Despite the recent war on wokeness, woke capitalism is still with us and it is asking us to remain alert – to remain watchful about capitalism, and to keep an eye on its overpaid and private-jet flying good-doing elites who are trying tell sell us capitalism as the most wonderful idea ever – the most efficient system to distribute goods and services.
The idea of being woke or wokeness transfers the African-American term woke meaning “to be alert” about racism and racial prejudice – to capitalism. Yet, woke capitalism is a particular form of capitalism. To smokescreen the pathologies of capitalism, woke capitalism sets up the hallucination that there is something like corporate morality – a contradictory term or tautology. Yet, woke capitalism has the power to sabotage democracy.
The apostles of woke capitalism now apply woke to business corporations that publicly support seemingly socially progressive causes that, in turn, always support – but never challenge – capitalism. Hence, the ideology of woke capitalism depicts corporations – especially multinationals – that align themselves with “some” social movements as “good corporations”. It uses that alignment to spread pro-business publicity and corporate advertising.
In reality, these mega-corporations and their corporate PR are engaging in woke washing – a marketing and public relations exercise whereby companies hope that by being associated with progressive political causes, they will gain customer support and, ultimately – commercial gain, the weasel word for corporate profits.
This goes to the core of what woke capitalism is. It is a seemingly progressive version of capitalism that uses corporate PR – as well as ideologies like corporate social responsibility (CSR), business ethics, and corporate citizenship – to frame corporations in a positive light.
In other words, woke capitalism and woke corporations are about corporate public relation or corporate propaganda. The goal is to make corporations and corporate capitalism acceptable to us. German philosophers Adorno and Horkheimer called this mass deception. It is what writer Enzensberger called the Consciousness Industry using what Herman and Chomsky diagnosed as propaganda. The ultimate destination of all this is Media Capitalism.
Meanwhile, conservatives fear that corporate executives are actually serious about their wokeness. Even worse, they worry that CEOs might pursue woke causes at the expense of what should be the true purpose of their business which are making profits, short-changing workers, and destroying the environment while making all this look good.
Of course, on all of this, the ultimate quote on corporate social responsibility remains Milton Friedman’s 1970’s classic that states, the social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits. And – of course the mastermind of neoliberal ideology continued with, to make as much money as possible. Occasionally, even staunch neoliberalists can speak the truth. To camouflage the truth, almost any corporate voice will speak a sound bite-sized version of morality.
Perhaps the truth behind the corporate use of business ethics, corporate social responsibility, etc. and woke capitalism was once expressed by none other than Marx (1867). Marx was indeed hitting the nail right on the head in Das Kapital, when stating, a certain
- 10%, will ensure its employment anywhere;
- 20%, certain will produce eagerness;
- 50%, positive audacity;
- 100%, will make it ready to trample on all human laws;
- 300% and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave trade have amply proved all that is here stated.
This has not changed since the days of Karl Marx. What has changed under woke capitalism, however, is that the real danger is not that woke capitalism will weaken the capitalist system. Rather, it will further cement the concentration of political power among a corporate elite. Yet, woke capitalism will also assist the corporate elite in pretending that the corporate elite is perceived as a good-doing elite.
One should be very clear about woke capitalism. In the name of democracy and humanity – and for the benefit of the many – woke capitalism must be resisted. There are plenty of examples on how woke capitalism works. One most instructive example comes from Australia’s 2020 bushfire.
During that, mining magnate and $18bn-man ($18.000.000.000) Andrew Twiggy Forrest promised a donation of A$70 million (70.000.000) to bushfire relief. Yet of the A$70 million, $10 million went directly to bushfire victims, and the same amount was given to fund an army of helpers.
The remaining $50 million went to research in so-called fire mitigation to be conducted by his very own Minderoo Foundation. The entire setup raised questions about whether the findings would need to align with their boss’ interests. In other words, Twiggy spent $20m – or one-nine-hundredth – 1/900th – of his wealth – on bushfire relief. This is woke capitalism.
It is not at all surprising to see that woke capitalism is the dominant motif at Davos – the private-jet-setting meeting of the global do-good-elites. Meanwhile, corporations are playing a PR trick on the public by appearing progressive while gaining considerably from economic policies, especially corporate tax cuts and neoliberal deregulation – read: pro-business regulation.
Worse, corporations even come up with the ultimate Orwellian term: performative wokeness which basically means manipulating the political system in their own favor. Evil heretics know this as corporate lobbying – a $3.5bn global industry that produces nothing except corporate PR.
At the same time, what is sold as corporate social responsibility is designed to forestall giving the government cause to intervene into corporations. It weakens state regulations while giving corporations more power. The PR trick of woke capitalism is also useful so that when it comes to paying tax, there is one rule for the super-rich and big companies and another for ordinary people.
Beyond all this, woke capitalism is primarily about corporate power: it involves breaking the chain that has long been connected to liberal democracy and capitalism, so that corporations can continue on the path of global domination in the political, as well as the economic realm.
In other words, woke capitalism is dressed in progressive sheep’s clothing while remaining wedded to long-term corporate interests, as well as capitalism. Yet, woke capitalism and corporate social responsibility are not the same. What makes woke capitalism different from the ideology of corporate social responsibility and business ethics is that it is about four things:
- legitimizing capitalism and the domination of managers, corporate apparatchiks, CEO, etc.;
- it is about preventing emancipation and the revolt of workers;
- it is about the prevention of regulation with raising corporate taxes potentially one of the worst for capitalism; and finally,
- woke capitalism is also about preventing any direct takeover of democracy.
Overall, woke capitalism remains a rather defensive move. It is designed to preserve – if not enhance – a status quo where corporations hold an increasing share of political power. Furthermore, corporate philanthropy – another ideology highly supportive of capitalism and funding the toolbox of works councils – remains a truly fantastic way to divert attention away from capitalism’s systemic pathologies – environmental vandalism, global poverty, and rising inequalities. Simultaneously, it casts CEOs and billionaires as the good guys.
Yet, we might like to remember that paying tax is the main way that corporations can contribute to society. Paying tax is the corporate social responsibility of corporations. However, that is exactly what corporations do not want to do. Hence, they fancy ideologies like woke capitalism, corporate social responsibility, business ethics, corporate citizenship, and philanthropy etc.
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Corporation is a prime example. In the decade to 2019, Amazon paid a microscopic $3.4bn in tax. Yet, it earned revenue of $960bn. This is a rather laughable tax rate of 12.7% compared with the standard corporate tax in the US of 35%. Even better, in 2018, Amazon paid no corporate tax in the US whatsoever despite earning profits of $11bn. Simultaneously, profits in 2019 were US$13bn but the effective tax rate was just 1.2%.
Meanwhile, warehouse workers in Britain were urinating in bottles rather than going to the toilet, so that they did not miss their performance targets or were not disciplined for being idle. Amazon’s horrendous work conditions, its stratospheric profits, and despotic management regimes signify the contradictions of woke capitalism.
On the one hand, corporations like Amazon pretend to support social and political causes that many would see as progressive like climate change, poverty alleviation, education, same-sex marriage, human rights, etc. On the other hand, Amazon – like many business organizations – displays the usual corporate pathology, the normal capitalist greed, inhumanity and dehumanization, as well as exploitation.
Yet, one of the reasons for this is – not to make the world a better place as the apostles of woke capitalism frequently announce so happily – but to preserve and if possible, even enhance the status quo that has made them extremely rich. By shifting taxes onto philanthropy, lobbying governments for pro-business regulation, woke capitalist and its corporate apparatchiks in companies and corporations seem to shift democracy – slowly but steadily – towards plutocracy: a government by the rich.
Those who argue that the fundamental tenet of woke capitalism is commercial self-interest and that this is not at all incompatible with corporate activism are correct. Yet, one of the problems of woke capitalism is that big business bosses have assigned itself the right to represent people even though we – the people – have not chosen or elected them as our political and democratic representatives.
Instead, their corporations are localizations of extreme anti-democracy: no manager is elected. Worse, this political self-appointment is a central feature of woke capitalism today. In the end, woke capitalism remains downright anti-democratic.
Like traditional capitalism’s advent since about two centuries ago, woke capitalism too, lives on the self-assigned assumption that those who own capital have the right to control labor – and this means: us! This is the so-called right to manage, also known as managerial prerogative.
Beyond that, one can argue that corporate activism is commercial as much as it is political – it is a marketing strategy geared at the management of corporate values and identity, as well as reputation building.
Although, one might add that this is not really the task of marketing. The task of marketing is to sell products. It is the task of corporate public relation or corporate propaganda. While it might not be marketing’s but a corporate PR’s task, the outcome is the same: make the global pathologies of capitalism – including woke capitalism – look good, normal, neutral, and acceptable. If done right, corporate PR can achieve the unachievable, namely that we see this as acceptable:
In 1913, the top 1 per cent of US income earners took home 18.6 per cent of the country’s earnings, while the bottom 50 per cent acquired a total of only 15.4 per cent. Fast forward to 2019 and the situation has worsened: the top 1 per cent claim 20.5 per cent while the bottom half gets just 12.7 per cent.
In the end, we might need to get woke to woke capitalism. Woke capitalism is a public relations stunt that makes no difference whatsoever to the corporate self-interest of profit maximization. After all, with woke capitalism, corporations have essentially realized that they have needed to change how they go about pursuing the financial self-interest of their shareholders. If anything, woke capitalism is yet another ideological attempt to sell capitalism as a really nice thing to us.
Unlike 19th century’s robber barons, 21st century capitalists depend on the media to a much more significant degree than the robber barons ever did at their time. Today, capitalism can no longer be thought of without the media. We have entered the age of media capitalism. Woke capitalism is all but another signifier of this development.
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