Journalist Chris Hedges talks to Joshua Freeman, Professor History at City University of New York, about his book ‘Behemoth: The History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World’. While the US has deindustrialized its economy with skeletal remains of its manufacturing base, the factory continues to dominate the world economy, employing nearly 30 percent of the global workforce, nearly 43 percent in China. These factories make appliances, cars, laptops, and clothes, and the vast array of consumer products that define the modern age. Some of these factories employ as many as 200,000 or more workers. But what is the future of manufacturing when faced with diminishing resources, its legacy of land and air pollution, and environmental degradation?
