Book review

Citation

Rankin, A. (2002), "Book review", European Business Review, Vol. 14 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2002.05414eab.005

Book review

Marketing the Revolution: The New Anti-Capitalism and the Attack Upon Corporate Brands

Michael MosbacherSocial Affairs UnitLondon2002ISBN 0 907631 95 9

This new monograph from Digby Anderson's Social Affairs Unit is a trenchant analysis of the "anti-globalisation" movement. This is reflected in the now predictable May Day demonstrations, the mantra-like slogans and the cult status, within the "movement", of individuals like Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and George Monbiot. Ironically, like the protesters, Mosbacher lumps these writers together somewhat indiscriminately. Chomsky is a thinker and writer of great power, who often assumes positions unpopular with the politically correct (such as universal freedom of speech). Klein, at her best moments, breaks out of her ideological box to offer shrewd insight and political comment. Monbiot's writing, by contrast, consists in the main of a "PC" fundamentalism, described by fellow left-winger David Aaronovitch (quoted by Mosbacher) as "a Socialist Sunday School notion of how capitalism works … too simple, even for Harry Potter".

Despite this unfortunate, but probably inevitable, lumping together, Mosbacher provides an intellectually rigorous and well-researched study of the new political culture of protest. He is the right man for the job, too, as a specialist in British Communism during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mosbacher's thesis is two-pronged. First, he argues that the radical left has lost the economic argument but retained its emotional fervour. The result is a continuing "anti-system" fanaticism without a corresponding commitment to an alternative system. In the absence of a coherent socialist (or anarchist) model, much of the protest is as much psychological as political, and finds expression in nihilism, violence and grossly simplified rhetoric. From the old left, however, there persists a dualistic view of human society, a Manichean polarisation of light and darkness, exploiters and exploited, "racists" and "anti-racists", etc. Much of the "movement' is directed towards maintaining this dualism, and with it the primitive urge to avenge and punish.

Mosbacher's second argument is that the targets of protest are not necessarily the "bad guys", but the more "ethical" capitalists – and green campaigners who seek compromise. As examples, he cites the London Greenpeace attacks on the Body Shop and George Monbiot's petulant critique of Jonothon Porritt, Director of the pro-business Forum for the Future and former Green Party éminence vert. Cleverly, Mosbacher points out thatNaomi Klein's iconic book No Logo, which attacks the power of brand names, was marketed after the fashion of a brand product. Citing many statistics, Mosbacher shows that many "anti-capitalist" campaigns are sponsored by the very transnational corporations that the protesters condemn and sometimes physically attack: an exhibition of movement art – "Protest and survive" at London's Whitechapel Gallery – was sponsored by Michael Bloomberg.

This is a concise, tightly argued monograph that raises interesting questions. An unabashed pro-capitalist, Mosbacher is surprisingly inclined to accept on trust the monolithic definition of capitalism offered by most of the protesters. He does not draw the crucial distinction between a capitalism that is local or national in scope, and that which is actively engaged in breaking cultural boundaries. Nor does he distinguish between capitalism as practice, which "works" because it is empirical and piecemeal, and capitalism as ideology, or more accurately the doctrine of neo-liberalism. The latter, described by capitalist George Soros as market fundamentalism, has many of the defects of Marxist theory. It becomes a dogma because (like Marxism) it places economics before all other areas of human activity, allowing for little if any local or individual variation.

Reading this interesting pamphlet, two passages stand out. The first is a quotation from Naomi Klein, the second from Mosbacher himself. Both refer to the rise of political correctness, or rather capitalism's ability to co-opt "progressive" social issues – issues which in the absence of economic theory, the left holds dear:

We have heard the refrain over and over again from Nike, Reebok, The Body Shop, Starbucks, Levis and The Gap: "Why are you picking on us? We're the good ones!" The answer is simple. They are singled out because the politics they have associated themselves with, which have made them rich – feminism, ecology, inner city empowerment – were not just random pieces of effective ad copy that their brand managers found lying around. They are complex, essential social ideas, for which many people have spent lifetimes fighting. That's what lends righteousness to the rage of activists campaigning against what they see as cynical distortions of those ideas (Klein).

The 1960s critics of capitalism believed that by challenging racism, traditional gender roles, and conventional sexual behaviour, they were somehow challenging capitalism itself. Imagine the shock of the activists when they saw advertising that celebrated black empowerment, put powerful and independent women on a pedestal, and portrayed homosexuality as chic (Mosbacher).

Here we are left with the impression of two highly intelligent people inching towards the same conclusion, but pulling back because their respective ideologies make it unpalatable. That conclusion is that the relationship between neo-liberalism and "PC" is symbiotic. They share a radical hostility to rootedness and sense of place, to family and community, to any values that challenge their view of the human being as an interchangeable economic unit. Neo-liberalism and political correctness share the same obsession with "progress", the same crudely reductionist view of human behaviour, the same impetus towards constant change or "permanent revolution". This is why the language of multi-national brands and the slogans of left-wing demonstrators echo each other in their destructive banality.

Marketing the Revolution is available from the Social Affairs Unit, Morley House, Regent Street, London W1B 3BB, e-mail: www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk

Aidan Rankin