On the second week of class, we were assigned two videos to watch: Nike Sweatshops: Behind the Swoosh and Beware Fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks are Coming. A common theme in these videos is the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, as Marx predicted in The Communist Manifesto. The following analysis will describe the videos in detail and see how they relate to Marx’s ideology.
The Nike video Behind the Swoosh followed the mission of Jim Keady, a Catholic teacher at St. John’s University, who defied pressure from Nike by going to live on worker’s wages in Indonesia at one of their factories, also known as a “sweat shop”. The viewer watches Jim as he immerses himself in living conditions where fellow workers live in extreme poverty on low wages; who have little to no sewage; who sleep on the floor in cramped cement “boxes”; and who work long shifts of “15 hours a day, 6-7 days a week” (TeamSweat, 2011). After this experience he goes to Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, looking for a representative to comment on these conditions. He was rejected by everyone he spoke with, and an order was put out that employees were not to talk with him or anyone he associated with.
Hanauer’s video Beware Fellow Plutocrats was less adventurous, but equally impactful. It shows him giving a speech on what he believes is the best way to improve living conditions in the U.S. He is a staunch supporter of raising the minimum wage, which he thinks would have the effect of strengthening the middle class, thereby increasing consumer spending. Hanauer points out that trickle-down economics does not work; that ever since the 1980s when it was implemented, the middle class has been shrinking while the gap between rich and poor has been increasing. Alarmingly, he suggests that if this trend continues, people will either revolt against the plutocrats, or against the whole capitalist system, as Karl Marx predicted. In his opinion, keeping the middle class strong is the only way to maintain the stability of capitalism.
Karl Marx viewed history as being a struggle between lower and upper classes that is rooted in the possession of material goods. He believed material goods are what shape the social interactions in society, not ideas. His historical materialism “presupposes that our actions are driven by our attempts to maximize our interests” (Applerouth & Edles, 36)- those interests being the methods that increase capital. Both these videos demonstrate how materialism motivates corporate interest in the exploitation of labor and natural resources. The corporations referred to in them are trying to maximize profits by eliminating competition and subjecting the lower class to their will.
Nick Hanauer showed this by illuminating the increasing gap between rich and poor in the U.S. He argued that corporations who lobby for trickle-down economics are in the wrong because it concentrates wealth into the top 1% of earners. This exploits the lower class and its workers by making it harder for small businesses to grow. His solution is to raise the minimum wage, which would help them grow by making it harder for corporations to expand. Small businesses would theoretically be able to employ more people and at more respectable wages, thus eliminating the threat of “angry mobs with pitchforks” (TED, 2011) coming after the plutocrats.
In the Nike video, Marx’s historical materialism is demonstrated more directly. Jim Keady showed us literally how Nike’s exploitation of low-wage workers in Indonesia disrupts their quality of living and the environment. “Nike is in Indonesia for one reason- cheap labor”, says Jim (TeamSweat, 2011). The video demonstrates how outsourcing- a prime way of cutting the cost of production for corporations- leads to the type of class struggle that Marx predicted in The Communist Manifesto. The workers of the factory are the proletariat from his vision, while Nike headquarters represents the bourgeoisie. Their Indonesian workers are literally working in the refuse of their natural environment- one whose resources Nike and their associates excavated and incinerated in the same vicinity. At 11:12 in the video, Jim refers to piles of waste in neighborhoods where children play: “The burning fumes, I learned from the company that designs Nike’s shoe rubber, give off toxins and carcinogens” (TeamSweat, 2011).
Hanauer’s prediction about the lower class coming at the top 1% with pitchforks is suggestive of the revolution Marx predicted, however it mentions nothing about the state of other countries, only our own. In Marx’s vision, an unregulated capitalist state would first transform into a socialist one, abolishing some elements of capitalism while embracing some of communism. This seems to be what Hanauer is calling for- the next step in the Marxist process. They key difference is that by moving toward a more socialist state with a redistribution of wealth, he thinks the revolution can be thwarted. What he does not mention is the next step in the process: the ideal state that Marx envisioned after socialism. This state is described by Marx as the end of history, when capitalism is completely overthrown by communism.
In Behind the Swoosh, we see another problem that Marx predicted: the alienation of the worker by reducing their role “to that of a cog in a machine” (Applerouth & Edles, 47). Many sweat shop workers are only assigned one role for the duration of their shift, which has the effect of repressing their individuality.
It is not evident that these workers will rise up in revolt just yet, because believe it or not, jobs like these are not even considered the worst in places like Indonesia. Poverty is so bad there that people consider themselves lucky to have them. Corporations like Nike move into these poverty-stricken countries, knowing they are overpopulated with people looking for work. They use the workers’ desperation against them. They know they are not strong enough to coordinate the type of unions that took shape in the U.S. to combat labor abuse. At least, not yet. Once they are, they will probably move to other poor countries with expendable workers and do the same thing. Africa might be the next frontier beyond Asia as a fertile ground for capitalist expansion.
Also relevant to the discussion is how Nike is an example of the commodity fetishism that Marx described in Das Kapital. Commodity fetishism contributes to the overproduction of goods by increasing the demand for branded items, making it harder for workers in sweat shops to keep up. The “swoosh” is something many of their consumers look for when shopping at retail stores. The fetishes of these consumers are strengthened by the company’s insatiable marketing campaign, featuring the sponsorship of many top athletes around the globe: Michael Jordan, Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, to name a few. The Nike brand is intimately connected with people’s motivation to be like the people they see on television. “Advertisements… routinely convey the message that interpersonal ‘success’ is dependent on our using this product” (Applerouth & Edles, 71). It is no coincidence that the athletes they choose to sponsor are the ones people idolize the most.
If Marx were alive today, I think he would see the end of capitalism in sight only after workers from all corners of the globe awaken to class consciousness. He would probably agree with Gramsci that the working class (now global instead of national) is still “socialized into accepting a bourgeoise ideology as an unquestioned view of the world and their place in it, perpetuating their own exploitation” (Applerouth & Edles, 37). Once the workers in all countries become aware of the class consciousness Marx theorized, there may be no turning back to the globe’s reliance on overabundance created by capitalist economies. Unionizing the world would be no easy task; but thanks to the Internet, it might just be possible. Marx would likely see it used as a more powerful tool for expanding his vision.
References
TeamSweat. (2011.) Nike Sweatshops: Behind the Swoosh. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5uYCWVfuPQ
TED. (2014, August 12). Beware Fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks are Coming. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8
Applerouth, Scott, & Edles, Laura Desfor. (2016.) Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory. SAGE Publications Inc.
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