We First, by Simon Mainwaring: a review

 

There's a lot to like about Simon Mainwaring's We First. This former advertising executive pulls no punches. He tells his former clients that the way they do business has got to go.

Capitalism, Mainwaring points out, is flawed as a system. It leads to class rule, booms, bubbles, and busts. It promotes selfishness and greed. It sacrifices workers and their families and despoils the environment in a short-sighted grab for immediate profit. Capitalism is not sustainable, neither economically, environmentally, or ethically.

I agree with all of this, and I believe that if every reform Mainwaring proposed were put into practice, we would all be better off. Yet I finish the book profoundly dissatisfied.

This book proposes that:

1. By changing their mentality, corporate capitalists will be able to make "purpose" as important as profit.
2. If they won't change on their own, social media-savvy consumers will be able to compel them.
3. The changes they make will create the world we want to live in (and avoid the hell we're headed toward).

But none of these is true.

1. The profit motive is not a matter of mentality. It is the engine of capitalism. Yes, it may just be possible for global corporations to swear off some of the pollution and exploitation that has given them such extraordinary profits in the last thirty years--and it would be a good thing if they did. Always, though, they will feel the pressure to grow or die. Inexorably, they will be forced to push products at the expense of people and the planet. Only a countervailing pressure will force them to put "we first."

2. Consumers on social media can embarrass corporations. We can cost them money by ruining their reputation and reducing their sales. And we should. But this is not enough to compel real change. Mainwaring himself cites the danger of "greenwashing": businesses adopting feel-good policies that don't ultimately change their environmental impact (or simply donating to good causes to buy themselves a better reputation). Corporate PR has kept many the company profitable despite its terrible labor practices. Consumers can add to, but not replace, government regulation, social activism, and labor unions. (Mainwaring never mentions unions. It is a telling silence.)

3. Even if corporations make huge changes in the direction that Mainwaring calls for--and it would be a good thing if they did--they would still be in charge. That means they'd make those changes on the schedule and in the way they find best--not what's best for the rest of us. It's not just corporate greed that's unsustainable. It's corporate power as well.

I give credit to the author for recognizing that capitalism is the problem. I fault him for his naivete in thinking capitalism can be the solution.

Share or Die: Voices of the Get Lost Generation in the Age of Crisis (ed. Harris & Gorenflo)

 
This is really three books in one.  "Share or Die" is the theme of several essays in the book, and you will find inspirational stories about how people pool resources, from housing to knowledge, in order to live better than they would otherwise.  You'll also find how-to tips about educating yourself, choosing a roommate wisely, and starting worker co-ops and housing co-ops.  Implicit in these essays is a critique of consumption as a lifestyle and of capitalism as a system that demands consumption to survive.

Another set of essays focus more on the "Get Lost Generation," the Millennials or Generation Y, who came of age expecting that a college education would allow them to do it all, have it all, and change whatever discomforted them in the world they inherited.  Society fostered some of these expectations.  Others seem to have been mass delusions.  In any case, the Great Recession dashed a lot of hopes and made young people re-examine the value of a college education, a job, owning a home, marrying (since none of them have turned out as expected, at least since the Great Recession). 

If you are white and from a middle-class background and a member of this generation, you will probably find yourself or people you know portrayed in this book.  For a late Baby Boomer like me, it offers a chance to listen in to conversations and soliloquies I might not otherwise hear.  I do think a limitation of the book is that it doesn't solicit the voices of Black, Latino, and/or immigrant youth.  I have worked with people from those cohorts, and I think they would have a whole different set of concerns (and express shared concerns in a very different way).

The least developed set of essays in the book deal with the "age of crisis" we live in.  When I was in my twenties and attending graduate school, I provided personal care to an old leftist who had suffered a stroke.  One day, I told him that the undergraduates I taught didn't know about Vietnam or Watergate. "They have no sense of history!" I exclaimed.  "Neither do you," he retorted, and reeled off a series of important events from the first half of the twentieth century that I had barely heard of.

So, I am not in any position to blame the writers of this book for exaggerating the unique quality of the age they live in--but that is what they do.  There is no sense that protest began before Occupy Wall Street.  There are no references to the long history of cooperatives in this country, let alone Mondragon, in Spain.  And few of these writers consider that some of the wonderful experiments in collective living, collaborative consumption, and political activism they are engaged in might not survive when they need enough income to raise a child, or health insurance for themselves, or money and leisure to afford to take care of an aging parent.  (The essay "Get on the Lattice" by Ahlander and Kofman is a notable exception.)

We should all read this book--and share it with others.  Then, we should invite friends and strangers to a potluck dinner and discuss what it means to each of us.  That way, we can take up the challenge this book poses and carry it further.