One of my favorite bloggers these days is the pseudonymous Yves Smith, who spent a quarter of a century working in high finance but now refers to “banksters” with nothing but contempt on her blog, naked capitalism. Like many bloggers, Smith has a “links” post at the end of each day with some stuff she didn’t get to in other posts. Following a link the other day, I found this account of the evils done by Monsanto, the biochem company.
Now, I don’t know anything about genetically modified crops, so I’m going to set that aside. What interested me particularly was the story within the article of Kirk Azevedo, a former Monsanto employee who claims he went to work for the company because he believed the claims of Monsanto’s CEO that GM plants would solve the problems of global hunger and environmental degradation. As he discovered that the company was engaging in bad practiced such as feeding test crops containing potentially unsafe proteins to cattle (which then entered the human food chain), “Azevedo realized he was working for ‘just another profit-oriented company,’ and all the glowing words about helping the planet were just a front.”
As we say on the internet,
It’s my understanding that a publicly held company has a legal duty to its shareholders not to run itself as a charity for “helping the planet” but as a profit-generating enterprise. And although it’s tempting to be taken in by a corporation’s image machine and allow yourself to believe it’s really trying to save the world, that’s ultimately a naive and dangerous fantasy. “Beyond Petroleum,” anyone?
All this by way of introducing some Slavoj Žižek — in cartoon form (watch it at a bigger size if you can; the animation is great):
P.S. And since the subject of billionaire charity is in the news today, I’d also point you to Pablo Eisenberg’s comments towards the end of this article about the “giving pledge”.
And yet again, I find nothing that Slavoj says inaccurate. However, I think that setting his lecture to animation is somewhat distracting — I found my brain slipping into a comfortably entertained state a couple of times when what the big Z is saying should make one feel the opposite.
I do feel that this particular subject is extremely taboo among many of my friends and acquaintances — we all just want to feel good for a change, and hope that there can be a market solution to the world’s problems, one in which we can all still have organic farmer’s markets and Facebook accounts with which to brag about our excursions to said markets. I find that discussing this topic, more than any other, raises the ire of hip, young liberals. People often respond as if I’m shining an extremely bright light in their eyes, and trying to wake them from a really wonderful dream.
What I’m saying is that socially (at least in the circles I travel in) this is a tough one, especially at cocktail parties.
Yes, Scotty, very true. And yet, in some famous words, “What is to be done?” The sort of feel-good cultural capitalism (the Starbucks ethics) that Zizek describes, while of course a very real problem, does seem to me to be a marginal improvement on straight-ahead, no-holds-barred f*ck-em-all capitalism, and not just in its efficiency.
Howsomever, it’s probably obvious and I’m sure that many people have pointed it out, the Starbucks ethic puts a happy we-are-the-world face on the notion of trickle-down economics, meanwhile putting money-making in hyperdrive. No matter how much more those bean growers are making by selling to Starbucks, the glowing sense of good will that Starbucks customers feel when they buy their coffee lights the spark that stokes the fire that runs the engine that makes the money of which the corporation and its investors keep much, much more.
Of course, buying a cup of Starbucks coffee (or one of those delicious doughnuts they purvey) does not offer a real way out of the incredible inequities that global capitalism creates and exploits, but neither does Zizek, it seems. This is not a fault of Zizek, however.
I love his descriptions of our current predicament (and actually I found the illustrations both entertaining and helpful), but he also seems very aware that, just as one can’t think oneself outside of thought (there is no outside to philosophy) one can’t produce and consume one’s way outside of production and consumption. This is why he does not and cannot offer a solid plan to change the cultural capitalism he describes.
An analogy comes to mind. A student of mine recently wrote an essay in class about how grateful he was to a friend of his whom he met while they were both homeless and prostituting on the streets of Hollywood. (No lie.) He was incredibly grateful to her because she showed him how to save his money up to buy an ad in one of the sex-trade papers so that he could make more money than he had been when he was turning tricks on the street. He was able to save up more money and get his own apartment, which just may have saved his life.
Now, everyone’s aware that prostituting is not a positive way to make a living, but if you’re going to be prostituting, having shelter and food is certainly better than not. Perhaps in this equation the bean growers and other recipients of producers’ largesse are still being exploited, like prostitutes, but they just might have a more secure place to live, which is something of an improvement, yes?
I realize that I sound like a Starbucks apologist here, which is not an attractive position for me and not how I like to think of myself, but, well, there it is.
Vastly entertaining/immensely discouraging. I guess I should read more Zizek. I’m curious if there’s a book of interviews, as I’ve found certain people like Chomsky to be a lot more accessible to non-theory-head me by means of that sort of thing than they are in monographs.
As if on cue…
This is completely riveting–both artistically and conceptually. Tim’s example of the prostitute and how his life is improved is such a difficult argument; it’s hard to see past the immediately practical (as when my students argue that sweatshop workers in Nicaragua should be thankful for that nickel a day they wouldn’t otherwise be earning if Nike weren’t paying them). Zizek would disagree with you, obvs.
Tim also says, “I love his descriptions of our current predicament (and actually I found the illustrations both entertaining and helpful), but he also seems very aware that, just as one can’t think oneself outside of thought (there is no outside to philosophy) one can’t produce and consume one’s way outside of production and consumption.” How Zizek puts it (in that real estate section) is something like it’s unethical to use private property to address the problems caused by private property–or, the master’s tools can never dismantle the master’s house? But, one might ask, what other tools do we have?
5: See the P.S.
And yeah, the whole topic is immensely complicated and confusing.
really cool! i like it better than william ketterigde.
I wonder if George Lucas could be persuaded to unmake half his movies instead of giving away half his wealth?
LP: you didn’t need to take your comment down! Your criticism is a good one, and difficult to consider and refute.
Friedrich Engels, when he was Marx’s intellectual partner and benefactor, was a wealthy man whose family owned manufacturing facilities (presumably the kind that he and Marx hoped would crate a proletariat, class consciousness). Does this mean that his critiques of 19th century capitalism were any less valid? I don’t think so.
As for me and my part in our culture, I’ve been filled with plenty of self-loathing from time to time. I find the drive to just drop out is usually quelled by my own social contracts (mostly with Swells), but maybe that’s just an excuse for me to enjoy the wonderfully blinding light of middle class comfort.
Anyway…Much LOVE.
Yes, middle class comfort is indeed a pleasingly blinding light, one I feel lucky to bask in. The vast, apparently unsolvable inequities between those who get to enjoy it and the billions who don’t is one of the reasons I ended up rejecting the traditional notion of an all-powerful god with his fatherly hand in everything. It all just seemed too cruel and random.
LOVE you too.