Robert Scheer: Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us

Posted on Feb 15, 2012
By Robert Scheer


Four decades ago Richard Nixon, a once famously hawkish Republican president, cut a deal with the Communist overlords of China to reshape the world. The result was a transformation of the global economy in ways that we are only now, with the sharp critiques of Apple’s China operation, beginning to fully comprehend.

At the heart of the deal was a rejection of the basic moral claim of both egalitarian socialism and free market capitalism, the rival ideologies of the Cold War, to empower the individual as the center of decision-making. Instead, the fate of the citizen would come to be determined by an alliance between huge multinational corporations and government elites with scant reference to the needs of ordinary working folk.

It was understood by both parties to this grand concord that monopoly capitalism could be constructed in China to be consistent with the continuance in power of a Communist hierarchy, just as in the West capitalism was consistent with the enrichment of an ostensibly democratic ruling class. Sharp income inequality, the bane of genuine reform movements bearing the names populist, socialist and democratic, came to be the defining mark of the new international order.

The current controversy over Apple’s treatment of its 700,000 foreign workers, mostly in China, is a manifestation of that cross-ideological betrayal. The ironies are manifest. Not the least of which is that businessmen from Taiwan, the bastion of anti-Communist Chinese during the Cold War and still the pretend reason for a U.S. military presence in the region, are the essential organizers of mainland China’s workforce. But in the pursuit of profit, and at a time when the startling success of China’s hybrid communist-capitalist model keeps the U.S. Treasury afloat, few questions are asked. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/apples_china_comes_home_to_haunt_us_20120216/

[dkf]

1. This is the key passage...

"Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.”

[Pholus]

2. I dunno. The article is full of good "quotable quotes" Every paragraph is hit out of the park!

My other favorite quotes:

"In reality the multinational corporations prefer China’s state-sponsored model of capitalism, which assures them an endless supply of docile workers unprotected by those pesky unions and restrictive government regulations."

"It is sad, and not encouraging, that Jobs endorsed a blatantly anti-union position by claiming that until the teachers’ unions were broken, there would be almost no hope for education reform. "


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And so we get to the core of "Why bash on Apple."

Because in the end, you have slimy low-rent tech companies that go "so what" when you call them on their misdeeds and a slimy high-rent tech company that goes through the motions ("Message: I Care.&quot for the sake of PR.

At least the low rent tech company is not gouging me as much and is not trying to actively lie about the fact they're sleazy.