Left and right in the mirror of the NGOs

In this article, Paulo Arantes questions the “citizenship rights” lexicon used by companies and government authorities linked to the social field—a simulacrum system, since it enables the shuffling of roles and camouflages the real interests of the social segments involved, in a game of "interchangeable things". Examples of that language used by the NGOs include: "civil society", "social spaces", "commitment" and "engagement" among the "actors", leading to "citizen participation". From the corporate field, we have "business experience", "complicity", "engagement with your surroundings", "partners" and "market interlocutors", "citizen company". This lexicon is part of the compensatory policies recommended by the sponsors of the ongoing economic and social restructuring led by the World Bank. This framework of changes includes a new conception of the role of the state, with the reduction of a specific portion of its functions—mainly that of social policy enforcer—engendered under the auspices of Keynesianism. The implementation of these policies is now delegated to "civil society partners", non-profit entities, and relies on transfers of public funds. (...) They advocate a managerially lean Voluntary Sector, a facilitating/partner state that should "strategically" withdraw as soon as non-governmental organizations "demonstrate" the superiority of their comparative advantages—a victory that required little effort, since there was no one else with whom to compete, except for the scrap prepared for demonstrative purposes. As for the companies, Arantes now identifies the existence of "a schizophrenic crisis, since they act—but above all speak—in a way that implies they are fundamentally non-profit social organizations", without really losing their intrinsic commercial tendency. Companies capitalize on the "voluntary" work that they induce their employees to do with "communities", transforming it into a competitive advantage by adding the "citizen company" reputation to the products and/or services they put on the market. The phenomenon can be summarized by the distorted usage of the words it denominates, or as Vera da Silva Telles said, an "astonishing semantic slippage", which contextualizes it and exposes its intention to turn the world "upside down", clouding the mind and causing confusion. This lexicon therefore fulfills the functions of ideology, seeking to conceal the unequal distribution of wealth and power within capitalist society.

(From Maria Rosa Lombardi’s review)

Keywords: NGO, State reform, citizen company, civil society, voluntary sector, social organizations, World Bank, partnerships, citizenship rights, marketing, target audience, managerial logic, empowerment, privatization, language, semantic slippage.