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Chapter Eight

Wal-Mart and Freedom

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Definition of Freedom?

Free market = Freedom?

Freedom understood by many Americans to be synonymous with collective good

Freedom as the absence of coercion?

Freedoms always paired with unfreedom Individual vs. collective tension

Individual freedom to smoke interferes with collective freedom to breathe healthy air

Individual freedom to own assault rifles interferes with collective freedom to feel safe from harm

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Wal-Mart’s Vision of Freedom and Rights Wal-Mart’s freedom is market-centric

Wal-Mart free to: Maximize shareholder profits Hire and manage employees Ban unions

Wal-Mart focuses on the freedom of the individual consumer Free to spend the money they save at Wal-

Mart on the things that make their lives better

BUT… we are not SOLELY consumers. We are also: Workers Citizens Inhabitants of the natural environment

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Competing visions of Freedom

Wal-Mart’s Freedom

Pay low wages

Outsource labor

Slow and discriminatory hiring practices

Leverage consolidation power over vendors

Pollute the environment

Ban unions

Mistreat workers

Our unfreedom

Earn an adequate living

Good American jobs; locally made products

Ability to move up the ladder

Have real “choice” between products

Have a clean and safe natural world

Collectively organize

Enjoy basic human rights

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Normalizing Wal-Mart’s Freedom

Keep “inconvenient truths” hidden

Internalized Wal-Mart’s definition: Not an accident Wal-Mart works to make this happen

Dissolution of class boundaries through shopping and working at Wal-Mart

Becoming “entrepreneurs of ourselves” Ascribing this to our own free will

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Masking contradictions

As these contradictions grew, Wal-Mart succeeded by using high efficiency logistics and exploiting a low wage workforce to manufacture a miniaturized version of the American Dream

This version empowered vulnerable individuals to navigate an increasingly unequal and hostile socioeconomic terrain and fostered real experiences of belonging, saving, and self-improvement. It also promoted a plausible and contradiction-free worldview

Wal-Mart deployed an effective anti-union strategy, and developed a sophisticated PR apparatus to deflect organized opposition or critique

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Reimagining Freedom

A “job” or a living wage?

Fashioning truly sustainable and alternative versions of the dream Turning one Dream into multiple dreams

Rebuild the Dream Movement Fights for public investment in poor and

minority communities Overcome historical injustices

Freedom as collective well-being. Recognize the: Fundamentally shared nature of our

existence Collective production of society Interdependence of individual and

collective

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Making Other Dreams Possible

Alternative perspectives allow us to: Imagine the possibilities of collective

action through which we could wrestle control from powerful corporations and undemocratic political systems Put other dreams of freedom into

motion Forge alliances between groups that

have been separated by neoliberal economies

Organize around our various oppositions to Wal-Mart and other multinationals: The Occupy movement Respect DC and other Community

Benefit Agreement groups

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Making Other Dreams Possible (Cont’d)

Wal-Mart and multinational industry not inevitable “Harm industries”

Global capital literally “banks on” the continued separation of oppressed groups

Wal-Mart’s affective inclusion partially makes up for the unmet demands of some of their critics

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Alternative visions of freedom require reconfigured regulatory frameworks—

new cultural rules by which we organize economic and political life:

how we exploit the natural environment to meet human needs for survival;

how we assign property rights, mobilize labor, organize exchange, and

distribute surplus;

and how we organize ourselves into groups and make political decisions;

in short, how we best govern ourselves.

The possibilities for reconfiguration are almost limitless, and anti-Wal-Mart

movements provide numerous ideas of places to start.