Corporate Planet

Well why post this? The fact that the US economy is fuelled by military Keynesianism, by that fact that military spending creates profit is one of the reasons for war in the Middle East.

Blair is another reason, corporate government.

I am amazed by how many Ayn Rand fans one finds on the net, I always thought she was a fictional character....markets are never free.

This is from Babylon, its taken from the chapter looking critically at David Korten's ideas.....would value your feedback on how we change this, order Babylon from your library and spread the word....

See you on the Embankment at 11.30


Global government inc
Korten suggests that modern corporations are the ‘dominant governance institution on the planet’ (1999: 60). The Bush junior cabinet of 2000-2004 was, for example, staffed by key corporate figures. Andrew Card, Chief of Staff, was a former chief lobbyist for General Motors; as head of the American Automobile Manufactures Association, he led their $25 million campaign against stricter fuel emissions standards and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. GM threw a lavish rooftop party when he joined the Bush administration. Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, the department in charge of parks and other public lands, was a former oil lobbyist. She headed the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates, a group funded by Ford and BP Amoco, which advocated abolishing the Endangered Species Act (Mensler/Corp Watch). Condolezza Rice, National Security Advisor, sat on the boards of Charles Schwab, Transamerican Corp and Chevron. Chevron christened a 130,000 oil tanker after her. Corporate influence is part of the two party system with firms often donating to both parties, Gore’s Presidential bid against Bush was bankrolled largely by law firms. The 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry is notoriously corporate friendly. For example, he used his position on the Senate Finance Subcommittee to support the merger of Fleet Boston Financial with the Bank of America. Fleet has consistently funded his congressional campaigns. The merger, which led to the loss of 2,500 jobs, was strongly opposed by local activists in New England.
In the UK, despite election spending limits, the governing party is usually linked to business interest. Mrs Thatcher was so supportive of McDonalds that she opened their UK headquarters in her parliamentary constituency of Finchley in North London. Her powerful press secretary Bernard Ingham went on to work for the corporation as their head of public relation. John Major’s Conservative government of 1992-97 was discredited by corporate based scandals involving Cabinet Ministers and ‘backbench’ Members of Parliament who took cash to ask parliamentary questions on behalf of business. Tony Blair’s governments have also been mired in allegations of corruption. Labour Party funding has increasingly come from transnationals. Prior to his 1997 General Election victory Blair was flown to a special tropical resort conference by the news magnate Rupert Murdoch. Best known for the genial Simpsons, the Murdoch empire also produces such pro-corporate staples as Fox TV and the Sun newspaper. The Murdoch press shifted support from the Conservatives to Labour. The Blair government has since reformed competition and media legislation in ways that benefit Murdoch’s News International. After Formula One racing boss Bernie Ecclestone gave large donations to the party, Labour allowed tobacco sponsorship for the sport to continue (Dunleavy et al 2000: 365).
From the power wielded by Russian oligarchs to the participation of Korean cheabols (corporations), big company influence on national governments, makes a global mockery of democracy. The London School of Economics based sociologist Leslie Sklair has identified the existence of globalising politicians who work for corporate interests by removing national barriers on trade and investment to benefit the transnationals. These politicians, often trained at neo-liberal economics departments such as Chicago, Harvard or the MIT, believe that economic prosperity can only be created or maintained by making life easier for transnationals. Representative democracy has effectively become a system of elite pluralism, where rival elite corporations may compete for influence but where others such as trade unionists, environmentalists, ordinary party members or the public have little or no say in the debate. Politics becomes more like business and opposition to capitalism or even just the worst excesses of corporate greed becomes impossible to voice (Sklair 2001).
Korten argues that corporations govern the globe and have created institutions such as the WTO to secure their power. Essentially, there is a shadow global government based upon hidden groups such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group who bring politicians, corporate heads, influential academics and journalists together (Korten 2001: 135; Sklar 1980). Typically, both the leaders of governing parties and those of the opposition in countries like the US, UK and Japan tend to go to Bilderberg events. The famously corporate friendly British European Commissioner Peter Mandelson is a Bilderberg figure (Ronson 2000: 127). The European Commission drives forward European Union legislation, which must be transformed into law by the individual EU states. The small number of European Commissioners are more powerful than most cabinet members and many Prime Ministers. Unelected, they seem rather to be selected for loyalty to the transnational capitalist class. Mandelson as EU trade commissioner provides a pro-business mouthpiece in WTO negotiations.
‘Free trade’ is, according to Sklair and Korten, driven by corporations. The WTO and trading blocs such as NAFTA allow large corporations access to new markets where they can sell goods to new sets of consumers. In turn, they can relocate production to countries where wages are low and they export without facing barriers such as import taxes (tariffs). It might be thought that nationally based firms would be resistant to allowing access to foreign competitors. Indeed one potential weakness of anti-corporate accounts of globalisation is the fact that different businesses may have opposing economic/political objectives. Thus in the US law firms might benefit from stronger rules on corporate behaviour and have therefore been more likely to support the mildly reformist Democrats, who could be prepared to clamp down on the worst excesses of destructive corporations. Chemical and oil corporations have tended to favour the Republicans who are more likely to reduce regulation. However, while disputes may exist, causing the state to act as a committee of corporations or an umpire between corporate interests, Sklair has found that corporations have an almost universal interest in ‘free trade’. He notes how the pro-NAFTA lobby included the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, National Foreign Trade Council, US Council for International Business, National Retail Federation, Business Roundtable, and the American Farm Bureau Federation. In the run up to a Congress vote on NAFTA, the US Chamber of Commerce phoned every congressional representative daily. ‘No stone was left unturned. Even Miss Mexico spoke out for NAFTA as she was being crowned Miss Universe!’ (Sklair 2001: 102).
The General Agreement on Trade in Services extends free trade to 160 areas in the service sector and means that in principle WTO members will have to allow foreign companies to compete in the provision of postal services, telecommunications and healthcare. In preparation for competitive postal services, European Union postal services are being made to cut costs and raise charges to bring in profit. In the UK, thousands of local post offices are likely to close and there is a strong possibility that private competition will lead to ‘cherry picking’. Profitable postal services, for instance, those supplying the needs of large commercial interests in major cities, will attract investment, while rural services will close. Already in the UK, the post deliveries have been cut to once a day.
Privatisation leads to ‘insourcing’ where cheap, often illegal migrant labour is used to cut costs even further. The market is aided by the fact that workers are ‘illegalised’ when they migrate, so their fear of discovery by the authorities means that they are unlikely to join unions or complain about poor pay. Right wing media sources, in turn, demonise refugees rather than identifying corporations as a source of low pay and social instability.
Globalising politicians such as Tony Blair have been keen to bring in Private Finance Initiatives (PFI), which allow private corporations to fund and profit from the provision of roads, hospitals and schools, previously provided by the state for the community.
Naomi Klein in No Logo shows that firms have been keen to move into new areas of public life to strength their brands and exploit new markets. She notes, for example, how education is corporate dominated. Schools may be sponsored by transnationals, textbooks may contain adverts and university research is ever more dependent on grants from firms. Corporate control of areas of life that were provided by the state or local community has reached absurd lengths. When in 1998 Coca Cola ran a competition for schools to design a marketing plan for their product, one school, Greenbriar High School, Evans, Georgia, suspended a nineteen year old student for wearing a Pepsi t-shirt to the official Coke day celebrations (Klein 2000: 95). In 1996 the Centre for the Study of Human Ecology was thrown out of the University of Edinburgh, partly because it was felt to be an anti-corporate institution because of its research into capitalist driven ecological problems (Monbiot 2000: 281). The evidence provided by both Klein and Monbiot suggests that universities are increasingly centres for what is best described, with an apology to the oldest profession, as intellectual prostitution.
Corporations are territorially expansive, seeking control over more and more local markets globally. Their ambitions are also intensive, even totalitarian, as they seek to dominate almost every area of social life. Bus shelters and road signs are branded; in Scandinavia telephone calls made cheap by corporate sponsorship are interrupted by adverts. Sporting events like the Olympics are marketing bonanzas for the merchants of fat and fizz. Sklair believes that the power of corporations has created a new transnational capitalist class. He divides this class into four fractions including 1) transnational corporate executives and their local affiliates, 2) globalising bureaucrats and politicians, 3) globalising professionals and 4) retailers and media communities. All are committed to creating a single world corporate paradise.
Even ‘alternative’ politicians have been pulled into the transnational capitalist class. The centre ground Green 2000 faction of the UK Green Party who sought to make the Party more mainstream, created a business friendly environmental group Forum for the Future, sponsored by oil interests and airlines (Sklair 2001: 211). The German Greens under charismatic leader Joschka Fischer has become a party committed to the market: ‘Their ministers are among the more competent […] the party has ditched many leftist positions […] Today, younger Greens are not just environmentalists and socially liberal, but also fiscal conservatives.’ (Economist,10 June 2004)
Klein notes that while corporations enjoy a governing role, they are reluctant to pay the taxes necessary for the state to support their position. Transnationals negotiate to move production to free trade zones where they can enjoy tax ‘holidays’. Corporate welfare (where governments tax citizens and subsidise companies) is common especially in the US and within the free trade zones.