I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to revisit Naomi Klein’s updated edition of the rightly celebrated, No Logo, to see what take she has on the past decade, particularly in light of the Great Recession that we, in the West are still limping through. I was not disappointed. Nothing in her groundbreaking exposure of the dehumanising effects of global corporations and their obsessively fiendish attention to global branding has been rendered obsolete over the past ten years. Rather, this calculating corporate strategy has become more intense, more refined, more poisonous than ever. What is new however, is the manner in which the US government, taking its lead from corporate America, has itself outsourced so much of its core activity, and to cover its tracks, has produced perhaps the most ubiquitous brand on the planet, brand Obama.

I would imagine most citizens across the planet, secretly or otherwise, hoped that the Obama administration would come to represent something progressive for mankind; progressive in terms of fairer world trade, a less aggressively imperial foreign policy, a greener energy agenda and a more socially equitable domestic policy. No one was expecting a socialist paradise but a left turn away from the Friedman, Reaganite-Thatcherite-Bush neo-liberal economic and foreign policy was a general expectation. Naomi Klein ponders, in her new introduction, on what is branding and what is substance, if anything, in the new Obama run United States. Reflecting on the outgoing Bush administration, Klein paints the following sobering picture;

There are many acts of destruction for which the Bush years are rightly reviled the illegal invasions, the defiant defenses of torture, the tanking of the global economy. But the administration’s most lasting legacy may well be the way it systematically did to the US Government what branding-mad CEOs did to their companies a decade earlier: it hollowed it out, handing over to the private sector many of the most essential functions of government, from protecting borders to responding to disasters to collecting intelligence. This hollowing out was not a side project of the Bush years, it was a central mission, reaching into every field of governance. And though the Bush clan was often ridiculed for its incompetence, the process of auctioning off the state, leaving behind only a shell or a brand was approached with tremendous focus and precision Pxix

Klein then adds a very beguiling quote from Bush’s budget director, Mitch Daniels, who argues: The general idea that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided seems self evident to me. Pxix

I pondered long and hard on these few seemingly innocuous words. As Deng said of the Chinese shift to capitalist methods; black cat, white cat as long as they catch mice. So perhaps US, and now increasingly British government outsourcing is not such a terrible crime after all. As long as the services are competently provided, why should we care who provides them? Of course the whole private outsourcing edifice comes crushing down to the ground as soon as you remind yourself that the prime motive of any private company is one of profit and not one of service provision. In fact the latter is merely a conduit for maximising the former. And, as capitalist economies inevitable move through boom and bust cycles, so the level of private provision becomes ever more compromised. The big question that Klein asks is whether the Obama administration has moved on in any real sense from the Bush philosophy.

Under the Bush presidency Lockheed Martin, Blackwater and Halliburton virtually cleaned up in the post invasion free for all that was Iraq. All these companies the likes of Bush and Rumsfeld had extremely close links to. Government and big business were virtually one and the same. Klein elaborates: By the end of eight years of self immolation under Bush, the state still had all the trappings of a government the impressive buildings, presidential press briefings, policy battles but it no more did the actual work of governing than the employees at Nike’s Beaverton campus actually stitched running shoes. Governing it seemed, was not its core competency. Pxxii

With the new Obama administration coming in on a wave of national and international goodwill, one might reasonably expect a bold package of legislation to at least reverse the worse excesses of the Bush years. The hype of Yes We Can suggested that big changes were afoot. Klein takes a closer look. What she finds is a disturbing if not predictable let down of those early expectations: Bush had used his ranch in Texas, as a backdrop to perform his best impersonation of the Marlboro Man, forever clearing brush, having cookouts and wearing cowboy boots. Obama has gone much further, turning the White House into a kind of never-ending reality show starring the loveable Obama clan.. The White House (became) the crown jewel of the Obama brand, a physical space where the administration can embody the values of transparency, change and diversity that drew so many voters out on election day. Pxxv

Klein then quotes Desiree Rogers, the White House secretary, who boasted to the Wall Street Journal: We have the best brand on earth: the Obama brand. Our possibilities are endless. Pxxv

While stating that it is too soon to issue a verdict on the Obama presidency, Klein does present a damning indictment of the Obama administration to date, arguing that Obama is great at the progressive rhetoric but decidedly poor on delivery. Her most instructive criticism is on the all important question of the big banks of which she curtly states: (Obama) will slam the unacceptable greed of banking executives, even as he hands the reins of the economy to consummate Wall Street insiders Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, who have predictably rewarded the speculators and failed to break up the banks. Pxxvi

Citing the lost opportunities at the G20 meeting in London in April 2009 Klein adds: In short, Obama didn’t just rebrand America, he resuscitated the neoliberal economic project when it was at death’s door. No one but Obama, wrongly perceived as a new FDR, could have pulled it off. Pxxviii

So the all powerful message from Klein in her updated No Logo is still the same; look at the systems and not just the symbols, be it corporations or increasingly, whole governments. And her overall optimistic message for the future direction of human struggle and development has not changed either. It can be summed up in the following few lines: What seems to be emerging organically is not a movement for a single global government but a vision for an increasingly connected international network of very local initiatives, each built on reclaimed public spaces, and, through participatory forms of democracy, made more accountable than either corporate or state institutions. If this movement has an ideology it is democracy, not only at the ballot box but woven into every aspect of our lives. P457

Ten years ago I would have dismissed this vision as overly utopian, borrowing too heavily on anarchism as opposed to the solidity of the socialist state. Now I feel far less inclined to dismiss it, seeing in its grassroots participation a powerful antidote to socialist state bureaucracy and party diktat. The new communication technologies lend themselves well to the international network of local initiatives that Klein refers to. The idea that a village activist somewhere in Africa or a factory union organiser somewhere in Asia might be reading this or similar blogs fills me with a sense, possibly misguided, of growing optimism and for me, No Logo at 10 is still a crucial piece in this rapidly expanding international network.