Lululemon Founder Chip Wilson is the Face of Canada’s Vicious Elite
“When social justice is put ahead of profits, eventually, natural competition eliminates the weak”. Such a transparently callous remark sounds like it could have been lifted from one of Ayn Rand’s particularly brutal philosophical musings. On the contrary, it’s a quote from a recent op-ed penned by Lululemon founder and former CEO Chip Wilson, in which the billionaire investor proves himself the epitome of the bloated elitism of the Canadian ruling class.
In his article for local Vancouver media outlet Daily Hive, Wilson takes a two-pronged approach to attacking progressive politics, simultaneously criticizing the social democratic provincial government under current premier John Horgan and the Mountain Equipment Co-op chain (MEC). The piece is a vicious effort to paint the picture of an irresponsible and naive leftist model taking over BC politics — one that Wilson fears is bound to gear the province’s economy for an implosion comparable to the downfall of MEC’s “socialist regime”. In reality, the billionaire’s claims are both empirically false and morally reprehensible, foregoing even the basic niceties of the country’s largely centrist political sphere and exposing a social darwinism still present in the philosophy of its corporate Right.
Wilson begins the article by declaring that his companies maintain a simple policy: never hire anybody who has worked for MEC. Wilson accuses the former co-op of facilitating an environment that created entitled and useless workers who “[felt it was] egregious to work more than 36 hours a week”. His attack comes in the wake of American investment firm Kingswood Capital Management’s acquisition of MEC earlier this year in the midst of COVID-19-related troubles. The buyout signals a reorientation towards a top-down, for-profit business model and new corporate management.
Founded in 1971, MEC served as a sustainable consumer’s cooperative, prioritizing democratic governance and ethical practices over then-emerging neoliberal incentives for overseas exploitation and private growth. Over the years, despite a continued commitment to transparency and eco-friendly practices, MEC’s operative structure began to de-emphasize democratic participation — with upper management eventually selling the company without any input from its membership.
The buyout can be understood in a variety of terms. A common reason for failure in large co-ops is the dissolution of co-operative principles. Perhaps the company ought to have maintained its emphasis on community participation and ownership. Another point of critique could of course be the government’s broader failure to provide adequate structural supports for co-ops and democratic workplaces, which are in some cases less competitive than conventional management/ownership structures, but are largely beneficial to worker and community well-being. In Wilson’s article, these ethically-grounded interpretations of the MEC buyout are — predictably — nowhere to be found.
Wilson’s gripes aren’t with the specific strategic failures of MEC, but are rather motivated by a deep ideological disgust towards workplace democracy and egalitarian politics as a whole. According to the billionaire’s estimation, “the costs of providing inflated wages, of ensuring job security for inferior work, of employing people who should have likely been terminated but were kept for diversity percentage reasons or unionization,” spelled it’s competitive failure, when in reality, co-ops often manage to keep such factors as job security and adequate pay intact while achieving significantly higher survival rates than other corporations. In his blatant antagonism, Wilson expresses distaste for even the most basic forms of social liberalism and affirmative action. Diversity initiatives have now been broadly accepted in Canadian society, even by the corporate world. To Wilson, the failure of MEC is only the inevitable result of the misplaced humanity within the forms of organization that co-ops and unions collectively represent.
“MEC was in competition with creative entrepreneurs who enjoy working 24/7,” Wilson writes, “who develop employees to be great, and who propel the world forward — the same entrepreneurs who pay for Canada’s infrastructure and social programs”. Beyond the false narratives of fruitful trickle-down policies, and dedication to the fabricated assumption of purely monetary work incentives, is a refusal to recognize the possibility that the workplace models that drive massive wealth inequality and the destruction of our planet ultimately are not ideal. If Wilson was attempting any kind of humane investigation, we could point to the well-documented effects of healthy unions on society at large and the spiritual and pragmatic advantages of worker-owned enterprises. Clearly that isn’t happening. Wilson’s op-ed is little more than age-old elite cruelty; wholly alienated from the everyday realities of a largely precarious working class.
Out of Wilson’s sloppy cultural critique emerges the primary aim of his article: to attack the center-left BC NDP party, recently elected majority government. To Wilson, their policies signify a turn towards political victimhood (which he describes in the summarical phrase “it’s not fair”) and economic ruin. As was the case with MEC, Horgan’s NDP has a great many problems, largely stemming from it’s awkward position as a moderate and largely corporate-friendly party alienated from its working class socialist roots. Of course, Wilson’s criticism evades all sensibility, only calling for greater corporatism in an already deeply unequal society.
“As we go to the polls,” Wilson writes, “I urge the undecided not to be blinded by social media headlines of unionized media writers and socialist university professors,” suggesting a vote for the conservative policies of the Harperite Liberals. Thankfully, these reactionary Cold War politics are unlikely to persuade many Canadians. The population holds increasingly positive views of socialism, especially among younger generations. However, this has yet to be reflected in the nation’s twenty-first century electoral politics, and the center-left (composed of the federal Liberal, NDP, and Green parties) wholly fails to address Canada’s massive wealth inequality and corporate control.
Beloved NDP-founder Tommy Douglas, the first elected democratic socialist in North America, conceived of the party as a worker-oriented move towards alternative forms of ownership. In the 1990s, the party began taking cues from the neoliberal “third way” positions of the UK Labor Party’s Tony Blair administration, leaving Canadians with no real working-class option. In a time when chapters of the DSA are gaining traction all over America, Canadians are reminded of the need for an opposition to brutal capitalism that goes beyond the slight leftward turn of the party under Jagmeet Singh. Wilson’s article serves as a wake-up call for Canadian progressives, reminding us that a real democratic socialism must emerge in the face of an increasingly powerful elite. Wilson conveys nothing but disdain for working class stability, portraying even the most moderate attempts at diversity, justice, and equality in the workplace as signifiers of petulance and entitlement. In these tumultuous times, Canadians must stand against such ludicrous attacks on democracy.
Like many capitalists, Wilson believes that the siphoned wealth of the entrepreneurial class is somehow independently earned, existing as separate from its community (a notion which is of course completely unfounded). He rejects “the progressive [agendas] of environmental consciousness, diversity, social equality, and union hand-holding” as profit-stifling inefficiencies, and reminds us that those who refuse democracy in the central part of most Canadians’ lives — the workplace — often have little political investment in the well-being of others. Wilson’s interpretation of the working class mirrors the ugliest sentiments of early liberals like Thomas Malthus, who viewed capitalism as the vehicle through which the inferior — or in Wilson’s words, “the weak” — can be weeded out. That’s an easy theory to adopt when you have a net worth that could cover nearly half of the projected costs of ending Canada’s homeless epidemic, with a fortune largely built on the backs of abused overseas factory workers.
There is obviously no evaluation of risk, creativity, or hard work that justifies such a gross degree of personal control. Wilson adopts the right-wing fallacy that abandons all understanding of circumstantial causation to make the claim that those who suffer under capitalism are simply inferior, while those who control the wealth do so because of some loosely defined merit. In this Reaganite view of political economy, entrepreneurial risk becomes a religion of its own. The Lululemon CEO presents a philosophy that encapsulates the aristocratic superiority complex of a Canadian ruling class that, like capitalists around the globe, have been consumed by their own fallacious reasoning and feel empowered enough to assert their control openly.
Wilson’s rationale mimics the misanthropic justifications behind the steep hierarchies that progressives around the globe have been combating for centuries. His reactionary outburst is a reminder that Canada’s domineering elite won’t give up their control without a fight. Popular opposition to the nation’s corporate capitalism must be represented through truly progressive politics that embrace the class consciousness required to combat an ultra-rich whose earnings speak for themselves. In confronting Wilson’s brutal outlook we are met with a simple fact, not only for Canadians but nations the world over: in the face of corporate-created apocalyptic climate disaster and mounting far-right bases, a failure to counter such callous individualism could soon spell the end of our species. What will Canadians do to stop it?
