[illegible], The Multinationals, [illegible], 50p.
Graham Bannock, The Juggernauts, Penguin 1973, 65p.
'Exhibit 1: Corporate rating scale for determining a country's investment climate. Item: Political stability. Range for category; 0-12
Stable long term—12
Stable but dependent on key person—10
Internal factions but government in control—8
Strong external and/or internal pressures—4
Possibility of coup (external and internal) or other radical change—2
Instability, real possibility of coup or change—0.'
Not all the methods of calculation employed by the global capitalist corporations in devising their world strategies are as crude as the above. There is, for example, the giant US chemicals concern DuPont 'whose researchers have identified fifteen to twenty interest groups per country, ranging from small landowners to private bankers ... (their) "latent influence" and "group cohesiveness" are expressed in figures and multiplied together, and the result is then multiplied again by another figure representing the government's receptivity to the group's influence.' A mass of information extracted from company files and libraries was made available with the publication of these two books, which have just reappeared as paperbacks. The first certainly deserves shelf-space in the bookcase where socialists file their copies of the Financial Times or The Economist.
Tugendhat is a Tory MP, apparently driven to investigate multinational firms in defence of 'commercial realism' as he outlines both the history and [illegible] of transnational capitalist organisation, illustrated by several short case-histories of growth and structure. He concentrates on the US and European 'commercial theatre', unfortunately to the exclusion of their Third World operations; but despite this, he throws some light on modern imperialism at work. $150,000,000,000 is his now out-dated estimate of the book value of the multinational firms' total investments outside their 'parent' countries—of which approximately 60% belongs to US-based corporations. As he says, 'The trend is clear'—the very processes of production are becoming increasingly internationalized. Different components of the same products are often manufactured continents apart prior to assembly and marketing. This creates an interdependency which potentially adds greatly to strength of national trade unions—though lately only the disadvantages have been emphasized by the unions and the left. One strike could halt production around the world. The sectoralism of the working-class is challenged by the vast corporations. Serious attention should be given to the demands for world-wide parity in pay and conditions now surfacing among the more active trade-union internationals. The massive size of the multinationals is not always disadvantageous to the proletariat.
Tugendhat conjures up a compelling vision of one possible aspect of capitalism to come. He raises the idea of the surging, uncontrolled Eurodollar and Eurobond markets, as sources of finance for the multinational capitalists, eventually producing a system of multinational ownership of the huge enterprises, so that they cease to be US or UK based and become literally rootless. Will today's national bourgeoisies, interlinked as they are across frontiers in a hundred ways, give way to genuinely cosmopolitan capitalist interests vying for control of international industries? The chairman of a British subsidiary of a US firm advises executives to 'set aside any nationalistic attitudes and appreciate that in the last resort his loyalty must be to the shareholders'—regardless of their location or locations. Tugendhat's speculation has obvious parallels to Kautsky's famous theory of ultra-imperialism, demolished by Lenin in Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
For Tugendhat, of course, the foreseeable prospects are generally acceptable. True the big corporations can blithely deepen financial crises by moving vast sums of money between currencies. They can put thousands out of work without blinking an eyelid. But 'to win the full confidence of public opinion and of governments' (whatever happened to the shareholders?), this hitherto practical Tory urges the multinationals to adopt strangely utopian measures. Regular 'informal' exchanges of information between the corporations and the national governments over plans and problems should ease all difficulties and permit the internationalized exploitation of the working class to proceed apace (presumably telling a government in advance you are going to put thousands of workers out of jobs will somehow ease the burden). In the trade-war atmosphere of the 1970s, which will continue to intensify, such friendly, co-operative solutions are useless for the ruling classes, and only serve to mislead the working class.
Less significant and more long-winded is the companion study by Bannock. His real theme is monopoly, rather than multinationalism, and his position is far more critical of the entire trend. Offering repeated homage to Galbraith's theories of the separation of modern industrial control and ownership, this book concentrates on providing a short outline of bourgeois economic theories of industrial concentration, supplemented by much data (generally from the UK). Although unoriginal the data is of use, especially that concerning the rate and extent of monopolization. Bannock also spends time debunking 'scientific management' techniques and delights in demystifying management terminology. (E.g. FPI, short for 'filing power improvement', refers to the reduction in quantity of tobacco in cigarettes by fluffing it out more in the [illegible].) However, when it comes to practical solutions, he even improves on Tugendhat for utopianism. We are told the answer lies in a drastic return to smaller-sized firms! How exactly is this process—the reversal of history to order—to be carried out? For Marxists, such nonsense is hardly worth comment. Both books aid in understanding the forces gaining control of international capitalist production. Both, not surprisingly given their class position, ignore the Marxist contribution to economic theory which alone places their findings in proper historical and class perspective.
Richard Neubauer.