Een treffend voorbeeld van hoe de echoput van de mainstream-journalistiek doorgaans klinkt gaf NRC Handelsblad van maandag 3 maart 2015 onder de kop
Knausgård leest ook Geert Mak. En dat vervult hem met ‘intense schaamte,’
waarna de lezer wordt verteld dat
De Noorse ‘literaire rockster’ Karl Ove Knausgård in januari door de VS [reisde] om een serie reportages te schrijven voor The New York Times. Mét Geert Maks Amerikaboek Reizen zonder John, blijkt uit het eerste deel van die reportage. En dat Amerikaboek vervult hem met ‘intense schaamte.’
Zittend in een sombere pizzatent in Canada, waar hij vastzit omdat hij moet wachten op een nieuw rijbewijs, schrijft Knausgård:
‘Nu vervulde het boek me met een intense schaamte. Hij [Geert Mak, red] was nog niet uit het vliegtuig of hij zat al in zijn huurauto en reed weg. Geen koorts, geen onzekerheid, geen angst, geen missend rijbewijs, geen onproductieve dagen op een hotelkamer. Hij heeft statistieken over Amerika en Amerikanen, hij citeert uit een groot aantal boeken, waaronder Tocqueville, en, hij had tenminste iets te zeggen over Amerika, hij was in staat om wat hij zag in een economische, politieke en culturele context te plaatsen.’
De 'literaire rockster' (?) voegde eraan toe dat hij dacht Mak's Reizen zonder John. Op zoek naar Amerika (2012) ‘te kunnen gebruiken als sjabloon, niet voor de inhoud, maar voor de vorm.’ Waarom de auteur Knausgård juist Mak's boek als model wilde gebruiken, zonder diens zogeheten 'economische, politieke en culturele context' en niet bijvoorbeeld de door Mak zo gehate On the Road van Jack Kerouac of William Least Heat-Moon's subtiele Blue Highways. A Journey into America is eenvoudigweg omdat 'I didn’t know anything. I knew nothing about the U.S.,' terwijl hij wel Geert Mak kende omdat niet alleen zijn 'Amerika-boek' in het Noors is vertaald, met zijn 5 miljoen inwoners toch een leuke markt, maar vooral ook omdat volgens Mak zelf 'sinds de TV-serie In Europa in Noorwegen maar liefst drie keer is uitgezonden heb ik daar flink wat lezers.' Kassa. En hoewel Mak in een email aan NRC liet weten dat hij zich 'gevleid' voelde 'proef ik [natuurlijk], Knausgård kennend, tussen de regels ook een vleugje ironie.' Met andere woorden: een pose waarbij het tegenovergestelde wordt gezegd van wat men werkelijk bedoelt. Goddank voor Mak was er sprake van slechts 'een vleugje ironie,' waarmee de kritiek op de nationale 'historicus' voldoende werd afgezwakt, vooral ook omdat Mak hier snel aan toevoegde dat de ironie 'nu precies zíjn kwaliteit' is, kennelijk niet beseffend dat Knausgård's ironie een volkomen versleten verdedigingsmechanisme is geworden en dat 'neither irony or sarcasm is argument,' zoals de Britse auteur Samuel Butler al lang geleden besefte. Ik ken Knausgård als schrijver niet en zal ook niet snel één van zijn boeken lezen omdat hij, als ik het goed begrijp, 'vooral bekend [is] vanwege zijn zesdelige autobiografische roman Min kamp ('Mijn strijd'),' waarin hij 'over zijn leven en de relatie met zijn ouders en vrienden' vertelt en 'te pas en te onpas de levens van zijn vrienden en familie (met naam en toenaam) in detail beschrijft.' Maar Mak kent zijn werk wel en is 'gevleid' dat deze Noorse Voskuil zijn boek noemde, aangezien '[h]et altijd leuk [is] als je kind met een andere auteur mee op pad mag.'
Hier zien 'we' hoe het postmoderne consumentisme werkt: een Noorse ‘literaire rockster,’ opgegroeid in een narcistische cultuur, heeft zes boeken nodig gehad om zichzelf en zijn directe omgeving in kaart te brengen, maar 'wist' tegelijkertijd 'niets over de V.S.,' hetgeen geen enkele belemmering was voor hem en voor 's werelds beroemdste mainstream-krant om Knausgård te verzoeken over Mak's 'ordebewaker en politieagent' van de wereld te schrijven. In zijn beschrijving verwijst Karl Ove met 'een vleugje ironie' naar een Nederlandse journalist die 'citeert uit een groot aantal boeken, waaronder Tocqueville,' waardoor de 'niets' van de VS wetende Noor, die kennelijk meent dat 'Tocqueville' een boek is, de lezers van de New York Times meent te kunnen verzekeren dat Mak 'in staat [was] om wat hij zag in een economische, politieke en culturele context te plaatsen.’ Hoewel hij 'niets' over het kolossale land 'wist' en dus geen enkel beoordelingscriterium bezat om erover te schrijven, wist hij wel met grote stelligheid en 'een vleugje ironie' te beweren dat het literaire 'kind' van de verder kinderloze Geert Mak een superieur werk is. Zo helpt de lamme de blinde de brug over, en blijft de waanzin doorgalmen. Het is allemaal een kwestie van marketing, branding, en packaging van de virtuele wereld, waarin elke dag weer een nieuwe waarheid geldt. De klassieken worden niet meer gelezen, de ijdele hedendaagse mens heeft geen tijd zich te verdiepen, om zodoende een onderscheid te kunnen maken tussen waarheid en verdichting. En dus blijft een Noorse auteur over zijn eigen onnozelheden door zeveren, al dan niet met 'een vleugje ironie,' zijn 'Mein Kampf' producerend, met een knipoog, ironie, tongue in cheek. Ondertussen gaat de werkelijke wereld gewoon door. Juni 2015 stelde de Amerikaanse blogger, David Swanson, auteur van ondermeer War is a Lie (2010), het volgende:
What led to the first two world wars and allowed numerous wise observers to warn of them years ahead, even to warn of World War II immediately upon completion of the treaty that ended World War I? A number of factors ought to be obvious but are generally overlooked:
1 Acceptance of war, leading to steady preparation for it.
2 A major arms race, making instruments of death in fact our leading industry, with hope placed in a balance or domination of powers of war, rather than an overcoming of war.
3 The momentum created for war by massive investment in highly profitable (and status and career advancing) weaponry and other military expenditures.
4 Fear in each nation of the war intentions of the others, driven by propaganda that encourages fear and discourages understanding of the other sides.
5 The belief produced by the above factors that war, unlike the tango, only takes one. On the basis of that belief, each side must prepare for war as self-protection from another war-maker, but doing so is not believed to be a choice or an action of any kind; rather, it is a law of physics, an inevitable occurrence, something to be observed and chattered about like the weather.
6 The consequent, though seemingly mad, willingness by those in power to risk potentially apocalyptic war rather than to pursue survival without war.
Als overgeleverde tradities geen zeggingskracht meer hebben, als de 'lessen van de geschiedenis' er niet langer toe doen, als de autoriteit van wetenschap en deskundologen is komen te vervallen, dan komt alles aan op het hier en nu. Dan wordt de weergave en interpretatie van actuele gebeurtenissen en ontwikkelingen en ontwikkelingen van levensbelang. Daaraan ontlenen we immers onze normen, ons toekomstvertrouwen, ons collectief humeur.
Deze beschrijving van de huidige samenleving is meedogenloos eerlijk. 'Het humeur van Nederland' wordt, net als overal in de westerse consumptiecultuur, bepaald door de causale wetten van het materialistische 'hier en nu,' dus door ethisch normloze 'normen,' oftewel door het nihilisme, zoals Nietzsche dat beschreven heeft. In 1888 voorspelde de Duitse filosoof dat
eens mijn naam met de herinnering aan iets ontzagwekkende verbonden [zal] zijn, — aan een crisis zoals er nog nooit één op aarde is geweest, aan de diepste gewetensbotsing, aan een beslissend gebeuren, opgeroepen tegen alles dat tot dan toe geloofd, vereist, geheiligd was.
Terwijl de westerse wereld werd ontheiligd, waarschuwde Nietzsche in een brief aan zijn vriend Overbeck dat:
Mir besteht mein Leben jetzt in dem Wunsche dass es mit allen Dingen anders gehen moge, als ich sie begreife; und dass mir jemand meine 'Wahrheiten' unglaubwurdig machen,
en wel omdat door de doodverklaring van God het nihilisme zijn intrede had gedaan: 'der unheimlichste aller Gäste.' In zijn postuum uitgegeven Ecce Homo (1908) presenteert Nietzsche zich weliswaar als 'een blijde boodschapper,' maar dan één die tevens 'de mens van de doem' is:
Want als de waarheid de strijd aanbindt met de leugen van duizenden jaren, dan zullen we catastrofes beleven, een kramp van aardbevingen, een ontwrichting van berg en dal waar niemand van heeft kunnen dromen. Het begrip politiek zal dan geheel en al zijn opgegaan in een geestelijke oorlogsvoering, alle machtsconcentraties van de oude maatschappij zijn geëxplodeerd — ze berusten alle op leugens: er zullen oorlogen zijn zoals ze op aarde nog nooit zijn geweest.
Meer dan een eeuw later blijkt hoe gelijk Nietzsche heeft gehad. 'Wij' voeren niet alleen oorlog, 'wij' zijn de oorlog, het eeuwigdurende geweld dat nooit meer zal stoppen, omdat het nihilisme, 'de griezeligste van alle gasten,' geen moraal kent, laat staan beheersing. Met het verdwijnen van het godsbegrip werd ook de daarop gebaseerde moraliteit vernietigd, een feit waarop het rationele Verlichtingsdenken geen antwoord bleek te hebben. Het rationalisme zonder rede vernietigde zichzelf tenslotte definitief in Auschwitz en Hiroshima. Maar deze werkelijkheid is taboe in de mainstream-media met hun pathologische behoefte aan 'hoop,' 'optimisme' en spektakel. In de door Knausgärd bewonderde bestseller Reizen zonder John (2012) is de bewering te lezen dat aan het begin van de twintigste eeuw 'de Amerikaanse marine' de
rol van internationale politieagent, toen al de derde ter wereld, uitstekend [kon] vervullen, zo meende hij (president Theodore Roosevelt. svh). Het zou de basisfilosofie worden achter talloze Amerikaanse interventies overal ter wereld, vanaf de Europese oorlogen tussen 1914 en 1945 tot Vietnam,
hetgeen Mak ten slotte tot de conclusie voert dat Washington en Wall Street
decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent [fungeerden] – om maar te zwijgen van alle hulp die het uitdeelde… En nog steeds zijn de Verenigde Staten het anker van het hele Atlantische deel van de wereld in de ruimste zin van het woord. Het is nog altijd de ‘standaardmacht.’
Hier wordt het 'begrip politiek' teruggebracht tot 'geestelijke oorlogsvoering,' de noodzakelijke basis voor massaal geweld, hetgeen een fascistische verheerlijking is van de macht. Het gevolg van dit proces is, volgens één van de scherpzinnigste hedendaagse Amerikaans/Canadese geleerde Henry Giroux, dat de
celebration of violence in both virtual culture and real life now feed each other. The spectacle of carnage celebrated in movies such as A Good Day to Die Hard is now matched by the deadly violence now playing out in cities such as Chicago and New Orleans. Young people are particularly vulnerable to such violence, with 561 children age 12 and under killed by firearms between 2006 and 2010. Corporate power, along with its shameless lobbyists and intellectual pundits, unabashedly argue for more guns in order to feed the bottom line, even as the senseless carnage continues tragically in places like Newtown, Connecticut, Tustin, California, and other American cities…
At the same time, America's obsession with violence is reinforced by a market society that is Darwinian in its pursuit of profit and personal gain at almost any cost. Within this scenario, a social and economic order has emerged that combines the attributes and values of films such as the classics Mad Max and American Psycho. Material deprivation, galloping inequality, the weakening of public supports, the elimination of viable jobs, the mindless embrace of rabid competition and consumption, and the willful destruction of the environment speak to a society in which militarized violence finds its counterpart, if not legitimating credo, in a set of atomizing and selfish values that disdain shared social bonds and any notion of the public good. In this case, American society now mimics a market-driven culture that celebrates a narcissistic hyper-individualism that radiates with a new sociopathic lack of interest in others and a strong tendency towards violence and criminal behavior. As John le Carré once stated, ‘America has entered into one of its periods of historical madness.’ While le Carré wrote this acerbic attack on American politics in 2003, I think it is fair to say that things have gotten worse, and that the United States is further plunging into madness because of a deadening form of historical and social amnesia that has taken over the country, further reproducing a mass flight from memory and social responsibility.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14814-the-politics-of-disimagination-and-the-pathologies-of-power
Het zal niemand kunnen verbazen dat de uitstekend geïnformeerde intellectueel Henry A. Giroux, in tegenstelling tot de van 'niets' wetende ‘literaire rockster’ Karl Ove Knausgård nooit door de New York Times is gevraagd om 'a tongue-in-cheek Tocqueville' artikel te schrijven voor het wereldberoemde dagblad, dat sinds jaar en dag als slogan heeft 'All The News That's Fit To Print.' Daarover schreef de Amerikaanse media-analist en econoom, professor Edward S. Herman, dat de
veteran New YorkTimes reporter John Hess has said that in all 24 years of his service at the paper he 'never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t let me get started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?' The paper is an establishment institution and serves establishment ends. As Times historian Harrison Salisbury said about former executive editor Max Frankel, 'The last thing that would have entered his mind would be to hassle the American Establishment, of which he was so proud to be a part.'
Gezien het schrikbarend gebrek aan kennis onder mainstream-journalisten in dit kleine land duikt de vraag op of er in Nederland nog iemand is die een boek leest? Ik bedoel niet de fratsen in boekvorm van de leden van de 'politiek-literaire elite,' onder wie Mak en Hofland die elkaars cliché's herhalen. Nee, ik doel op de geschreven werken van vooral Angelsaksische intellectuelen, waaruit ik hier nu al enkele jaren citeer. Knausgård mag dan wel met 'een vleugje ironie' diep onder de indruk zijn van Mak's belezenheid, maar uit eigen ervaring weet ik dat de bestsellerauteur een niet gering deel van de door hem op zijn literatuurlijst opgevoerde boeken slechts heeft 'angelesen' of zelfs helemaal niet heeft gelezen, zoals bijvoorbeeld het baanbrekende standaardwerk A People's History of the United States (1980) van de door rechts zo gehate joods-Amerikaanse historicus Howard Zinn, een kritisch meesterwerk dat de gewone burgers, die niet gezien worden door de historici van het establishment, in het volle daglicht plaatste. De reden waarom Geert Mak het werk van Howard Zinn niet heeft bestudeerd is niet moeilijk te traceren, de Amerikaan is voor hem te kritisch en daarmee te controversieel, wat problematisch was voor de oplage van zijn 'Amerika-boek,' dat met het oog op de lucratieve Amerikaanse markt ook in het Engels moest verschijnen. Zelf schreef Zinn in een brief aan de New York Times in 2007 over zijn invloedrijke werk:
Making History
To the Editor:
Walter Kirn’s review of my book 'A Young People’s History of the United States' (June 17) attributes to me the belief that 'telling the truth is not Job 1 for historians.' The reviewer seems to hold to the 19th-century von Ranke idea that there is one truth to be told. Most historians, and most intelligent people, including bright 12-year-olds, understand that there is no such thing as a single 'objective' truth, but that there are different truths according to the viewpoint of the historian. Kirn is intent on giving a sinister ring to what is common sense.
Kirn is irritated because his 'truth' is not mine. His truths — built around veneration of the 'great men' of the past: the political leaders, the enterprising industrialists — add up to exactly the simplistic history fed to young people over the generations, which my book tries to replace. His kind of history produces a submissive population, always looking for saviors on high. I prefer that readers of history, including the young, learn that we cannot depend on established authority to keep us out of war and to create economic justice, but rather that solving these problems depends on us, the citizenry, and on the great social movements we have created.
My history, therefore, describes the inspiring struggle of those who have fought slavery and racism (Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses), of the labor organizers who have led strikes for the rights of working people (Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, César Chávez), of the socialists and others who have protested war and militarism (Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, Cindy Sheehan). My hero is not Theodore Roosevelt, who loved war and congratulated a general after a massacre of Filipino villagers at the turn of the century, but Mark Twain, who denounced the massacre and satirized imperialism.
Kirn is annoyed at my refusal to go along with the orthodox romanticization of Lincoln. I suspect he has not read the chapter on Lincoln in Richard Hofstadter’s classic, 'The American Political Tradition,' in which Hofstadter brilliantly punctures what he calls the 'Lincoln legend.'
Kirn says: 'Writing about abolitionism, Zinn leaves the impression that freeing the slaves was not enough.' It seems he does not know of the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Eric Foner, who document the betrayal of the freed slave after the Civil War.
I want young people to understand that ours is a beautiful country, but it has been taken over by men who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties. Our people are basically decent and caring, and our highest ideals are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which says that all of us have an equal right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' The history of our country, I point out in my book, is a striving, against corporate robber barons and war makers, to make those ideals a reality — and all of us, of whatever age, can find immense satisfaction in becoming part of that.
Howard Zinn
Geschiedenis is een te serieuze zaak om aan journalisten als Geert Mak over te laten, maar dat besef is in 'ons' polderland nog niet doorgedrongen, en trouwens ook niet in Noorwegen met zijn 5 miljoen inwoners die tot drie keer toe via de televisie Mak's In Europa-verhalen kregen te zien en te horen, waardoor de Noorse ‘literaire rockster’ Karl Ove Knausgård opmerkzaam werd gemaakt op Mak's bestaan, en vervolgens niet Howard Zinn's onthullende boeken aanprees, maar de beschamende Readers Digest-versie die Mak van de VS gaf. En zo galmt de leugen in de echoput van de luie commerciële massamedia almaar door. Tot 'wij' straks de rekening krijgen gepresenteerd, want alles is met alles verbonden. Niets is zonder consequenties. Ook corruptie niet.
We Need Regulations to Prevent Corporations From Fleeing Overseas
Thursday, 25 June 2015 00:00 By Miriam Shestack, In These Times | Interview
In the early 20th century, working conditions in the Unites States were abysmal and often deadly. Legal protection for workers was all but nonexistent. At the same time, companies polluted and degraded the American landscape unchecked. But Americans soon began fighting - and occasionally dying - for reforms to make workplaces safer and to curb the ability of corporations to destroy the environment. Growing worker power in America also led to the formation of the most prosperous working class in the nation's history.
But that is only half of the story. No sooner had the United States began successfully regulating the labor standards and environmental impact of corporations than corporations began looking for ways to move production into less regulated territories.
Erik Loomis, author and assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island who writes for the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, spoke with In These Times about his new book Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe, which he sees as a history of capitalism over the past 100 years. The book details significant victories in workplace and environmental safety rapidly undercut by the ability of corporate interests to outsource the most dangerous aspects of their operations to more vulnerable parts of the world and far from the view of consumers. Now, Loomis says, it is up to American citizens to pressure our government to curb corporate power domestically and to bring American corporate behavior abroad under legal scrutiny.
What is the main argument of your book?
The book is a history of capitalism over the last 100 years. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both labor and environmental conditions in the US were terrible, workers were dying, pollution was unchecked and corporations could basically do whatever they wanted, including in the political arena. During the 20th century Americans fought and struggled and died in order to change that. Americans demanded environmental regulations and labor regulations and created the middle class and workers got a bigger piece of the pie.
That's a story that might be well known, but it is also increasingly a story of the distant past. Corporations in the middle of the 20th century, and really beginning in the 1970s and '80s and into the present, tried to escape those regulations by moving their capital abroad. Corporations had long tried to do this, but at that time, they were able to leave the US entirely. Most moved to Mexico and then to Asia and Central America. In doing so they have begun recreating that period of 100 years ago where corporations controlled everything in the US; again they are responsible for terrible labor conditions worker deaths, and horrifying pollution. If a nation or people try to resist, corporations now can very easily just close shop and move to another country.
You write that geographic distance creates a gap between consumers and the people who make goods, such that labor abuses are not visible to consumers. However, you point out many ongoing cases of unsafe work conditions and environmental degradation in the American South, not very far from American consumers at all. Can you reflect on what other factors like race, culture and income of the community play a role in keeping workplace and environmental hazards hidden from consumers?
When corporations can move, workers and politicians and communities become very worried and skeptical about applying any workplace regulations or environmental regulations, because companies openly claim that they will move the jobs overseas in the face of greater regulation. This undermines the ability of American workers to demand a safe workplace or good wages. Every time jobs are moved overseas, this undermines the ability of the American working class to fight for any kind of positive change. That's because unions no longer have the union dues to affect the political system and workers and communities are careful to not say anything negative or do anything that might threaten their jobs.
The other part, of course, is that both corporations and politicians have worked very hard to place production and pollution in communities that have the least ability to resist. There are reasons that some companies continue to site production in the US, and when they do it's in southern states like Louisiana and Mississippi and in Latino communities in the West. They site that production in areas that have very high poverty rates, which in this nation usually corresponds to places where high numbers of people of color live. Corporations attempt to escape regulation by targeting those parts of the nation that have already been left behind in whatever gains have been made in the past.
I'm wondering about the audience of this book. I feel like it's largely written to the globally relatively wealthy American consumer class. How do you understand the role of the wealthy in the developing world in outsourcing workplace and environmental hazards from the West?
There is clearly an alliance between American corporations and an elite class in nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, so that both are able to prosper through this system. It's very much a neo-colonial relationship wherein an American corporation or a British corporation creates alliances and close connections with somebody like Sohel Rana, the owner of the Rana Plaza factory that collapsed in 2013, in order to get products made as cheaply as possible. It's in both of their interests to ensure that production takes place without the actual knowledge of the details by the American corporation so that they can remain not liable for it, while also allowing factory owners like Rana to boost their profit margin.
When someone like Rana has as much political power as he does, what exactly is the conduit for workers to step in and protest and to make change? What can workers in a nation like Bangladesh do when their factory owners are also the politicians who create the system, and the military and the police are willing to effectively serve as private armies for apparel companies? The wealthy in places like Bangladesh are certainly culpable in this system, but the system also doesn't exist without the American corporations seeking to take advantage of it.
In the book you talk a little bit about some successful student campaigns like with USAS, which I used to be a member of, and a factory that closed in Honduras over a union drive. What do you think about consumer activism that has to do with shaming corporations and getting them to sign onto various accords as a means of changing the system, as opposed to perhaps more legislative mechanisms?
Corporations signing onto some sort of agreement is a positive step, but there is a limitation to that kind of activism largely because people's attention is going to move on to something else. Corporations can outlast people's attention. So you might have a campaign that gets a company to sign on to some sort of labor agreement, but what happens five years down the road when activists have moved on to some other issue? Then who is really holding them accountable?
Shaming corporations through consumer activism is a really useful and necessary first step. But in the end, corporations have to be held legally accountable so that when the attention of consumers has moved on, companies can be held accountable by courts, by governments agencies and by workers themselves.
This book is, in a sense, a story about how the US legal system consistently serves the interests of corporations much better than those of average citizens. You address the relatively low cost of OSHA fines to corporations, such that they become an acceptable risk in running a dangerous but highly profitable business. You also tell the story of several cases where workers or environmentalists try to hold corporate actors accountable for dangerous practices and are ultimately thwarted by endless appeals from companies that can afford to play a waiting game. How do you see the role of the US legal system in the story of labor rights and environmental protection?
There's no question that the US legal system is flawed and the path ahead that I'm proposing is a hard one. We're in a situation right now where we need to basically recreate the system that once held corporations in check and make it global. The US legal system at this point in time is very favorable to corporate interests, and with every lost union job it becomes more favorable to corporate interests.
I'm a historian, and the reality is that the only thing that's really ever created better workplace conditions is changing the legal system. I'm not underestimating the size of this task, but I think that what we need in the end are new laws that would empower workers to access the US legal system, and then on top of that, a legal system willing to enforce workplace regulations.
This doesn't have to only be a US-based effort. That said, if we're going to allow corporations to go global, then we have to decide what standards to have as Americans for the conditions under which goods are produced by American companies everywhere, and the conditions of production that we allow in imported products. The only way to make those decisions and enforce such standards is through statutes in the US legal code.
Can you talk more specifically about what kinds of US policy changes you think might be effective?
We could demand real inspections of factories, we could say as Americans that sweatshop workers making products for the American public have to be paid a particular wage, we could monitor pollution around those plants. We could establish that if workers die in these factories that there is going to be an investigation to determine whether those goods can be imported to the US from that factory in the future.
The US is relatively powerful as a nation, and we have the power to dictate more than we already do. Corporations are dictating the conditions of production in Bangladesh. That's already happening. So we as Americans can say, yes, clothing factories aren't coming back to the US, but we also want to make sure that these companies are not just dumping dyes into the water and poisoning the entire eco system where they do operate.
There are all sorts of things that we can do if we were to choose to. It's just a matter of wrestling the power from the corporations to make it happen.
What kinds of steps do you think need to be taken to take that power back from corporations?
We as Americans have to decide to reverse the current system of tremendous exploitation and growing income inequality that we are seeing in the US now. The Citizens United decision is certainly central to that. We have to organize and demand that our politicians hold corporations accountable. I think we're already starting to see that, or the beginnings of it, beginning with Occupy, and moving on now to the Fight for 15 and the OUR Walmart campaigns. This is a hard struggle because labor unions, the one institution that has assisted working class people and given them a voice in the government throughout American history, have reached an all time low in terms of membership, and that's intentional on the part of corporations.
The thing worth remembering is that, although we're in a terrible situation now, during the early 20th century there was no reason to believe that we ever would tame corporations in the first place, and we largely did - for a time.
You write in your book that people are in a better position to challenge corporate power when they themselves feel financially secure, which is why so much of that happened in the mid-20th century in the US Do you think income inequality in the US needs to be addressed before more global issues of capital mobility, environmental degradation and worker safety, or can the two work in concert with each other?
They are certainly connected. The rise in income inequality in the US comes at precisely the same time that so many quality jobs of the American middle class were shipped overseas. Theoretically, yes, we could create a $20 per hour minimum wage, or pass a federal jobs bill that provided full guaranteed work for people. Those things could happen, but they are not going to happen, because the institutions that might work to make that happen have all been decimated. So yes, theoretically, domestic and global income inequality could be separated as issues, but they are very closely related.
Speaking about policy changes and legal accountability, you mentioned that perhaps the goal in the US should be to reform the gains that had been made in the 20th century to hold corporations more accountable and also make the impact of the regulations more global. So at what level of governance or regulation do you think corporations should be held to account? Are US laws enough? Are international regulations effective?
We are in a situation where almost any reforms will help help. There's a number of different ways that countries should be able to establish minimum acceptable work and environmental conditions of domestic production or demand that any goods entering their country or produced by their corporations be produced with ethical standards. They need to have the legal authority to enforce those standards. I also think that if you actually empower the International Labor Organization in the UN to really have the ability to craft international standards, that would be helpful. Right now, the ILO effectively creates model laws for nations to sign on to and that's useful, but greater international ability to craft real standards is necessary. Obviously, supporting the fights of workers to try to improve the conditions within their own nation is also viable. This has to be a multi-pronged front.
The key here is a combination of a US legal code that effectively establishes the standards for our nation, in concert with international regulations through the ILO. We should have an ILO that is really empowered to create global levels of regulations.
You write this book very much from the opinion that capital mobility is not something that is going to be curbed but that could perhaps be regulated. So do you think that if it were possible, capital mobility should be curbed? Or is there an upside to this mode of production, if it were better regulated?
The purpose of these regulations is in part to curb capital mobility, or at least to disincentivize it. Look at Central America for instance. You have a bunch of tiny countries all next to each other, so when factory workers in Honduras organize and struggle for years to establish unions and succeed, the company just closes the factory and moves 20 miles away to Guatemala. That has to stop. We have to take away the incentives that make it okay for companies to do this wherever they want to, to whomever they want and for whatever reason. If an apparel company is held legally accountable for their contractors no matter where they operate, then it actually becomes their incentive to have a unionized workforce and to stay in one place so they have stable production under safe conditions.
There is not very much positive about capital mobility at all - certainly the constant ability of companies to keep moving is a disaster. Yes, in a theoretical construct you might destroy the American middle class to create a Bangladeshi middle class. But that is not the case because as soon as the Bangladeshis start to develop a middle class, the jobs disappear there too.
Touching on the last chapter of your book, if I am an American consumer looking to get involved in this fight, what should I do? Can you suggest some avenues for what average people should be doing?
On a basic level, you can join a union if you're able to. Think of yourself as a worker wherever you may be and seek to express power that way. Worker power is a direct way that everyday people can affect the political system and make their lives better.
You could also hold elected politicians accountable to these issues and elect people who are pushing for corporate accountability like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. There are politicians who we should be giving our money to and who we should be supporting. We should make it a political liability for politicians to support pro-corporate policies. If they don't support ethical working conditions and policies that allow the US to have a middle class, we need to punish them. Politicians understand power. If we have power, we can create the necessary reforms to the global economy.
The more that people know about these issues, the more that they hold corporations accountable - which is precisely why corporations don't want them to know anything. If you're a student, creating a USAS chapter or another student organization that promotes labor rights is another way to take action because university administrations at least theoretically have to listen to students. Whether it's as a student or a member of a church or any type of organization that you're involved with, in which you have a certain amount of leverage. Find out about how things are made and make choices based around that knowledge.
MIRIAM SHESTACK
Miriam Shestack is a Spring 2015 In These Times editorial intern. She is a senior at the University of Chicago majoring in history and a member of Students Organizing United with Labor, an affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops.
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