Or in 1848. But I do think Klein is trying to get at the specificities of turn-of-the-21st-century neoliberalism and perhaps even more the particularities of resistance to it:
`And while the corporations are busy doing what they think is important - branding a way of life, putting the squeeze on independent shopkeepers, and the like - someone, somewhere, has to make the stuff. This may be a time of "degraded production in the age of the superbrand", as Klein puts it, but corporations do tend to need a product somewhere along the line. The "death of manufacturing" is only a western phenomenon - as we're consuming more products than ever, someone must be making them. But it's difficult to find out who. As Klein says, "the shift in attitude toward production is so profound that, where a previous era of consumer goods corporations displayed their logos on the facades of their factories, many of today's brand-based multinationals maintain that the location of their production operations is a 'trade secret', to be guarded at all costs." Very often, it seems, they are produced under terrible conditions in free-trade zones in Indonesia, China, Mexico, Vietnam, the Philippines and elsewhere.
`The sweatshops Klein visited in Cavite, the largest free-trade zone in the Philippines, have rules against talking and smiling. There is forced overtime, but no job security - it's "no work, no pay" when the orders don't come in. Toilets are padlocked except during two 15-minute breaks per day - seamstresses sewing clothes for western high-street chains told Klein that they have to urinate in plastic bags under their machines. Women like Carmelita Alonzo, who sewed clothes for the Gap and Liz Claiborne, had a two-hour commute home, and died after being denied time off for pneumonia, a common illness in these factories. As Klein says, people are now demanding to know why, if the big brands have so much power and influence over price and marketing, they do not also have the power to demand and enforce ethical labour standards from such suppliers...'
On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Carrol Cox wrote:
> ... I would guess that if one looked hard enough one would find
> Klein's point being made by someone in the 1890s.