Speaker 1: Welcome to it Could Happen here podcast about things falling
Speaker 1: apart from what you can do about it. My name
Speaker 1: is Christopher Wong, and today I'm gonna be talking about sabotage.
Speaker 1: But this is not the episode on sabotage that you expect.
Speaker 1: I will not be discussing, for example, the destruction of machinery,
Speaker 1: throwing monkey wrenches, slow down strikes, or the myriad of
Speaker 1: other tactics that workers have used since time memorium to
Speaker 1: strike back at their bosses. No, Instead, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be talking about a far more common, an infinitely more
Speaker 1: dangerous form of sabotage, corporate sabotage. Now, the most conficuous
Speaker 1: form of corporate sabotage is the mass destruction of a
Speaker 1: corporation's own products. The fashion company Burberry, for example, destroyed
Speaker 1: three hundred and seventy million dollars of its own product
Speaker 1: in one year alone. Louis Vutton and Chanel also systematically
Speaker 1: destroy their own sold stock every year, joining H and
Speaker 1: M and literally lighting their own sold products on fire
Speaker 1: in order to prevent anyone from using them. Quote business
Speaker 1: insider Richemont, the owner of Cadalier BoNT Blanc, destroyed more
Speaker 1: than four million pounds of watches over a two year
Speaker 1: period after an excess in goods in the Asian markets.
Speaker 1: Nik has also admitted that a New York store slashed
Speaker 1: unsold trainers before throwing them away, and last year an
Speaker 1: Urban Outfitters employee said he was instructed to pour green
Speaker 1: paints on the unsold stock. These, of course, are only
Speaker 1: the stories that have made it into the press, and
Speaker 1: this behavior is by no means limited to high fashion.
Speaker 1: Grocery stores routinely throw away normous quantities of unsold goods,
Speaker 1: and when communities realized they could feed people in need
Speaker 1: by taking the still good products from grocery store dumpstairs,
Speaker 1: the stories began to destroy their food intentionally. But these
Speaker 1: acts of destruction, as callous and horrifically greedy as they are,
Speaker 1: are by no means the extent of corporate sabotage. To
Speaker 1: explain I turned to the work of the economist Thorston Veblen.
Speaker 1: That one is perhaps best known today for the theory
Speaker 1: of conspicuous consumption, but he wrote extensively on corporate sabotage
Speaker 1: in the first part of the Engineers in the Price System,
Speaker 1: a work that is broadly ignored even by his followers.
Speaker 1: Febun wrote a section called on the Nature and Uses
Speaker 1: of Sabotage. From that work, Writers and speakers who dilate
Speaker 1: on the militarious exploits of the nation's businessmen will not
Speaker 1: commonly allude to this voluminous running administration near sabotage, this
Speaker 1: conscientious withdrawal of efficiency that goes into their ordinary day's work.
Speaker 1: We are not used to thinking of the ordinary work
Speaker 1: of a corporation being sabotage. But for Veblen there was
Speaker 1: no other explanation for what he was seeing. In the
Speaker 1: wake of World War One, there was an enormous explosion
Speaker 1: and unemployment, an enormous need on half of the population.
Speaker 1: But even as the unemployed begged to be let in
Speaker 1: to create the products that could build the needs of
Speaker 1: their fellow humans, business owners steadfastly refused to open their factories.
Speaker 1: As Feblin explained, but for reasons of business expediency, it
Speaker 1: is impossible to let these idle plants and idle workmen
Speaker 1: go to work, that is to say, for reasons of
Speaker 1: insufficient profit to the businessmen interested, or in other words,
Speaker 1: for reasons of insufficient income to the vested interests which
Speaker 1: controlled the staple industries and so regulate the output of product.
Speaker 1: Feblen was not alone in observing these are similar conditions.
Speaker 1: John Maynard Keynes, writing during the depression, observed newly precisely
Speaker 1: the same thing. For Canes, the solution simply was to
Speaker 1: have the government step into increased demand. But for Veblen
Speaker 1: dismissed the core of the problem. The real problem was
Speaker 1: at a core of absentee owners had the ability to
Speaker 1: shut down the factories in the first place by simple
Speaker 1: virtue of their ownership, Feblen argued, was simply sabotage, no
Speaker 1: different from the hated strikes of the I w W
Speaker 1: that's so racked and perturbed the capitalist ruling class of
Speaker 1: his time. At least, the workers could argue that they
Speaker 1: were simply fighting for a better share of what they
Speaker 1: had created. Absentee owners, on the other hand, who had
Speaker 1: no actual involvement in the production process whatsoever, simply carried
Speaker 1: out sabotage on an enormous scale in order to secure
Speaker 1: their own returns, and this was true even in times
Speaker 1: they weren't marked by massive depressions in order to make
Speaker 1: payments to capitalists, Feblin argued, who expect a certain rate
Speaker 1: of return on their investment. Corporations must maintain prices at
Speaker 1: such a level that they can meet their returns, and
Speaker 1: the only way they can do this is sabotage. For
Speaker 1: the good of business, it is necessary to curtail production
Speaker 1: of the means of life on pain of unprofitable prices,
Speaker 1: at the same time that the increasing need of all
Speaker 1: sorts of necessities of life must be met in some
Speaker 1: passable fashion on pain of popular disturbances, as it will
Speaker 1: always come of popular distrust when they passed a limit
Speaker 1: of tolerance. The sabotage Feblan argue was simply a product
Speaker 1: of the price system. Any production that was too efficient
Speaker 1: would simply and inevitably be sabotaged for private gain, because
Speaker 1: in order to maintain prices that would maintain the returns
Speaker 1: of investors, it was necessary when sure that production never
Speaker 1: became too efficient to produce too many goods. Feplin used
Speaker 1: as his example the twentieth century post office, but we
Speaker 1: could just as easily point to Trump sabotaging the post
Speaker 1: office in a dual bid to privatize the service by
Speaker 1: causing it to collapse and prevent mail and votes from
Speaker 1: being counted as part of his attempt to win the
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty election. In their book Capitalist Power Condis,
Speaker 1: Samshawan Bickler, and Jonathan Needson take Feplin's argument and expand
Speaker 1: on it, noting that capitalism, far from encouraging productivity at large,
Speaker 1: makes things inefficient on purpose. They used the example of
Speaker 1: public transportation, which is by bay essentially any measure, a
Speaker 1: significantly more efficient way of moving people around the US
Speaker 1: as an example. In the US and the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: a hundred electric rail lines were brought up and destroyed
Speaker 1: by car companies. Those same companies likewise twice destroyed incredibly
Speaker 1: efficient and popular electric cars, once in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: and again in the nineteen eighties because the profit rate
Speaker 1: was lower than that of gas cars. They then set
Speaker 1: out to cause everyone to forget that they had actually
Speaker 1: done this until Elon Musk figured out a way to
Speaker 1: sell electric cars that was profitable, namely by selling himself
Speaker 1: as a brand and not the cars themselves. Now, if
Speaker 1: capitalism was simply destroying its own products in order to
Speaker 1: create Elon Musks, you could argue that the system at
Speaker 1: least produced advancements before it stopped them. But the most
Speaker 1: violent forms of sabotage are reserved for productive systems that
Speaker 1: are simultaneously efficient and outside of capitalist control together. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the best known example of this is the East British
Speaker 1: East India companies the industrialization of the Indian textile industry,
Speaker 1: not to be outmatched by their British forebearers. American settlers
Speaker 1: and their allies in the American military sterminated the buffalo
Speaker 1: herds of the Great Plains in an attempt to starve
Speaker 1: out the indigenous tribes that lived there. In doing so,
Speaker 1: they destroyed it enormously doctive and sustainable agricultural system. They
Speaker 1: did so precisely because the system was efficient, so efficient,
Speaker 1: in fact, that it allowed indigenous tribes to repeatedly defeat
Speaker 1: the American army and defence of their lands. We are
Speaker 1: used to thinking of capitalism as the system of production,
Speaker 1: but here, amidst the fields of buffalo corpses something else
Speaker 1: entirely capitalism appearing in its true form, a system of
Speaker 1: organized sabotage. To fully untangle what this means, let us
Speaker 1: return to Feblin. Feblin divided capitalism into two separate processes.
Speaker 1: The first he called industry industry Feblin argued, has existed
Speaker 1: long before capitalism and will continue to exist long after
Speaker 1: it has a bit Clear and niets and put it
Speaker 1: quote when considered an isolation from emporary business institutions. The
Speaker 1: principal goal of industry it's raison, according to Veblen, is
Speaker 1: the efficient production of quality goods and services for the
Speaker 1: betterment of human life. Industry is an inherently collective undertaking.
Speaker 1: The basis is cooperation and integration, the creation of communal
Speaker 1: knowledge that allows production and scientific advance to occur, and
Speaker 1: coordination and cooperation between people to create things for each other.
Speaker 1: Left to its own devices, industry would simply produce goods
Speaker 1: for people. It has no concern for profitability, rates of returns,
Speaker 1: or capitalization. Unfortunately, capitalism is defined by private ownership. This
Speaker 1: is what Veblen calls business. Business is a system of
Speaker 1: power that extracts wealth from industry by means of sabotage
Speaker 1: production to serve human need. The basis of industry is
Speaker 1: useless to business unless it can be turned into a
Speaker 1: revenue stream. It does this by taking control of industry
Speaker 1: and its products and the restricting access to it. Part
Speaker 1: Clear and Nichs input it the most important feature of
Speaker 1: private ownership is not that it enables those who own,
Speaker 1: but that it disables those who do not. Technically, anyone
Speaker 1: can get in someone else's car and drive away, But
Speaker 1: given order to sell all of Warren Buffett shares in
Speaker 1: Berkshire hathaway, the purpose of private ownership is wholly and
Speaker 1: only an institution of exclusion. An institutional exclusion is a
Speaker 1: matter of organized power. As we can see from the
Speaker 1: genocide on the Plans, This power is no abstract force.
Speaker 1: Beblin tends to focus on the power of absentee owners
Speaker 1: to stop production, and for good reason, but business stands
Speaker 1: in the way of industry in more immediate ways too.
Speaker 1: After all, the purpose of cooperative industry is to make
Speaker 1: goods to improve our lives. And yet in between us
Speaker 1: and the proceeds that industry creates to slerve our needs,
Speaker 1: there is a cash register in a cop Even the
Speaker 1: creators of a Louis Vuitton bag, or for that matter,
Speaker 1: a tomato, have no claim on it. Its business takes over,
Speaker 1: and business would rather destroy it than see it fall
Speaker 1: into their hands. The famous Russian anarchist theorist Peter Kirpopkin
Speaker 1: was writing along similar lines to Veblen just a few
Speaker 1: years before Feblen, it seems, have been exposed to anarchist
Speaker 1: ideas through his association with the Industrial workers of the World.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen hundreds, it was not altogether unusual for
Speaker 1: economists to move in radical circles. The great Italian economist
Speaker 1: Piero's Raffles smuggled pens and papers to Antonio Gramsey, while Grumsey,
Speaker 1: the head of the Italian Communist Party, was a prisoner
Speaker 1: with the Italian fascist regime. Grapha would later extract the
Speaker 1: writings that Crampsy had written in prison Unlesian Gramsey's prison
Speaker 1: notebooks onto the world. But Veblin was unique even among
Speaker 1: these economists for the extent that he incorporated radical theories
Speaker 1: directly into his work. As you've seen was his adoption
Speaker 1: of sabotage as a way of thinking about capitalism. This
Speaker 1: led Veblen to call the end of the system of
Speaker 1: what he described as vested interests and absentee owners. Febulance solution, however,
Speaker 1: which he described as a quote sovietive technicians would manage
Speaker 1: production for all society leaves a lot to be desired for.
Speaker 1: So let us return to the source Herscropotkin in the
Speaker 1: Conquest of Bread the minds, so they represent the labor
Speaker 1: of several generations, and derive their sole value from the
Speaker 1: requirements of the industry of a nation and the density
Speaker 1: of the population. The minds also belonged to the few,
Speaker 1: and these few restrict the output of coal, are prevented
Speaker 1: entirely if they find a more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery, too,
Speaker 1: has become the exclusive property of the few. And even
Speaker 1: when a machine and contestedly represents an improvements added to
Speaker 1: the original rough invention by three or four generations of workers,
Speaker 1: it nonetheless belongs to a few owners. And if the
Speaker 1: descendants of the very inventor who constructed the first machine
Speaker 1: for lace building a century ago were to present themselves
Speaker 1: today at a lace factory and bail or Nottingham and
Speaker 1: demand their rights, they would be told hands off, this
Speaker 1: machine is not yours, and they would be shot down
Speaker 1: if they attempted to take possession of it. Here we
Speaker 1: see the competition between two different kinds of rights. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, the right of industry, the right of creativity,
Speaker 1: the right of those who produce and care for each
Speaker 1: other to be able to determine where are the proceeds
Speaker 1: of their labor go. From industry's point of view, this
Speaker 1: is to each other, to those in need, into society
Speaker 1: as a whole. On the other hand, there is the
Speaker 1: right of property, the right of men with guns to
Speaker 1: throw oysters into the ocean because it's not profitable for
Speaker 1: anyone to eat them. Capitalism has developed a myriad of
Speaker 1: iterations precisely the same principle, and the world is now
Speaker 1: infested by them. Patent trolls haunt they already fraught waters
Speaker 1: of intellectual property, buying up patents for cheap or on
Speaker 1: rare occasions, creating something themselves for the sole purpose, or
Speaker 1: preventing anyone else from using it, making money by suing
Speaker 1: anyone who dares try. Large corporations, of course, to precisely
Speaker 1: the same thing, see for example, Disney's War. In the
Speaker 1: concept of anything, anything at all, falling into the public domain,
Speaker 1: the sabotage, and on this all four of our interlocutors
Speaker 1: Veblin Kropotkin clear needs and degree as long as private
Speaker 1: ownership exists, because sabotage is all private ownership really is.
Speaker 1: But it is not simply enough to answer corporate sabotage
Speaker 1: with their own sabotage. As Veblin pointed out, this is
Speaker 1: simply the ordinary state of affairs under capitalism. For Capotkin,
Speaker 1: the answer was simple. This rich endowments, painfully one builded, fashioned,
Speaker 1: or invented by our ancestors, must become common property, so
Speaker 1: that the collective interest of men may gain forbid the
Speaker 1: greatest good for all. There must be appropriate ation the
Speaker 1: well being of all the end expropriation. The means how
Speaker 1: precisely to go about doing such a thing has been
Speaker 1: the subject of endless debate for nearly two hundred years,
Speaker 1: And I am not arrogant enough to propose to solve
Speaker 1: the problem here. But a system where a company can
Speaker 1: prevent even the US government from attempting to produce ventilators
Speaker 1: by simply buying up the company that won the contract
Speaker 1: and refusing to fill the order to maintain the value
Speaker 1: of the ventilators it was already producing. Is a system
Speaker 1: based on nothing less than ensuring that people will die
Speaker 1: for or five percent rate of return. If we are
Speaker 1: to have any hope of stopping the ravages that climate
Speaker 1: change promises for our future, we cannot afford to be
Speaker 1: sabotaged at every step,