THE BAD MOOD KEEPS RISING No Logo, by Naomi Klein. London: Flamingo, 2000. Paperback. Reviewed by Judy McVey. As I was writing this article more than 200,000 protesters were on the streets of Genoa in Italy, where the G8 summit, a meeting of government leaders of the seven most wealthy nations plus Russia, was being held. The meeting place was surrounded by steel-reinforced barricades as protection against a growing anger among ever-larger numbers of demonstrators. As I completed the article I heard on the radio news that one protester was dead. This time it was Genoa, but it could have been the Swedish City of Gothenburg where another protester was shot and wounded earlier this year. And it could have been any number of cities where 'globalisation' is fought on a regular basis. Naomi Klein's No Logo traces the early development of this movement as it burst onto the world stage about six years ago, reminding everyone that change is possible and necessary in response to Third World debt, economic rationalism, Nike sweatshops, McJobs and growing domination by multinationals. This book has become a bestseller and played an important role in building and shaping the movement. Even though it was written before the huge Seattle protest in late 1999 and S11 in Melbourne in 2000, reading it is still an inspiration. For activists who have been fighting privatisation and Jeff Kennett-style assaults on our communities all through the 1990s, the book sums up not only the facts and the history, but the tremendous mood of anger and then relief that someone has written down our feelings and that there is an international mood of solidarity and empowerment. Klein shows how the movement leapt from the early nineties' localised protests to global expression: 'When I started this book, I honestly didn't know whether I was covering marginal atomised scenes of resistance or the birth of a potentially broad-based movement. But as time went on, what I clearly saw was a movement forming before my eyes.' The Genoa protests were described as 'anti-capitalist' by reporters—it's a movement which has been struggling hard to get this message through that protesters are not against internationalisation. The day before Genoa, I heard one person arguing with a reporter why his message was not 'anti-globalisation' unless that solely meant he was against the unregulated rule of multinationals trampling on the rights of the poor, the Third World and workers. But he was in favour of globalisation if it could mean genuine international communication and freedom of movement for people, showing how many people have taken the anti-corporate analysis of Naomi Klein further into a new anti-capitalist orientation. Klein examines the role of big corporations dominating our lives through advertising, 'brands' and 'logos', and by limiting our control over what we do, how we work, what is provided in society. She attacks the empty promises of globalisation, that to let the market rip will mean wider prosperity and broader choice. The book exposes the sweatshop conditions in the Philippines and China as well as the attacks on workers and the proliferation of 'McJobs' in the US. It is a positive message—not just about suffering but the resistance to these conditions—from 11-year-olds protesting at the cost of Nike shoes (when they only cost $5 to make) to trade union struggle and 'culture jamming' (direct action attacks on advertising). Around 1995, she identifies 'a bad mood rising' against giant companies and brand names when the first conferences against globalisation changed the political landscape. The 'bad mood rising' is people making connections. Her example is the links being made between the First and Third worlds: In 1993 a fire in a Kader toy factory in Bangkok, making toys for western children sold by 'Toys-R-Us', left 188 workers dead. But in 1993 the connections weren't made—no one said 'we don't want burnt toys'. By 1995 she identifies a 'collective click'. Whereas once people would say about migrants and people from poorer countries: 'they're getting our jobs', blaming Third World workers for accepting low wages, in 1995 activists said: 'our corporations are stealing their lives'. Klein takes up major issues of importance to women, especially working conditions in the sweatshops where many women slave. However, there is also an important reassessment of 1980s feminism that criticises identity politics for a very narrow and inward-looking approach which ignored what was happening beyond the campus as well as class and economic issues. She argues that feminists need to dump identity politics, 'a politics of mirrors and metaphors', in order to fight today's battles. 'Over time, campus identity politics became so consumed by personal politics that they all but eclipsed the rest of the world.' Worse, representation could be coopted by the very enemy identity politics was meant to fight; by the mid-nineties 'diversity' had become the mantra of the biggest companies and government advertisers. So, for Klein, 'identity politics weren't fighting the system, or even subverting it. When it came to the vast new industry of corporate branding, they were feeding it.' This failure to address economic questions 'turned out to be immeasurably problematic because the economic trends that have so accelerated in the past decade have all been about massive redistribution and stratification of world resources: of jobs, goods and money. Everyone except those in the very highest tier of the corporate elite is getting less…. In this new globalised context, the victories of identity politics have amounted to a rearranging of the furniture while the house burned down.' No Logo draws a sharp distinction between 1980s feminism and women's struggles of the early 1900s, arguing that 'the relationships between gender and class have not always been so casually overlooked' and reminding us of the origins of the International Women's Day rallies. They celebrated working class women's strikes and demonstrations, in particular marking the anniversary of the 1908 strike and demonstration of women textile workers in New York, that protested about wages and working conditions, child labour and long working hours. Klein argues that 1980s-style feminism left a generation of student activists 'ill-equipped to deal with issues that were more about ownership than representation'. The book is all about taking up that practical task of promoting a new political culture of action not images. The anti-capitalist movement is still in gestation, but a movement is on the rise pregnant with possibilities for a struggle for freedom, including freedom for women. History shows that women's liberation has been dependent on broader movements for change—from the revolutionary movements of the early twentieth century when women of in the western countries won the vote and the first steps to equality, to the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement which grew out of the broader Civil Rights, international student and anti-Vietnam War campaigns. This new anti-capitalist movement, already international and militant, is an enormous opportunity for further advances for women as well as humanity in general. We can use an historical perspective to understand just how great is the opportunity for change. In this regard, Naomi Klein's No Logo remains at an early stage of analysis. Fantastic in its ability to represent the aspirations of a new generation of activists, its greatest contribution is to assist in unleashing further ideas and encouraging us to develop new visions of the human future of genuine liberation. No Logo describes what's wrong with the current world of corporate domination and demands a democratic and militant overturning of the relationships of exploitation and oppression. A vision of total equality between men and women, Black and white and Asian, lesbian and gay and straight can only be realised through deepening the current struggle and demanding not only more rights but full control of our lives. Everyone should read this book and pass it on to their friends. Also take the message to heart and get involved at the next anti-corporate mobilisation. Judy McVey has been a socialist and women's movement activist since the mid-1970s. She is a delegate in the Community and Public Sector Union and a founding member of the Refugee Action Collective in Victoria.