Why do hundreds of thousands of young people try to obstruct world summit meetings, despite repression in the form of tear gas and severe beatings? Why would relatively affulent people in the developed world care about the debt crisis in the third world? Naomi Kleins, No Logo, which hit the streets just in time for the Seattle uprising of 1999, is the best answer yet.
The power of corporations grew in the 1990's, eliminating public space, consumer choice and good jobs -- now, a new generation is striking back with techniques from culture jamming, boycotts, and mass protests.
Title: No Logo, Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Picador USR, New York
ISBN: 0-312-27192-1
Year: 1999
Libraries: Alternatives
By the mid-1980's, "multinational corporations" were being eclipsed by "global corporations" that could sell the same product, in the same manner, everywhere in the world -- eliminating the extra cost of specializing products to fit the needs of different consumers. Companies began to realize that maintaining a brand image was more important than making things, a task they could outsource to factories in "free trade areas" in developing countries such as Thailand and the Honduras.
As brands become more and more powerful, they usurp a growing proportion of the public conciousness; they create a cultural crisis similar to an environmental crisis like the ozone hole. As our cities are remade in the image of Times Square, music, arts, sports and all forms of entertainment become little more than venues for advertising. Youth cultures are commercialized as soon as they begin, and even the schools are becoming increasingly infiltrated by the likes of Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Nike.
The academic wing of the left in the 1980's was preoccupied with identity politics, which linked social problems such as racism and sexism to the content of the mass media and school curricula. This led to demands that minorities be represented with positive images. Global corporations were glad to oblige, as global marketing required a new look, a bit less offensively American, to pitch products in the world market.
As the global corporations grew, they pushed out small businesses, eliminating the consumer's right to choose. Blockbuster Video, Wal-Mart and Starbucks grew by a concious strategy of saturating markets and suffocating the competition -- in the meantime littering the landscape with a wasteful style of construction making it all but impossible for people to do their shopping on foot.
Once a company is publicly traded, it too can be bought and sold. If a company can't vanquish its competitors, it can buy them out, concentrating power into fewer and fewer hands. The constellation of cable channels, for instance, gives the illusion of vast choice. In reality they're all owned by a few giants like Viacom, Disney, and AOL Time-Warner, which also own publishing houses, theme parks, movie theaters and computer networks.
At what cost? Variety falls victim to the spectacle of conglomerates fighting to produce the same thing. But worse, corporations practice censorship of the old-fashioned kind. Wal-Mart filters music and magazines so as to "respect the needs of families", so few publishers risk rocking the boat.
Factories proliferated besides shantytowns in the developing world in the age of globalization; in the rich core, well-paid and secure jobs were disappearing for all but the most fortunate. Service industries create "McJobs", which are "low skill, low pay, high stress, exausting and unstable." Teenagers worked both in the shopping mall and in the factories that produced the products it sold. While Wal-Mart "sales associates" joined the working poor, workers in free trade zones worked sixteen hours a day for subcontract manufacturers.
It was little wonder that a generation of activists got fed up and found ways to fight back.
Some attacked the billboards and magazine advertisements used to present the brand image, co-opting the corporation's style to jam its messages, commandeering the vast resources it spent making its logo meaningful. Culture jamming, or adbusting, is one of many tools used in a political movement against the branded life.
"Reclaim the Streets" and "Critical Mass" represent a movement that hijack busy streets, major intersections and even stretches of highway for spontaneous gatherings. These establish that the pedestrian can establish a space, and exclude the automobile -- fighting for the right of free assembly which is rapidly disappearing. These gatherings, which create a temporary autonomous zone, create and train people who can stage the massive political demonstrations that have put pressure on global capital.
In the mid 1990's, a network of activists began a campaign to link big brands like Nike with human rights abuses in their factories abroad. One group of activists was sued by McDonalds, resulting in a trial that dragged for years, embassing the company. David Green, its senior vice president of marketing testified that Coca-Cola is nutritous because "it is providing water, and I think that is part of a balanced diet." Direct actions, boycotts, and letter writing campaigns have had many effects: blocking the adoption of genetically-modified crops in Europe, forcing companies like Pepsi out of the repressive regime of Burma, and forcing Shell to change its plans for disposing of an old oil platform.
Conservative critics accuse the young activists described in No Logo as a bunch of spoiled brats living in the suburb, and Naomi Klein does little to fight this image. Peppered with references to the toxic culture of the 1990's, older readers might tire of reading about Nirvana and the Gap, Air Jordan and Hello Kitty. Naomi Klein herself admits that brand-based activism often fails at uncovering the sins of less famous corporations that don't spend millions at creating their images. Clearly the movement needs to broaden its base and clearly link the degeneration of our social network of family and friends, felt acutely by older adults, to the policy of culture destruction run by the multinationals. Now that the movement can face down the power elite in the streets, it needs to develop a positive vision of a post-corporate world. The Green Party can play its role by puttings pressure on the power elite at the ballot box, and creating a propaganda arm that reaches a wider audience to expand the movement.
