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Capitalism in Wolf's Clothing

Author(s): Naomi Klein, Erik Kuhonta, Rob Graham and Martin Wolf
Source: Foreign Policy, No. 140 (Jan. - Feb., 2004), pp. 6+8
Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4147508 .
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 LETTERS

Capitalism in Please assure Mr. Wolf that I

have mailed him his own signed
-SoegnPl
Wolf's Clothing copy of the book so he does not
In "TheMoralityof the Market" haveto relyon shoddysecond-hand
MoIsts NAfM 2003),Martin sources in the future.
(September/October
EDITOR& PUBLISHER

JAMES GIBNEY
Wolf quotes from my book No
EXECUTIVE
EDITOR
Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand -NAOMI KLEIN
Toronto, Canada
CARLOS LOZADA
MANAGINGEDITOR
Bullies, where I referto "corporate
MARK STRAUSS
space as a fascist state where we
SENIOREDITOR
& MANAGING
EDITOROF all salute the logo and have little
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM
opportunity for criticism because MartinWolf providesa shrillargu-
MICHAEL C. BOYER, VERENA RINGLER
ASSOCIATEEDITORS
our newspapers,televisionstations, ment that rhapsodizes about all the
Internet servers, streets and retail benefits of the free market-altru-
JAMES G. FORSYTH
ASSISTANT
EDITOR spaces are all controlled by multi- ism, democracy, environmental-
KATE PALMER national corporate interests." He ism-without presentingsolid evi-
COPYEDITOR
concludes, understandably,that I dence for the link between
JAIDEEP SINGH must be paranoid and delusional,
EDITORIAL
ASSISTANT capitalismand such liberalvirtues.
ELIZABETH DAIGNEAU especially as I am able to criticize Furthermore,it is unclearhow Wolf
ASSISTANT
TOTHEEDITOR multinationalsall the time. can make wild assertions such as
SHIRA GOLDBERG, JENNIFER Kuo Yet anyone who read those that capitalismended slavery.This
RESEARCHERS
words in context would know that claim should be, to put it mildly,a
TRAVIS C. DAUB
DESIGN& PRODUCTION
DIRECTOR they were used sarcastically, to surpriseto historians.
SARAH N. SCHUMACHER mock the very same argumentthat Completelyone-sided,the essay
ART& PRODUCTION
ASSISTANT Wolf attributesto me. The verynext devotes only one paragraphto the
NING ZHANG sentence directly refutes this sim- corruptionand cronyismso evident
WEBMASTER
plistic vision of brand totalitarian- in corporateboardsacrossthe Unit-
JANELLE Lu, ADAM OVERSTREET, ism. I wrote: "[T]hereis good rea- ed States. Wolf even fails to name
TURNA RAY
WEBINTERNS son for alarm. But a word of the actual firms implicated in the
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
caution: We may be able to see a scandals: WorldCom, Enron, and
JacquesAttali,Paris;ChristophBertram,Berlin; not-so-brave new world on the the rest. Rather naively, he notes
JorgeI. Dominguez,Cambridge, Mass.;
YoichiFunabashi,Tokyo;YegorT. Gaidar,Moscow; horizon, but that doesn't mean we that the rule of law can catch the
AndrisOrtega,Madrid;
RupertPennant-Rea, London are alreadyliving in [Aldous]Hux- capitalist rascals. Yet how many
CONTRIBUTING
WRITER ley'snightmare....Insteadof an air- Enron executives have been prose-
DouglasMcGray
tight formula, [corporate censor- cuted to date?
EDITORIAL
BOARD
Morton Abramowitz, John Deutch, Lawrence Freedman,
ship] is a steady trend, clearly It is clearthat Wolf is aiminghis
DiegoHidalgo,StanleyHoffmann,RobertD. Hormats, intensified by synergy and the tirade at the antiglobalization
ThomasL. Hughes,KarlKaiser,JessicaT. Mathews,DonaldE.
McHenry, CesareMerlini,Thierryde Montbrial,
JosephS. Nye
Jr.,SoliOzel,MoeenQureshi,JohnE. Rielly,WilliamD.
mounting stakes of brand-name movement. Perhaps that explains
Rogers,KlausSchwab,HelmutSonnenfeldt,Lawrence Summers,
StrobeTalbott,RichardH. Ullman,StephenM. Walt
protection, but riddledwith excep- the shrillness of his essay and the
tions. The shift that is taking place dogma it exudes. Wolf should real-
PUBLISHED
BY is at once less totalitarianand more ize that articles of this nature add
CARNEGIE little substanceto the debate.
dangerous."
" ENDOWMENT
for International Peace How could Wolf have made
such an error? Surely such an -ERIK KUHONTA
FOREIGN POLICY Shorenstein Fellow 2003-04
esteemed journalist would not
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Asia/Pacific Research Center
Washington, DC 20036 willfully misrepresent an oppo- Stanford University
Publishing Office: (202) 939-2230 Stanford, Calif.
Subscriptions: (800) 535-6343 nent's argument just to make a
www.foreignpolicy.com
02004 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
point. Then I remembered: In Sep-
All rights reserved. FOREIGN POLICYand its logo are trademarks
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which
tember 2001, The Economist ran
bears no responsibility for the editorial content; the views
expressed in the articles are those of the authors. No part of this an article that used that very same Reading Martin Wolf's essay, I
publication may be reproduced in any form without permission
in writing from the publisher.
quote in the same misleading way. thought of, strangely enough, All
2003NATIONAL
MAGAZINE
AWARIWINNER
He must have missed the letter Quiet on the Western Front. In the
GENERAL
EXCELLENCE OZm. CODW correcting the error. novel, author Erich Maria Remar-
6 FOREIGN POLICY

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 Letters

que noted how the Germans' talism and the end of slaverywhile
favorite weapon for hand-to-hand ignoringcorporatecorruption.Vir-
combat was theirentrenchingtool, tually all societies with an elabo-
basically a common shovel. rate divisionof labor,priorto those
LYNN E. NEWHOUSE Now, capitalismis like the shov- of the moderncapitalistworld, had
ASSOCIATEPUBLISHER & GENERALMANAGER
el. It is simplya tool, and tools have either slaveryor serfdom.The pro-
DARYL MARCO no moralcomponent;they can only liferationof machineryand the right
CIRCULATION& MARKETINGMANAGER
do what their users make them do. to sell laborfreelyendedtheseinsti-
LISA SIESENNOP One cannot blame the tool for the tutions.The firstis a consequenceof
CIRCULATIONASSISTANT
damage or good that it does. the contemporarymarketeconomy;
NICHOLAS COSKY As noted, a shovel can be used the second is one of its underlying
BUSINESS ASSISTANT
to kill a man. It can also be used to principles. I agree that company
AMY RUSSELL dig a vegetable garden or a foun- bosses are no paragons of virtue.
DIRECTOR,ADVERTISINGSALES dation to a house. Capitalismcan But the market found Enron out.
be used to enslave people to long In a competitivemarket economy,
ELIZABETH H. LAWBAUGH
workinghours,for low pay in high- companies that use fraud to con-
DIRECTOR,CORPORATEPROGRAMS
ly dangerousconditions. Or, it can ceal their lack of profitabilitywill
VANESSA FRIEDMAN
be used to help people fulfill their runout of money.As Kuhontaright-
DIRECTOR,INTERNATIONALDEVELOPMENT
lives by giving them usefulwork to ly notes, political and legal systems
SPENCER KEHE
do, while rewardingthem quitelib- are not always as effective.
SYNDICATIONCOORDINATOR
erally for it. Finally, Naomi Klein protests
AUDREY SEAGRAVES
Capitalism is ethically neutral, too much. Her subsequentqualifi-
RR. & PROMOTIONSCOORDINATOR
as it only does what its usersdecide cations to the remarksI quoted do
it will do. not reverse their thrust. She says
SUBSCRIPTIONS & SUBSCRIBER SERVICES
FOREIGN POLICY, P.O. Box 474, Mt. Morris, IL 61054- there is good reasonfor alarmover
8499; www.foreignpolicy.com;e-mail: frnp@kable.com;
(800) 535-6343 in U.S.; (815) 734-1235 outside U.S.;
- ROB GRAHAM corporatepower.I say thereis little.
Toronto, Canada She sayswe can see a "not-so-brave
Rates (in U.S. funds): $24.95 for one year; $44 for two
years. Canada add $9/yr. for postage and handling;
other countries add $15/yr. For academic rates, go to
new world on the horizon." I say
www.foreignpolicy.com/education. we can see no such thing. She says
Martin Wolf Replies: corporate censorship is a "steady
BPA &FP
ADVERTISING
CORPORATEPROGRAMS To defendthe moral virtuesof cap- trend." I say it is not. Klein says
INTERNATIONAL
Call (202) 939-2374. italism is to take one's intellectual that the "shiftthat is taking place"
ADVERTISINGREPRESENTATIVES life in one's hands. Yet I expected is moredangerousthoughlesstotal-
West Coast: Malone Media (310) 541-9997
India: Munir Nabi 91 22 637 1988 somewhatmore impressiveassaults itarian, which appears to suggest,
than these. astonishingly,that it might be less
NEWSSTAND AND BOOKSTOREDISTRIBUTION
Curtis Circulation Company, 730 River Road, New
Rob Grahamarguesthatcapital- dangerous if it were more totali-
Milford, NJ 07646-3048; (201) 634-7400. ism is a tool, like a shovel.This sim- tarian.I say this argumentis aston-
ile is absurd.Capitalismis a social ishing.Our differencein perspective
BACK ISSUES
arrangement,not a tool. As such, it seems just as sharp as I suggested.
$7.95 per copy. International airmail add $3.00 per
bothrestson moralassumptions-the
copy; online: www.globalnewsstand.com; e-mail:
fp@ceip.org. legitimacy of property rights, free
competition, and voluntary The Falseness of
MEDIA INQUIRIES
exchange-and has moral conse-
quences.The consequencesof capi- Chauvinism
Contact Audrey Seagraves(202) 939-2242;
aseagraves@ceip.org.
talismdo includelow wagesin coun- The arguments of Fouad Ajami's
SYNDICATION& OTHER PERMISSION REQUESTS trieswith hugesurplusesof labor.Yet essay ("The Falseness of Anti-
Copyright ClearanceCenter,Inc. (978) 750-8400;
it is not capitalismthat "enslaves" Americanism," September/Octo-
www.copyright.com.
such people to low wages, but their ber 2003) are surrealin their logic
PUBLISHED BY poverty.The marketeconomyoffers and deeply perniciousin their con-
an escapefromthat poverty. clusions.These flaws become obvi-
CARN EG I E
OENDOWMENT Erik Kuhonta claims I have ous if one asks some very simple
Peace
for International exaggeratedthe link between capi- questions.
8 FOREIGN POLICY

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