24Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.
25John Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, New York: Penguin, 2013.
26Ha-Joon Chang, “Breaking the Mould: An Institutionalist Political Economy Alternative to the Neoliberal Theory of the Market and the State,” United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Social Policy and Development Programme Paper No. 6, 2001.
27See the discussion of the carceral state in Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets.
28See, for example, Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, London: Anthem, 2003.
29Karl Marx made a similar point about the taken-for-granted class structure of society: “Nature does not produce on the one side owners of money or commodities and on the other men possessing nothing but their own labor-power. This relation has no natural basis, neither is its social base one that is common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older forms of social production,” Capital, 1:169, quoted in Smith, Uneven Development, p. 69.
30See William S. Laufer, “Social Accountability and Corporate Greenwashing,” Journal of Business Ethics 43, 2003.
31Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister, Eco-Business: A Big-Brand Takeover of Sustainability, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013.
32People and the Planet Report, Report 01/12, London: Royal Society Science Policy Centre, 2012.
33Dauvergne and Lister, Eco-Business, pp. 19–20. Companies are benefiting from their partnerships with environmental groups as well. The Sierra Club logo on its Green Works line of products has enabled Clorox to capture 40 percent of the natural cleaning products market.
34David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 43.
35Mackey and Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism, p. 80.
36“Whole Foods Market Reports First Quarter Results, Outlook for Fiscal Year 2014,” www.wholefoodsmarket.com/sites/default/files/media/Global/Company%20Info/PDFs/WFM-2014-Q1-financial.pdf.
37Stacy Mitchell, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, Boston: Beacon Press, 2007, quoted in Dauvergne and Lister, Eco-Business, p. 23.
38Smith, Uneven Development, p. 71 (emphasis in original).
39Mackey and Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism, p. 165.
40The benefits enjoyed by Whole Foods workers do not extend up the supply chain. A June 2014 Forbes article revealed that Whole Foods sells tilapia and artisanal cheese produced by prisoners earning a base pay of 60 cents a day: Jennifer Alsever, “Prison Labor’s New Frontier: Artisanal Foods,” Fortune, June 2, 2014. The current nostalgia for, and fetishization of, farmers markets, local produce, and mothers cooking slow food for their families, popularized by writers like Michael Pollen, also ignores the exploitation and invisibility suffered by farmworkers toiling in the US and elsewhere.
41Stacy Mitchell, “New Data Show How Big Chains Free Ride on Taxpayers at the Expense of Responsible Small Businesses,” ILSR.org, June 7, 2013.
42Nick Paumgarten, “Food Fighter: Does Whole Foods’ CEO Know What’s Best for You?” New Yorker, January 4, 2010.
43Alec MacGillis, “Executives Lay Out Compromise to ‘Card Check’ Labor Bill,” Washington Post, March 22, 2009.
44Sharon Smith, “Something Stinks at Whole Foods,” Counterpunch, May 8, 2009.
45Josh Harkinson, “Are Starbucks and Whole Foods Union Busters?” motherjones.com, April 6, 2009.
3
The Oracle of O: Oprah and
the Neoliberal Subject
In the Oprah Winfrey lore, one particular story is repeated over and over. When Oprah was seventeen she won the Miss Fire Prevention Contest in Nashville, Tennessee. Until that year every winner had had a mane of red hair, but Oprah would prove to be a game changer. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up she replied, “I would like to be a journalist. I would like to tell other people’s stories in a way that makes a difference in their lives and the world.”1 This vignette is recounted for two reasons. It enables us to imagine the moment when Oprah first stepped onto the path to becoming a media mogul and household name. (She is so omnipresent that we refer to her simply as Oprah.) It also demonstrates the wonder of Oprah—that a poor, black girl could win a beauty contest for white girls in 1971 in the Deep South is a testament to her greatness.
The contest was the first of many successes for Oprah. She has won numerous Emmys, has been nominated for an Oscar, and appears regularly on magazine lists like Time’s 100 Most Influential People. In 2013 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and named the Most Powerful Celebrity in the United States by Forbes. Oprah founded the Oprah Book Club, which is often credited with reviving Americans’ interest in reading, and in 2011 started her own television network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
Oprah’s generosity and philanthropic spirit is legendary. During the Oprah Winfrey Show’s twenty-five-season run she showered her studio audiences with gifts (like cars), gave her guests extravagant makeovers and vacations, and rewarded dedicated employees with cash, cars, and jewelry. She started philanthropic projects like the Angel Network, which built fifty-five schools in twelve countries and restored hundreds of homes following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Oprah’s philanthropic reach extends beyond the United States to Africa. In 2007 she opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a posh boarding school for poor South African girls. Oprah provides the girls with a top-tier education and then pays their college expenses. She also contributes millions of dollars to other nonprofits through the Oprah Winfrey Foundation. More recently, Oprah teamed up with Bono in the Red Campaign to raise money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Oprah has legions of obsessive, devoted fans who write her letters and follow her into public restrooms. Oprah basks in their love: “I know people really, really, really love me, love me.” And she loves them right back. It’s part of her “higher calling.” Oprah believes that she was put on this earth to lift people up, to help them “live their best life.”
“I’m very clear about what my purpose on Earth is,” she said. “The work I do on television is just a way of me manifesting myself as a vessel and a vehicle for the larger energy [and universal purpose] I call God.”2
Oprah’s stories encourage people to love themselves, believe in themselves, and follow their dreams. Even presidents are inspired. When Obama conferred the Medal of Honor on Oprah he said, “Oprah’s greatest strength has always been her ability to help us discover the best in ourselves.”3 Oprah’s success and charisma undergird her core message that anything is possible. Her story is a real-life, rags-to-riches tale that inspires a belief that wealth and success are achievable if we open our minds. She tells us over and again that “the boundaries and limitations that prevent us from living our Utopia are those we have created in our own mind and have made a part of our own reality.”4
It’s a Cold World Out There
Oprah’s popularity stems in part from her message of empathy, support, and love in an increasingly stressful, alienating society. Three decades of companies restructuring their operations by eliminating jobs (through attrition, technology, and outsourcing) and dismantling both organized labor and the welfare state has left workers in an extremely precarious situation. Today, new working-class jobs are primarily low-wage service jobs, and the perks that once went along with middle-of-the-road white-collar jobs have disappeared. Flexible, project-oriented, contingent work has become the norm, enabling companies to ratchet up their requirements for all workers except those at the very top (jobs that in the past required only a high school education now require a college degree). Meanwhile, the costs of education, housing, childcare,
and health care have skyrocketed, making it yet more difficult for individuals and households to get by, never mind prosper.
The situation is bleak: over 60 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession were good jobs, middle-income jobs. The average unemployed person spent forty weeks on the unemployment rolls in 2012, and today there are more than four people vying for every job opening. In the corporate world, job openings elicit hundreds of résumés, and when foreign automakers open plants in the US South tens of thousands apply. A third of households have negative wealth or no assets, and three-fourths have less than six months’ income in savings. One in three people say that if they lost their job they wouldn’t be able to make their mortgage or rent payment within one month.5
While the working poor grew used to crushed dreams a long time ago, the emotional toll of the recent crisis on the middle class is stark. The New York Times recently reported that the US middle class is no longer the most affluent in the world: even economic self-help guru Suze Orman tells older middle-class people that they’ll need to work until at least age seventy and “live below their means” if they’re going to make enough to support themselves through their retirement. But older workers, particularly those who lost their jobs in the recession, are finding it difficult to get, or stay, hired. Psychologists say that Millennials are the most stressed-out generation ever, set loose in a society that tells them the sky’s the limit, but that also sets requirements for, and expectations of, success sky-high. Meanwhile, 45 percent of the unemployed are young people. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among college students, and the leading cause of death, after cancer and heart disease, among male baby boomers.
Finding the Sweet Life
In this climate of stress and uncertainty, Oprah tells us the stories of her life to help us understand our feelings, cope with difficulty, and improve our lives. She presents her personal journey and metamorphosis from a poor little girl in rural Mississippi to a billionaire prophet as a model for overcoming adversity and finding “a sweet life.”6
Oprah’s wildly successful trajectory frequently draws comparisons to the Horatio Alger myth. She even won the Horatio Alger Award, which honors public figures who have overcome adversity and are passionate about supporting education. At first glance, Oprah seems to embody that myth. Starbucks offers Oprah Chai Tea to benefit the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Foundation, and on one of many trips to Africa Oprah told a group of impoverished children who had been orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic that with hard work and determination they too could be like her one day: “I grew up like many of you. No running water. No electricity, as a little girl. You can overcome poverty and despair in your life with an education. I am living proof of that.”7
Horatio Alger, a sensitive Harvard alum, was horrified by the ills of industrial capitalism in New York City during the late nineteenth century. In response, he wrote a hundred inspirational novels about young men who escaped poverty and achieved success, idealizing a time when “honesty, thrift, self-reliance, industry, a cheerful whistle, and an open, manly face” were all it took to achieve the American Dream. The Alger stories had fallen out of favor by the turn of the century, not because they sported titles like Ragged Dick, but because critics like H.L. Mencken thought that Alger was deluded about what it takes to succeed in America. Mark Twain was also not a fan. He wrote an Alger parody about a “good little boy” named Jacob Blivens whose piousness couldn’t save him from being turned into a “human nitro-glycerin rocket,” body parts hurled across four townships. “You never saw a boy scattered so.”8
Yet despite frequent comparisons to the Alger myth and its revived popularity, Oprah’s story bears little resemblance to Alger’s stories. His heroes never became extravagantly wealthy—success for Alger’s plucky protagonists meant reaching the middle class and securing a steady job. Prosperity also depended heavily on a stroke of good luck (like saving a rich girl from being flattened by a falling safe) and earning the favor of a rich, kindly benefactor.9 Conversely, Oprah credits her success in life to “being excellent” at everything she does and drawing strength from God and spirituality. Echoing the remedy of Rhonda Byrne (author of The Secret) for a hard-knocks life, Oprah attributes her billions to getting back what she puts out into the universe:
What I recognize now is that my choice to, in every way, in every example, in every experience, do the right thing and the excellent thing, is what has created the brand … So doing the right thing, even when nobody knows you’re doing the right thing, will always bring the right thing to you. I promise you that. Why? Because the third law of motion is always at work. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.10
This makes Oprah a much more exciting character to emulate. In her story, success comes from righteousness and hard work, not luck—so anyone can achieve it.
Oprah’s biographical tale has been managed, mulled over, and mauled in the public gaze for thirty years and is a story familiar to millions of Americans. She used her precocious intelligence and wit to channel the pain of abuse and poverty into building an empire. She was on television by the age of nineteen and had her own show within a decade. The 1970s feminist movement opened the door to the domestic, private sphere, and the show walked in a decade later, breaking new ground as a public space to discuss personal troubles affecting Americans, particularly women. Oprah broached topics (divorce, depression, alcoholism, child abuse, adultery, incest) that had never before been discussed with such candor and empathy on television. The Oprah Winfrey Show was the top program in its time slot for twenty-five seasons.
The show’s evolution over the decades mirrored the evolution of Oprah’s own life. In its early years the show followed a “recovery model” in which guests and viewers were encouraged to overcome their problems through self-esteem building and learning to love themselves. Oprah herself was a part of the healing, both as sympathetic ear and as victim. She talked about expunging her “slave mentality” and famously admitted to drug use and childhood trauma in spontaneous, on-air confessions that shocked the world and endeared her to millions. But as copycat shows and criticisms of “trash talk” increased in the early 1990s, Oprah changed the show’s format.
In 1994, Oprah declared that she was done with “victimization” and negativity: “It’s time to move on from ‘We are dysfunctional’ to ‘What are we going to do about it?’” Oprah credited her decision to her own personal evolution: “People must grow and change” or “they will shrivel up” and “their souls will shrink.” In an appearance on Larry King Live, Oprah admitted that she had become concerned about the message of her show and so had decided to embark on a new mission “to lift people up.” Themes of spirituality and empowerment displaced themes of personal pathology. For Oprah the transformation was total: “Today I try to do well and be well with everyone I reach or encounter. I make sure to use my life for that which can be of goodwill. Yes, this has brought me great wealth. More important, it has fortified me spiritually and emotionally.”11
An episode with Marianne Williamson (a spiritual/self-help guru made famous by Oprah) demonstrated the transformation of the show and Oprah’s worldview. The show featured a depressed, unhappy mother on welfare. Williamson encouraged her guest to let go of her “victim mentality,” embrace the idea that “I have within me the power to break through these constrictions,” and realize that God is more powerful than welfare or depression. A different episode featured a young, single-mother named Clarissa who had recently lost her job, but who, after seeing an episode of Oprah, realized that instead of anger she should feel gratitude for being fired. According to Oprah, “Any time you get fired, you should say thank you,” because “it obviously means you’re not supposed to be there.” Now that Clarissa was able to focus on “gratitude” rather than anger at losing her job, she could find her true calling in life and use her newfound freedom to go back to school. Oprah says that “opportunities, relationships, even money flowed [her] way when [she]
learned to be grateful no matter what happened in [her] life.”12
A stream of self-help gurus like Williamson, Rhonda Byrne, Eckhart Tolle, John Gray, Suze Orman, Deepak Chopra, and Sara Ban Breathnach have spent time on Oprah’s stage over the past decade and a half, all with the same message. You have choices in life. External conditions don’t determine your life. You do. It’s all inside you, in your head, in your wishes and desires. Thoughts are destiny, so thinking positive thoughts will enable positive things to happen.
Oprah channels the message of the gurus through her own story, having learned that everything in life happens for a reason, including failure. “Failure is just a way for our lives to show us we’re moving in the wrong direction, that we should try something different.” When bad things happen to us, it’s because we’re drawing them toward us with unhealthy thinking and behaviors. “Don’t complain about what you don’t have. Use what you’ve got. To do less than your best is a sin. Every single one of us has the power for greatness because greatness is determined by service—to yourself and others.” If we listen to that quiet “whisper” and fine-tune our “internal, moral, emotional GPS” we too can learn the secret of success.13
Neoliberalism and the “Mind Cure”
Janice Peck, in her work as professor of journalism and communication studies, has studied Oprah for years. She argues that to understand the Oprah phenomenon we must return to the ideas swirling around in the Gilded Age, particularly in the fields of psychology and religion. The therapeutic/religious movements popular then, variously called “mind cure,” “New Thought,” etc., drew on the teachings of psychology to link societal problems with individual behavior, seeing both society’s problems and their solutions as originating in individuals. In a time of social turmoil, the movements provided a path to “personal and societal well-being” that originated within the self. Practitioners argued that anyone could achieve self-actualization and success if they liberated their true, beautiful, inner selves and realized that the “material conditions of the world” don’t control individual lives. Peck sees strong parallels in the mind-cure movement in the Gilded Age and Oprah’s evolving enterprise in the New Gilded Age, the era of neoliberalism. She argues that Oprah’s evolution from pathologizing problems to spiriting them away is mirrored in the evolution of neoliberalism starting in the 1980s.14
The New Prophets of Capital Page 7