together is like herding cats and many of them seem to think that
lasting change can occur without organization and without real participation by those being most
harmed by the "growth at any cost" culture.
21) There is a slowly-growing awareness that some technologies cannot be "regulated." For
example, governments behaved for 50 years as if nuclear weapons could be controlled and
regulated and kept out of the hands of "bad people." No one any longer believes that. And there is
growing awareness that biotech probably cannot be "regulated" to limit its destructive secondary
consequences. Even a graduate student could probably do substantial harm using genetic
engineering techniques, if he or she is so inclined. Maybe the events of Sept. 11, 2001, will help
wake us all up to these possibilities. Global awareness of nuclear proliferation has certainly been
aroused since 9/11.
22) Some Christian fundamentalists may share some of our goals -- some don't want to see God's
creation desecrated or destroyed, some actively oppose slavery and other forms of oppression, and
so on.
23) Please add your own items to this list:
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Appendix A
The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest
by DAVID BROOKS
(New York Times Jan. 12, 2003.)
Why don't people vote their own self-interest? Every few years the Republicans propose a tax cut,
and every few years the Democrats pull out their income distribution charts to show that much of
the benefits of the Republican plan go to the richest one percent of Americans or thereabouts. And
yet every few years a Republican plan wends its way through the legislative process and, with some
trims and amendments, passes.
The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal of the estate tax, which is
explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al Gore, who ran a populist campaign, couldn't even win the
votes of white males who didn't go to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the past decades
and who were the explicit targets of his campaign. Why don't more Americans want to distribute
more wealth down to people like themselves?
Well, as the academics would say, it's overdetermined. There are several reasons.
People vote their aspirations.
The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time Magazine survey that asked
people if they are in the top one percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in
the richest one percent and a further 20% expect to be someday. So right away you have 39% of
Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top one percent, he
was taking a direct shot at them.
It's not hard to see why they think this way. Americans live in a culture of abundance. They have
always had a sense that great opportunities lie just over the horizon, in the next valley, with the next
job or the next big thing. None of us is really poor; we're just pre-rich.
Americans read magazines for people more affluent than they are (W, Cigar Aficionado, The New
Yorker, Robb Report, Town and Country) because they think that someday they could be that guy
with the tastefully appointed horse farm. Democratic politicians proposing to take from the rich are
just bashing the dreams of our imminent selves.
Income resentment is not a strong emotion in much of America.
If you earn $125,000 a year and live in Manhattan, certainly, you are surrounded by things you
cannot afford. You have to walk by those buildings on Central Park West with the 2,500-square-
10
foot apartments that are empty three-quarters of the year because their evil owners are mostly living
at their other houses in L.A.
But if you are a middle-class person in most of America, you are not brought into incessant contact
with things you can't afford. There aren't Lexus dealerships on every corner. There are no snooty
restaurants with water sommeliers to help you sort though the bottled eau selections. You can
afford most of the things at Wal-Mart or Kohl's and the occasional meal at the Macaroni Grill.
Moreover, it would be socially unacceptable for you to pull up to church in a Jaguar or to hire a
caterer for your dinner party anyway. So you are not plagued by a nagging feeling of doing
without.
Many Americans admire the rich.
They don't see society as a conflict zone between the rich and poor. It's taboo to say in a democratic
culture, but do you think a nation that watches Katie Couric in the morning, Tom Hanks in the
evening and Michael Jordan on weekends harbors deep animosity toward the affluent?
On the contrary. I'm writing this from Nashville, where one of the richest families, the Frists, is
hugely admired for its entrepreneurial skill and community service. People don't want to tax the
Frists --- they want to elect them to the Senate. And they did.
Nor are Americans suffering from false consciousness. You go to a town where the factories have
closed and people who once earned $14 an hour now work for $8 an hour. They've taken their hits.
But odds are you will find their faith in hard work and self-reliance undiminished, and their
suspicion of Washington unchanged.
Americans resent social inequality more than income inequality.
As the sociologist Jennifer Lopez has observed: "Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got, I'm just,
I'm just Jenny from the block." As long as rich people "stay real," in Ms. Lopez's formulation, they
are admired. Meanwhile, middle-class journalists and academics who seem to look down on
megachurches, suburbia and hunters are resented. If Americans see the tax debate as being waged
between the economic elite, led by President Bush, and the cultural elite, led by Barbra Streisand,
they are going to side with Mr. Bush, who could come to any suburban barbershop and fit right in.
Most Americans do not have Marxian categories in their heads.
This is the most important reason Americans resist wealth redistribution, the reason that subsumes
all others. Americans do not see society as a layer cake, with the rich on top, the middle class
beneath them and the working class and underclass at the bottom. They see society as a high school
cafeteria, with their community at one table and other communities at other tables. They are pretty
sure that their community is the nicest, and filled with the best people, and they have a vague pity
for all those poor souls who live in New York City or California and have a lot of money but no
true neighbors and no free time.
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All of this adds up to a terrain incredibly inhospitable to class-based politics. Every few years a
group of millionaire Democratic presidential aspirants pretends to be the people's warriors against
the overclass. They look inauthentic, combative rather than unifying. Worst of all, their basic
message is not optimistic.
They haven't learned what Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt and even Bill Clinton knew: that you can
run against rich people, but only those who have betrayed the ideal of fair competition. You have to
be more hopeful and growth-oriented than your opponent, and you cannot imply that we are a
nation tragically and permanently divided by income. In the gospel of America, there are no
permanent conflicts.
David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, is author of Bobos in Paradise: The New
Upper Class and How They Got There.
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