As my co-workers and family will testify, I am something of an inveterate consumer of Starbucks venti soy lattes. The habit is so deeply ingrained that when I walk into the outlet down a block from the UFT offices, they start making the order on sight, without asking me what I want.
But as much as I enjoy — and depend upon — good coffee, and as much as I have little patience for the cultural Puritans who would have us forego any product tainted by the world marketplace, the passing pleasures of consumption clearly has its limits. I am grateful that the outlet near the UFT does not practice the annoying corporate Starbucks mantra of calling its customers “guests.” When I invite guests into my home, I do not ask them to pay for the bread we break together. My friendship and my camaraderie are not commerical transactions, thank you.
Desire for the material product is no substitute for the love of friends and countrymen, and the pleasures of consumption are no substitute for the life of the citizen. The primary ends of what Aristotle would call the good life focus on the exercise of the rights and duties of citizenship, so that the demos of which we are part actually rules in our republic. The latest Bridging Differences dialogue between Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier reminds us that citizenship and the nurturance of the public sphere and a vibrant civil society, not consumerism and the worship of the market, are the foundation of democratic self-governance. If we need a compelling reason to defend a truly public education, we could do no better than beginning there, with the importance of cultivating citizenship to the life of our democracy.
Starbucks makes a fine model for public education — if the choice between chais and lattes, rather than the democratic election of representative government, is what make us a sovereign; if homogeneity and standardization, rather than diversity and pluralism, is the foundation of democracy; if passive individual purchases are more virtuous than public action for the common good; and if education into democratic citizenship is unimportant.
Harold Meyerson’s recent Washington Post essay demolishes the Starbucks theory of democratization in China. It is increasingly difficult to believe that such theories are put forward entirely in good faith, rather than as transparent apologies for corporate market share and profits at the expense of democratization. And then there is the obvious connection — that the very same corporate actors fighting unions and democratization in China are fighting unions and seeking to privatize public education in the United States. One might even call it the “Wal-Mart Connection.”
5 Comments:
1 xkaydet65
· Apr 5, 2007 at 11:26 am
It does my heart good when I see the Liberal UFT condemn Communist China, oh wait it was China not Communist China. But I digress. With all of the threads on this board attacking Walmart I have seen nary a one attacking Sam’s company for its blatant efforts to enrich China and assist it in creating a modern industrial base able to meet the needs of consumers while degrading the industial base of the U.S.A..
If the socialist aspect of China blinds many on the left to its dangers, then i offer a different comparison. See China as an Imperial Germany, with somewhat fewer liberties. A nation bent on becoming the dominant military, technological, naval, and expansionist power of its time.I understand that the left likes to couch foreign threats as, in the main, unfair economic competition abetted by rampant capitalists in America, but the threat of China is real if now still over the horizon. You are right about one thing, neither Starbucks nor Walmart will lessen that danger.
2 Leo Casey
· Apr 5, 2007 at 12:14 pm
XKaydet:
There was a time when one could debate whether or not there was a “socialist aspect of China.” That time is long since passed. What exists now is a laissez-faire market economy, protected and guaranteed by an authoritarian state and party. I make this point not because I think it is important to establish some sort of taxonomy of authoritarian regimes, but because we will understand nothing about what motivates Wal-Mart, Starbucks and any other corporate entities now in China if we don’t recognize why they can’t invest fast enough in the Chinese economy. Call it Communist or whatever you like, but recognize it for what it is.
3 xkaydet65
· Apr 5, 2007 at 4:33 pm
What it is is a direct threat to the interests of my country. No more no less. Couch your opposition in those terms and you will have even my brethren on Free Republic applauding you.
Your definition of China as Laissez faire is bewildering. There is no way any producer or vendor could do something in contravention of Party policy without immediate and devastating intervention by the government. Every business in the PRC whether foreign or home grown exists at the whim of the Party. That is, maybe a demonstration of state socialism as practiced by Hitler or Mussolini, and maybe a more finished product than that currently attempted by Bloomberg and Joel Klein, but it is most certainly not laissez faire as described by Milton Friedman.
4 Leo Casey
· Apr 5, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Milton Friedman and his ‘Chicago Boys’ rushed into Chile after the Pinochet coup to provide economic advice to the dictatorship on how to reconstruct the Chilean economy along laissez-faire lines — including a national system of vouchers to privatizatize the Chilean public schools. Some of Friedman’s Chicago Boy students even took high ministerial posts in the Pinochet regime. There is no contradiction, I am afraid, between an economic policy that provides “laissez-faire” for corporations and employers, and an authoritarian state that ensures that working people have no rights and can not challenge those corporations and employers.
Indeed, China is only following the path that was blazed by the so-called East Asian little tigers — Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore — each one of which combined laissez-faire economics with political authoritarianism. China has watched them quite carefully, and understands that it was the emergence of independent trade unions — not laissez-faire — which brought democracy to Taiwan and South Korea. By contrast, Singapore — sans unions — continues in the authoritarian path.
5 curious3
· Apr 5, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Wow.
“Starbucks makes a fine model for public education — if the choice between chais and lattes, rather than the democratic election of representative government, is what make us a sovereign; if homogeneity and standardization, rather than diversity and pluralism, is the foundation of democracy; if passive individual purchases are more virtuous than public action for the common good; and if education into democratic citizenship is unimportant.”
Leo, a huge percentage of our kids can’t read. Thousands of parents got turned away from charter schools because of the cap. Let’s focus.
Ken