The Corporation
In an organizational communications class I took last semester, we watched several segments of the documentary entitled The Corporation. This film opened up my eyes to what really goes on in the production of goods and what corporations really can and do get away with. They are greedy and will do anything to make a profit from exploitation to performing illegal actions. It really is disgusting how corporations can be instruments of domination wherever they chose to locate themselves and their production plants.
In chapter two of The Empire of Mind, Dr. Strangelove mentions that corporations are very good at evading the law. However there is much more to corporations and when I heard about what they and get away with I couldn’t believe that we as consumers allow them to do it.
For example Wal Mart treats it suppliers very poorly and harshly. Suppliers all want their products in Wal Mart because of their customer base and Wal Mart fully takes advantage of this in a despicable manner that has a very serious effect on the industry. In order for Wal Mart to offer their customers lower prices and still make a profit they need to buy it at a lower price and therefore it needs to be produced for cheaper. They drove their suppliers to move their production plants overseas where the labor is cheaper resulting in closed plants and lots jobs in both Canada and the United States.
It is very difficult to blame the corporations for these developments as they are based on the ideology of capitalism. It is easy however to blame consumers for allowing this type of domination. We flock to Wal Mart for their low prices even after all of the horrible things they have done have been exposed. They can only give us these low prices because they bully their suppliers who then exploit the labor force of a poor country. I for one have shopped at Wal Mart in the past, but after watching The Corporation and looking in to them on the Internet, I don’t think I will every shop there again.
Commodification – How Far Can We Go
Commodification is a major theme throughout The Empire of Mind and in the world that surrounds us. It is a process that is continuously occurring and affecting the world around us.
According to Karl Marx, commodification, also known as commoditization, is the transformation of goods and services into a commodity, which is any good or service that is produced through the use of human labour and made accessible for public sale on the market.
Douglas Rushkoff states that “commodification refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-market areas, and to the treatment of things as if they were a tradable commodity”. This involves the transformation, packaging and marketing of something that never before had an economic value meaning that there is now a profit being made where there never was before. This process has become very common for items that one would have never thought could be sold and bought, such as water by selling it in bottles and education as the cost of university is outrageous.
A major question is why do we allow this process to occur and why do we support it through the purchase of these unnecessary commodities? For example is it not cheaper to drink the regular tap water than to buy bottled water? Of course it is, but the value attached to the bottled water is what makes us buy it. It is handy to have the bottle to carry around making the water transportable and it tells others that we are healthier because bottled water is perceived as so. They attach meaning and value to the commodity, and this is why we buy it.
Commodification is linked in many ways to globalization as products are becoming available on a global market meaning that we can buy a Japanese product in Canada and vice versa, but can place our own meaning and value on it. However, both commodification and globalization are related to capitalism, as under capitalism everything becomes a commodity that can be sold around the world through globalization. Commodification, globalization and capitalism have one final goal – making a profit at all costs.
Capitalism and The Wedding
Capitalism is a very tricky thing. It has many positive aspects as well as many negative ones and in my mind it is not clear which ones outweigh the other. It is true that capitalism does push people to work harder and to create more, however it also teaches and enforces the concept that consumption is a way of life and as a society we buy into that.
Dr. Strangelove states that capitalism is associated with the production of goods, but that it also produces the desire within people to consume. This is a very difficult concept to wrap your mind around as it is saying that people consume because capitalism requires and encourages them to without them even knowing that this manipulation is taking place. People believe they have freewill and are not affected by advertisements or media, but their drive to consume is created by the market itself.
Everyone has the desire for more. No one is ever satisfied with what they have and could always have more clothes, more space or more vacations. Desire is a natural human trait that capitalism recognized and has become highly skilled at using it to manage the patterns of consumer behaviour. Capitalism does so by attaching meaning and value to every product developed for consumption and this is achieved through advertisements. For example the ads for a men’s product that feature beautiful women are trying to portray that this is a manly product and if men buy it women like the one in the ad will desire this man. Consumers desire and buy things because of the meanings associated to the product.
It is crazy to think that the sacred act of marriage and the purchase of a wedding ring has been transformed into an economically shaped bahaviour. The fact that a diamond ring has become a necessity in the act of marriage to demonstrate the grooms love and that he makes money and participates in the marketplace is ridiculous as marriage is about love. Having said that, I cannot imagine my own wedding without a diamond ring, therefore I know that I personally have been influenced by the ideologies of capitalism!
