Book Share: Supercapitalism by Robert Reich – Part 2.

Here are some more excerpts from Supercapitalism by Robert Reich (previous excerpts here). This sums up my tension with our current two options better than anything else. It is such a rich excerpt. And if you have even a mild interest in economics, you can probably resonate with this weird tension that Reich describes. This book is so good and you need to go out and buy it (or join my library craze).

In recent years, the cheerleaders of American capitalism – denizens of Wall Street, lobbyists on Washington’s K Street, the inhabitants of top executive suites and New York penthouses, most Republicans, many economists, editorial writers for the Wall Street Journal, free-marketers around the world – have had difficulty containing their enthusiasm about the economy. America’s gross national product has virtually tripled since the 1970s! The Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen from 1,000 to over 13,000 today! Behold the wondrous innovations and inventions, and the plethora of new products and services! The cheerleaders disdain what they consider to be constraints on further capitalist exuberance – taxes and regulations, labor unions, “Old Europe’s” inefficiencies, anything that retards consumer well-being and investor gain.

But other trends have worried labor leaders, community activists, most Democrats, some economists, many sociologists, editorial writers for the New York Times, trade protectionists, and left-wing populists. Look at all the workers who are falling behind! The widening inequalities of income and wealth! The instability of jobs! The loss of communities! The destruction of the environment! The trampling of human rights abroad! Conservatives will sometimes join this chorus, especially with regard to the so-called coarsening of American culture and the entertainment industry’s seeming obsession with lurid and titillating sex and violence. For these critics, the villains are often greedy CEOs, immoral corporations, and a cabal of wealthy global elites.

The two stories – Oh the wonder of it! Oh the shame of it! – both describe aspects of twenty-first-century supercapitalism. But considered separately, each is seriously misleading. Each leaves out the other, which is actually its flip side. Each disdains or blames imaginary forces in opposition when the qualms are actually inside almost every one of us.

The awkward truth is that most of us are of two minds: As consumers and investors we want the great deals. As citizens we don’t like many of the social consequences that flow from them. The system of democratic capitalism in the Not Quite Golden Age (1940s-1970s) struck a very different balance. Then as consumers and investors we didn’t do nearly as well; as citizens we fared better.

What’s the right balance? Are our gains as consumers and investors worth the price we’re now paying for them? We have no real way to tell. The old institutions of democratic capitalism, and the negotiations that took place within them, are gone. But no new institutions have emerged to replace them. We have no means of balancing. Our desires as consumers and investors usually win out because our values as citizens have virtually no effective means of expression – other than in heated rhetoric directed against the wrong targets. This is the real crisis of democracy in the age of supercapitalism.

These issues of economic security, social equity, community, our shared environment, and common decency were central to democratic capitalism as we knew it in the Not Quite Golden Age. They were – and still are – concerns to us in our capacity as citizens. But as power has shifted to us as consumers and investors, these issues have been eclipsed. We’ve entered into a Faustian bargain. Today’s economy can give us great deals largely because it punishes us in other ways. We can blame big corporations, but we’ve mostly made this bargain with ourselves.

After all, where do we suppose the great deals come from? In part they come from lower payrolls – from workers who have to settle for lower wages and benefits, or have to get new jobs that often pay less. They also come from big-box retailers that kill off Main Street because they understand prices charged by independent retailers there. They come from companies that shed their loyalties to particular communities and morph into global supply chains paying pennies to twelve-year olds in Indonesia. They come from CEOs who are paid exorbitantly; from companies all over the world who wreak havoc on the environment; and, in some instances, from companies that pump out violence or porn or nutritionless foods and beverages.

You and I are complicit. As consumers and investors, we make the whole world run. Markets have become extraordinarily responsive to our wishes – more so all the time. Yet most of us are of two minds, and it is the citizen in us that has become relatively powerless. Supercapitalism is triumphant. Democratic capitalism is not.

Book Share: Supercapitalism by Robert Reich.

Instead of just bulk reviewing books like I did in the previous year, I hope to start sharing some weekly excerpts from the books I’m reading in hopes that it might encourage others to pick them up and give them a read. Currently I’m reading Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich. As a frame of reference, Reich’s supercapitalism is what I’ve been referring to as hyper-capitalism. So here are a few excerpts from the first couple of chapters:

“The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.” – Milton Friedman as quoted in Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

“The last several decades have involved a shift of power away from us in our capacities as citizens and toward us as consumers and investors.”

“In this transformation, we in our capacities as consumers and investors have done significantly better. In our capacities as citizens seeking the common good, however we have lost ground. As a result, consumers and investors had access to more choices and better deals. But the institutions that had negotiated to spread the wealth and protect what the citizes valued in common began to disappear. Giant firms that dominated entire industries retreated, and labor unions shrank. Regulatory agencies faded. CEOs could no longer be corporate statesman. And as the intensifying competition among companies spilled over into politics, elected officials became less concerned about the Main Streets and communities in their districts and more concerned with attracting money for their campagins. Lobbyists swarmed Washington and other capital cities seeking laws and rules that would give them a competitive advantage relative to their rivals, wielding greater and greater influence over decision making. Thus did supercapitalism replace democratic capitalism.”

“Stories about heroic or villainous CEOs and financiers, brilliant or corrupt politicians, or diabolically powerful merchants of ideas, however gratifying they may be, should be surrendered to reality. Although a few of these figures have been especially insightful or particularly unscrupulous, in terms of the big picture their deeds are almost completely beside the point. The changes at issue here are structural, not personal. Similar assumptions about immoral and economically powerful corporations conspiring against the public also need to be abandoned because they are too simplistic. Companies are neither moral or immoral. Any such explanation is a convenient diversion, assigns credit or blame incorrectly, and thereby imperils meaningful reform of capitalism and democracy.”

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Here’s another story from the margins. That you won’t hear about in the marketing campaigns that flash across our screens and sell our magazines.

From Samima.

My name is Samima Akther. I am twenty-one years old. I have been working in garment factories for three years. Since February I have been working in Shah Makdhum as a sewing operator.

I produce shirts including Disney’s “Pooh” label. My operation is joining the side seams of the shirt. In my factory, each line has thirty-three machines. Each line produces 120 shirts per hour, a total of 1,320 shirts a day if we work eleven hours.

Until recently, I had to work from 8 am until 10 pm each day. We get only two days off a month. I walk to work and back because I cannot afford to take a bus or bicycle rickshaw, which would cost 450 taka a month. In dollars that would be $7.84 or 27 cents a day. The factory is three kilometers away, and it takes thirty minutes to walk. I normally get home at 10:30 pm.

I get a regular wage of 1,650 taka a month, not counting overtime. In dollars this comes to $28.75 (a month), or 14 cents an hour.

Because we have to work very long hours, seven days a week, we have no family life, no personal life, no social life.

If the last sentence doesn’t remind you of slavery, then you’re blind. Samima is nothing more than a cog in a machine that produces “fluff” for us. We buy our kids toys. We buy ourselves toys. We buy ourselves clothes to make ourselves look good. Meanwhile, people . . . real people work 28 days a month, 12 hours a day, for $28. Meanwhile Disney’s shareholders and executives reap insane profits.

Perhaps both the consumer and the producer are just cogs in the machine.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Globalization, Disney, Colonialism, Sweat Shop Labor[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Here’s a short 1 minute video of Jenrain’s story that I made last week. Forgive the cheesiness of my voice-over reading.

And here’s another story of a worker who makes things she can’t afford and can’t enjoy so that we can have excess. Sadly, this is what would be considered an “above average” work life in an overseas factory.

I don’t share these stories as a pompous detached white boy. But rather to show you how full of contradictions I am. For example check out the first four photos from our Sunday house cleaning session. We have a table full of stuff. Made 2 trips to Goodwill. Threw away 2 garbage bags. And have 7 rubbermaid tubs full to the brim. And that’s just what we cleaned out of our cabinets and closets. That’s just the stuff we don’t use on a regular basis, i.e. 6 months or so. And we only live in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house. Less than 1500 square feet. Talk about embarrassing gross excess.

Anyway . . .

From Samima.

I cannot support myself with the wage I am getting. I have rice and lentils for breakfast, rice and mashed potato for lunch, and for supper rice and vegetables. I eat chicken once a month when I get paid, and maybe twice a month I buy a small piece of fish.

If we want to use the bathroom, we have to get permission from the supervisor, and he monitors the time. If someone takes too long for any reason, the supervisor shouts at her and humiliates her, calling her names. If someone makes a mistake, the supervisor docks four or five hours of overtime wage, or lists her as absent, taking the whole day’s wage.

In my factory there is no day care, no medical facilities. The women don’t receive maternity benefits. The overtime is mandatory, but we are always cheated on our overtime pay. The supervisor makes us sign two separate payroll sheets. One tells the truth – that we worked four or five hours of overtime each day. The other says that we only worked two hours of overtime each day, as our labor law requires. That is the one they show to the buyers.

Our lives have been stolen. We are treated like animals, and any workers who attempt to get together a union are fired immediately and may be blacklisted. We feel that we have been born only to serve the needs of the owners.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Globalization, Colonialism, Sweat Shop Labor[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

I thought I might revisit the idea of Corporate Responsibility Mondays. But instead of focusing on a specific company – which we can dismiss if we don’t typically buy from them – I’ll take a look at the general industry and economic model that globalization and colonialism has built for us. And for which we are usually the sole benefactors of it’s successes and profits. I’ll do this by giving you letters from typical overseas workers who make the things that we enjoy. The things that we typically wear for a few years until it goes out of fashion, at which point it goes into our closet, attic, or thrift store.

People are more important than things.

From Jenrain.

On the production line there are thirty machines with thirty operators and ten helpers. The supervisors give us a production target of 370 caps per hour (college university hats), but we can barely complete 320 caps per hour, so we have to work as fast as we can. But because of this, we sometimes make mistakes, and then the supervisors shout at us and call us bad names, or they slap us, or hit us with a stick or a cap, or jab us with scissors. Sometimes we cry because of this rough treatment, and then they threaten us not to cry.

I have to ask permission to use the bathroom, and they give you only two minutes. The supervisor checks the time. If I need more than two minutes, the supervisor yells at you and calls you bad names.

We only have tap water to drink, which is filthy and makes us sick. The workers often have diarrhea, jaundice, and kidney problems. Because we have to sit on stools with no backs working so many hours, the workers also suffer from backaches.

The factory is cloudy with dust. It is not well ventilated; it is without enough air and light. The air of the factory is polluted with dust from the cloth. This dust goes into our noses and makes us sick with coughs and respiratory problems.

God, may we allow these stories of your children to haunt us. Bring them to mind when we aimlessly or purposefully walk through stores. Stir in us an imagination to dream up new ways of providing jobs and resources for people who have none without making them slaves. Stir in us eyes to see and ears to hear the voices suffering at the margins. In the name of the Father who creates, the Son who rescues, and the Spirit who inspires. AMEN.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Globalization, Colonialism, Sweat Shop Labor[/tags]