Multinationals

We owe the idea for this month's issue of NI to you, our readers. When we mailed our last subscriber survey 18 months ago we asked some of you to short-list topics you would most like to see us cover. For some inexplicable reason multinational corporations emerged as your number one choice. Ever sensitive to readers' needs we checked our back numbers and discovered that it had been more than a decade since we'd tackled the subject head-on.

In my own case it had been considerably longer. The last time I personally researched the issue was in 1976. That was the heyday of interest in multinationals. Only three years before, Dick Barnet and Ronald Muller had released their now classic Global Reach, a brilliant dissection of the growing 'statelessness' of these huge companies. Growing outrage over corporate support for repressive regimes in Latin America and Africa combined with resentment over their lack of public accountability at home to make multinationals a topic of intense concern.

When I rummaged through my files to see what I'd written nearly 20 years ago I was struck by the fact that the basic criticisms raised then still stand. Though the corporate world has 'restructured' and many of the individual companies have been swallowed up or gone bust in the process, the giants are still there and they haven't lost any of their power. Quite the opposite.

There have been critical changes in the intervening two decades, largely to do with 'market share' and the way corporations themselves are organized. Most of these internal developments have been driven by the micro-electronics revolution.

Computer technology has zoomed ahead faster than any of us could have predicted, opening the way for what the Japanese call 'lean production' - innovation coupled with flexibility and, inevitably, insecurity for workers. As Henry Ford's old idea of mass standardized production and mass markets ended, the era of 'outsourcing', 'just-in-time' production and 'niche marketing' began.

Despite these enormous structural changes and their impact on the world economy, multinationals somehow managed to avoid the spotlight of public criticism during the 1980s. The giddy excesses of the decade, the free-market mania of the Thatcher/Reagan era, fractured the main battle into a thousand rearguard skirmishes. Now with the division of the world into three huge trading blocs and a strong business lobby pushing 'free trade' there is renewed concern about the 'corporate agenda'.

In the 1970s I wrote about the 'democratic facade' that allows multinationals to ignore social responsibilities and to place private gain ahead of public good. In the emerging global economy of the 1990s it's even more urgent to question corporate ideology.

'Who's in control?' was and is still the central issue.

The subversion of sovereignty
Wayne Ellwood investigates the growing power of multinationals to shape the world in their own image.

The rag trade goes South
Central America has become a magnet for new Asian investment. Sarah Cox visits the region to find out why.

Dirty growth
Cowboy capitalism creates problems along the US/Mexico border. Beatriz Johnston Hernandez reports.

Globaloney
Corporate jargon unravelled by Doug Smith.

The green machine
Andre Carothers uncovers the strategies used by multinationals to outflank their environmentalist critics.

Selling dreams
Down with Marx, up with Ronald McDonald. Phil Weller on consumerism in Eastern Europe.

MULTINATIONALS - THE FACTS

Patents and profits
Big drug companies push the Canadian Government to the wall. Report by Roxanne Snider.

Simply - Tower of power

Giants stalk, creation trembles
The gospel of globalism. Exegesis by Kirkpatrick Sale.

Model miracle
Lake Sagaris questions Chile's much-heralded economic success story.

Worth reading on... MULTINATIONALS

Letters
Letters from Lahore
Updates
Reviews: plus Louise Gray classic
Curiosities
Endpiece: by Yvonne Burgess
Country profile: El Salvador

FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION: JERZY KOLACZ/REACTOR
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