No Logo Taking Aim At The Brand Bullies. - Review - book review

By Naomi Klein

ST MARTIN'S PRESS 1999/US$28

Slavery isn't dead -- it just went underground! Some 15 years ago, the American William Kowinski had a book published with the clever title The Mailing of America. As the title of the book implies, it described how the big chain stores, clustered in giant suburban shopping malls, were elbowing out the main street retail shops and sucking the life blood out of downtown, USA. Now a young Canadian journalist, Naomi Klein, has written a 250-page sequel to the demise of the ma and pa emporium. Her witty and well-written book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, gives a detailed and scary account of the smothering conformity enveloping the Earth in the age of globalisation.

Reminiscent of recent headlines about The Battle in Seattle, Klein's book is a scathing indictment of corporate global branding, and a vivid account of the mounting worldwide backlash against it. She describes a promising movement among today's youths: the growing rebellion against the marketing of universal brand names in lieu of locally manufactured products. Armed with a strong thesis and a light literary style, she shows how corporations like Nike, Reebok, Microsoft, Disney, McDonald's, Starbucks, Shell and the Virgin Group have abandoned traditional product advertising and instead poured billions into brand imaging. Convinced that 'image is everything', they have relinquished manufacturing to become bargain hunters in search of the best deal in the global mall.

Thus Richard Branson derisively refers to 'the stilted Anglo-Saxon view' which holds that a name should be associated with a specific product. Such menial tasks can be delegated to subcontractors, whose only job it is 'to fill the order on time and under budget'. This leaves HQ free for the really important job: to infuse meaning into the raw objects cranked out by slave labour, by affixing its corporate brand name. Eureka! In this age of enlightenment, slaves are no longer branded -- only the fruits of their labour.

According to Klein's carefully researched book, some 27 million workers in more than 70 Third World countries are now turning out the bulk of the brand-name merchandise on display in the malls and megastores of the West. Many of these workers are employed in Export Production Zones (EPZs) outside the jurisdiction of the host nation, and are not protected by any laws mandating minimum pay, maximum hours, safety regulations or health benefits. In essence, they are nothing more than modern-day slaves, hidden from importunate scrutiny and out of sight and mind of the brand-blinkered consumer.

Since the mid-80s, when India offered a five-year tax break to companies manufacturing in its low-wage zones, the EPZ industry has really taken off. In the Philippines alone, there are now 52 EPZs employing close to half a million workers -- up from 23,000 in 1986. But the largest zone economy is China, where by conservative estimates there are 18 million people working for slave wages in 124 EPZs. No doubt it was this access to cheap labour which recently prompted the US Congress to put the greed of the transnationals before the need of the Chinese workers by granting their country full and unconditional membership in the WTO. Since no such cheap labour pool is available in Cuba, there is no incentive to grant that former Soviet dependency the same privilege as Communist China. Besides, the virulently anti-Castro Cuban expatriates in the USA carry a lot of political clout. Unlike Chinese dissidents, they get to vote in US elections.

Abandoning the democratic principles which it is supposed to uphold, the Clinton administration had earlier capitulated to the interests of the multinationals, who already had the Republican majority in Congress securely tucked away in their well-lined pockets. Thus, after the enactment of NAFTA, the number of Mexican factories jumped from a few dozen to several thousand in just a few years. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of American textile and assembly-line workers have literally seen their jobs 'go South'.

In a chapter somewhat ironically titled 'The Branding of Learning' the author quotes the CEO of ZapMe! Computer systems, Frank Vigil. Defending the pervasive intrusion of brand names into the classrooms of America, he said that 'America's youth is exposed to advertising in many aspects of their lives... [but] we believe students are savvy enough to discern between editorial content and marketing materials'. If only Frank had been more vigilant and savvy in his choice of words, substituted 'facets' for aspects and 'distinguish' for discern, his faith in the US educational system and the incorruptibility of American youth might have been more credible. But this is the kind of imprecise language one can expect from a computer geek accustomed to spouting gibberish unintelligible to the digitally uninitiated. As some wit put it: 'Muddled speech is the product of a befuddled brain'.

No Logo reveals a betrayal of the promise of choice and increased personal freedom that was supposed to be the hallmark of the information age. The global village turns out to be just a Potemkin mirage -- the mirror opposite of its proclaimed image: instead of greater diversity, we are left with a homo-genised culture, where ever fewer 'brand leaders' direct ever widening spheres of our existence.

But, as depressing as it is to read Naomi Klein's perceptive analysis of the forces fuelling the global economy and forcing untold millions into virtual servitude, it is encouraging to learn that there is a groundswell of opposition among young people all over the world against the abuses of the marketplace. It is on them that she pins her hopes for a better and more equitable world. For it is they who must decide 'the labour, human rights, and environmental agenda of a new global economy'.

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