I’ve been reading No Logo by Naomi Klein recently, inching forwards with it a few pages on the bus one day, a couple of paragraphs in bed a day or two later. No Logo is one of those books that was always on my radar, that I almost felt I didn’t need to read because it’d be preaching so obviously to the choir. I could say “Oh, like No Logo by Naomi Klein?” in a conversation with another member of the liberal intelligentsia, and they’d nod and I’d nod, and we’d both know how erudite and sophisticated we both were. And really, what’s the point of books if not to deploy their titles as reference points proving that you’re better than other people?
But I finally did pick up the book, and boy am I glad. It is a thoroughly dispiriting and depressing affair, making me burn with indignation about three times a paragraph, and this is of course the other point of reading - to become so sickened by the state of the world that you barely have the energy to finish your cup of espresso and turn on your PlayStation that day.
Here’s the thrust of the book, as I understand it, thus far:
Since the 80s companies have been far less concerned with the actual manufacture of goods, which is a dour, mucky, low-class affair, and far more concerned with branding, which involves creating a mythos around your organisation and tying the owning of your goods to a spiritual, aspirational state of being, which is something that essentially soulless CEOs and marketing executives like the idea of an awful lot.
Thus, Nike don’t sell trainers, but the very concept of human perfection achieved through sporting excellence. Apple don’t make iPhones with very fast CPUs and lots of RAM, they turn the use of computer equipment into an act of religious enlightenment. Starbucks don’t brew the best coffees, but engender environments that provide modern versions of the Greek agora or Roman forum for today’s hip youth.
This shift in conceptual focus for companies is borne out in their spending budgets. Branding, in which you foster the notion that people lead better lives because they use your, for example, garbage Lynx bodyspray, accounts for far more of companies’ marketing spend than traditional advertising, wherein you might say, Hey, buy our garbage Lynx bodyspray because it smells the best, and it’s really good value.
Maybe you pay YouTubers, who should be independent cultural critics, to be spies for you, to find our what your young key demographic are into. They say that kids are all playing this videogame called Fortnite, which includes a dance known as “flossing”. Therefore you put someone flossing in your next advert, and your audience see it and believe your brand to be part of their world, despite the fact the game, and the dance, have not a single thing to do with the product you actually sell.
Further, marketing in general accounts for far more of these companies’ overall budgets, so they have far less to spend on making the things they sell. So they close all their factories in their own countries, sack all the workers, and contract out manufacture to people in Bangladesh or China or the Philippines, who promise to fulfil orders on the cheap by erecting makeshift factories in zones to all intents outside of local jurisdictions, in which impoverished workers labour in the most horrendous conditions for paltry wages, and the big companies can say, Hey, it’s nothing to do with us, we just ask for x number of trainers to be made, for y price, and someone goes away and does it. That x trainers can only feasibly be made for y price by using essentially slave labour is something the companies don’t feel like considering.
And these trainers, made by young girls miles from their families and home villages, are utterly generic, the same as all other trainers, until that special white Swoosh gets stitched onto them, and they get put in the Nike box, and sold at the Nike megastore.
And at this end of the process, the sale of the goods, the companies all also want to spend less, so they have more left over for brainstorming cultural resonance sessions or what the fuck ever. So they cultivate the idea that retail jobs, working in Starbucks, Gap, the Apple Store, aren’t really jobs. They’re for students, for young people about to go travelling, for kids looking for some extra spending money. And as such they can pay minimum wage, offer no benefits, no job security, zero-hour contracts, forcibly discourage unionisation, treat their workers like complete pieces of shit, because none of it is that serious.
Except by the 90s, when No Logo was written, retail work had risen to account for 75% of all employment in the United States. The factories have all been closed down! There’s nowhere else for huge numbers of the population to work than in shops. The average age of service sector workers has risen, the length of time they’re spending in job roles has risen - and public sector professions are being axed all over the place, education is more expensive than ever, the cost of living is enormous, property prices are insane...
Yet, still, the big brands pretend their McJobs are more about life experience than a career, and they wash their hands of all responsibility.
They’ve fucked the developing world at the manufacturing end, they’ve fucked their own world at the retail end, and there’s nothing they can do about it, they say, because they need the money for branding exercises, for basically working really hard to create the illusion, the lie - let's call it what it is - that wearing Nike shoes makes your life any different to wearing any other black sneakers. That Lush soap is any different to any other surfactant that emulsifies oils so they can be washed away with water.
You want to know why the world is fucked? And this, admittedly is me extrapolating out my own conclusions. But the world is fucked because greedy organisations use slaves in the developing world to make tat that they trick us into buying at marked up prices, sold by members of our own society who aren’t paid nearly enough, under the pretence that the brand will make us happier, which it doesn’t. All the factories are closed. The shops pay nothing. The goods are too expensive. Everyone is struggling.
And then some loud demagogue comes along, some Trump or Farage or Bolsonaro, and yells that everyone is struggling, and it’s the fault of… the immigrants. Or the EU. Or the liberals. Or the Millenials. Or the lecturers. Or the scientists. Just as they said it was the fault of the Jews and the gypsies and the cripples in the 30s.
It never was then, and it isn’t now. It’s the fault of the private companies, the executives, the bankers. The Bullingdon Club politicians with their filthy hands down the pants of big business. It’s the fucking fault of the people with all the money! They’ve taken it! They’ve stolen it out from under us, and now they desperately need someone weak to blame.
Don't fucking buy their shit. Don't buy their lies, don't buy their brands, don't buy any of it. Reclaim your mind, your life, your world. Fight back.
It's going to get really important, really soon. Be on the right side of this.
