Charlie Bertsch takes a curious look at Jobs' politics in today's Souciant. According to Bertsch:
"As satisfying as it might be to dismiss Jobs as just another overpaid, self-aggrandizing capitalist, however, the stereotypes being circulated in the Occupy Wall Street campaign don’t fit him very well. He may have been a perfectionist who was overly hard on underlings. He may have been oblivious to the suffering inflicted on the people building Apple products. But he was never the Old Boys’ Club sort of CEO, golfing his way to a bigger severance package.
In other words, though Jobs wasn’t ever a worker in the Marxist sense, he certainly worked the company’s products hard. Just as significantly, he always advocated that the idea of a particular piece of technology — and the narratives into which it could be inserted — were as important as the technology itself. That achievement alone would be enough to confirm his reputation as a masterful proponent of innovation. Combine it with his special gift for making consumers believe that they were buying him along with Apple products and you end up with a figure who should inspire all of us to “think different” about the nexus of labor, technology and identity."
To read the rest of the article: http://souciant.com/2011/10/perfect-pitch/
Best, Joel
On Oct 7, 2011, at 3:28 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Good piece. However, the FT article in question identifies Mr. Cook,
> not Mr. Jobs with adding Asian sweatshops to Apple's corporate
> structure. I wonder how much "charismatic leaders" like Jobs are
> involved in running companies they "lead." I suspect that in many
> cases they are just PR figureheads that give their companies a "human
> face" whereas the everyday business is run by unsavory grey eminences:
> beancounters and wage slave drivers.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Angelus Novus
> <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> "None of the eulogies for Steve Jobs are likely to have much to say about the people who made his fortune writes Liam Mac Uaid. Apple has pioneered an aggressive anti-union strategy both in the Chinese factories that manufacture its gadgets and the Apple stores that sell them. The company’s story is more one of hyper-exploitation than affable geekery.
>>
>> "An article in the Financial Times (FT) lifted the lid on just how Steve Jobs’ “readiness to humiliate and embarrass others” keeps Silicon Valley psychologists busy restoring the mental health of his former employees; how he has created a company which drives hyper-exploited workers in Chinese factories to suicide and grinds profits out of the university graduates who work in his shops “counting their blessings to have a job”.
>>
>> "Just because Jobs and his company make the cutting edge technological status symbols of the 21st century there is no reason they can’t resemble the mill owners of 19th century Manchester."
>>
>> Full article: http://socialistresistance.org/2457/apples-rotten-core
>>
>>
>>
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Joel Schalit skype: jschalit jschalit at gmail.com