Imperial Corporations & the New World Order
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Richard J. Barnet and John Cavanagh, in Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, argue that "there appears to be a direct connection between economic integration and political dissolution," and their book is an exploration of causes and examples of "this perverse relationship." By "economic integration" the authors mean the globalization of economics, in which national factors play weaker roles and international forces grow stronger. By "political dissolution" the authors mean that political power over world events is diminishing as a result of economic globalization. The authors argue that economic or business leaders are growing in power, while political leaders are losing power. The result is a world run by business leaders who care only about the profit ledger, instead of political leaders who at least show some capacity for consideration of human and environmental needs. Barnet and Cavanagh give a number of examples of their economic integration/political dissolution argument. In the first section of the book, they launch a vast study of the globalization of the entertainment industry in which, until the concluding chapter of the section, scant mention is made of the role of politics or government. This is telling, because it indicates the weakness of politics and the growing power of corporations. The major argument of the authors in this regard, again, is that corporations care little or nothing about the human factor---values, consciousness,
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l dissolution which the authors correctly argue accompanies global economic integration, Chinese leaders took a step which the authors criticize and point to as a reactionary response to the political threat:
At he end of the 1980s the Chinese government decided to stand Soviet perestroika on its head. The Communist Party cracked down on political dissent and opened up the consumer-goods market. . . . [As a result,] U.S. companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble now have wholly owned factories in China producing for the domestic market.
The power of such corporate giants to affect even U.S. government policy on a global basis has increased in a fiscally conservative era in which political leaders seek any opportunity to sell U.S. goods overseas. As the authors write, in reference to the title of their book, "Global companies dream of building a smoothly functioning global machine for the distribution of goods and the accumulation of wealth. But they do not consider it their responsibility to ponder the long-term social, political, and ecological consequences, much less deal with them."
In the realm of food production and distribution, we find another example of the political dissolution accompanying global
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1712
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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