From Publishers Weekly
This well-documented, apocalyptic tome describes the global spread of corporate power as a malignant cancer exercising a market tyranny that is gradually destroying lives, democratic institutions and the ecosystem for the benefit of greedy companies and investors. Korten (Getting to the 21st Century) points out his conservative roots and business credentials?and then proceeds to finger such classic conspiracy-theory scapegoats as the Trilateral Commission a…
Buy When Corporations Rule the World at Amazon
The people who gave this book one star obviously did not read the book, just looked at the title, maybe read he dust jacket, and decided to rail against it on Amazon for the benefit of their greed-soaked souls. OK, so maybe that last bit was a low blow, but seriously, their objections are WAY off base. Korten is not a communist. It is funny how people can still confuse autocratic communism as practised by the Soviet Union and China with the kind of democratic pluralism advocated by Korten, and realized to a small extent in a few industrialized nations. If you read even a chapter of this book, it is obvous that Korten is in favor of the market, but subordinated to the interest of the people, something that the negative reviewers must find repugnant.
He is also not a conspiracy theorist. All of his assertions are based on the principles of positive feedback and greed which it is easy to see operating in the world today. Greedy corporations amass wealth and power thus allowing them to satiate their greed with a freer hand. It happens.
He does, in fact, address the issue of overpopulation, but one reviewer here lies and states the opposite. Overpopulation is a problem, and Korten does not say otherwise, but notes that those of the first world usually focus on it to the exclusion of all else, a point seemingly proven in this very forum.
My last salvo against the negative reviewers is that they, with the exception of the liar, refuse to deal with any of what Korten actually says in the book. They cannot refute his positions–particularly thorny must be the well written analysis of how modern business, which claims to idolize Adam Smith, actually completely disregards his conditions for an efficient market–so they simply resort to ad hominem attacks, typical of the conservative movement. Most amusing of all is the reviewer who implies that the book isn’t even worth talking about by saying he won’t dignify it with further analysis or comments. Pray tell, sir, why you bothered to write a review at all? He cannot refute its positions through analysis, so he will not analyze it at all.
All in all, this is a fantastic book for anyone who knows deep down that something is wrong with the current world order but lacks the information or the economic tools to really uncover what it is. Korten lays it out, but it’s up to us to change it.
No book or university course has provided me such a concise description with compelling examples, measures and details of the workings and history of the global economy.
The title could have been simply “Corporations Rule the World”.
First and foremost, the book provides a foundation for thinking about sustainable business, ones’ role in society, day-to-day habits and our collective need to create a future for our children.
Take note, however, that the book is worth a read in a very pragmatic and personal way, as a primer for investors.
I was given the book on Aug 17 ’98 and finished it by the 22nd. In recent years, I had placed all of my hard earned cash, and some inheritence from hardworking grandparents — for convenience sake — in the hands of fund managers dealing in “blue chip” companies in the global equity markets. Understanding something from Kortens’ book, and his apt description of the world now around us…I sold all of those equities and funds on the 24’th. The markets collapsed on the 25’th. I’ll go back to directing my own investments with the cash I’ve saved — thanks to a timely reading of Korten’s informative book.
Kortens’ work is as brilliant as a Hitchcock movie — providing space for the reader to fill in the “gaps”, to “get” his global picture in a personal way. Korten avoids confronting readers with the simple statement that WE ARE corporations. We ARE government and we ARE civil society — however healthy or sick…
Having said that, Korten’s book is entertaining and frightening because he is fact-based and truthful.
Unlike other Amazon.com book reviewers, I generally accept and enjoy pondering Korten’s ideas.
I volunteer and commit to spend my rare time on this planet to forward Korten’s kind of agenda for people-centered development. There’s no point having kids and no way to sleep at night, without wisdom and change.
I’ll invest in new forms of global business opportunity, based on Korten’s wisdom and call for change. I’ll start by changing myself, to make my actions consistent with my words, to make my words consistent with such wisdom as Korten’s and to make my business work towards a healthy tomorrow.
Thank you, David Korten.
The fact that transnational corporations and their agendas have come to dominate cultural, political, and economic life on a global scale can hardly be disputed. These powerful corporations have used national governments and government-created international bodies to create a legislative and institutional regime that accedes to and actively promotes and implements a “free-market” ideology. This book is largely concerned with detailing the tremendous costs to the political, economic, and social fabric of the entire global community as corporations have become ever more capable under this ideological regime in extracting wealth and generating huge profits on a worldwide basis. The author sees poverty, social and political disintegration, and environmental degradation as the main consequences of this global corporate ascendance.
The ability of corporations to penetrate the political and cultural sectors of our society is hardly a late twentieth century phenomenon. Despite the founders’ efforts to contain corporations by explicit and revocable state charters, emerging industrialists in the post-Civil War era became powerful enough to sway legislators and the judiciary to act in their behalf. Not only did corporations generally gain rights to perpetuity, but the Supreme Court declared corporations to be legal persons entitled to the same rights as ordinary citizens, in addition to limited liability. By the late 1920s capitalism had largely emerged triumphant over worker and community interests. Consumerism was instilled as the only legitimate avenue for realizing individualized “freedom.”
According to the author, a form of democratic pluralism existed among the civil, governmental, and market sectors of society in the post-WWII era, but any such sectorial accommodation was mostly an aberration that came about only because of the necessity to solve the twin crises of the Great Depression (caused by corporate-led economic excess) and WWII. Any social accord that may have existed was shredded as corporations, backed by the Reagan administration, renewed their assault on the working class and relentlessly pursued self-interested global strategies. Over the last two decades, middle-class jobs have been lost, median pay has stagnated, and austerity has been imposed on the less fortunate as a profound upward redistribution of wealth and income has occurred.
Globally, the structural adjustment measures forced upon developing nations by the World Bank and the IMF to qualify for loans, ripped the fabric of those societies and have actually increased indebtedness to First World bankers. Trade agreements and administrative bodies, such as the NAFTA and the WTO, are designed to eliminate local restrictions on investments by international firms and barriers to the free movement of goods between nations. The freedom for capital to move freely among nations has also fueled rampant financial speculation unrelated to productive investment. Unconscionably, American taxpayers have been forced to bailout those engaged in extracting wealth from the developing world.
Free market ideology is used to justify the gutting of the social and legal structures of nations. But it is a disingenuous view. Free market activities posited by Adam Smith involve local, individual economic actors, none of whom have the power to control the marketplace. Unregulated market activities by huge economic entities can result in market coercion. For example, monopolistic firms can externalize costs, that is, they are powerful enough to force societies to pay for the social and environmental side-effects of their activities. For example, labor and environmental regulations are often ignored with impunity with society picking up the pieces.
The impact of corporations acting as legal persons cannot be overemphasized. Corporations overwhelm actual citizen political participation and free speech by the extent and intensity of their political lobbying and media controlling efforts. Corporations and the rich, in a form of legalized bribery, basically fund political campaigns. They also heavily sway public opinion through public relations front organizations, conservative think-tanks, and the control of the major media. The dependency of the media on advertising dollars virtually guarantees presentation of views that are compatible with corporate interests, not to mention the fact that the huge media empires are themselves transnational corporations with no interest in harming broader corporate interests.
As the author indicates, corporations have largely “colonized” the common culture. Television is the main media outlet for the inculcation of business-friendly values, which emphasizes the avid pursuit of consumption. Even political activity has become mostly the marketing of pleasing candidates. The message is incessantly and subtly delivered that a free market system is self running and stabilizing and needs little or no political interference. Of course, the reality is far different. Corporations have infiltrated government at all levels with the sole purpose of ensuring that governments take an active role in supporting the corporate agenda, or pro-business regulation. In addition, governments are left to deal with the unprofitable aspects of society or side-effects of corporate actions. The net effect is a democracy hardly worthy of the name.
The author’s principal approach to this regime of corporate hegemony is to call for a rollback to self-sustaining local communities. Such recommended measures as land reform (breaking up corporate farms) and urban agriculture seem almost quaint. The author confuses his message of a return to pre-consumption-dominated life by calling for high tech solutions, such as video-phones, to link local communities. Where does he think high tech products come from other than corporate development labs? A hard-hitting analysis seems to be getting waylaid by some fuzzy spirituality.
But the most practical approach is contained in the book. Free market propaganda has to be countered and a regime of regulating big business through governmental controls must be instituted. Is there any hope for this? The Seattle protest and other citizen demonstrations show that the democracy-killing initiatives of the WTO have not gone unnoticed. In addition, it has been claimed that 25 percent of the population belongs to a cultural grouping called “Cultural Creatives,” who can be expected to oppose insensitive corporate agendas. And the author takes no note of minority interests that are generally opposed to the conservative business agenda. The author wants to see a cultural transformation, but a heightened awareness of class will be needed to combat the class warfare being perpetrated on the non-elites of the world.