The Multi-National Corporation

Abstract

The emergence of the multi-national corporation (MNC) has fundamentally changed the pattern of trade flows and international finance in the last twenty years. Worldwide enterprises such as General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, Royal Dutch Shell, the Bank of America, Nestle, Siemens, Hitachi and Fiat have grown rapidly in number and power. They now account for one-eighth of all international trade flows; but in 1980 they will control one-quarter. Mobile and powerful, they can threaten, if they so choose, the sovereignty and the viability of the nation state. The regime of Allende in Chile commanded less economic power or disposable cash flow than ITT. The nine nations of the European Common Market (EEC) found in last winter's petroleum crisis that they could neither expose nor control the cross-national transfers effected by the eight largest of the MNC oil "majors". It now appears that the MNC will serve as the agent necessary to develop contemporary capitalism to the "next stage" in the concentration of international wealth and political authority. It yet remains to be determined how socialist theory and socialist movements will adjust to this fundamental development.