Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital
Review of Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips (Introduction by William I. Robinson). New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018. LCCN 2018017493; ISBN 9781609808716 (pbk.); ISBN 9781609808723 (ebook); 353 pps.
Giants: The Global Power Elite, by Peter M. Phillips, Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University, opens with a stated intention of following in the tradition C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite. This book is clearly meant to be a contemporary update and expansion of Mills' work, such that the "power elite" now becomes the global power elite (GPE) in Phillips' volume—and central to the idea of a global power elite is the transnational capitalist class that was at the core of the theorization of Leslie Sklair. One of the most important features of this book, in my view, is that it overcomes the unproductive dichotomy that continues to silently inform many academic and political debates on this question: is the contemporary world order one dominated by US imperialism or transnational capital? Phillips' answer is productive (even if I do not entirely agree): transnational capital has acquired US power and uses the power of the US state to further its aims, protect its interests, and enforce its agenda. Where I differ, the difference is a relatively slight matter of emphasis: Phillips' model is largely correct, but it is also important to remember that the wealthiest, most numerous, and most powerful membership of the "transnational" capitalist class is in fact American.
Aside from this, Phillips reveals how even now mere mention of the "transnational capitalist class" is obscured in mainstream corporate media coverage. As he points out: "the concept of a global transnational capitalist class is essentially completely absent from corporate news coverage in the United States and Europe" (p. 62).
The centrepiece of this work is its detailed exposition of the 389 individuals who constitute the core of "the policy planning nongovernmental networks that manage, facilitate, and protect the continued concentration of global capital" (p. 10).
I am thankful to the author for providing me with a free copy of this text, so that this review could be written. I have also assigned one of the chapters as required reading in one of my recent courses (DeGlobalization & the Nation), and thus I also have the benefit of feedback from students on some of the book's key contents.
Chapters—Contents
The Preface to the volume effectively summarizes the key contents of the book and outlines its principal arguments. It was not prepared as a mere formality, and is worth reading on its own.
The Introduction, "Who Rules the World?" was written by William I. Robinson, one of the leading scholars today on the topic of the transnational capitalist class.
Chapter 1, "Transnational Capitalist Class Power Elite: A Seventy-Year History," aims at explaining the "transition from the nation state power elites described by Mills to a transnational power elite centralized on the control of global capital around the world". In this chapter Phillips traces the development of the concept of global power elites from the work of C. Wright Mills, through to Leslie Sklair, William Robinson, William Carroll and even David Rothkopf. While the author also invokes "shadow elites," he does not mention the work of Janine Wedel in this regard. Phillips also provides a detailed outline of the nature of global wealth inequality, ranging from the control of wealth by a few, to over-accumulation, and starvation. In addition to the preface, this is the chapter that makes the central arguments of the book.
Chapter 2, "The Global Financial Giants: The Central Core of Global Capitalism," identifies the 17 global financial giants—money management firms that control more than one trillion dollars in capital. As these firms invest in each other, and many smaller firms, the interlocked capital that they manage surpasses $41 trillion (which amounts to about 16% of the world's total wealth). The 17 global financial giants are led by 199 directors. This chapter details how these financial giants have pushed for global privatization of virtually everything, in order to stimulate growth to absorb excess capital. The financial giants are supported by a wide array of institutions: "governments, intelligence services, policymakers, universities, police forces, militaries, and corporate media all work in support of their vital interests" (p. 60).
Chapter 3, "Managers: The Global Power Elite of the Financial Giants," largely consists of the detailed profiles of the 199 financial managers just mentioned.
Chapter 4, "Facilitators: The Power Elite Policy Planning Center of the Transnational Capitalist Class," examines the membership of two non-governmental Global Elite policy-planning organizations: the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission. The chapter also goes into some depth in related organizations, such as the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations. Detailed profiles of the directors of the G30 are included in this chapter, as well as profiles of the members of the Trilateral Commission Executive Group.
Chapter 5, "Protectors: The Power Elite and the US Military NATO Empire, Intelligence Agencies, and Private Military Companies," focuses on the power of "the US/NATO military empire". As Phillips explains, the US/NATO functions as a "transnational military police state" that operates in nearly every country in the world, and, "threatens nations that do not fully cooperate with global capital with covert activities, regime change, and heavy negative propaganda" (p. 12). Phillips also examines how the global Giants, "invest in war making as a method of using surplus capital for a guaranteed return, with an increasing use of private military/security companies for protection of Global Power Elites and their wealth" (p. 12). Detailed profiles of the 35 members of the Atlantic Council Executive Committee form part of this chapter. This chapter also examines "Private Military Contractors," focusing on Blackwater and G4S.
Chapter 6, "Ideologists: Corporate Media and Public Relations Propaganda Firms," concentrates on the extensive investment by the Giants in corporate media and their expanding "use of public relations propaganda companies in the news systems of the world" (p. 13). The six major global media organizations The chapter this focuses on the six leading global media organizations, and how they offer ideological justification for corporate capitalism while censoring contrary perspectives. As Phillips explains early in his book:
"We have a media system that seeks to control all aspects of human thinking and promotes continued consumption and compliance. The dominant ideological message from corporate media today is that the continued growth of the economy will offer trickle-down benefits to all humans and save the planet". (p.13)
One outstanding fact that is presented at the start of this chapter is that, "corporate media receive anywhere from two thirds to 80 percent of their broadcast and print news content from public relations and propaganda (PRP) firms" (p. 263). Since only a handful of media companies monopolize the world market of information distribution, this fact reveals a monumental bullhorn in the hands of the transnational capitalist class (p. 265). This chapter also informs us that, in the US, the number of media companies has declined from 50 in the early 1980s to just six today, and that 98% of all US cities are served by only one daily newspaper (p. 264).
This chapter also provides detailed profiles of the major media and public relations firms in the US, along with discussion of some of their noteworthy international interventions. In addition, the chapter discusses propaganda and the "engineering of consent".
Chapter 7, "Facing the Juggernaut: Democracy Movements and Resistance," offers "a summary and what-needs-to-be-done statement" (p. 13), that emphasizes what needs to be done to reform the system, in very broad terms, with a return to the principles outlined in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The books ends with a postscript which amounts to a letter to the Global Power Elites "asking them to consider future generations when making decisions regarding global capital, and urging them to take corrective action before more serious and inevitable unrest and environmental devastation take effect" (p. 13).
"Global Power Elites": the Transnational Capitalist Class
Phillips describes the Global Power Elite as follows:
"The Global Power Elite function as a nongovernmental network of similarly educated wealthy people with common interests of managing, facilitating, and protecting concentrated global wealth and insuring the continued growth of capital. Global Power Elites influence and use international institutions controlled by governmental authorities—namely, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), NATO, World Trade Organization (WTO), G7, G20, and many others". (p. 9)
Therefore what Phillips indirectly points to here is the growing recognition of the fact that, far from the promised obsolescence of the state, globalization has not only been enacted by states, the power of certain states has in fact increased. On the other hand, he apparently endorses Robinson's claim that nation-states have become, "little more than population containment zones," while "the real power lies with the decision makers who control global capital" (p. 26). Both propositions are unconvincing: first, populations are clearly not being contained; second, if states matter so little, and the real decision-makers are global capitalists, then why do the latter need states?
Indeed, Phillips appears to be of two minds on this question. He does note, for example: "The World Bank, IMF, G7, G20, WTO, Financial Stability Board, and Bank for International Settlements are institutions controlled by nation-state representatives and central bankers with proportional power/control exercised by dominant financial supporters, primarily the United States and European Union countries" (p. 161). Critical institutions of the global capitalist system are themselves state institutions. Clearly then, states are a lot more than just population containers. The shaky narrative of this book is a product of an underlying theoretical lack of clarity.
Global Power Elites, as Phillips explains, "are the activist core of the Transnational Capitalist Class—1 percent of the world's wealthy people—who serve the uniting function of providing ideological justifications for their shared interests and establishing the parameters of needed actions for implementation by transnational governmental organizations" (p. 10). They should therefore not be confused with all elites, nor apparently with elite technocrats who serve in government but who are not among the world's wealthiest people. The GPEs also apparently exclude the lobbyists, academics, media and think tank members who constitute a large part of what Janine R. Wedel describes as flexible "influence elites," in her own updating of Mills' work on elites (see "From Power Elites to Influence Elites: Resetting Elite Studies for the 21st Century" in the special issue of Theory, Culture & Society on Elites and Power after Financialization).
What unites the members of the GPEs are common interests and backgrounds. They tend to interact with each other regularly, and a wide range of mutually reinforcing organizations. It can come down to sharing the same university affiliations and membership in social clubs—"It is certainly safe to conclude they all know each other personally or know of each other in the shared context of their positions of power" (p. 11). Elsewhere in the book, these transnational elites are described as effectively forming a club: "interacting families of high social standing with similar lifestyles, corporate affiliations, and memberships in elite social clubs and private schools" (p. 22). "The power elite policy groups inside the Transnational Capitalist Class," Phillips observes, "are made up of persons with shared educational experiences, similar lifestyles, and common ideologies" (p. 214). The degree of commonality among the elites studied in this book is striking:
"One hundred thirty-six of the 199 power elite managers (70 percent) are male. Eighty-four percent are whites of European descent. The 199 power elite managers hold 147 graduate degrees, including 59 MBAs, 22 JDs, 23 PhDs, and 35 MA/MS degrees. Almost all have attended elite private colleges, with 28 attending Harvard or Stanford". (p. 62)
Of those same 199 individuals, 59% are from the US; many of the 199 are dual citizens; and, "they live in or interact regularly in a number of the world's great cities: New York City, Chicago, London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, and Singapore" (p. 63). Of the same 199 global financial directors, 69 have attended the World Economic Forum (p. 147).
Less convincing was William Robinson's assertion, in the Introduction to the book, that suggests that national capitalists have effectively vanished. Presumably they metamorphosed into a transnational capitalist class, and for that reason Mills' work needs to be updated (p. 17). What was missing here then was a golden opportunity to reflect on the fractious breakup of the dominant elites into a diminished and angered national capitalist faction in opposition to the transnationalist faction. That alone could have done more to explain the rise of Trump, as a champion of national capital, than resorting to facile ideological truisms about "populism". Unfortunately, Robinson is destined to continue missing this, as elsewhere he quickly rushed to assert that Trump himself was a leading representative of the transnational capitalist class—and it was as unconvincing as it was misleading. Even worse, Robinson risks reducing "transnational capitalist class" to something like "fascist": a term of abuse, with limited explanatory power. Unlike Robinson's comments in this book, Phillips seems much more attuned to the reality of factions that exist even among the global power elites (p. 23).
Phillips describes the world's top billionaires as "similar to colonial plantation owners" (p. 21), which can be a useful way for conceptualizing Western power structures as they have developed over the past five centuries. Phillips thus points to the UK's Barclays Bank as an example of the colonial heritage at work today: "Barclays Bank [is] the number-one most connected firm. Barclays is a 300-year-old banking company founded in 1690 in London. Barclays grew with the expansion of the British Empire and now offers services in more than 50 countries and territories, serving some 49 million clients" (p. 79)
Transnational capitalists work through an array of institutions such as, "the World Bank, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, the G20, G7, World Economic Forum, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Bank for International Settlements," among others (p. 25). This book also cites the The Handbook of Transnational Governance (2011) which "lists 52 trans-governmental networks, arbitration bodies, multi-stakeholder initiatives (with internet cooperation), and voluntary regulation groups (fair labor/trade associations)" as key bodies of the transnational capitalist class. It's not clear why, if their interests and agendas are shared in common, they would need so many multilateral international organizations—at the very least it would seem to be an inefficient diffusion of effort.
The other question is, if the global power elites discussed in this book control/manage a total of about $41 trillion, and the world's total wealth is estimated at $255 trillion, then that would mean the global power elites in fact control a minority share of global wealth (roughly 16%). Then who owns or controls the other 84%? Elsewhere in the book it is revealed that "147 companies controlled some 40 percent of the world's wealth" (p. 36). Then the question becomes: who controls the remaining 60%? Also, is control the same thing as ownership? Later the book informs us that, "in excess of $74 trillion of inter-invested centralized capital" is controlled by 69 cross-invested firms (p. 49). This would mean that they control just over 29% of the world's wealth. One wishes that some overall profile of global wealth ownership and distribution had been provided in this book, so as to better contextualize what the "giants" really own.
American Power Elites (APEs)?
One of the ironies in this text is what Phillips reveals in Chapter 1:
"The top six billionaires in 2017, with their country of citizenship and estimated net worth, were Bill Gates (US, $88.8 billion), Amancio Ortega (Spain, $84.6 billion), Jeff Bezos (US, $82.2 billion), Warren Buffett (US, $76.2 billion), Mark Zuckerberg (US, $56 billion), and Carlos Slim Helú (Mexico, $54.5 billion). Forbes's billionaire list contained 2,047 names in 2017". (p. 21)
Thus of the top six billionaires, four are American. As for the Forbes list, in 2019, seven of the top 10 billionaires listed are American. In fact, the list has become increasingly American since circa 2012, according to this compilation of annual rankings, returning to the situation that was observed from before 2005. In total, 14 of the world's richest 20 persons are American. Overall, 607 of the world's 2,153 billionaires in 2019 are American—or just over 28%, which still reflects a disproportionately large American presence. As mentioned above, the American proportion has been steadily increasing:
So what does one conclude from this picture? Is it in fact transnational capital of a global power elite that has dominated globalization, that we are seeing here? Or would it be more accurately reflective of reality to speak of an American Power Elite that dominates the world's circuits of wealth creation and concentration? The answer has enormous import for how we think about globalization vs. American imperialism as the best mode of describing contemporary reality.
As we saw in the last section, the inability to explain why transnational capitalists need states is one of the most serious flaws in explanations that claim states have been diminished while transnational capitalists have real power. If they had real power, they would not need states. Thus one of the problems of this book is that it under-theorizes critical areas that really needed attention, if we were really to update Mills' work.
US Imperialism and Transnational Capitalism
One of the key strengths of this book is that it goes against fashionable theorizing on the political left, prevalent among academics and activists, that minimizes or even refuses to name US imperialism. As Phillips shows in this book, the US is the foundation of transnational policing that works to enforce the interests of global capital. In particular, the global financial giants invest heavily in war-making as a means of profitably deploying excess capital.
Thus Phillips notes that, "the policy elites in the United States have been mostly united in support of an American empire of military power that maintains a repressive war against resisting groups…around the world" (p. 23). He also points out: "uncooperative regimes are undermined and overthrown in support of the free flow of global capital for investments anywhere that returns are possible" (p. 64).
"Humanitarian intervention" is also critically addressed by Phillips. He argues that the transnational capitalist class promotes "military interventions [that] are ideologically justified as peacekeeping or humanitarian missions," primarily in cases where governments are "viewed as unfavorable to the TCC's capital interests"—in such cases then, "resistance forces will be supported and encouraged toward regime change, as in…Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia" (p. 30). It is refreshing to read a North American academic who recognizes this reality. As indicated in the list of contents, Phillips dedicated an entire chapter to the subject of US empire (chapter 5).
The protection of transnational capital, Phillips argues, is what lies behind the production of "failed states, manufactured civil wars, regime changes, and direct invasions/occupations". Each of these is a manifestation of "the new world order requirements for protecting transnational capital" (p. 215).
NATO is a key part of Phillips' discussion, and he notes that NATO members collectively account for 85% of the world's military spending (p. 223). Phillips' argument is that NATO is the leading military defender of the interests of global capital: "NATO is quickly becoming a US military empire supplemental police force for the Global Power Elite and the Transnational Capitalist Class" (p. 224). In conjunction with this, he discusses the role of the Atlantic Council as the chief purveyor of NATO propaganda.
Yet, despite Phillips' own arguments about manufactured civil wars, "resistance" groups funded if not created by Western powers, and regime change war—he still manages to produce an unquestioning endorsement of "Arab Spring protests" in North Africa as examples of resistance against neoliberal austerity politics (p. 304).
Global inequality has become extreme under the dominance of the Global Power Elites. As William Robinson writes in the Introduction,
"the richest 1 percent of humanity in 2017 controlled more than half of the world's wealth; the top 30 percent of the population controlled more than 95 percent of global wealth, while the remaining 70 percent of the population had to make do with less than 5 percent of the world's resources". (p. 15)
Phillips recounts a recent finding that only eight individuals now own half the world's wealth (p. 21).
While not always clear about whether "the richest 1 percent" are the top 1% in the US or the top 1% of the world as a whole, the book informs us that the top fraction "increased their total wealth by 42.5 percent in 2008, and 50.1 percent in 2017," and in the latter year, "2.3 million new millionaires were created, bringing the total number of millionaires around the globe to more than 36 million"; these millionaires represent "0.7 percent of the world's population controlling more than 47 percent of global wealth'; the world's bottom 70% only control 2.7% of total wealth (pp. 301–302).
This book also relays the following overview of global wealth inequality:
"The world's total wealth is estimated to be close to $255 trillion, with the United States and Europe holding approximately two thirds of that total; meanwhile, 80 percent of the world's people live on less than $10 per day, the poorest half of the global population lives on less than $2.50 per day, and more than 1.3 billion people live on only $1.25 per day". (p. 30)
Robinson offers a partial/partisan view of the political results of increasing inequality, asserting that it has fueled "populist insurgencies" (thus unfortunately reinforcing elitist terminology), and that these are dominated by racist, xenophobic, and nativist concerns. What Robinson does not do is offer an explanation as to why those on the losing end of globalization in North America and Europe have turned to the right, and not the left.
What Robinson predicts is that the global concentration of wealth is, in effect, suicidal: it will lead to a global contraction of demand, and thus the global market will be unable to absorb the output of the global economy, and at that point the system will seize up. Is this something to be celebrated or criticized?
Phillips makes a similar point about the over-accumulation of capital: "there are only three mechanisms of investing excess capital: risky financial speculation, wars and war preparation, and the privatization of public institutions" (p. 30). What needs to be explained to readers is why, if capital over-accumulation is really a problem, would the holders of such capital invest in areas that generate even more capital.
Land and hunger also stand out as one of the strong points of this book's explanations. First, some important statistics are provided, such as: the UN's World Food Program estimates that 1 in 9 people go to bed hungry each night, which amounts to 795 million people suffering from chronic hunger; nine million die each year from starvation; one-third of the planet suffers from malnutrition; two billion more people will be lacking food by 2050, according to UN forecasts; and yet, "chronic hunger is mostly a problem of distribution, as one third of all food produced in the world is wasted and lost" (p. 31). Phillips clearly pins the blame of this maldistribution on global speculation invested in agricultural lands, and global speculation in food, which have both raised the costs of land and food, and displaced populations (pp. 31, 63). As Phillips explains:
"In the last ten years, more than $90 billion has been invested in 78 countries for buying up more than 74 million acres of farmland. The result is mass corporate farming, usually for export, and the removal of these lands as a local food source". (p. 32)
While the book tends to endorse much of the emergency talk around "climate change," it's important to note that Phillips is aware of some of the glaring opportunism that motivates some of the crisis-making:
"Amazingly, TCC/Global Power Elite money managers study the transforming environment for new investment opportunities. Climate change investing can be profitable, according to Forbes, and getting in on low-carbon investments, and sectors that will benefit should climate stress increase—such as defense, health care, and property insurances—can prove lucrative. Increasing interest in new mining opportunities available due to global warming is an important issue in Greenland. Private investment in the control of water sources is seen as an increasingly attractive opportunity for power elite speculation". (p. 32)
Criticisms of the Book
Unfortunately, much of the book is written for an audience that is already prepared to believe and accept its main arguments and their assumptions. The question then is why such an audience would need this book. The echo-chambering of public discourse is itself echoed louder than ever in academic production. This book is not written for, say, skeptical students who are unconvinced and like to raise questions. On the other hand, it can be useful precisely for generating questions.
What in my view is one of the least attractive features of the book is the tendency to reduce discussion to moral principles. In that respect it is a very American book, which follows the very American tradition of displacing politics into morality. The result is a moralistic appeal for reform. Thus the book is directed at precisely those elites who are least likely to read or care about this book. However, matters become even murkier when the book's idea of reform means that activists should volunteer to work with billionaires: "An honest, open look at real human options is vitally needed, and social movement activists seeking to end the crisis of humanity may find allies at the top willing to make radical readjustments needed to prevent wars, mass poverty, and environmental degradation" (p. 159). In an open letter to the Global Power Elite at the end of the book, we read this: "We absolutely believe that continued capital concentration and neoliberal austerity policies only bring greater human misery to the vast majority of people on earth" (p. 320, emphasis added). Why reduce what the book shows to be factually true, a matter of objective knowledge, to a matter of belief? Why should anyone care what the author and his colleagues "believe"? Sometimes the book has an unfortunate tendency of diminishing itself.
Theory remains relatively under-developed in this book, which tends to leave major questions unspoken (some of which were discussed in the sections above). The result is that books like C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite remain as outstanding contributions, and the updating of his work is something that still needs to be done. Neither this book, nor other attempts at updating Mills, are yet ready to be read as "Mills Part 2".
Related to the latter point, we seem to be generating an ever expanding vocabulary for describing essentially the same phenomenon. Thus, added to the base that is the transnational capitalist class (which is sufficient), we have shadow elites, influence elites, flexible networks, and now global power elites. Pretty soon, rather than having work that takes our understanding further, we will instead have works that lose time and energy in just clearing up the mystifying mass of new labels.
Though I intensely dislike facile comments like, "some of the book's strengths are also its weakness," I find myself here needing to make the same comment about the immense catalogue of empirical detail that appears in the profiles of the 389 individuals and the dozens of organizations named in this book. In that respect, the book begins to resemble more of a database, that makes for tedious reading. Seen from another angle, the book serves as a reference resource. However, what really stands out is the limited theorization of the material, that really does not expand on or elaborate on either the works of Mills, Sklair, or William Robinson.
Restrictions on access to the power elites means that the profiles that are provided in the book are based almost exclusively on open source documentation. The profiles thus result as flat, and almost lifeless—useful perhaps for statistical analysis, but almost devoid of oral history and cultural content.
Sometimes this book mirrors a website more than a printed volume, meaning that there can be excessive interleaving with contents that are already widely available. Thus the book unnecessarily reproduces, in full, the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The tendency to copy and insert so much that is open source tends to produce excessive length.
Diagrams in the book are often useless spaghetti illustrations of many dozens of crisscrossing lines linking inter-locked firms. The point is to show that each one is connected to every other—and it is far more economical to express that fact with words.
The Introduction by William Robinson was, surprisingly, one of the disappointing elements of this book. Robinson exploited the opportunity to sound off on a range of issues that personally anger and frustrate him—everything from Trump to climate change. I gather that this a popular Californian academic narrative. The chapter on the whole has a certain apocalyptic, doomsday quality to it, which is arguably more of a reflection of how culturally unprepared Americans are when it comes to absorbing the reality of their imperial decline: "If we do not annihilate ourselves in a nuclear holocaust or descend into the barbarism of a global police state, we will have to confront the threat of a human-induced sixth mass extinction that scientists say has already begun" (pp. 15–16).
At times, the book appears to pander to the fixations of the liberal-left, especially where climate emergency alarmism and identity politics are concerned. We are thus told at various points that this or that board of directors is exclusively male, or exclusively white, or white and male—as if the aesthetic veneer of dominance is what should occupy our attention.
Sometimes the book paints an excessively bleak and hopeless picture of inevitable collapse and war. The power of elites is sometimes overstated. Assumptions that poverty leads to rebellion (p. 303) are part of the book's baggage of truisms, even if there is painfully little evidence to validate such assumptions. The point is that if it is all so bleak, then that defeats the chances of reform, the same reform that the book advocates. Phillips argues that unless something is done soon, movements like Occupy Wall Street will continue to emerge (p. 305)—to which the answer has to be a big "so what?"
Lastly, the index contains some notable errors and omissions, and is actually not very useful for using this book.
Reminding me of the some of the great books written by Susan George in the 1980s on debt crises and hunger, this is one of the more original and important contributions to early 21st-century debates about the decline of the 20th-century phenomenon known as "globalization". It will serve as a valuable reference to many students of globalization, both within and outside of academia. Thus, despite my criticisms above, I would still recommend this book as required reading for any students in the fields of Political Science and International Relations, Global Sociology, and International Political Economy, as well as perhaps students in Economic Anthropology. What is especially valuable about this book is more than just its detail, but its reconciling of transnational capitalism with US empire. Even where the book falls short, it does so in a manner that provokes many productive and constructive questions.
For me personally, what emerged from studying this text is recognition of the degree to which states still matter immensely in the so-called globalized world (produced by states themselves), and the extent to which the US stands on top of globalization. It is no surprise then that we see the decline of US empire at the same time as the rise of de-globalization. Not discussed in this volume—and hardly mentioned on this site either—is the rise of an embryonic new order dominated by China, as evidenced by its extremely ambitious and widely spread Belt and Road Initiative.
BOOK REVIEWS, GLOBALIZATIONbook review, C. Wright Mills, climate change, deglobalization, Giants: The Global Power Elite, global capitalism, global corporations, income inequality, Leslie Sklair, media propaganda, NATO, neoliberalism, Peter M. Phillips, regime change, transnational capitalist class, US imperialism, William Carroll, William I. RobinsonMaximilian C. Forte11 comments
State of the Empire: Reviewing 2019
11 thoughts on "Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital"
A great review of a turn-on book. Very timely, again.
Mourad Dahami — مراد داحمي
"If they had real power, they would not need states"
Wouldn't that be like saying "If the state had real power, it would not need a bureaucracy (or such and such part of said bureaucracy)"? Not that I would contend that states represent a purely bureaucratic apparatus as far as globalization is concerned: their role as public relations fronts and as political buffers (through their 'individual' makeup as well as their multitude) seems to be just as important an asset. States may be part of the necessary makeup of transnational capitalism until narratives that justify transcending the state and that are 'consensual enough' emerge in the historical process (or not): Just like tribalism is obsolete for many if not most 'progressive' nationalists (sometimes all while they claim to defend it), their own narratives may go down the same drain
French law scholar Valérie Bugault does a pretty rigorous job tracing the rise of global capital through corporate law 'reforms' around the time of the French "revolution" and emphasizes the "mechanically" evolutionary aspect of the NWO entity (or "old new world order" as she sometimes calls it). This second point is relevant because it implies that the consolidation process is not necessarily over… perhaps even what is seen as "de-globalization" is only part the process: the same states at the head of the "embryonic new order" themselves use moralistic discourse as arguments when appealing to anti-imperialist aspirations, and we as outside observers get to have little concrete information about what it is exactly that they are overthrowing. To avoid a misunderstanding: they do seem to undermine US supremacism on the short term, but I think that what has happened this last century should push us to look a bit further in addition to acknowledging positive developments. I say this, but Dr. Bugault is wary of making pronouncements regarding China, for example, due to relative unfamiliarity… not that I am making pronouncements, either: the linguistic barrier is more than enough to remember to know one's place
Maximilian C. Forte
On "Wouldn't that be like saying 'If the state had real power, it would not need a bureaucracy (or such and such part of said bureaucracy)'?"
The simple answer is no: bureaucracy is an integral part of the state; there really can be no state power without a bureaucracy. I think the rest of your points, willingly or not, tend to reaffirm the centrality of the state, in that the state remains the key reference in the argument. As for China, one thing that a new wave of globalization integrated under Chinese direction will dispel from the start, is any assertion that the state is obsolete.
petermphillips
Thank you for a serious review of my work. I greatly appreciate your overall support and I recognize of my limited approach to theory.
Peter Phillips
peter.phillips@sonoma.edu
Thank you Dr. Phillips, for producing such an important and timely book. I am sorry for being late in informing you that this review was now available, I had meant to send an email and then got sidetracked by end-of-semester duties.
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Stanley Dundee
Thanks for a valuable review of what looks like a useful book. I have added it to my discouragingly long list of books to read. I look forward to comparison with Bill Domhoff's Who Rules America?, which I found exceedingly useful. Great to see you posting again!Regarding the question of is the contemporary world order one dominated by US imperialism or transnational capital? please consider the importance of the US dollar as global reserve currency and the privileges that entails. Dollar hegemony forms one of the key pillars of US imperialism and tends to support the interpretation that US imperialism is the more useful frame. Especially since the US empire declines to acknowledge itself; the use of concepts such as transnational capital serves in part to obfuscate US imperialism.Moreover, the deprecation of states as players is belied by the importance of the geopolitical opponents of US imperialism, especially Iran, China, and Russia. China has certainly indicated its economic ambitions with the formation of the Belt and Road Initiative. But the failure to date of China to break the chains of dollar dependency circumscribes my expectations of its leadership of a new world order, at least in the near term. However, Russia's deployment of weapons capable of neutralizing (and potentially humiliating) the US military, as well as the pioneering the use of payment systems that operate outside the purview of the dollar-based system, may in fact play an equal or greater role in the dismantling of the US imperium.In my view, the pending demise of the role of the state in global affairs has been somewhat exaggerated.
GREAT commentary, with cutting insights, as always from Stanley. Many thanks.
Sorry my supporting/background links didn't make it through. Happy to provide if you didn't see them. Thanks again for all the great writing and analysis!
You're right, which is strange because I saw the linked text in the original. Sorry to see that happen. Now if you supply the links, WordPress will mark your message as "spam"–but I should be able to find it.
Take 2, hopefully with links this time.
Thanks for a valuable review of what looks like a useful book. I have added it to my discouragingly long list of books to read. I look forward to comparison with Bill Domhoff's Who Rules America?, which I found exceedingly useful. Great to see you posting again!
Regarding the question of is the contemporary world order one dominated by US imperialism or transnational capital? please consider the importance of the US dollar as global reserve currency and the privileges that entails. Dollar hegemony forms one of the key pillars of US imperialism and tends to support the interpretation that US imperialism is the more useful frame. Especially since the US empire declines to acknowledge itself; the use of concepts such as transnational capital serves in part to obfuscate US imperialism.
Moreover, the deprecation of states as players is belied by the importance of the geopolitical opponents of US imperialism, especially Iran, China, and Russia. China has certainly indicated its economic ambitions with the formation of the Belt and Road Initiative. But the failure to date of China to break the chains of dollar dependency circumscribes my expections of its leadership of a new world order, at least in the near term. However, Russia's deployment of weapons capable of neutralizing (and potentially humiliating) the US military, as well as the pioneering the use of payment systems that operate outside the purview of the dollar-based system, may in fact play an equal or greater role in the dismantling of the US imperium.
In my view, the pending demise of the role of the state in global affairs has been somewhat exaggerated.