Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are Seizing Power, by Susan George
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Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are Seizing Power, by Susan George
Ebook PDF Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are Seizing Power, by Susan George
Lobbying has long been part of the political landscape. But in recent years links between big business and government have become stronger and more far-reaching than ever. Global corporations now demand control over decisions affecting labour laws, finance, public health, food and agriculture, safety regulations, taxes and international trade and investment. They even claim the right to private tribunals where they can sue governments for passing laws that could harm their present or future profits.
These business elites don?t want to govern directly. They operate behind the scenes - directing planning, setting standards and fashioning government to maximise their own profits. Thanks to the UN Global Compact they have extended their influence to the highest levels of multilateral decision-making and now, via the Davos-inspired Global Redesign Initiative, they are setting their sights on managing world-wide public policy.
Elected by and accountable to no one, secretive and highly organized, these shadow sovereigns are destroying the very notion of the common good and making a mockery of democracy. It is high time we challenged this assault on our rights and our institutions. In this incisive and clear-sighted book Susan George provides us with the practical knowledge to do just that.
Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are Seizing Power, by Susan George- Amazon Sales Rank: #1046690 in Books
- Brand: Polity
- Published on: 2015-06-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x .65" w x 5.52" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 208 pages
Review
"Susan George?s work has provided deep understanding of the world in which we live. Shadow Sovereigns carries these insights further to the carefully hidden core of global decision-making, a matter of prime significance for those who hope to take their fate into their own hands in times when critical decisions will determine the future of the human experiment."Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Driven by a virulent strain of neoliberalism, the global corporate assault on democracy has now reached unprecedented and planet-cooking extremes. Nobody is better qualified than Susan George to document and dissect the inner workings of this process. The result is a book will galvanize those new to the subject while providing veteran opponents with renewed urgency and fresh insights." Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
"Susan George has found and revealed the blueprint that transnational corporations are using to conquer our political system. In this vital book, written with characteristic rigor and flair, she lifts the veil on the many mechanisms through which corporations buy politicians, manipulate global policy, and in the process render our democracy a farcical pantomime. Most importantly, Shadow Sovereigns hauls corporations out of the dark where they like to operate and shows them to be the frontline troops in the neoliberal assault on public life. George?s diagnosis that the grand Enlightenment tradition is being fatally corrupted by what she calls the Great Neoliberal Regression is chilling. But by shining a light on our new silent rulers and telling us how they work, George replenishes the intellectual armory we need to fight back." Matt Kennard, author of Irregular Army and The Racket
About the Author Susan George is a high profile political scholar and activist whose previous books have been widely read and translated. She is currently president of the board of the Transnational Institute, a world-wide fellowship of scholars and activists.
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. "Business is regulating government" By David Wineberg Shadow Sovereigns is a call to arms. There is no pretense of being neutral. The evidence is frighteningly overwhelming. Susan George wants you to know you’re being traded away to the high bidders. She describes it as the “rise of illegitimate authority”. Transnational corporations (TNCs) are usurping justice and privatizing legislation.Her main preoccupation is the TTIP, the new transatlantic trade treaty. She says it contains one chapter on trade and 24 on regulating trade for the benefit of the TNCs. They get all kinds of new rights, bypassing local governments, plus the ability to sue them if they do anything to curb imports, even of dangerous materials. George paints a grim scenario where American gun rights get transferred to Europe by an arbitrator picked by the TNC. No appeal is allowed. Never again would national parliaments be in charge of setting the regulatory rules on new products and processes, she says. It has the potential to bring financial disasters that would dwarf the crisis of 2008-9, and for precisely the same reasons: the TNCs running trade as they run finance – with total disregard for anything but immediate profit.Even the UN has been contaminated, if not neutered, by the TNCs. George says the UN has voluntarily become part of the problem. She cites CFC actions: DuPont called ozone depletion “a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish…utter nonsense”, but The Montreal Protocol banning CFCs defeated its “Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy”, and is considered the greatest collective global environmental achievement, ever. Now that the DuPonts of the world have infiltrated the UN and have a seat at numerous tables, this achievement is unlikely to ever be surpassed. The UN committee on coal was eclipsed by corporate sponsors, who wrote the final communiqué as an appreciation for coal. George says allowing them to drape themselves in the UN flag is “bluewashing”, discrediting the entire institution.She aims the first and last salvos at the Davos World Economic Forum, where the TNCs openly pursue world political domination. Their manifestos, working papers and forums are completely clear: corporates perform far better than governments.What is puzzling in all this is the lack of outrage by those in power. Throughout history, men would do anything to maintain and enlarge their power. You were either conqueror or roadkill, and no one willingly chose roadkill. Yet national governments, state governments, and even the UN seem not at all disturbed by this massive elbowing-in of TNCs. For unexplored reasons, stepping aside for corporations does not bother elected officials. There is another book here.David Wineberg
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Who's this book for? By Kate Vane Thirty years ago I read Susan George’s How the Other Half Dies and it was one of those books that stayed with me. I was just becoming interested in politics and she showed in devastating detail what corporations can do to people who are poor and powerless.So I was keen to read Shadow Sovereigns. I have to say I was disappointed. George is angry (and why not, all these years on and the situation is in many ways worse). However, the anger undermines her argument. It feels like she wrote the book in a rage and didn’t pause to reflect or structure her thoughts.I’m not sure who her target reader is. The section on lobbying is quite general and abstract and if, like me, you already have an interest in these issues you won’t learn much.Later she does illustrate her arguments with specific examples (including one court case she was once again pitted against Nestle). In the chapter about TTIP she gives exhaustive detail which will be useful to activists but might overwhelm the general reader who is looking for a broad understanding of the issues.Even though I largely agree with her, I felt quite put off by the strident tone, and I’m afraid that someone coming to these issues for the first time, who isn’t familiar with the context, may be completely alienated.*I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.If you’re interested in reading more about the power of corporations over governments, I’d recommend Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens by Nicholas Shaxson.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Crucial for understanding how global corporations have supplanted or taken over crucial parts of the public realm By Robert Moore I have often thought it would be interesting to do a history of political thought by asking of each major figure of the past: "What were they afraid of?" Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was afraid of society that lacked a system of laws that curtailed the natural instincts of people to violently subdue all others. It was this kind of world, bereft of civil society, that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."An even more interesting figure to ask this of is Adam Smith, and most people would instantly answer: "the interference of the government in the economy." But his actual fear was the control of the public interest by the very wealthy. He yearned for a separation between government and the economy. For instance, he did not think that individuals involved in trade should be allowed to serve in government, since he did not think that they could serve without self-interest. Smith was also scared of society being dominated by large business entities. He believed that companies should be small, preferably less than a dozen total employees. He also was afraid of stock companies, and would be horrified to see the central place that trading stocks and all financial companies play in our economy. Smith was afraid of a lot of things, most of which came true. Adam Smith would be as horrified by today's economy - which many feel is the free market economy described by THE WEALTH OF NATIONS - as Karl Marx would have been by the Soviet Union, which was totalitarian while he believed in a popular democracy (his political idol was Abraham Lincoln and the country whose political system he liked most was the United States, with it three separated powers and bicameral Congress) and had been born in violent revolution whereas Marx believed that the collapse of capitalism would occur because of internal structural weakness (and it looks like Marx might have turned out to be right after all, with capitalism about to face its greatest challenge, with us poised at the beginning of a technological revolution that could eventually make workers redundant and obsolete; our economy is shifting from one that involved owners of capital having workers produce their products, to one where intelligent machines and computer programs make them instead, creating an economy in which most humans are without jobs, which will make some form of a welfare state absolutely unavoidable, with two Oxford economists projecting that 47% of American jobs could be lost to robots or computer programs - in other words, nearly one out of every two Americans could be jobless, while we should keep in mind that at the peak of the Great Depression unemployment hit 25%). Adam Smith was terrified of capitalists (the term "capitalist" was popularized by Marx, but it applies well to those who were involved in making their living in the market. But keep in mind that Adam Smith's capitalists were heads of small, ten person max companies that either made or grew or processed things. Smith detested the idea of people having a company that didn't make anything. So his detest of today's global economy would be close to total.Susan George goes into great deal about all of these things that Adam Smith would have feared: huge conglomerates who for the most part do not make anything - but instead sell ephemeral financial products that no one needs except as a means to making more money - and who not only do not honor the line separating the market and government, but obliterate it, effectively taking over the government. It is the rare elected official who can resist this. Most don't even try. As an example, the US Representative to Congress from my part of Arkansas is French Hill. It is safe to say that French Hill has never espoused a single idea that hasn't been vetted by corporate America first. I don't believe he has ever done anything that wasn't primarily in the interests of the shadow government of the United States. And I don't think he believes he is doing anything wrong. He simply believes that the way to serve the people of the United States is to first serve the needs and interests of the corporations and the investment class. If people are struggling to find decent jobs, it is because we haven't trusted the process whereby we give vast sums to entrepreneurs and investors and heads of corporations and corporations themselves, and then they in turn create jobs. Only, in a finance-driven economy, it does work like that. No matter how much you give the investors, they refuse to invest personnel. The problem is that the rhetoric is parasitic upon older models of the economy, where if you give money to a corporation, they in turn invest in new equipment and upgrading the plant. But today in the US there aren't plants, but offices and too many of those offices are merely involved in financial and investment products. They don't make anything, so giving them money doesn't lead to upgrading plants that will lead to hiring 500 new high wage workers. French Hill is a blank sheet of paper that merely sits waiting for corporate America to write its message and policy desires for.This is an important book on a very important subject. I honestly believe the United States is right on the verge of becoming a dystopian society. For many Americans - and America now has more individuals below the poverty line than any other rich country - this is already a dystopia. And we have already begun the process whereby humans will be replaced by computer programs (such as many paralegal positions, thanks to computer programs that can do legal research more accurately and much more quickly) or intelligent or semi-intelligent robots. Adidas is building a factory in German that is scheduled for completion later in 2016 that will have robots making its shoes. For decades we have thought of the robotic age as being somewhere off in the future, but each year as we move further into the 21st Century, machines are being designed that can do the jobs of humans. Something radical will need to be done for everyday humans. As corporate profits soar to even higher levels than the present, millions of humans will help in a society that no longer will have even remotely enough jobs for its citizens. George's book is important for those of us who want to understand both the nature of the situation and what we can do about it.
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