Only fools are blind to the potential for this uprising to extend to Apple and the rest of Corporate America’s greedy exploiters who’ve been delighted to profit from the protection of the CCP.
Let’s start our “Come to Mao” reckoning with the obvious:To the U.S. stock market:The coronavirus ravaging China doesn’t matter.China doesn’t matter.1,500 deaths don’t matter, 5,000 deaths don’t matter, 50,000 deaths don’t matter, 500,000 deaths don’t matter.10,000 coronavirus cases don’t matter,100,000 cases don’t matter, 1,000,000 cases don’t matter.
All that matters is that exploited Chinese workers get back to assembling iPhones for Apple and all the landfill economy stuff that generates billions in profits for Amazon and the rest of Corporate America.Nothing else matters.
Even coronavirus cases and deaths outside China don’t matter. All that matters is that Apple and the rest of Corporate America continue reaping billions in profits off exploited workforces.Like every other venal, exploitive Empire in history, Apple relies on rapacious, ruthless local elites to enforce its exploitation–in this case, Foxconn and the Communist Party elites who’ve gorged at the Apple/Foxconn trough. Thus Apple claims that when Foxconn re-opens production is up to Foxconn while Apple execs hound Foxconn to start production no matter how many workers might become ill and die.
Apple has always bought the best PR cover for its exploitation and greed that money can buy, starting with the famous 1984 commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl. That Apple ruthlessly exploits workers and the planet and pays essentially zero federal taxes–those don’t fit its bogus but oh-so-glossy PR image. Apple insists on $5 for you, Chinese workforce, and $500 for us. The greed of Apple is only surpassed by the greed of the elite fund managers who depend on Apple’s ruthlessness to fatten their own gains.
Those are the most obvious realities of our “Come to Mao” reckoning, but there’s more– much more. Thanks to the official mishandling of the coronavirus, the Chinese people are awakening anew to the grim reality that the only thing that matters to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)– the CCP leadership and cadres–is maintaining the wealth and power of the CCP. The Chinese people don’t matter except as exploited workers generating the profits for Apple et al. and for corrupt and venal Party elites. Nothing else matters–except enforcing the exploitation of Chinese workers by Apple and the rest of Corporate America, because the CCP and Apple are best buddies: each equally rapacious, greedy and exploitive of those under their power.
The righteous anger of the people, currently directed at the CCP, is only a millimeter away from widening to include Foxconn, Apple and the rest of the elites exploiting the Chinese workforce. Where the workers responded to inhuman conditions at Foxconn a few year ago by killing themselves, the next time around they may choose to administer some rough justice to the elites in the CCP, Foxconn and Apple, their tormentors and exploiters.
We can hazard a guess that Mao would heartily approve of hacking U.S. corporations and agencies, and selling Huawei equipment with backdoors and taps, but the CCP’s enforcement of American corporate profits might not have won Mao’s approval. As the exploitation and oppression in China has ramped steadily higher, the Revolutionary Mao has been making a come-back. Not every Chinese citizen is thrilled that the CCP destroyed the environment and ransacked the nation’s resources and workforce for the elites’ personal aggrandizement. Since speaking openly about this will quickly draw a prison sentence or worse, the only sanctioned way to express one’s rejection of the CCP’s self-serving leadership is to harken back to Mao.
The implicit topic here that cannot be spoken about directly in China is the Cultural Revolution of 1966 – 1976, which Mao unleashed to cleanse the Party of potential rivals, under the PR banner of “eliminating Counter-Revolutionaries,” i.e. anyone who questioned the supremacy of Mao’s clique.
This campaign quickly got out of hand, and millions of innocents and loyal Army and Party cadres were beaten, imprisoned, exiled or killed. In effect the Monster Id of all China’s suffering from Mao’s ill-conceived policies–The Great Leap Forward, etc.–was unleashed on the Party and anyone who had any ties to pre-Revolutionary elites, regardless of their blameless service to the revolution. Young cadres switched alliance between local groups seemingly at random, destroying cultural treasures one month and then gutting the educational system the next.
Only fools are blind to the potential for a bottom-up Cultural Revolution that cleanses the CCP of its corrupt, self-serving, greedy elites, and only greater fools are blind to the potential for this uprising to extend to Apple and the rest of Corporate America’s greedy exploiters who’ve been delighted to profit from the protection of the CCP.
Put another way: just as the amoral greed of Corporate America knows no bounds, Divine Retribution will also know no bounds.
My recent books:Audiobook edition now available:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE.
