Highly potent polemic re the hyper-branded, hyper-corporate, outsourced, downsized, surreal state of the West, and how it got there. Covers the changing corporate attitudes of the late 20th century that led to the conclusion that corporations should place "branding" before manufacturing, the reasons and specifics of downsizing and outsourcing trends of same. Really succinct, focused, clear writing, about some really Byzantine shit. Also gets into the various styles of rebellion against the "branded" culture. It probably could have used a chapter detailing the mechanics of how the US Congress (and similar bodies abroad) whittled away the safeguards (i.e. regulations) built into the economy after the Depression, though that info is available elsewhere (William Grieder, Thomas Frank, for example). Otherwise pretty near perfect.

Reviewer Marc states "Despite what Naomi Klein is trying to imply, the vast majority of the factory workers is happy to have these jobs and nobody is forced to take them", which is precisely the flawed reasoning Klein takes on and demolishes in her beautiful yet tragic portrayal of the post-industrial United States in her well-written and easy to read No Logo. Obviously, neo-con, pro-free trade leaning people will find this book trite simply because of the beliefs Klein holds (it would be like a liberal reading Ann Coulter). Klein proves that the jobs that people are "happy to have" in the developing world are actually forced upon them, and shows a plethora of other atrocities corporations commit daily. What a good book!

A classic. I should have read this ages ago.

(If you want the most bang for your buck, I suggest the “No Jobs” section in the middle.)

I HATE ADS!!!!!!

Today, more and more campaigners are treating multinationals, and the policies that give them free rein, as the root cause of political injustices around the globe.

The impact this book had was slightly overshadowed by the events of September 11th 2001, when everyone's focus and concerns seemed to suddenly turn elsewhere. But that's not to say it has lost any of its power.

Reading it now, having read Klein's latest work (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism), it's just as concerning, if not more so. It's within these pages that you can see her thoughts on Milton Friedman's economic policies building up, and it's fascinating to see how far she's come since she wrote No Logo.

The downside is that, nearly ten years on, it's so difficult to know where we stand with our big corporations today. Nike are on the receiving end of a heck of a lot of criticism in the book, but are the conditions in their sweatshops still causing misery to people today? www.nikeresponsibility.com would suggest otherwise. Have other, more onerous examples come to light that aren't mentioned by Klein?

It's difficult to say. Ultimately, we have to remind ourselves that No Logo was never intended as a manifesto, but as a documentation of both corporate activity and the growing worldwide opposition to it. One shouldn't read it in order to find out which particular brand of clothing is ethically acceptable - indeed, to do so would be to miss the point - but to learn and understand how and why brands became more important than products, and the effects this has had on the world.

This was published in 2000, coming out during the time when the internet bubble was riding high but before the fall of the Two Towers (the ones in NY, not Tolkein's).

Its subject matter was Shell, McD's, and Nike. Social awareness was getting a second wind after languishing in general and now it was all about sweatshops. Multinational corporations became our favorite bogeymen (again), and this was when we could throw our weight behind small-time activists and FEEL like we could accomplish some great-seeming things... like getting all the exploiters out of Burma so as to take away the support of that regime.

Remember those times?

Add awareness to the whole Banding idea, the feeling that Corporations are real people with souls (ha), and see this as a way to stop bad practices by attacking their PR image.

Then realize that the problem goes sooooooo much deeper. Much deeper than this book is prepared to take it, except to realize that these highly visible multinational corporations were great as a rallying point but even if anyone could break them down and hold them accountable, it was EVERY OTHER corporation doing the exact same thing that makes the situation seem rather hopeless.

So, and rightly so, this book does not delve into the economics and politics that made the rape of underdeveloped countries possible: the policies and the greed and the perfectly legal practices that can ravage whole countries, their land, and devastate indigenous peoples.

It can't. It's a problem that requires widespread awareness everywhere... and the knowledge of all the interrelated contributing factors... to combat.

We all need to be aware and awake to not just the fact of injustice, but the causes. The only real way we can combat this problem is by waking the real slumbering beast of humanity from its ignorant dream. :)

This is an extremely important book even if some of Klein's optimism for taking back our community spaces and for trimming back corporate rule of government was curtailed by the September 11 attacks.

The anti-corporate movement has had a lot of hard times in the 10 or so years since No Logo was written, but the past year has shown there is signs for hope. Despite this such "common sense"like "multinationals are job creators" continues to be parroted as fact even though it has been throughly untrue for 15 or so years (and throughly debunked in this book).

It's time for an update, a "No Logo 2". The breathtaking situation described in this book becomes mind blowing when you realize that corporate control of our lives has gotten a degree of magnitude worse and the world is at a crisis point. Hopefully we will go the correct direction and it would be great if Naomi Klein gave us some new pointers.

I'm trying to read through all of Naomi Klein's oeuvre, because I think she is one of the great diatribists of our time. "Shock Doctrine" is one of the most eye-opening pieces of non-fiction I've ever had the privilege of reading, and "This Changes Everything," about climate change, has changed my behavior and attitude toward my surroundings probably more than any other book. "No Logo" is not as impressive an entry into her pantheon, but it prefigures the talent that she would display in her later works.

Perhaps it's because it was a bit dated--references to the influence of MTV and Nike abound; brand hegemons like Apple--whose share price has since increased by a factor of about 300x--do not even merit mention. Sweatshops were the cause celebre of the 1990s, and it's hard to say whether we hear less about them because corporations recognize that it's no longer profitable to employ exploitative sweatshop labor (as Klein points out: revenue and not morality is always the gravamen of this calculus), or because we grew fatigued by the effort and tolerate them now, or at least their slightly less exploitative post-1990s iterations.

One highlight of the book came toward its end, when Klein talks about the agency of youth consumers and of disenfranchised yet culturally relevant black and brown youth who live in the nation's cities. It's pretty incredible that brands as powerful as Nike and Disney caved to the pressure of these individuals, who understood themselves to have been chumps for paying 30x the cost of a shoe, and having engaged in the exploitation of other marginalized people throughout the world in so doing, all to pad the larders of megarich companies who had co-opted their sense of style and fashion to begin with. It's kind of great that people won't tolerate hostile corporate forces invading their space.

To wit, I've been venturing beyond my West Brooklyn/Lower Manhattan ambit of late, and have found myself in the Bronx, in Central Queens, and in white ethnic enclaves like Greenpoint. Milo Yiannopoulos, the smugly execrable male Ann Coulter/low-rent Oscar Wilde with a bronzer problem who is currently afflicting our society with his "provocative" yet wholly warmed-over ideas in the Trump era, is putting out his own book, entitled "Dangerous." I'm all for free speech, and come from the Millsian/Skokie line of ACLU types who think that one of the only things America is truly great at, and has benefited from, is its staunch defense of freedom of speech in the public arena. Even if they were repellent, which they surely are, I would defend Mr. Yiannopoulos' right to advocate his views. But freedom of speech is important for allowing new ideas to surface, not for perseverating the same "Muslims are bad!" "White men are responsible for all cultural innovations!" and "Women make up rape allegations for attention!" tommyrot that has been around since the Crusades, if not earlier, and has been widely discredited for centuries; we need this type of public voice like we need lectures about why the Earth is flat. Mr. Yiannopoulos is a gadfly, and he has never propounded an original idea other than that he is somehow noteworthy, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, I noticed that ads for his book, "Dangerous," were cynically posted all over the subway stations in less gentrified areas, ostensibly because people in the other areas would not tolerate their living spaces being desecrated by such an inane, bigoted idiot and his quest to enrich himself by sowing dissension. And happily, I noticed that of all the ads on the subway, even in the areas not teeming with effete latte liberals like myself, these ads were almost always the only ones torn down, desecrated, denounced, destroyed. As Klein notes, there may be no legal theory to support these actions, but one of the most powerful ways in which people can revolt against the invasion of their spaces and communities by hostile, capitalist attempts to make money off of them and their neighbors is through hostile, pointed destruction of the property that these forces use to accomplish their aims. I'm sure that Mr. Yiannopoulos would have some tired quip about the breeding of these people or their motivations, and how it shows that the left (read: the not extreme right) is intolerant of free speech, but this really just reflects an overbroad view of the protections to which private property and money are entitled, and a cramped view of the ways in which speech, protest, and dissent can, should, and will increasingly be expressed.

Having read it about a year after it was first released, I felt as though my eyes had been suddenly opened to a rather horrible reality about how globalized (a.k.a. transnational) capitalism was concentrating wealth in the hands of a powerful few and exploiting a poor majority for their labour. To read it now would surely reveal dated views of the economic and cultural world in which we find ourselves. I would also have to admit that by about page 378 I was finding the tone a bit shrill. In spite of these areas of concern, I think that Klein might have been one of the earliest authors to tackle some of these issues. Even if some critics feel as though Klein and others like her aren't successfully proposing alternatives to a sort of free market where only the biggest corporate dogs eat and everyone else waits for scraps, the book does accomplish one important task: convincing the reader to rethink the consequences of their buying habits. As a consumer I very often have a choice of what I buy and perhaps more importantly, what I don't buy. I may not always be able to find an option to a shirt made in a Bangladeshi sweatshop firetrap, but at least I am aware enough to seek options.

God, this was such a fantastic book. I'm sure you've heard of it - it's about sweatshop labour, globalisation, branding, the way in which companies produce and how that's changed over the years.

I picked this up because it was on the reading list in the back of Scarlett Thomas's PopCo, and I can see why - the sort of realisations that Alice in PopCo has about branding are all in here, as are the seeds of the movements against branding.

This is a depressing book, of course. I'm certain that so many of the products I own are produced in sweatshops, and that I'm influenced by branding in all sorts of ways. I can see why this encourages so many peope to become activists - because it's affecting your life in such an everyday way. Even if I don't go out and start altering advertising, I think I'll still think about it in a different way in the future, and try and source products that aren't produced by global brands utilising sweatshop labour.

Rise of the Corporatocracy
3 May 2012

tAs I mentioned under The Shock Doctrine, this book is about the internal problems with the American Empire as opposed to the external concerns to the rest of the world. In a sense it is the idea that our culture is being destroyed by a culture of consumerism and that idea of profits before people is the main motivator of the modern corporatocracy. We do need to put this book in context though, being written at the end of the 90s, just after the anti-globalisation protests in Seattle, an event referred to by many as the Battle of Seattle. I guess the events really brought to the forefront how the American Government was willing to go to war with its own people to protect the interests of the corporatocracy. However, remember that between 1989 and 2001 there was no real external threat to the United States, and as such there was no way of distracting the population to an external threat, so another means of distracting them was required. The concept of the brand is not new, however it is during this period that we begin to see a rise against the corporatocracy which resulted in a rejection of the militaristic foreign policy of the early 21st Century.

tI am going to be honest though, there is nothing different now than there was during the rest of US history, though I will point to the writings of Howard Zinn to direct you to the discrimination and oppression that has been a mainstay of American, and in fact world, history. Things have changed though, and one of the major things was the rise of the middle class. The appearance of the middle class did bring about massive changes in modern society, and one had resulted in the French Revolution. However, industrialisation also brought about the rise of the working class. With the appearance of the working class, the middle class was allowed to develop whereas the working class were then oppressed. However, with the rise of communism, and the fear of a world wide revolution, the working class was appealed to, and universal healthcare (at least in the British Empire) as well as minimum wages and benefits, were introduced. The problem with this was that hiring labour became much more expensive.

tNow I seem to have diverged a bit, though in many cases I tend to like to try to put a few things in context. Now, I do very much agree with Klein's assessment here, however I do feel that there are a few misleading ideas, such as the idea of cheap labour in poorer countries. Now, don't get me wrong, I am opposed to the mistreatment of any human being, and am opposed to unsafe and discriminatory work practices. This was something that was thrown out of the western world over 100 years ago, however it has simply moved to the developing world. Low wages are not necessarily the problem though, since if you do travel to these places you will discover that the low prices of goods there more than makes up for the low wages. For instance, it costs around $100 a night to stay in a hotel in Melbourne, while it costs $30 a night in Hong Kong, and in Bangkok I found a hotel for $14 (though my friend's comment was that it was probably a pretty shitty hotel). However, low wages are still a problem, but what makes things worse is cost cutting as a means to increase profits. If, for instance, the manufacturer cuts costs so that the worker is working long hours, has no breaks, is not allowed to go to the toilet, and the workplace is so unsafe that accidents regularly happen, then that is not good. However, the price of the shoes, or the shirt, in Australia does not change, despite the factory in Australia closing down and the one in Asia opening up. This is not a means to make the goods cheaper, but a means to increase the profits of the corporation, and in turn the shareholders. No only are the workers being exploited, but so are the consumers in Australia.

tOne thing she talks about is the concept of space. Basically space is being taken over by the corporatocracy. Once one would go shopping on the main street and spend some time in the town park. That is no longer the case: main street has closed down and much of the activity has moved to the shopping centre. There is a big difference between the town centre and the shopping centre and that is that the town centre is a public space while the shopping centre is not. What that means is that the owner of the shopping centre has complete control over what goes on there, thus creating an ordered and sheltered place where people can go and spend money and not be disturbed. However I have noted that at times The Body Shop have plastered their shop with anti-corporate logos, even in the middle of a Westfield Shopping Centre.

tThe further idea of no space is that all of our space is being taken up with advertising, and that the main thought forms of today is the brand logo. However branding once again in not new. Christianity has been using the brand logo for centuries, and in many was it has brought about the development of the brand as a means of advertising. The brand has also been used in the past to mark possession, such as slaves or cattle. However, you could say that the modern brand also marks possession. We see the swoosh on a shirt or my shoes and we know that they are Nikes. Nothing more needs to be said, but then I raise the question of whether those of us who wear the brand are in fact possessions of the company. I would say not, however to me it is a means of cheap advertising, though the cheapest form of advertising is always word of mouth. Personally, I must admit, I like Coopers Pale Ale, and as such I will wear a T-shirt with the brand on it (though I should also point out that the T-shirt was given to me as a gift). I guess, if the brand was a brand that I didn't like, then I wouldn't be wearing it (unless of course I was paid to do so, then I wouldn't have a problem, unless of course it was something that I was violently opposed to).

tSome have suggested that the modern corporatocracy is launching a war against the middle class. To be honest I am going to dispute that namely because the corporatocracy needs the middle class, and even a cash flushed working class, to survive. Things have changed dramatically since this book was published, as the corporatocracy attempted to increase profits by increasing availability of credit. However, the more people got into debt, the less of an ability they have to pay it back, and when they cannot pay it back the debt must be written off. Come 2008, the entire economy reaches the brink of collapse, and the banks have not yet recovered. The economy survived, barely, and some still say it is on life support. However, many of the masters of the economy have fallen from grace, but this was not through the actions of demonstrators and protesters, but through their own greed. In the end it is much like a Shakespearian tragedy.

tAs mentioned, the corporatocracy need the people to survive, to create and grow their profits, but they have effectively reached critical mass. All of the jobs that filled the pockets of American workers have gone overseas, and as such these workers have been left without anything. Further, their savings accounts have also been drained and their credit has been maxed out, therefore they no longer have any money left to partake in the consumer society. Sure, the staples such as Walmart and McDonalds can survive because everybody needs food, but the others can't. Instead, with no money left to suck out of the working class, they need to look elsewhere for support, and unfortunately that does not exist in the developing world. The workers there are still underpaid and cannot afford the luxuries of the west. Therefore, in the end, the corporatocracy is its own worst enemy, and its endless pursuit of power and profits is going to be its own undoing.

tThough I still love the free market capitalist who hated short sellers. I know this has nothing to do with this book, but I have to mention it. It is typical of the hippocracy of the extreme capitalist. They love the free market right up to the point that the market spins around and smacks them in the face, then they will jump in with regulations in an attempt to protect their profits. All I can say is if you want a free market, then you have to accept all of the free market, both good and bad. Personally, I see nothing wrong with short sellers, and in fact I actually quite like them because they piss off the capitalist to no end.

This will be my first book on goodreads.com, officially. The most "Adult" book I have read, alongside Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, in my twenties. I have the biggest crush on Naomi Klein. For anyone interested in the negative effects of corporations on third-world companies I would also recommend reading The Corporation (or just watch the documentary, which includes interviews with both Naomi Klein and Howard Zinn. I recommend watching the documentary since it includes a bonus dvd apart from the documentary of prominent figures talking specifically about certain issues. You also get to SEE Naomi Klein, ha ha). It brings to the reader's attention the phenomenon of Branding, like Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks!!! for example, the word itself being etched into the psyche of the collective unconscious, as a form of corporate advertising.