Aware of the environment, spreading messages in favor of equality, against racism, claiming the LGTBI + group, pioneers in the promotion of cancer research, in favor of the unity of the Spanish State, supporting the independence of Catalonia, against Brexit… companies have long been shown to us with social conscience. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the business world. This is done by the marketing departments and, of course, by companies, in addition to connecting their brand with certain values, in many cases it helps them to “clean up the image” and, in passing, to prevent and deactivate the boycott threats that come from social movements.

In principle, allocating part of its benefits to society appears to be a good performance and, of course, there are economic players who do so with complete conviction and honesty. However, as always, the story is not as nice as it seems. The companies that invest the most in CSR are the large multinationals. Those same people who don't want big changes in the organizational system in lobbies and fear of losing profits. They are the most criticized by social movements. To give two illustrative examples of frequent use, Coca-Cola claims the production of “green beverages”, while in one day it launches 110 billion plastic bottles into the world. Volkswagen, for its part, announced diesel engines as “the cleanest on the market” in the years when they had installed an emissions manipulator.

Bleaching purple, green, pink, blue or rainbow. For all tastes. Hypocrisy and purely rhetorical action sometimes manipulating others. But always with an obvious ideological burden. They manifest their willingness to change everything through advertising, to focus attention on the superficial and that nothing changes. Pay attention to carbon emissions, not to the capitalist system and to the development model. Paying less to women as if it were a set of individual decisions, and not another end of the patriarchy.

The same criticism is made of movements that have recently been noted, such as the Fridays for Future, an initiative that has brought young people from all over Europe to the streets against climate change. After the action of the Swedish adolescent Greta Thunberg and, above all, through social networks, the multinationals and lobbies interested in green capitalism have been placed from the environmental movement.

Both the marketing activity of companies and this type of media and global mobilizations can be seen as a threat or an opportunity. The development of environmental awareness by young people, even through these superficial issues, can be an opportunity for the environmental movement to take hold and place the issue in a true revolutionary and anti-capitalist environmentalism. An example of this is feminism. The fact that those here and there send us their messages around March 8th was able to help the agenda and spread the issue, but then it was there, placing the feminist movement of Euskal Herria on the anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal street and taking into account all the oppressions.

Looking from Euskal Herria, the greatest challenge is to link all these demands to a country project and to underline the importance of sovereignty in developing a progressive project. As Anje Duhalde sang: “The world has for me its principle here and I would like to know everything, I can understand who is defeated, because here everything begins!” The threat would have to start to become an opportunity.