[lbo-talk] decentralization, Whole Foods style

Liza Featherstone lfeather32 at erols.com
Thu May 29 15:33:21 PDT 2003


A couple years ago I wrote an article on "social responsibility" as a union-busting tool for crunchy companies -- "It's Business, Man!" Dissent fall 1999. It's too long to post here, and the 1999 archives for Dissent magazine's website aren't up, but if anyone is interested I'd be happy to send it to you offlist.

Liza


> From: Kelley <the-squeeze at pulpculture.org>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 18:05:00 -0400
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] decentralization, Whole Foods style
>
> At 04:33 PM 5/29/03 -0500, Shane Taylor wrote:
>
>> One major point of One Market Under God is that, today, old fashioned
>> anti-Communism or Trad Vals aren't required for a populist backlash
>> against unions and for the free market. Whole Foods adopts the socially
>> conscious variety of this. Superficially, it's a quirky, amusing
>> rationale for union busting. It's easy to dismiss as an aberration. But
>> it's effective and will be less funky the more familiar it becomes.
>>
>> -- Shane
>
> Oh, I think it's very familiar and fits right in line with the glories
> gushing from the pages Tom Peter's been penning since his fist-pounding,
> sweat-dripping revolutionary bizgasms in _In Search of Excellence_.
>
> I honestly don't see how anyone is surprised. Not that you seem so, Shane.
> But I think I'm responding to the "aberration" above. I find it surprising
> that anyone would think this is an aberration. For one thing, we've
> frequently discussed hostilities between Greens and labor on the list. It
> was worthy enough to note that the lesbians were marching with the UAW in
> Seattle and think, Wow, something might be happening here. And the fact is,
> consciousness is shaped by your relation to the means of production, is it
> not? It's not determined by them, no, but that owners of the largest
> natural food store in the nation are opposed to unions is not at all
> surprising. Nor is it especially surprising that Whole Foods thinks they
> can get away with it. It's not like they didn't do any market research on
> the issue before hand, I'm sure. I'm confident that what the number
> crunchers told them was that there just wasn't enough consumers to give a
> rat's ass enough to risk losing their yuppie fucking health shopping
> experience.
>
> feh.
>
> aside from which, and thanks to brian for encouraging a visit to the site,
> if you click around what seems especially important to the fuckers that
> wrote that site is that they're lobbying congress or some such. I mean,
> it's really all becoming about get a leg up in the market by using
> government to pass favorable legislation. It's about self-aggrandizing
> power in the name of their passion and about making sure it's profitable.
>
> triple feh.
>
> i'm fehing at whole foods, though, not you shane. :)
>
> kelley
>
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