Amway: The Cult of Free Enterprise

by Stephen Butterfield

Butterfield, an ex-Amway distributor, dissects the dynamics of this "Free Enterprise" empire with an insider's insight.

Genres: Business, Management

185 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1985

Reviews

[Kaitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know me, always on my anti-MLM shit.

This book was written by an ex Amway distributor and published in 1985. He discusses what it was like being in Amway from the inside.

Its super fucked. Fuck Richard Devos. Fuck Ronald Raegan. Fuck Amway. Fuck MLMs and to a certain extent Fuck the Government.

"Is Amway the wave of the future, the revival of small entrepreneurship and personal freedom in a bureaucratized society? Is it, as many people assert, the Golden Rule in action? The quintessence of the American Dream? Is it merely a business opportunity? Or is it something more sinister: a conspiracy, a cult, a gigantic scheme to attack the labor movement, a home-grown American brand of fascism, a "feeder" organization for fundamentalist right wing political causes?

Imagine a tightly knit, highly dedicated group of Black Panthers, over a half million strong, programming themselves every day with tapes and recruiting new members at an annual rate of 33%: imagine the Moonies or the Hare Krishnas filling auditoriums and coliseums with hundreds of simultaneous rallies every weekend, issuing approved book and tape lists, telling their members to read and listen only to material on the approved list, inventing chants and slogans and special in-group gestures, implanting the leader principal in masses of followers, and actually controlling the attitudes, household product use, incomes, reading matter, and social circles of a million suburban homes. The ensuing panic accompanying a revelation of this kind would make the Big Red Scare of 1919 seem like a wedding reception. Parents everywhere would be kidnapping their children and locking them in bathrooms for de-programming."

I rented this book from the library and in the first chapter someone had penciled in notes like, "So what!", "Sounds good to me", "Thats a plus! No overhead, more profit!" "The author is paranoid". Clearly it was an Amway distributor who was writing these little notes, I wonder if there were orders from the top for distributors to find copies of this book in libraries and book stores and try to undercut the author's point. Seeing the notes in the book made me a lil paranoid.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, eye-opening book on this strange, cult-like operation which has worked quietly in America since the late 1950s. The author became involved with Amway himself, and gives an inside view of the experience, with a healthy dose of dry wit appropriate to the material, which sometimes borders on the surreal.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative. People should do a little research in a company they plan on becoming part of, especially when they pay for starter kits, seminars, meetings training materials... Something is wrong.