Aan het einde van mijn studententijd stond No Logo - vreemd genoeg - heel lang hoog in de top van managementboeken. Het boek kwam al snel bekend te staan als het nieuwe standaardwerk voor antiglobalisten. Hoewel ik me niet tot deze groep aangetrokken voel, was een zekere interesse gewekt. Inmiddels 15 jaar na het verschijnen heb ik het boek dan gelezen. Wat een spijt heb ik dat ik dat niet veel eerder heb gedaan. No Logo geeft een zeer objectieve weergave van de uitwassen van de macht van de wereldmerken, maar is ook kritisch ten aanzien van de slecht georganiseerde tegenbeweging. Er spreekt ook hoop uit het verhaal. Niet een idealistisch dromen, maar gestaafd met voorbeelden waarin machtige bedrijven hun koers hebben moeten wijzigen als gevolg van protesten tegen het sociale of milieubeleid van de betreffende multinationals. Door de neutrale weergave krijg je een uitstekend en overtuigend beeld van de moeizame verhoudingen tussen natiestaten, multinationals en actiegroepen. Hoe dan ook is No Logo een must-read voor iedereen die geïnteresseerd is in internationale (politieke) economie. Ook vandaag is het boek nog zeer actueel.

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 book's divided into four sections—No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo. The first three are cool, they talk about, respectively, how corporations in the 90s took over all our space with their logos, how we have no choice but to buy their products since they buy all the other smaller companies and it's crazy hard to find indie stores anymore, and how there aren't any good jobs since corporations like Nike outsource everything to Burma. These first three sections are really good. Everyone knows corporations are evil and this book tells you about it. The final section, No Logo, however, which takes up about 40% of the book's entire length, is about how some people, "culture jammers" or "adbusters" or whatever, are starting to fight back, and spray-paint ads to say funny stuff like "Think Stupid" instead of "Think Different," or, you know, protesting or whatever. WHO CARES. Why are corporations still doing evil stuff, then? No one wants to read 200 pages about a bunch of people running around pasting up posters and organizing rallies. At least I don't. But I did. So I say, read the first three sections of this book, because they're really good, esp. the first two, and skip the last one. Radiohead likes this book so it can't be that bad but then again they love Douglas Adams too.

I first read No Logo a couple of years ago when I was a teenager getting into all sorts of political activism. I remember crying profusely many times, screaming at anyone who would listen about the atrocities that I had read about and how horrible and unfair everything is. Re-reading No Logo several years later at the age of 24 isn't much different (though I like to think I've toughened up on the crying, and replaced it with anger and an even stronger dislike for corporations and authority). Although much of its content is now 'technically out-of-date', has the world really changed that much, if at all? The problems and social issues that this book detailed are still here in 2011: sweatshops, economic processing zones, poverty in the first and third worlds, the big guy screwing over lots and lots and lots of little guys, consumerism gone mad, corrupt governments who happily turn blind eyes in exchange for wads of cash etc, which is why I think No Logo still holds up and is relevant today. It still serves as a good introduction to anyone interested in how the world really works. Hopefully it will still inspire readers to read further about the issues discussed and perhaps get involved in ways to make some changes. "Another world is possible".

This work is a very well documented effort with lots of references to the author's own investigations, published papers, actual interviews, etc. it is an amusing read if you read it with the right mindset and no preconceptions. Having said that I found the book has two major faults: one being it is highly biased and partial towards the author's own ideologic notions; everything in this book seems to have a black/white, good/evil sense, with no shades of gray, and it never tries to even take a look at a different viewpoint (in this case, the one of "evil" globalized corporations); by the way, all this whinning gets really repetitive throughout all of the book, same concepts and ideas, same targeted corporations, same whines over and over.

The second major fault I see with this work is its naivety, it doesn't take onto account that exacerbated consummerism is really propelled by a very extended human trait: selfishness and greed at all levels of our society, we are a selfish species on the core, corporations as well as governments are only a reflection of what we are as a society, corporations respond to market conditions only and not to an obscure world-domination agenda.... to put it in other words we always have the tyrants that best suit our way of living, and it is not probable we will have a sudden extended enlightment era of the human race soon.

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.

We were editors in Canada's student press at the same time -- 1992-93. Even then, Klein was in a league of her own. Well, Doug Saunders was up there, too.

If I'm going to be honest with myself, I have not yet read this book for very selfish reasons: while Naomi's star continued to climb, I chose alcohol, drugs and self-absorption. Klein's fame arose from a commitment to serious journalism and leftist politics. I was jealous.

At an ORCUP Conference in 1993 (Ontario Region Canadian University Press), I arranged for a group of student journalists to head to U of Toronto to join in. The Varsity Blue, UofT's paper, edited by Naomi, were hosting.

One night, while hanging out in some pub on Spadina, with members of the still white-hot Kids in the Hall quaffing pints at the bar, I realized that I didn't have a place to stay.

My writing had gotten some attention through the Canadian University Press wire -- a precursor to the internet (my age!), and Naomi seemed to be a fan. She jumped up, handed me a key and said, "That's the key to my apartment. You can stay there."

I passed out on her living room floor, waking up just briefly enough to see her staring over me, shaking her head. I was too drunk to fuck, too drunk to engage in all-night political discussion with Naomi Klein.

No regrets, right? But what the fuck was I thinking?

Naomi, please keep doing what you're doing. And, for what it's worth: I'm enjoying your book (so far lol).

3.5 dnf
bardzo dobre, ale w 2024 już trąci myszką

Perfectly written for a non-fiction book, this entire work will annoy you once you realise how much and how easily human beings are manipulated. Sadder than everything, you are faced with how much of your own behaviour and ability to choose is bent by the will of big corporations, and how this massively hurts other human beings. Read up on Export Processing Zones - get good and angry - and then watch as no one listens because our Western lives are so god damn convenient. A good read for anyone interested in the machinations of modern life, and what hides behind the curtain.

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.

I first read this book in 2003 and when I took it out of storage I decided to give it another look. I'm glad I did because it's better than I remember, and encouraged me to pick up Klein's more recent work.

Klein's target at first glance seems to be the big name companies' aggressive and ubiquitous branding of our public spaces and institutions. She explains the shift from owning the means of production and manufacturing goods to outsourcing and pumping the massive savings into brand building, stuffing the psyches of target markets with recognition, affection and even passion for faceless corporations. The worst excesses of branding shade into censorship, as whole university campuses and courses accept sponsorship deals loaded with gagging clauses forbidding brand criticism and demands that students be exposed to their advertising material.

Squashing free speech is disturbing enough, but this would be a shallow critique if Klein didn't go much, much further. The second section of the book points out what brands like Wal-Mart and Starbucks spend their huge profits on: blanketing towns and cities with their outlets, suffocating the competition as they go. As other options wither, nothing is left but the corporate vision of 'choice', presenting culture as something mindlessly consumed, never answered or created by its 'market'.

Still, this is all about Westerners' lifestyles and comfort; pretty trivial compared to the painstaking work Noam Chomsky, for example, has done in documenting multinationals' manipulation of US foreign policy under cover of propaganda at home: installing puppet dictators, engineering brutal crushing of popular uprisings and attempts to nationalise or retain local control of resources and systematically denying the rights of indigenous populations to land, liberty, free association etc etc etc etc etc. But Klein is not done. The third section tells how the brands can afford to pay celebrities millions to endorse them, saturate public spaces and clog high streets and malls: by exploiting their workers. CEOs collect their six & seven figure salaries and are lauded for 'streamlining' the business - cutting jobs. This happens at both ends of the chain: in the underpaid and insecure temporary 'McJobs' in outlets, and far more shockingly, in sweatshops and resource-extraction & processing sites in production. The stories of sub-subsistence wages, physical and psychological abuse, sexual harrassment, child labour, exposure to toxic chemicals, brutal suppression of attempts to unionise and other horrors that Klein documents became common knowledge in the brand backlash of the nineties

The final section of the book is all about that pushback against corporations, as consumers came together to tell the brands they would not stand for starvation wages and child exploitation. This is a very multi-layered resistance, and Klein is highly critical of multinationals 'greenwashing' and code-of-conduct writing, which she points out is all about the comfort of consumers to buy without guilt. The people fighting for basic rights in Export Processing Zones are 'too busy organising factory workers to bother with Western lifestyle politics'. She also faults the 'unthreatening' (academic) critique of brand-culture that treats people as stupid and 'unable to police their own desires'. Ultimately, change has to come from the bottom: workers making branded goods must be empowered to organise and negotiate wages they can live on and conditions that don't destroy their health.

Klein writes in an engaging journalistic style that's persuasive and easy to read. This is a long book and it could be shorter to make its point, but it would be less entertaining, less accessible, and less quotable.

I was pleased to hear that the political book club had selected for its next book  Naomi Klein’s  No Logo, which has been sitting on my TBR shelf waiting to go join its friend  This Changes Everything on my read shelf for a few years.

While I generally like Klein, I had a few apprehensions going into this. The book is more than 20 years old; would it be so dated as to be useless? Would it uncritically endorse trends in activism that have since become so played out they’re ineffective (or worse, counterproductive), like parodying stuff or adjusting your personal consumption habits?

In retrospect I probably should have given Klein more credit; she’s not stupid, even if a lot of other loud online voices on the “left” are. I had my critiques of this book (mostly to do with finger-wagging about property destruction at protests), and certainly some of it is a bit of a time capsule (how long has it been since MTV was culturally relevant?), but overall it is, unfortunately, still very educational reading. We are still living in in the world of brands and megabrands and their endless colonization of public space–even the internet, which was basically the frontier of anti-corporate activism when this book was written because anybody could set up a website or listserv, has devolved into like four social media sites and seven streaming services that are all chock-full of ads and can nuke whatever content they want whenever they want to.

The book is split up into four sections: “No Space,” about the aggressive intrusion of branding into every nook and cranny of our lives and the megabrands’ attempts to become art, culture, spirituality, education, and the public square; “No Choice,” about corporate consolidation and the effects of monopoly power; “No Jobs,” about offshoring, “McJobs,” union-busting, and the other labor issues in both the global North and South associated with the megabrand model; and “No Logo,” about anti-corporate activism. In each section Klein does a pretty good job of taking us through the various recursions, co-optations, ironies, and contradictions of both brand behavior and the various attempts to fight back against it.

Klein discusses some things about brand co-optation of social justice that I think should be required reading for anyone trying to do cultural activism, especially around issues of media and representation. I also appreciated very much that in the section of “culture jamming,” she discussed the critiques and pitfalls of it as well as its successes (although, since the book came out 20 years ago, it doesn’t include one of my main critiques of it, which is that these days everyone thinks they’re terribly clever and good at it and most of them aren’t). She also has some not particularly original but nonetheless very important things to say about dressing up modest demands in radical language; the efficacy of lawfare (high) versus making people feel guilty about buying clothes and food (low); the uses and limitations of boycotts and selective purchasing agreements; and the commodification of rebellion (“Extreme sports are not political movements and rock, despite its historic claims to the contrary, is not revolution”).

There’s some solid reporting on how evil Disney is that is, distressingly, even more important now than it was when it was written, as Disney has made great strides in the past 20 years in acquiring every single fucking piece of video media ever produced and wiping the insufficiently “family-friendly” ones off the face of the earth (RIP Nimona) while dicking queer audiences around with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, easily-editable-out-for-China “first gay characters” every six months or so to keep audiences so hyperfocused on representation issues that we’ll never get around to noticing that special effects, practical effects, costuming, set design, lighting, and sound mixing have all gone completely down the toilet in the movie industry over the past several years, making most movies fucking unwatchable regardless of how diverse the cast is. I’m not going to judge anyone for being entertained by entertaining things (I have been entertained by many Disney products over the years), but all the same: Fuck Disney, fuck Marvel, fuck Netflix, fuck Warner Brothers, fuck every streaming site, fuck every TV station, fuck every major movie studio that buys up smaller movie studios just to fuck them over, fuck big retailers like Wal-Mart that can pressure studios out of making stuff by refusing to carry it, fuck Amazon, and while we’re at it, fuck everything that’s going on in the book industry too.

*ahem* Sorry, where were we?

Anyway, how to take on extremely large brands is always going to be difficult, because extremely large brands are… well, extremely large, and generally very deep-pocketed. But I think despite its age this book has some good strategic thinking on display that can help inform readers not only about what they’re dealing with, but what factors contribute to resistance being effective or ineffective. And for that, it’s still well worth reading, even if it does talk about MTV and Blockbuster a lot.

Currently, if you want to do something material to push back on at least one megabrand, Starbucks stores all over the U.S. are unionizing–you could go find the one nearest you and sign up for a picket shift or donate to the strike fund. And don’t cross any picket lines!

Originally posted at Brands, big business, and bad behavior.