We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Foxconn’s Global Empire Reflects a New Breed of Sweatshop

by Michelle Chen from In These Times. 

The abuses at Foxconn in Southern China made it briefly into some mainstream media, but other reports are surfacing to suggest that their model of worker management is widespread in the electronics industry. Capitalists' never ending search for greater profits creates such gross examples of wage slavery.
With hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide, Foxconn's militaristic model is perfectly suited to the evolving workplace culture of the global economy—homogenized, disciplined, robotically efficient.
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