[WS:] Two observations:
1. What is cool and chic aesthetic on this side of the pond, it is drudgery and satanic mills on the other. Of course, many industries are affected, but those built on the "hipster" business model whose main strategy is based on appeals to vanity and status consumption is particularly reprehensible. Fuck their corporate sleekness and cool.
2. These working conditions are, literally, a throwback to the 19th century. What I find surprising, though, is the absence of any serious labor action in China and other countries comparable to those in the turn of the century Europe. No unions, no direct action, no threat of a socialist revolution. This, btw, shows the poverty of the class-centered analysis of social behavior, that analysis would predict the opposite - massive labor organizing and looming revolution. The fact that none of this seems to be happening indicates that something else than the class as defined by the relations to the means of production is the driving force of social behavior in China and elsewhere.
-- Wojtek http://wsokol.blogspot.com/