The Capitalist Catwalk
17-10-2007
"Say: 'My life, my death and acts of worship are all for
the Rabi-l alamin.'" [ Al-An'am: 162].
"Obey Allah and Obey the Rasool…" [ An-Nur: 54].
"Thirst is everything, obey your thirst" (American commercial for Sprite).
Get a Lifestyle
We are told that the purpose for our entire existence is to worship Allah (swt).
TV ads tell us otherwise. According to advertisements, our needs, wants and
instincts are everything; we should obey them.
The Western way of life relies on a continual cycle of want. The people must
always desire to own something new, regardless of whether they need it. The
people keep the cycle of consumption in constant motion. They work extra hard,
in order to buy things they do not really need, in order to impress people that
they do not really care for. The objective is to have the newest and the best;
and therefore, in their eyes, to be the best. For this "cult of the worship of
newness" to prevail, the high priests of the god of consumerism must work hard
to preach their gospel. They are not just selling products, they are selling an
ideology. They are promoting a value system that continuously bombards the
public with messages of self-indulgence and instant gratification. One only
needs to look at the catch phrases: 'me first', 'gotta-have-it' and 'gimme,' to
understand the common ethic. This god of consumerism is the creator and
sustainer of the Capitalist system.
Fashion epitomises the Capitalist ethos of creating a desire for the
inconsequential. Consumers from all walks of life spend hundreds of billions of
dollars on fashion annually. On face value, fashion may appear to be a frivolous
and insignificant obsession for the rich, dandy and infamous. In reality, it is
an industrial giant that directly influences most of the world's inhabitants.
Its task force includes Chinese silkworm farmers, Indian cotton pickers, Italian
yarn spinners, Scottish weavers, German dyers, French seamstresses, teenaged
Saturday shop assistants from Hackney, Harlesden and Hounslow, and South
American, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and Bengali sweatshop workers. Besides
these, are a string of wholesalers, retailers, merchant traders, rip-off artists
and street hustlers from Bangkok to Brixton. In global terms, it is an industry
worth over $1.5 thousand billion. This astounding figure is actually more than
the international expenditure for the arms industry.
Fashion reached a new pinnacle during the 1980s. During this time, right wing
parties controlled the main economies of the world. The Thatcher and Reagan
administrations provided tough fiscal policies and reduced taxation for the rich
and very rich. With this new climate, the rich no longer had to be ashamed about
their wealth. Clothing became a means for the wealthy to display their means
while inflating their egos. The demise of Reaganomics and Thatcherism had no
effect on the escalation of fashion at large. Fashion now stands as the primary
cultural artefact of the Western world, replacing music, cinema, art and poetry
as the all-encompassing symbol of both popular and high culture.
Clothing is an integral part of human existence; yet, it is only a minute aspect
of fashion. Other components are art, design, expression, risk and above all,
marketing. The fashion industry has evolved symbiotic relationships with many
sectors. These are primarily with the visual media industry (magazines
especially), the chemical industry (through dyes, perfumes and cosmetics) and
pharmaceutical industries.
The Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is constructed as a pyramid. At the top are the couturiers
(Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and the like), below these are the imitators
and competitors, and at the bottom lies 'high street' fashion. The clothes
produced directly from the fashion houses are exclusive and very expensive.
Haute couture, though it holds the most exclusive position in the fashion
pyramid, does not provide the designers with a profit. This is because of the
cost of materials and the small clientele. It is the piece of the pyramid
beneath couture that has become the most lucrative. Though these can also be
very expensive, they are mass marketed in a way that the first category is not;
therefore, it is accessible to more people, while retaining prestige.
Associated with design houses are a plethora of other products. These include
everything from cosmetics, accessories, perfumes, jewellery, cars, sports
equipment etc. Pierre Cardin endorses over 800 products, most of which Cardin
himself has probably never seen. Designers' names (under licence) have gone on
underwear, cigarettes, deodorants, chess-sets, teddy bears, stationary,
bath-towels, neckties, cufflinks, ball point pens, watches, sunglasses and even
tropical fruit (the Oscar La Renta papaya). The perfumes Dune and Coco were only
conceived years after the deaths of Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, although the
Houses of Dior and Chanel make a handsome profit from them.
The not so rich can buy into the Calvin Klein lifestyle by simply buying bottles
of cK Be from department stores. Those who have even less can buy into the
lifestyle from unofficial vendors on Oxford Street, London. The perfume industry
is worth well over $10 billion a year. Few women can afford a Chanel suit for
thousands of pounds, but millions are able to spare enough for a 7 ml bottle of
liquid. Gram for gram Chanel's No. 5 costs about the same as 22 Karat gold.
The main point here is that fashion is not about clothes, it is about
lifestyles. This is true just as Coca-Cola is not about thirst, but lifestyle.
Yet, with all the abundance, Westerners who can get clean water on tap for free,
will proclaim that they have nothing to drink, or look through their bulging
wardrobes, and proclaim, "I haven't a thing to wear." Do not think, however,
that all this rampant indulgence comes without cost.
Exploitative Practices
The exploitative practices of the fashion industry have been well publicised in
recent years. This practice is not unique to Third World countries. Immigrant
workers earn minimum wage in sweatshops on 7thAvenue in New York. They operate
cheek by jowl with shoppers buying designer sweatshirts on 5th Avenue. The
contradictions here are blatant. The combination of cheap labour combined with
the artisans' skills, make fashion a paradigm of the workings of Capitalism.
The contradictions in the less developed countries are even starker. Relatively
poor regions, where jeans are not commonly worn, import large quantities of
denim. For example, 48 million metres of denim were imported into Bangladesh and
85 million meters were imported into Turkey in 1996. The reason for this is
simple; nearly all jeans are stitched together in hundreds of thousands of low
wage sweatshops and private homes around the world, but they are worn in the
West. The wages paid to these workers are far less than the wages paid to those
in the developed countries. Mexican garment workers earn one-fifth to one-tenth
of the hourly rate paid to the 200,000 garment workers across the border in Los
Angeles. These practices are necessary for the jeans industry to maintain their
massive profit margins. Between 1984 and 1997 Levi Strauss's market value
increased 105 times - by almost as much as Microsoft. In the early 1990s annual
sales of Levi Strauss were worth $7 billion, 71% of this was due to jeans or
jeans-related items, with an annual publicity expenditure of $300 million in the
US and $200 million outside. These disproportionate amounts spent on publicity
can be contrasted with the wages paid to their workers.
This issue of spending on advertising rather than labour is a common trait among
many different companies. More is spent on convincing one person to wear one
item than paying an employee to make thousands of that same item.
Compare the millions of dollars paid to Michael Jordan by Nike over the years
with the pittance paid to the South East Asians for producing these Nike goods.
What is the cost of a pair of Air Jordans? The women and children of Nike
sweatshops know them to be less than $2. After all, that is what they get paid
to make the shoes on their 12-hour shifts for 6 days a week. Michael Jordan was
at one stage the richest sportsman on the planet, even though basketball is not
the most popular sport in any country except the US. His wealth is largely due
to the generous salary provided by Nike. In the UK, parallels can be seen with
the recent million pound agreements made between David Beckham and Adidas. Once
again, the disproportionate wages paid to the Indonesians that stitch them,
compared to the one who endorses them, are quite apparent.
Another company that has come under the international spotlight is the Gap. A
series of protests were sparked off in America in 1995 when an 18 year old
addressed a crowd outside a Gap store in Toronto. Holding up a Gap shirt, Viera
told the crowd: 'In Canada, you pay $34 for this shirt. In El Salvador we were
paid 27 cents to sew it.' The Gap does not own the factories or have to deal
with the workers that make their products. Instead, they contract out production
to free-trade zones in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and now Africa.
The Gap has conspicuously not allowed independent monitoring at any of its
contract factories in over 50 countries around the world, nor did the company
suffer much public criticism when Carmelita Alonzo died of exhaustion from
overwork in 1997. Before she died, Carmelita had been working 14 hours a day at
a factory in the Philippines producing garments for the Gap and other brand-name
retailers.
Fall into The Gap
The followers of fashion are fooled into believing that spending thousands on an
outfit gives them 'individuality'. The victim is often unaware of the financial
oppression that they themselves are subjected to. Who better to sum-up the
machinations of the industry than one of the main perpetrators of the fashion
conspiracy, Karl Largerfeld. The head designer at Chanel, Chloë, Fendi, and KL.
When asked about what makes the fashion industry run, he narrated the famous
children's story, The Emperors New Clothes. This is a story of a couple of
tricksters who convinced a vain emperor that they could tailor him an immaculate
outfit. Only intelligent people could see the elegance of the clothes. The
ignorant would not even see the outfit, and the wearer would appear naked. In
actuality, the emperor really was naked! Largerfeld draws the similarity between
himself, and the tricksters in the story. After all, it is only the
'intelligent' that can look at a handbag, and recognises that it is a Chanel
crocodile original, with interlocking C-C hallmark, costing more than £5,000.
The ignorant will merely see a leather bag.
Other designers are not as honest about their profession. Their egos delude them
into believing that they are a special gift to humankind, bringing delight,
beauty and pleasure to millions of people. Christian Lacroix, for example
pontificates that the slave labour employed throughout the world helps to
provide employment for the people of Third World countries and their economies.
Ralph Lauren, on the other hand, considers his designs a reflection of emotional
freedom, nostalgia and romanticism of the average American.
The people caught up in fashion are superficial, pretentious and naive, but what
is so pathetic about them is that they are innocent victims. The trap (or the
Gap) is an easy one to fall into. There are many inner desires within all of us.
It is these desires that corporate power tap into.
The fashion industry is far from a marginal or atypical Capitalist industry. It
is not the norm for any Capitalist corporation to perceive a demand for a new
product and then strive to meet it. It is far more common for Capitalists to
produce commodities and then set out to create a 'need' for them. From Pokemon
to Double Mints, or roller blades to Rolls-Royces, the product precedes demand.
This explains why marketing is such a fundamental tenet of Capitalism.
One only needs to consider the present dependence on cars in the US, which was
brought about by the deliberate denial of choice to travellers. A 1974 report to
a subcommittee of the US Senate documented the destruction of electric
rail-transport systems in 45 US cities by General Motors (GM), assisted by
Standard Oil of California and the Firestone Tire Company. GM bought electric
transit systems, ripped up the tracks, substituted GM buses and then sold the
transit company. Public transport by bus implied road construction and hence a
huge hidden subsidy for the private car industry. Similar processes are now
taking place in Eastern Europe. Citizens of the new Capitalist 'democracies'
will have the choice between buying cars and immobility.
Another example of the creation of a need can be seen in a more pernicious
industry: the international arms industry. While it can be compared with the
fashion industry in terms of its annual turn over, the parallels actually go
much further. Developed countries produce arms and then work to create a need
for their produce in other countries. They do this by convincing people that
their neighbours, even fellow countrymen, are their potential enemies. These
people are often of the same creed, colour, race and tongue. The believers of
this myth proceed to squander the national wealth on useless military hardware,
just in case their friends become their enemies. I use the term 'useless'
because these packages always have strings attached. It is these 'strings' that
render the packages unusable. These may be such that the arms cannot be deployed
against a manifest enemy (often the salesman themselves). The result is that we
see governments going on shopping sprees to the Bond Streets and 5th Avenues of
the arms world. The glossy adverts and PR are more elaborate than in the fashion
industry. Whole wars, and endless repeats or war footage are used, i.e. the
stealth bomber and patriot missiles of the Gulf War. Wars are the arms
industries equivalent of cat walks and Fashion Week, and Norman Schwarzkopf and
Colin Powell were the super models of the industry.
Marketing
The power of advertising cannot be overstated and is indeed a whole topic in its
own right. Advertisers are continually seeking to manipulate the minds of the
public. They etch out new groups of consumers to target and continually think up
new exploitative ways of getting people to part with their money in exchange for
useless commodities.
A 1999 article in kidScreen, an online industry newsletter, stated, "there have
never been more ways in the culture to support marketing toward kids, and there
have never been more outlets to study how to speak to them. That makes the
competition for kids attention significantly greater, forcing advertisers to
work harder to get inside kids heads." Advertisers consider children to
represent great market potential. They are a sought-after demographic because,
in addition to making their own purchases, they have a powerful and growing
influence over their parents' buying decisions, and they hold great promise as
future adult consumers. In the US in 1998 alone, children ages 4 to 12 spent
approximately $27 billion of their own money and 12 to 19 year olds spent $94
billion. Children directly influenced about $200 billion in parental purchases.
Advertisers and marketers are enjoying an unprecedented number of potent
psychological tools to probe and exploit the minds and emotions of the
consumers. There is simultaneously a strong and growing body of psychological
evidence that indicates that people who watch a great deal of television, with
its incessant stream of commercials, have more materialistic values. It is only
now that psychologists are acknowledging that materialistic values are
associated with increased depression, anxiety, substance abuse, interpersonal
problems and antisocial behaviour. The American Psychological Association
published a statement in 2000 stating, "studies on 'materialism' show that
individuals highly focused on materialistic values also report less satisfaction
with life...worse interpersonal relationships, more drug and alcohol abuse, and
less contribution to community...[and this process contributes] to the formation
of a shallow 'consumer identity' that is obsessed with instant gratification and
material wealth." Western psychologists are finally recognising the obvious.
Rasool-Allah (saw) said, "If the son of Adam had two valleys of money, he would
wish for a third, for nothing can fill the belly of Adam's son except dust, and
Allah forgives him who repents to him" [Bukhari].
The fashion industry is a contrived industry based on creating a lust for
something that does not really exist: a gold standard in style. The industry
would not exist if this lust was not created in the first instance and then
sustained.
This blatant manipulation of basic human wants and needs could be contrasted
with the Socialist philosophy. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engel
described the expansion of human needs as part of Capitalism's 'progressive'
role. Having observed what was happening in the West they concluded that human
desire was all a bourgeois plot. They completely denied the existence of any
innate human wants, needs or instincts. A century and a half after Marx's
observations, the new 'needs' created by Capitalism no longer has a character
way beyond what Marx observed. Consider the US funeral industries promotion of
coffins with a foam mattress for the deceased. Mattresses for the dead are the
last word on consumerism. No doubt, one day these mattresses will be labelled,
under licence, with Calvin Klein or the like. The 'needs' referred to are part
of a malignant alienation that we know as 'consumerism'.
Islam
The Capitalists selfishly exploit and manipulate the wants and desires of
humans. The Socialists deny the very existence of these thought and emotions.
Both of these approaches would lead to misery.
Islam acknowledges the fact that ownership and the desire to have money is part
and parcel of human nature. Rasool-Allah (saw) said: "This wealth is (like)
green and sweet (fruit), and whoever takes it without greed, Allah will bless it
for him, but whoever takes it with greed, Allah will not bless it for him, and
he will be like the one who eats but is never satisfied. And the upper (giving)
hand is better than the lower (taking) hand" [Bukhari].
Also in the Qur'an:
"Beautiful in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: Women and sons;
Heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded (for blood and excellence);
and (wealth of) cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of this
world's life; but in nearness to God is the best of the goals" [Ale-Imran: 14].
Umar (ra) once said, "Oh Allah! We cannot but be happy with those things which
you have made fair in our eyes. O Allah! I request You to give me power to spend
all those things in the right way" [Bukhari].
Islam acknowledges this basic instinct, but it has not assigned it as the basis
of the whole economic system as Capitalism does. Islam's economic system is
comprehensive and clearly defined. A tenet of this system upholds that "all
property belongs to Allah, and we have delegated authority over that which Allah
has allowed us to own". This system also must ensure all basic rights of food,
water, shelter and clothing. In addition to these, Islam caters for the
luxuries. Therefore, it is clear that the system of Islam is in accordance with
our individual nature, the global community and the globe itself.
The above examples demonstrate that the Capitalist system has allowed certain
industries to dominate. In doing so, they have actually stripped the basic
rights away from many individuals. The fat cats such as fashion, films and
pharmaceuticals have bled the human resources within the Western World, not to
mention the Third World and the Earth itself. Despite the power of these billion
dollar industries, we cannot allow their foolishness to distract this Ummah from
its goal: the Khilafah.
Salim Fredericks