Description
Twenty years ago, When Corporations Rule the World sounded a global alarm: The consolidation of power in a global economy ruled by corporations poses a growing threat to markets, democracy, humans, and life itself.
Unfortunately, subsequent events affirm all but extraneous details of the analysis. Corporate power is now more concentrated and operates ever further beyond human control. Its exercise is more reckless. Its political domination is more complete. Its consequences are more devastating. And system collapse is more certain and imminent.
All of this is now abundantly visible. People the world over have mobilized to resist and to build the foundations of a new life-serving economy in which money is a means, not an end.
As the devastation wrought by corporate rule accelerates, time grows ever shorter. Replacing the suicide economy we have with the living economy we must bring forth is imperative, and we must accomplish it within a blink of history’s eye.
If we are to move beyond the current system’s deep dysfunction, we must understand its cultural and institutional sources and how they contrast with the design principles by which healthy living communities self-organize. In 1995, the year When Corporations Rule the World launched, the news was filled with reports of eye-popping corporate executive compensation packages, corporate downsizing, and the outsourcing of good-paying jobs to countries distinguished by their low wages and weak labor and environmental protections.
It proved to be a moment of awakening to the depth and implications of an unfolding global corporate takeover with ever more brutal consequences for families, communities, democracy, liberty, Earth, and the livelihood of billions of people. People were looking for explanations and answers that When Corporations Rule the World provided. Translated into twenty languages, it sold more than 150,000 copies and became an international classic.
Those who seek alternatives to the current system continue to find it an invaluable resource. Hence this 20th anniversary edition. A re-edited and more readable version of the original text is preceded by an updated prologue sharing insights from my personal experience as a participant in the growing new-economy movement. This all-new introduction presents lessons from the experience of twenty more years of capitalism’s broken promises. An all-new conclusion outlines high-leverage opportunities for breakthrough change, and an updated epilogue shares thoughts on our human nature and purpose as living beings born of and nurtured by a living Earth itself born of a living universe.
CONTENTS
A Choice for Life
Prologue: A Personal Journey
Introduction: Capitalism and the Suicide Economy
PART I: COWBOYS IN A SPACESHIP
1 From Hope to Crisis
2 End of the Open Frontier
3 The Growth Illusion
PART II: CONTEST FOR SOVEREIGNTY
4 Rise of Corporate Power in America
5 Assault of the Corporate Libertarians
6 The Decline of Democratic Pluralism
7 Illusions of the Cloud Minders
PART III: CORPORATE COLONIALISM
8 Dreaming of Global Empires
9 Building Elite Consensus
10 Buying Out Democracy
11 Marketing the World
12 Adjusting the Poor
13 Guaranteeing Corporate Rights
PART IV: A ROGUE FINANCIAL SYSTEM
14 The Money Game
15 Predatory Finance
16 Corporate Cannibalism
17 Managed Competition
PART V: NO PLACE FOR PEOPLE
18 Race to the Bottom
19 The End of Inefficiency
20 People with No Place
PART VI: TO RECLAIM OUR POWER
21 The Ecological Revolution
22 Economies Are for Living
23 An Awakened Civil Society
24 Agenda for Democracy
Conclusion: A Living Economy for Living Earth
Epilogue: Our Need for Meaning
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index