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Why we hate McDonald's

by Iain MacSaorsa 


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Talk given as part of a Scottish Federation of Anarchists
speaking tour April 1995

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I'm not hear to spill the beans on the Big Mac Empire, others can 
do that far better.

I'm here to place McDonalds in context, as a product of the 
system we live under. McDOnalds did not develop in isolation.

McDOnalds, with its empire, its advertising, its product, its 
production methods, its workforce, is the classic example of 
modern capitalism. Its methods, its "values" reflect those of the 
system and are becoming the "norm", if you like.

This process is typical of a market economy developing into a 
market society, of the process where the society increasingly 
reflects the economic basis on which it is built.

This process could be called "capitalisation" but we will call it 
McDonaldisation as this is more fitting with the times and feel 
of the modern spectacle within which we live.

McDonaldisation is the process by which the principles of the 
fast-food restaurant are becoming the dominate more and more 
parts of our society.

Image, if you like, is replacing content.

The key to understanding McDonaldisation is to understand that 
it, like capitalism, requires that the "human factor" be removed 
from process. It does this in 4 main ways :-

Efficiency, calculability, predictability and control.

Some examples will illustrate these four dimensions of 
McDonaldisation. There are plenty more. In fact someone has 
written a book on the subject "The McDonaldisation of Society". 
This speech is plagiarising said book. But since plagiarism is by 
its very nature creative, I hope you will think no less of it.

Honesty is, I hope you agree, often the best bet!

So, lets take efficiency first.

Efficiency within a McDonaldised system means that the vast 
potential of human life is controlled and narrowed in order to 
ensure "efficiency" (which, in practice, means less cost). Ray 
Kroc, the brain behind big Mac empire, emphasised this

"there was inefficiency, waste and temperamental cooks, sloppy 
service and food whose quality was never consistent. What was 
needed was a simple product that moved from start to completion 
in a streamlined path"

To increase "efficiency" work was deskilled and turned into an 
assembly line. The eating of food was turned into "finger food", 
no need for knifes and forks, time was minimised. Consumption was 
also made "efficient" with tables, chairs and environment 
designed to ensure customers feel uncomfortable and want to more 
on as quickly as possible. And as time means money under 
capitalism, as "efficiently" as possible.

The Egg McMuffin is a classic example of efficiency as it 
combines an entire breakfast in one handy sandwich, making 
breakfast far more efficient as all you have to do is stick it in 
your mouth and chew! Instead of a wide range of options, the 
menus are narrowly defined and we get to chose between the 
options others have created.

Media "sound bits" are another classic example of efficiency, 
where complex issues are condensed into 30 minute slots on the 
tv. The content is so summarised and distorted that issues cannot 
be addressed nor people informed of the reality of the situation. 
This ensures even more the elite domination of the news medium as 
30 seconds is an impossible time to challenge accepted ideas.

Whether this efficiency destroys all traces of human interaction 
and quality of service or just most of them, I will leave to the 
listener to decide.

Efficiency is driven by calculability. In order to work out if 
its efficient, we need to be about to measure it. Hence the need 
to emphasis "quantity", not quality. The big Mac, the large fries 
and so on.

Great care is taken to ensure that the pre-grilled hamburger is 
exactly 3.875 inches across and the roll it goes into is exactly 
3.5 inches. Why? For the same reason that the French fries box 
has been designed with strips, to give the illusion of size, the 
image of "value for money". The "Big Mac" can appear to be 
bursting out of the roll, a useful illusion.

In addition, calculability ensures that what really matters is 
maximised. Profits. A McDonaldised system is based on a system 
called "scientific management" invented by Frederick Taylor at 
the turn of the century. This was based on calculating the one 
best way of doing something and getting workers to follow these 
mind-less tasks, day in, day out. In the first workplace this was 
introduced, it lead to 360% increase in production. The workers 
got a 60% increase in their wages for the privilege of being turned 
into "human robots".

More nearer home, Burger King fries are sold at 400% of cost, 
their drinks, 600%. Calculability does pay off, for some at 
least. Of course, we can calculate the amount of rubbish they 
produce!

Being able to calculate something means you can make it 
predictable, the third aspect of a McDonaldised system.

We know that if we went into a McDonalds in Glasgow, in Moscow, 
in Sidney, we'll get the same shit, in the same packaging with 
the same inane smile. Everywhere you go, we see identical shops, 
selling identical products - a standardised world filled with 
clones. And McDonalds have the gall to claim on one of their 
leaflets they place design their restaurant to fit into the local 
culture! Aye, right! The local culture of McDonalds!

In work, we go through standardised work routines, with mad, 
pointless rules. On the bru, we fill in the same standard forms, 
in the same standard bureaucracies. Objective rules, crushing the 
subjective individual, turning them sad charactatures of their 
work! 

In a system of competition, this is not unusual, competition 
means putting like against like. Predictability is good for 
business!

Lastly, there is control. The replacement of human by non-human 
technology. The great source of trouble in any form of 
McDonaldised system is human uncertainty and unpredictability. In 
other words, human individuality!

This great evil to rationality, to calculability, to 
predictability and to efficiency must be controlled and removed. 
Hence people are replaced, controlled and processed by machines. 
And working in such an environment soon results in massive 
alienation, the feeling that who become the servants of machines, 
of others.

Not that such facts were unknown to the real founders of control, 
the assembly line. Both Taylor and Henry Ford recognised the 
horrible nature of repetitive, controlled work, but since they 
considered the majority to be stupid and not "mentally alert and 
intelligent" enough (to use Taylor's phrase) they considered the 
system they were imposing to be for the "greater good". Needless 
to say, reality proved them wrong.

We have already mentioned a very useful by-product of such 
control by technology, the increased profits of such a system. In 
addition, technology deskills the worker, allowing wages to be 
lowered, increasing the pool of labour, allowing each worker to 
be replaceable and so not treated as individuals, but as 
replaceable human machines. The mass worker replaces the unique 
individual. That this process of McDonaldisation is widespread in 
industry is seen from the name this type of employment is called 
- the McJob!

Here we have the crux of why we hate McDonalds, its not totally 
because of what they do (although that's a big part of it) but 
because of what they represent, the cutting edge of capitalism. A 
veggie McDonalds would still be a hell hole, an affront to 
individuality and humanity.

Such a system soon produces the "irrationality of rationality", 
where the living, feeling, thinking individual is crushed under 
the dead weight of the past, of capital, of authority and 
hierarchy.

The effects of McDonaldisation as felt everywhere, in all our 
social relationships. The market economy becomes the market 
society, commodity replaces community. In a McDonaldised system, 
people are not encouraged to feel emotions. "Emotional" people 
are to be considered strange, freaks. Only the efficient, 
calculable "emotions" of "have a nice day" count, to be doled as 
and when the boss required.

Which is, of course, the golden rule. Those with the gold make 
the rules. William Blake once said, "A Tyrant is the worst 
disease and the Cause of all others". Social hierarchy, economic 
and political power in the hands of the few, is the real source 
of social problems and so ecological ones. McDonaldisation would 
never develop in a self-managed system based on co-operation 
within humanity and with nature. McDonaldisation may be the 
"natural" result of capitalism, but its not the natural result of 
human life. Only when human life is placed under the control of 
"official" authority, with "natural" authorities of self-
management ignored (to use Bakunin's terms for a moment) does 
profit replace humanity.

Capitalism needs to enforce "official" authority on us in order 
to keep the "quantifiable" system it needs to extract profit from 
us, to keep going. The present destruction of the planet in the 
name of progress is no accident. Its not a product of some sort 
of abstract "humanity", but of a system which places accumulation 
and growth above all else, which thinks that 5 is better than 2, 
that money now is better than rainforest latter. 

A green capitalism is impossible simply because it has to grow, 
it has to accumulate. Eco-systems cannot expand, but the economy 
must! Capitalism can never be green, it needs to grow, to expand. 
That is why short-termism rules, why wilderness is being 
destroyed, why the environment is being scarified. Its the 
system, it has to do it in order to survive. 

A Japanese anarchist writing in the 1920's said that every social 
system has its belief system. Under feudalism, its the church. 
Under capitalism, its science. It has to be able to measure and 
quantify everything inorder to sell it. And its faith is 
reflected in its politics and economics, were quantity is more 
important than quality, where exchange value is better than use 
value, where 5 votes are better than 2 votes, where $5 is
better than $2.

Like all religions, capitalism needs sacrifice. It sacrifices 
individuality, humanity and ecology for the power and profits for 
the elite few, the ones who make the golden rules, the ones that 
enforce McDonaldisation in the name of "freedom". The ones that 
have the power while we have the pollution!

We need to resist the system, create new values, values based on 
quality, not quantity. We must put the human factor back into 
society, otherwise our alienated society will alienate itself off 
the planet.

We must change our values, our "belief" system, if you like while
changing the system. The "belief" system of anarchy is quality 
over quantity. The Japanese anarchist said this would be equivalent 
to geography, or in more up to date language, ecology. People 
living in harmony with nature because they live in harmony with 
themselves both as individuals and with each other, placing human 
values above all else.

We can only do that by reclaiming our individuality, organising 
together and change things by our own efforts and based on our own
ideas of right and wrong. That always goes on, that's why the 
human factor is so hated by the system. Where there is 
oppression, there is resistance. And resistance is the sign of 
humanity and it needs to be encouraged and developed to such a 
point that the current system can be replaced and the world 
renewed in the bright light of freedom, equality and solidarity.

That's what the Scottish Federation of Anarchists aims to do, 
but we cannot do it alone.

As one Zapatista said "how are you going to construct something 
new, if you keep doing the same old things?" We have to learn the 
mistakes of the past and build the new world in the shell of the 
old. In the Chiapas, in Mexico, the Zapatistas are learning these 
lessons, as are all people in struggle like the anti-roads 
protesters in Pollok, the people organising the centre in 
Edinburgh. All across the world, the anarchist message is being 
heard and being applied. Its a message whose time has come.

Its a message that strikes at the heart of the system which 
McDonalds represents and its so-called values. 

We need to act. Just saying "I object" is not enough. It implies 
acceptance of the status quo. You have to *do* something.

McDonalds is being resisted across the globe. From Mexico to 
Denmark, McDonalds stores get trashed. Such actions show that 
the message is getting through. But while attacking the symbols 
of capitalism is a fun experience, it is not enough. We have to 
challenge and change the content of the system while trashing and 
subverting its images.

The future is in your hands.