No Logo

No Logo by Naomi Klein is a book that speaks out against the pitfalls of corporate control and economy. It speaks all about the presence of anticorporatism on a large scale among the youth of the nation, possibly even the world. However, none of it would have sprouted if it were not for the seeming death grip that corporations have taken over consumers, as Klein illustrates with several examples.

One of Klein's points in the book is that corporatism and the idea of "robber baronism" began with the advent of mass production and industry. The key stimulators to the success of industry happened to be cheap labor and ever-growing corporate influence to the extent of global brainwashing. As a result, Klein is trying to emphasize that the corporate attitude breeds a ton of unrecognized negativity. At one point, Klein claims that corporations have little more than "...excitement inspired by manic renditions of globalization wear thin, revealing the cracks and fissures beneath its high-gloss facade." The "cracks and fissures" she alludes to include the presence of sweatshops, oppressed laborers who live in "designer slums", and a perhaps irreversibly deep economic divide. All of these and more are unforeseen side effects of corporatism.

Klein even goes on to say that corporatism has led to an emphasis on brand-name recognition. Through the brand-name, corporations could define themselves beyond the name of the company itself by virtue of a logo. Although the logo should supposedly serve as a static emblem of the company, Klein writes that it has instead created the entire marketing and advertising industry. Corporations have thus created an industry out of a need to upkeep the brand name.

However, the point here is that even the corporation's idea of creating an industry to publicize its product's quality is vulnerable. Although a corporation with a recognizable brand-name seems insurmountable, the "brand's death" is always looming. Keeping a brand name is costly, and a result the money gone into generating publicity is money that could have been used to upgrade and maintain a high level of quality. Therefore, someone else has the potential to create the same product or one even better than that of the corporation without many of the costs, creating bargains against the corporate. Consumers gradually started to like the idea of the bargain over the corporate. Soon enough, people rationalized that if corporations were "desperate enough to compete with no-names, then clearly the whole concept of branding had lost its currency." The corporation and the brand eventually did manage to rebound, but Klein writes with such an overwhelming tone against corporatism that it is easy to understand that corporations are far from perfect because they are most vulnerable at their pinnacles of productivity and success. She is ultimately trying to say that corporatism is a road the economy should not take.