Taking Back Control
James Wilt, Drinking Up the Revolution: How to Smash Big Alcohol and Reclaim Working-Class Joy
Repeater Books, 300pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781913462765
reviewed by Samuel Gregory
In my local in Sheffield, where I’ve lived for 13 years, there’s a tradition whereby anyone who goes on a demonstration can bring their placards to the pub afterwards and hang them on the wall for semi-permanent display. The pub is also a vital hub in the city for hosting political meetings and planning strikes and direct actions — such is the link between a particular strand of British drinking culture and working class politics.
But Canadian writer James Wilt’s new book, Drinking Up the Revolution, situates attempts to curb the power of multinational brewers and reduce overall alcohol consumption within a radical socialist movement. Wilt proposes that for a long time the international left has maintained a curious blindspot when it comes to ‘Big Alcohol’, not affording it the same level of analysis and anti-corporate activism that it gives to other ruthless and damaging cartels.
This is despite the fact that if anything big alcohol companies are even more highly consolidated and anti-competitive than other global industries. Just a handful of brewers dominate the industry worldwide, swallowing up hundreds of small breweries and beer brands in the global south and divvying up entire countries between them, creating effective monopolies that use a bewildering array of different beer brands to give the illusion of competition.
The first part of the book looks at the insidious effect these anti-competitive practices have on drinkers worldwide. As the comedian Stewart Lee has observed in a routine mocking the ‘pretend-folksy names and fake artisanal packaging’ of bottled beer in British supermarkets, so-called ‘craft beer’ is often nothing of the sort — and this absurdly misleading phrase masks multi-million pound companies cosplaying as grassroots producers. In Europe, the most odious example has to be Scottish firm BrewDog, whose rebellious marketing shtick (including the strap-line ‘Equity for Punks’) runs counter to their status as a $2 billion company and allegations made by ex-employees of poor working practices.
Wilt turns to the harms caused by alcohol consumption, noting that the growth imperative for the biggest brewers means that their corporate strategy is to dramatically increase overall consumption (as well as market share) in African countries with existing low rates of consumption. To do this, the industry tirelessly works to dismantle any barriers to higher consumption, including minimum pricing policies, antitrust rules and restrictions on where alcohol can be sold. The aim is to make every country like the UK — where alcohol is ubiquitous. This doesn’t mean that everybody is drunk all the time, but it does mean that having a drink is always a possibility (at home, in the park, even on a train).
This sudden flood of alcohol into the global south has had a devastating impact on public health, as workers turn to drink to relieve the stress inherent in living at the sharp end of capitalism. In this sense, Wilt argues, ‘Big Alcohol’ gets to have its cake and eat it, flogging a product that offers relief from the extractive system that it is a central part of. But this model of aggressive expansion in the global south, which relies on increases in overall consumption rather than market share, is conducted under a veneer of respectability. The industry promotes so-called 'responsible drinking' worldwide, creating the figure of the ‘problem drinker’ with the aim of legitimising and normalising a huge increase in lower levels of consumption (which by implication is non-problematic). This shifts the blame for subsequent health and social problems from the companies to the individual — an ingeneous tactic deployed by capitalism time and time again, absolving itself of responsibility in everything from mental health to environmental collapse.
Needless to say, the end result of this drive to separate ‘problem drinkers’ from everybody else is highly racialised, with black and brown people vastly more likely to be stopped by police for carrying booze or for public ‘drunkenness’. Wilt looks at his own country of Canada, where pernicious stereotypes of the 'drunk Indian', unable to metabolise alcohol at the same rate as white people (a nasty bit of race science known as the ‘firewater myth’), manifest themselves in the healthcare system and an institutionally racist police force. This can have tragic consequences: Wilt notes that Indigenous people in Canada are ‘constantly killed in hospitals and policy custody after suffering a severe medical issue which is “mistaken” for drunkenness.’
But despite this thorough and sobering analysis of the substantial harms caused by alcohol, Wilt largely skims over its benefits — perhaps anxious to avoid trivialising the misery it undoubtedly causes. The first half of the book’s subtitle (‘How to smash big alcohol…’) is well covered, but the second half (‘. . . and reclaim working-class joy’) remains tantalisingly elusive. In the right circumstances, booze can act as a vital catalyst for new ideas and artistic endeavours. From the pub philosophising of Mark E. Smith and The Fall, to the whiskey glass rumination of so much English folk music, how much of our counter-culture would be missing-in-action if it wasn’t for a drink or two? In another new book, Clubland, beer writer Pete Brown argues that working men’s clubs in the UK have long acted as crucibles of self-improvement, mutual aid and working class organising. Some campaigners have also made a distinction between home drinking and social drinking (as being around other people makes you more likely to moderate your intake), as part of an argument to tax home drinking more and pub drinking less.
Wilt concludes with a series of recommendations — a manifesto to take back control of the beer barrel. These range from the eminently sensible (unionise every sector of the alcohol industry) to the somewhat overzealous (imagine walking into your local and all the pump clips were subject to tobacco-style plain packaging) and the eye-wateringly ambitious (nationalise the entire industry, globally). One proposal few would dispute is the need for more genuinely public spaces (‘non-alcocentric’, Wilt writes), where people can gather, especially in the evening, without needing to buy anything. He also makes convincing connections with other social justice struggles, including a wider programme to legalise and regulate all drugs, and police and prison abolition. At its heart this is an argument for a truly liberated working class, with leisure options beyond the dismally narrow range offered by capitalism. ‘Through collective struggle for a better world,’ Wilt writes, ‘we can form new relations with alcohol and other substances, along with alternatives not yet even dreamed of.’
But Canadian writer James Wilt’s new book, Drinking Up the Revolution, situates attempts to curb the power of multinational brewers and reduce overall alcohol consumption within a radical socialist movement. Wilt proposes that for a long time the international left has maintained a curious blindspot when it comes to ‘Big Alcohol’, not affording it the same level of analysis and anti-corporate activism that it gives to other ruthless and damaging cartels.
This is despite the fact that if anything big alcohol companies are even more highly consolidated and anti-competitive than other global industries. Just a handful of brewers dominate the industry worldwide, swallowing up hundreds of small breweries and beer brands in the global south and divvying up entire countries between them, creating effective monopolies that use a bewildering array of different beer brands to give the illusion of competition.
The first part of the book looks at the insidious effect these anti-competitive practices have on drinkers worldwide. As the comedian Stewart Lee has observed in a routine mocking the ‘pretend-folksy names and fake artisanal packaging’ of bottled beer in British supermarkets, so-called ‘craft beer’ is often nothing of the sort — and this absurdly misleading phrase masks multi-million pound companies cosplaying as grassroots producers. In Europe, the most odious example has to be Scottish firm BrewDog, whose rebellious marketing shtick (including the strap-line ‘Equity for Punks’) runs counter to their status as a $2 billion company and allegations made by ex-employees of poor working practices.
Wilt turns to the harms caused by alcohol consumption, noting that the growth imperative for the biggest brewers means that their corporate strategy is to dramatically increase overall consumption (as well as market share) in African countries with existing low rates of consumption. To do this, the industry tirelessly works to dismantle any barriers to higher consumption, including minimum pricing policies, antitrust rules and restrictions on where alcohol can be sold. The aim is to make every country like the UK — where alcohol is ubiquitous. This doesn’t mean that everybody is drunk all the time, but it does mean that having a drink is always a possibility (at home, in the park, even on a train).
This sudden flood of alcohol into the global south has had a devastating impact on public health, as workers turn to drink to relieve the stress inherent in living at the sharp end of capitalism. In this sense, Wilt argues, ‘Big Alcohol’ gets to have its cake and eat it, flogging a product that offers relief from the extractive system that it is a central part of. But this model of aggressive expansion in the global south, which relies on increases in overall consumption rather than market share, is conducted under a veneer of respectability. The industry promotes so-called 'responsible drinking' worldwide, creating the figure of the ‘problem drinker’ with the aim of legitimising and normalising a huge increase in lower levels of consumption (which by implication is non-problematic). This shifts the blame for subsequent health and social problems from the companies to the individual — an ingeneous tactic deployed by capitalism time and time again, absolving itself of responsibility in everything from mental health to environmental collapse.
Needless to say, the end result of this drive to separate ‘problem drinkers’ from everybody else is highly racialised, with black and brown people vastly more likely to be stopped by police for carrying booze or for public ‘drunkenness’. Wilt looks at his own country of Canada, where pernicious stereotypes of the 'drunk Indian', unable to metabolise alcohol at the same rate as white people (a nasty bit of race science known as the ‘firewater myth’), manifest themselves in the healthcare system and an institutionally racist police force. This can have tragic consequences: Wilt notes that Indigenous people in Canada are ‘constantly killed in hospitals and policy custody after suffering a severe medical issue which is “mistaken” for drunkenness.’
But despite this thorough and sobering analysis of the substantial harms caused by alcohol, Wilt largely skims over its benefits — perhaps anxious to avoid trivialising the misery it undoubtedly causes. The first half of the book’s subtitle (‘How to smash big alcohol…’) is well covered, but the second half (‘. . . and reclaim working-class joy’) remains tantalisingly elusive. In the right circumstances, booze can act as a vital catalyst for new ideas and artistic endeavours. From the pub philosophising of Mark E. Smith and The Fall, to the whiskey glass rumination of so much English folk music, how much of our counter-culture would be missing-in-action if it wasn’t for a drink or two? In another new book, Clubland, beer writer Pete Brown argues that working men’s clubs in the UK have long acted as crucibles of self-improvement, mutual aid and working class organising. Some campaigners have also made a distinction between home drinking and social drinking (as being around other people makes you more likely to moderate your intake), as part of an argument to tax home drinking more and pub drinking less.
Wilt concludes with a series of recommendations — a manifesto to take back control of the beer barrel. These range from the eminently sensible (unionise every sector of the alcohol industry) to the somewhat overzealous (imagine walking into your local and all the pump clips were subject to tobacco-style plain packaging) and the eye-wateringly ambitious (nationalise the entire industry, globally). One proposal few would dispute is the need for more genuinely public spaces (‘non-alcocentric’, Wilt writes), where people can gather, especially in the evening, without needing to buy anything. He also makes convincing connections with other social justice struggles, including a wider programme to legalise and regulate all drugs, and police and prison abolition. At its heart this is an argument for a truly liberated working class, with leisure options beyond the dismally narrow range offered by capitalism. ‘Through collective struggle for a better world,’ Wilt writes, ‘we can form new relations with alcohol and other substances, along with alternatives not yet even dreamed of.’