Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods and the case for public ownership
22 June 2017
On June 16, Amazon announced a bid to purchase US grocery giant Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The deal, which is expected to close later this year, sent Amazon’s shares soaring and netted $2.88 billion for CEO Jeff Bezos in a single day.
The Whole Foods purchase gives Amazon a foothold in the $800 billion grocery industry and ownership of over 460 grocery stores across the US, Canada and Great Britain. The expansion is an expression of the unprecedented concentration of economic power among a handful of corporations that dominate the world capitalist economy.
The Wall Street Journal reported on June 17 that Amazon’s purchase “is just the most extreme example of a larger, more consequential phenomenon”—the fact that many businesses across industries “are going to get bought or bulldozed and power and wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few companies in a way not seen since the Gilded Age… We’re going to have to ask ourselves, as a country and as a civilization, just how much power we’re comfortable having consolidated in the hands of so few businesses.”
The move foretells a ruthless assault on the jobs, wages and working conditions of Whole Foods workers, which will mark a new stage in the assault on all retail service workers. Bloomberg News noted that Amazon “wants fewer employees in each [Whole Foods] store, with those who remain providing product expertise, rather than performing mundane tasks.” Amazon workers’ horror stories of super-exploitation will give Whole Foods workers an idea of what they can expect.
Amazon has not only grown to become the largest online retailer, it increasingly owns the infrastructure of the marketplace, netting $1 out of…