Note: this article is part of a series. You may also want to read Woke Capital 2: Banking and Finance, and Woke Capital Vol. 3: NGOs.
From BreadTube to Tucker Carlson, criticisms of capitalism can be found in all corners of the Overton window of acceptable political debate. However, since corporate-controlled media must protect their own interests, these well-paid pseudo-populists will never be able to offer a better alternative to capitalism. They will simply say all the right things to get more views while redirecting your anger towards whichever enemy they have chosen for you.
While your attention is focused on the Scapegoat Of The Day, the ultra-rich is putting lipstick on a pig. Liberals with six-figure salaries take pictures of the pig, choose the best one in their camera roll, pick a filter to make sure the lighting looks just right, write a lengthy caption about the pig’s beauty and bravery (along with several trendy hashtags at the end), and post it to Instagram to earn validation from their followers. That pig is global capitalism, and the lipstick is wokeism.
It might look like a step in the right direction when corporate executives say exactly what people want to hear, “supporting” all the progressive causes (as long as they are profitable), and your boss claims to hold no prejudices against you. However, it’s simply a more insidious form of social control. When your boss is openly authoritarian, shouting at you and threatening to fire anyone who steps out of line, people are more likely to support you and your co-workers when you demand a living wage and safe working conditions. The “woke” boss, in contrast, wraps up that authoritarianism in an artificial system of corporate etiquette to manipulate people into seeing dissent as both impolite and morally wrong.
Although multinational corporations tell the world how much they care about various social issues, the fact is that capital is loyal to nothing but profit. It just turns out that diverting attention away from class struggle and towards identitarianism is quite effective at preserving profits. From banking to Big Tech, many profitable industries are broadcasting their commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as well as environmental sustainability.
For an introduction to capital’s recent makeover, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a great place to start. Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the founder of the Council, claimed in an interview that she used to genuinely believe in the “Ayn Rand-inspired view that if you pursue your interests, all of society is lifted.” By the time of the 2008 financial crisis, she could no longer ignore the fact that the ultra-rich had gotten even richer while everyone else had gotten poorer. Throughout the interview, she appeals to God and morality while promoting her belief that in order for capitalism to become more ethical, the markets must reward shareholders and businesses that “are transforming at scale to become cleaner and more inclusive” must become more profitable for investors.
Judging by the “About Us” page of the organization’s website, the Steering Committee seems quite inclusive! All their members’ organizations combined have $10.5 trillion in assets, a $2.1 trillion market capitalization, offices located in 163 countries and territories, and they even claim to “represent” over 200 million workers. The council currently includes 257 organizations from a diverse range of industries; however, organizations from only two industries – non-profit and banking & finance – receive about 51% of the representation. Fortunately, the council makes up for that disparity by joining almost every major corporation in uplifting the voices of the most oppressed and under-represented minority of the entire anglosphere: supporters of the Kiev regime.
At least we know the council is willing to give a second chance to organizations that have made mistakes in the past. Bayer invented heroin and promoted it to children. British Petroleum (BP) spilled 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico just over a decade ago. Nestlé makes billions of dollars by drying up American springs and streams, putting our country’s drinkable water into plastic bottles and selling it back to us. All are welcome in the Council for Inclusive Capitalism!
The council has only existed for about a year so far but the concept of “Inclusive Capitalism” is nothing new. The Henry Jackson Society, a British neoconservative foreign policy think tank, launched the Henry Jackson Initiative for Inclusive Capitalism in 2012 in order to promote a gentler version of capitalism. Two years later, the E.L. Rothschild investment firm and the City of London Corporation hosted the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism to discuss how to preserve capitalism despite the public’s increasingly negative view of a system where production is organized purely for profit at the expense of the people. Many extremely wealthy individuals attended this conference, including Christine Lagarde, the (now former) Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; Prince Charles of Wales; and, of course, Ms. de Rothschild herself.
Unfortunately, the movement for Inclusive Capitalism was only the beginning; this trend of corporate virtue signaling is much bigger than just one council. As we saw with Bill Gates getting into philanthropy after the Microsoft antitrust trial, the ruling class regularly needs PR makeovers to maintain their power. Gates’ reputation in the media went from “ruthless monopolist” to “selfless billionaire who gives all his money to help starving children in Africa” after starting the Gates Foundation, but many people either saw through his act or ended up realizing it was a lie later on. We can see a similar reaction to the woke makeover of capital right now. Pharmaceutical companies, NGOs, the Military Industrial Complex, and various other industries can only hold on to their pseudo-progressive facade for so long.
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