The Corporation (2003)

Naomi Klein: Self - Author, No Logo

Quotes 

• Naomi Klein : Well, the whole idea of the Export Processing Zone is that it will be the first step towards this wonderful new development, through the investment that's attracted to these countries there will be a trickle-down effect into the communities. But because so many countries are now in the game of creating these free-trade enclaves they have to keep providing more and more incentives for companies to come to their little denationalised pocket. And the tax holidays get longer. So the workers rarely make enough money to buy three meals a day, let alone feed their local economy.

• Naomi Klein : You take this to its logical conclusion, one would have the image that we are, in fact, the end of the world is nigh. And we are all completely brainwashed and there's no space left. And I don't believe we're there yet. And I think it's really important that we don't overstate the case, and that we admit that there are cracks and fissures in all of these corporate structures. And sometimes when a corporation is concentrating on one particular project they look the other way and all kinds of interesting things happen in the corner.

  Vandana Shiva : It is the case in every period of history where injustice based on falsehoods, based on taking away the right and freedoms of people to live and survive with dignity, that, eventually, when you call a bluff, the tables turn.

  Elaine Bernard : Ultimately capital puts it foot down somewhere. And anywhere it puts its foot down it can be held accountable.

• Naomi Klein : When I was researching the takeover of public space when I started off I thought, "Okay, this is just advertising. We've always had advertising. It's just more advertising". But what I started to understand and what I understand now is that branding is not advertising; it's production. The very successful corporations, the corporations of the future do not produce products. They produce brand meaning. The dissemination of the idea of themselves is their act of production. And the dissemination of the idea of themselves is an enormously invasive project, so how do you make a brand idea real? Well, a good place to start is by building a 3-dimensional manifestation of your brand. For a company like Disney, it goes even further where it's actually building a town: Celebration, Florida. Their inspiration, they're brand image is the all-American family. And this sort of bygone American town. And that's where you see the truly imperialist aspirations of branding, which is about building these privatised branded cocoons. Which maybe you start by shopping in and then you continue by holidaying in but eventually, "Why not just move in?"

  Jeremy Rifkin : What happens if we wake up one day, and we find out that virutally all of our relationships that are mediated between us and our fellow human beings are commercial? We find out that virtually every relationship we have is a commercially arbitrated relationship with our fellow human beings. Can civilisation survive on that narrow a definition of how we interact with each other?