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Publication Date: 2006
Publisher: New Press
Binding: Paperback
Topics: Corporate Rule, Labor & Work / Classism, Visioning the Future

Description: There is no shortage of statistics testifying to Wal-Mart's mammoth scale: Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation, the world's largest private employer, and China's eighth largest export market. Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism is an attempt to get beyond the bare facts of this corporate giant, uncover a hidden history of the Arkansas based corporation, and dissect Wal-Mart's business model, social impact, and transformative role in the global economy.

Review(s): "Culled from an April 2004 conference on Wal-Mart at the University of California, Santa Barbara, these essays can be redundant, but they offer stimulating perspectives on the world's largest corporation. The rise of Wal-Mart, declares editor Lichtenstein, has been abetted by a "southernized, deunionized, post-New Deal America," a business culture in which labor costs can be squeezed, even as a company promotes loyalty via "faux classlessness." Several chapters place these phenomena in context: describing how Wal-Mart represents both an extension of and a quantum leap from previous retail giants and how it places unprecedented price pressure on its suppliers. Wal-Mart saves consumers money, the contributors argue, but only by externalizing many social and economic costs, including benefits for its workers. One provocative chapter, based on anonymous worker sources, describes a workplace atmosphere of relentless stress and understaffing. Some interesting tidbits: Wal-Mart hit a wall trying to expand in Mexico and never gained traction in Germany, in both cases because of the countries' different socioeconomic structures. A final chapter, by a union organizer, proposes a "Wal-Mart Workers Association" for this infamously antiunion company. The association would gain 13,000 members if only 1% of the Wal-Mart workforce joined." - Publishers Weekly