Power-Point© Change

 “Winners Take All – The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas, 2020

This book reveals another dirty secret of U.S. capital.  The corporations and their handmaids now have to pretend to be ‘for’ some social good in order to sell products or ideas or even their whole system.  It actually reflects the present ideological bankruptcy and economic stagnation of capital.  Prior to this, they pretended the ‘market’ alone would suffice.  Now they know otherwise.

Pretty soon if you buy a Goodyear tire, they will promise to plant a rubber tree that will mature in 30 years.  For a Hardees massive burger, they will feed a starving child with a tiny version of their toxic sandwich.  Cinnabon will donate to the juvenile diabetes association.  A Wall Street exchange will tell us if we buy a penny stock, they’ll give a homeless shelter a penny.  MSNBC promises that if you watch and register, they’ll hire a black janitor.  BP will donate money to a pelican sanctuary group after a fill-up.  Newport cigarettes will send money to the American Cancer Institute. Silicon Valley will encourage you to use your car as a taxi, ‘freeing’ you at $3.43 an hour.  Oh wait, Uber already does that.  It is all called ‘social entrepreneurship.’ 

Note how many products now have some social theme attached to their purchase, like they are not profit-making outfits but charities pretending to ‘save the world.’  The work of ‘change’ has become commodified and privatized as a new frontier of commerce nationally and internationally.  It has become part of what Baran and Sweezy called 'the sales effort.'  This is what this book focuses on.  The key idea is from the novel The Leopard:  “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

Giradharadas is not an anti-capitalist.  This is a fellow who calls imperialism ‘globalism,’ who calls class war ‘civil war,’ who confuses the left with the Democrats. He believes that government and vague politics is the solution, not private, anti-democratic attempts by elites.  He does note the added alienation when one frictionless ‘click’ on a computer magically brings a product to your door, hiding all human labor.  His book is required reading for CEOs, as one of the blurbs says.  Like others, he also appeals to elites.   

Giradharadas goes inside to dissect bourgeois attempts at ‘richsplaining’ imperialism, job losses and trickle-down change and the subsequent market solutions.  He takes the ‘win-win’ feel-good micro-solutions of corporations and their spokesmen and shows how they attempt to conceal their own role in inequality, environmental degradation, toxicity and labor exploitation with a veneer of jargon, TED talks, money and ‘intellectual’ adulation.  Some of the jargon:  corporate social responsibility, change agents, sharing economy, impact investing, green bonds, social enterprise, social value investing, change management, sustainable finance, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurs.  If you hear any of this in a capitalist context, you know the scam is on.  Run!

Giradharadas profiles various denizens of what he calls “Market World.” A guilty upper middle class girl interested in social change ends up at McKinsey & Co. as a typical corporate consultant.  An anti-sexist professor finds herself advocating a ‘power pose’ at TED talks as the solution to female intimidation.  A black entrepreneur creates a fantasy football league with some profits going to charities in Africa.  A sensitive rich techie builds a subscription app that saves paltry sums so low-paid workers don’t get caught short.  A former musicologist facilitates deals with mining companies in Mongolia and now works for Soros’ neo-liberal foundation as a way to ‘change the world.’  A poor black child from Louisiana, now head of the Ford Foundation investment program, wrestles with capitalist inequality and ends up on the board of Pepsico.  Giradharadas' interviews humanize these 'change-makers', making them more sympathetic, which is perhaps an intended sub-texual consequence. 

Giradharadas describes some fake billionaire ‘rebels’ and thought-leaders.  Libertarian tech titans and venture capitalists on elite cruises who pontificate against ‘the system,’ decrying unions, government laws and praising Uber.  The three steps of these ‘thought talks’ are:  1. focus on victims, not perpetrators.  2. personalize the political. 3. have a bite-size solution. And please, no conflict!  He dissects the McKinsey protocol of how an ignorant consultant can suss any problem in easy steps, based on increased productivity, better supply chains and technology, with smart procurement and purchasing.   Creeps like David Brooks, Elon Musk, Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Pinker, Niall Ferguson and Neil deGrasse Tyson appear at ‘think lite’ conferences like Aspen Ideas, South by Southwest, and Summit At Sea for very large speaking fees.  ‘Non-profit’ foundations launder capitalist exploitation into social control through charities they can live with.  Charity / business foundations like the secretive Clinton Global Initiative unite profit and ‘doing good,’ becoming modern Andrew Carnegies.

Even if they are not socialists, more and more people see that the institutions and power centers of this country are laughable and transparently bogus.  This book exposes in detail the corporate ‘social change’ sector from the inside, ending with an interview with Bill Clinton. The possibility here is that Giridharadas, because he is not an anti-capitalist but a left liberal, is becoming one of those ‘thought leaders’ he makes so much fun of, pulling his punches so that the ruling class will listen to him.  After all, he’s now a commentator on MSNBC, used to pundit at the Aspen Institute and worked for McKinsey.  This book got positive quotes from the NYT, Washington Post, the Ford Foundation, NPR, the Financial Times and of all people, Bill Gates. His own book will ultimately hang him.   

P.S. – The funnest question of all:  Who has more privilege – Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Carlos Slim, a black farm laborer in the Mississippi Delta, a Mexican farm worker in the Rio Grande valley or an old white miner living in a trailer up a holler in West Virginia?  Now expand that idea to the class system in the U.S. as a whole and its various components.  Privilege – it’s not always what you’re told.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box upper left:  “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Again,” “American Exceptionalism and American Innocence,” “McMindfulness,” “Giants – the Global Power Elite,” “The Happiness Industry.” 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

We’re open 1-5 PM due to CoVid. Due to crime, knock if the door is locked.

Red Frog

February 2, 2021