Debates … between revolution and reform … can be interrupted by exploring a “third way.” Socialist theorist André Gorz introduced the idea of “non-reformist reforms” as a way to provide another option, beyond what often seem to be all-or-nothing strategies. He suggested that some reforms could make more immediate gains without compromising the larger goals of social movements for radical change.
Lori Gruen, “The change we need“
1. Recap
This is Part 4 of my series The good it promises. This series draws lessons from a recent collection of academic essays, The good it promises, the harm it does: Critical essays on effective altruism.
Part 1 introduced the series and looked at the foreword of the book by Amia Srinivasan. Part 2 analyzed Simone de Lima’s discussion of colonialism and animal advocacy in Brazil. Part 3 discussed Carol J Adams’ feminist care-ethical critique of effective altruism.
Today, I want to look at a middle-ground perspective offered by another of the book’s editors, Lori Gruen. Gruen is William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. Her books include Ecofeminism: Feminist intersections with other animals and the earth, Ethics of captivity, and Entangled empathy.
Gruen’s essay, “The change we need,” introduces a `third way’ between the revolutionary and reformist positions that have come to characterize the institutional critique of effective altruism and the subsequent response to the institutional critique. I think that this third way is worth taking seriously, and I hope that you will too.
2. Revolution versus reform
There is an ongoing debate within philanthropy and social activism between revolutionaries and reformers. Revolutionaries argue that existing systems are fatally flawed, and that there cannot be meaningful change until a new system is built. Reformists counter that even if existing systems are flawed, it is often more effective to do what we can to incrementally improve conditions within existing systems.
Gruen discusses a number of examples of the tension between revolution and reform:
- Socialism (Early 20th century): Must socialists push for a revolution to overthrow capitalist systems? Or it is possible to push for socialist reforms within existing systems?
- Civil rights movement (Mid 20th century): Should protestors aim to nonviolently overturn unjust practices within the broad confines of current systems (Martin Luther King Jr.) or aim to overturn injustice by any means necessary (Malcolm X)?
- Animal advocacy (Ongoing): Should activists aim to overturn all forms of animal exploitation, or to improve conditions and shut down factory farms?
- US abolitionist movement (19th century): Should the institution of slavery be abolished, or should reformists focus on improving the conditions of slaves?
Gruen’s discussion of these cases suggests two lessons, which I take to be broadly consonant with Gruen’s stated views:
First, most of us are neither pure reformers, nor pure revolutionaries. In some cases (for example, the abolitionist movement), the prospect of anything short of systemic reform seems horrifying and unacceptable. In other cases (for example, socialist revolution or animal advocacy), many readers may be more willing to compromise.
Second, the tension between reformers and revolutionaries is sometimes exaggerated. For example, Gruen cites James Baldwin as having said of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that “by the time each met his death, there was practically no difference between them.” Gruen rightly clarifies that we should not take such optimistic pronouncements to show there is no meaningful tension between reform and revolution. But neither should activists with common goals seek to exaggerate the tension between each camp.
3. Effective altruists as reformers
Gruen suggests that effective altruists often lie further towards the reformist end of the spectrum. For example, Gruen cites MacAskill as writing:
I think that it is unlikely in the foreseeable future that the [EA] community would focus on rectifying injustice in cases where they believed that there were other available actions which, though they would leave the injustice remaining, would do more good overall.
Similar thoughts have been voiced elsewhere – for example, in Part 2 of this series we saw that Simone De Lima sees effective altruists as too strongly allied with the reformist camp of strategic veganism. And the same thought has been a mainstay of the institutional critique of effective altruism.
It is easy for this discussion to turn into a polemic, in which warring combatants debate the precise degree to which effective altruists have embraced reform over revolution as well as the merits of reform. For example, Nathan Robinson writes at Current Affairs:
All of this sounds pretty damned in-effective in terms of how much it is likely to solve large-scale social problems, and both MacAskill and Singer strike me as being at best incredibly naive about politics and social action, and at worst utterly unwilling to entertain possible solutions that would require radical changes to the economic and political status quo.
But as in so many debates, it may turn out that the truth lies somewhere in the middle between revolution and reform. Gruen proposes a third way between pure reformism and pure revolution: non-reformist reform.
4. Non-reformist reform
Gruen draws on a notion of non-reformist reforms introduced by André Gorz:
Socialist theorist André Gorz introduced the idea of “non-reformist reforms” as a way to provide another option, beyond what often seem to be all-or-nothing strategies. He suggested that some reforms could make more immediate gains without compromising the larger goals of social movements for radical change. … Gorz described “non-reformist reforms,” sometimes calling them “structural reforms,” as reforms that are clearly antithetical to the interests of capitalism, but don’t lead to immediate social transformation. These sorts of reforms have the potential to empower grass-roots activism in the pursuit of more meaningful, liberatory ends and certainly don’t promote the systems that are in need of change.
Gruen draws on the work of legal theorist Amna Akbar to characterize three concrete features of non-reformist reforms:
First, non-reformist reforms “advance a radical critique and radical imagination,” and in so doing provide frameworks “that will undermine the prevailing political, economic and social system from reproducing itself.” Second, non-reformist reforms actively shift power from the center to the margins and work to empower those who have been overlooked. And third, non-reformist reforms create the possibility for deepening independent thinking, developing creative demands, and forming new grass-roots political networks.
Here are some examples of the non-reformist reforms which Gruen cites:
(1) The AfroVegan society: Gruen writes:
The work that Brenda Sanders and the AfroVegan Society do in Baltimore, and the work others do in Black neighborhoods in New York, Atlanta, and other cities to introduce healthy, plant-based foods to the community, might … be considered non-reformist reforms. Too many people in low-income neighborhoods in the United States don’t have access to fresh, healthy foods. … The lack of access to healthy food, often framed as living in a “food desert” or as being subject to “food apartheid,” has deep ramifications for communities of color, making people vulnerable to premature death. Fortunately, there are people and organizations fighting against this threat. As the AfroVegan Society website notes, many people “have come to view veganism as both a viable solution to some of the challenges that currently face our communities as well as a vehicle for resisting the systems that are responsible for creating those challenges.”
(2) The Prison Reads program, which in its own words “uses literature to empower people to confront what prison does to the spirit,” providing prisoners with individualized libraries which “becom[e] a symbol and place of fellowship and respect, radiating a sense of dignity.” Such work does not seek to overturn the prison-industrial complex, but neither does it merely aim to improve conditions. Like other non-reformist reforms, such programs shift power (in the form of knowledge) to incarcerated people, create the possibility for dignity and independent thought, and in doing so advance a critique of the conditions of prisoners that are too often unfree, undignified, and devoid of meaningful opportunity.
5. Effective altruism and non-reformist reform
As these examples illustrate, non-reformist reforms sit squarely between the reformist impulse to take tractable interactions to improve outcomes within current systems and the revolutionary impulse to fundamentally uproot all oppressive systems before reform can begin.
However, non-reformist reforms must not be watered down. Here is Gruen:
Meaningful, non-reformist reforms must be designed to ultimately transcend the liberal, racialized capitalist paradigm and empower people to work in solidarity to bring about transformation of social/political systems. Non-reformist reforms are transitional steps that can build awareness and commitment toward radical change. As Gorz noted, “it is necessary to present not only an overall alternative but also those ‘intermediate objectives’ which lead to it and foreshadow it in the present…” They “must be conceived as means, not as ends, as dynamic phases in a process of struggle, not as resting stages.” They serve “to educate and unite” people and present a larger vision for change.
By contrast, Gruen argues, although effective altruists rightly stress that they are willing and able to support some types of systemic change, they often have a much less dramatic vision of systemic change in mind:
Consider just a few of the ways that MacAskill endorses EAs’ efforts supporting “political change.” He notes that one of the “structural” reasons that people are poor is that they aren’t able to leave their countries to become more productive, so working to support greater freedom of movement across borders is thought to be an efficient way to address poverty. But this misses the actual structures that produce and maintain wealth inequality as well as intergenerational wealth gaps that can’t be solved through immigration reform. Another allegedly “political” change involves recommending careers in “policy-oriented civil service and think tanks.” And, of course, he notes work supporting corporate campaigns to go cage-free as well as promoting scientific research and NGOs developing lab-grown meat and plant-based meat substitutes. This entirely misses the point of transformation and represents such a vanishingly “narrow” conception of systemic change that it’s hard to think that it is the critics who have the “misconception.”
Gruen closes by suggesting that effective altruists might consider investing more heavily in non-reformist reforms, in the process aiming to produce a broader type of systemic change while staying comfortably away from the zeal of the revolutionary.
6. Reconceptualizing the institutional critique
Speaking for myself, this is the second time in this volume that I have learned to see the institutional critique of effective altruism in a different light.
Part 1 of this series discussed the foreword to the book by Amia Srinivasan. There, we saw that the institutional critique may not be so much a matter of what effective altruists’ principles allow them to say, but rather a question of how those principles are systematically interpreted. Srinivasan writes:
Political critique does not, and should not, merely address what social and political movements say about themselves. Political critique does, and should, also think about what social and political movements do: what effects they systematically bring about in the world, which structures they tend to reinforce, and which people they empower and which they silence. When movements fail to “do” what they “say,” it is not always just a matter of failed “implementation,” easily correctable through a doubling-down on the movement’s core principles. Sometimes, contradictions between what a movement “says” and “does” reveal something deep about how the movement practically works – and why it is successful. In turn, such revelations can tell us something about the limits of what such a movement can plausibly achieve.
Today, we discussed a second way to reconceptualise the institutional critique, by seeking a middle ground between revolution and reform. Sometimes, advocates of the institutional critique fall into the radical trap of demanding that effective altruists throw their weight behind controversial revolutionary causes, such as anti-capitalist revolution. This has led many effective altruists to discount the institutional critique, on the grounds that they are not personally in favor of anti-capitalist revolution.
Gruen offers non-reformist reforms as a potentially viable middle ground, neither abandoning the institutional critique’s demand for meaningful challenges to existing systems and narratives, nor forcing the reformist to abandon her efforts in favor of revolution.
Could Gruen be right? I am not sure. But I tend to think that Gruen, like Srinivasan, has taught us something important about how debates about the institutional critique should be conducted, and has probably helped us to come to a place where we may be more likely to find meaningful common ground together with actionable solutions.
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