Ben & Jerry’s, the hugely successful Vermont-based ice cream maker, is a model of global capitalist success. The company grew into a corporate giant via the time-tested technique of providing a superior product to brand loyal consumers who believe in the integrity of that product’s individual components.

That formula paid off handsomely as demonstrated by last year’s sale of the Ben& Jerry’s company for $326 million plus a few incentives that made that company a peer in the community of corporate philanthropy with Yvon Chouinard’s Patagonia. To sweeten the deal, corporate suitor, the Dutch-based conglomerate, Unilever, agreed to toss in an additional $5 million grant to the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, another $5 million into an venture capital fund to seed “ethical” start up endeavors. Unilever also promised to pump a minimum of $1.1 million in “grants to social change” groups.

Where Patagonia sets aside an “Earth Tax” of one percent of sales or ten percent of after tax profits to fund its philanthropy, Ben & Jerry’s reserves up to 7.5 percent of pre-tax profits for its foundation and employee corporate giving.

The similarities continue.

With Ben & Jerry’s now a part of the $45 billion conglomerate, Unilever (complete with its new CEO, Yves Couette, a 24-year Unilever veteran whose corporate ladder ascent included stops in Paris, Mexico, Jakarta, New York and London), it can be truly called part of the world of global corporate capitalism. Patagonia, in terms of resource procurement and sales, qualifies as global trader on its own. That is an important point particularly in view of some of the recipients of both company’s corporate philanthropy.

Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s are key supporters of the extreme NGOs waging a holy war against capitalism, global traders, and multi-national corporations. Those groups include the Ruckus Society and Global Exchange, credited with the leadership roles in the riots that shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle, Washington in 1999. Among Ben & Jerry’s “partnerships” with social change groups is its relationship with Greenpeace. The ice cream makers and Greenpeace are particularly outspoken critics of biotechnology. Greenpeace’s repertoire of social criticism spans resource use issues from commercial fishing to agricultural biotechnology to global trade.

Patagonia has given $15 million to 900 groups over the past 16 years. Ben & Jerry’s donated $622,050 for 64 grants in 2000 and $283,950 for 45 grants in 1999. The Ruckus Society was the beneficiary of $100,000 in Ben & Jerry’s social largesse.

Exactly how corporate entities such as Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia think they will survive while funding groups dedicated to their corporate extinction remains one of today’s great modern enigmas.