Index

8: A Manifesto of Corporate Totalitarianism

John McMurtry

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain is cast by the corporate press which spawned him as a man of "the third way" between extremes. But we would do well to listen to what this "moderate pragmatist" himself says on corporate globalisation.

"These forces of change driving the future don‘t stop at national boundaries. Don ‘t respect tradition. They wait for no one and no nation. They are universal.

We need to lay bare the logic of Blair’s revealing statement to understand the program of power that it urges us to submit to. On first blush, Blair’s statement is the political rhetoric of a British leader keeping his working-class parry in line. But there is a deeper layer of meaning which goes beyond Britain itself to identification of a "universal" condition to which all people everywhere have no choice but to submit. Blair’s statement reveals by its sweep of assertion the invasive forces of which he is a spokesman. His words are very clear. Their structure deletes the subject of every sentence as nameless, inhuman, without definition, accountable to nothing. They affirm with no moral qualifier an occupation of societies everywhere by "forces" which will stop at no borders of national or cultural identity. All that was once secure in historical time and place is declared powerless against the transnational tide.

Prime Minister Blair reveals without knowing it the totalitarian nature of what he is awed by. The powers of corporate global revolution by which all that he sees has been swept up and carried are, he implies, beyond any possibility of democratic or legal control. Even he is helpless in their face as British head of state, for they overrun all historical limits of "tradition" and "nation." The referent of his words could be a Hun invasion writ large. Blair is admitting an overwhelmed sense of submersion in power, precisely the state of mind and emotion that every totalitarian movement must project onto its believers and audience as its ground of internalisation. The nation-overrunning forces are a given, not just what his fellow Englishmen must yield to as unstoppable, but what all everywhere must surrender to as "universal" and "driving the future." Zeus raping Leda to implant in her his destiny of might resonates as the trope of globalisation.

One might think that Blair’s statement is a rhetorical conceit. But is it, in truth, the missing key to every act of his office? What act in his record is inconsistent with any part of it? When has Blair, or Chr~tien or Clinton, ever not acted in conformity to this belief in inevitable corporate globalisation–"waiting for no one and no nation," trampling all who do not jump into line with its omnipotent advance. They are not, in fact, national leaders, but obedient expressions of these forces of corporate globalisation. Once we understand that, we see into the directive logic of current historical events otherwise myopised as "clashes of political will" and "party politics." We understand why Blair from the beginning denounced and isolated anyone who represented traditional working class positions in his own party. We understand why he fought against the governments of the major states of Europe if they tried to institute the economic rights of governments or working people, or if they sought to require these transnational forces to respect tax obligations or human rights.2

One might think from this explanatory standpoint that Blair is specially odious, merely a smiling toady to the transnational corporate system. But again one needs to search for evidence of any head-of-state leading on behalf of the common weal of his people in any of the world’s nations. Prime Minister Chretien, for example, symptomises the same awe of the "universal forces" in his defining diplomatic role as leader of "Team Canada" permanently roaming the globe seeking more contracts for transnational corporations, and engaging in "mutually profitable relationships" with any murderous dictatorship which might buy atomic energy reactors, electronic infrastructure, helicopter engines, oil servicing equipment, or open up mineral deposits for foreign corporate looting.3 As apparently all ministers of state in the no-alternative order, there is a new presupposed norm of political exchange: to receive media praise and electoral funding for "sound government" in return for privatisation of government as a corporate servant. Blair’s prime ministerial catechism to the inevitable forces of the global juggernaut reveals to us the character of this system as perceived even by its client politicians.

We can identify the defining features of this new order’s authority by diagnosis of Blair’s own words.

(1) The forces of corporate global restructuring are without meaning or value in their direction. For they are external "forces" not what we care about intrinsically, and they "drive the future" as the forces of combusted gases drive pistons or the forces of gravity move the tides. They are to be submitted to not because they confer meaning or give us a moral direction, but because they are all-powerful and we cannot resist them.

(2) The forces of corporate global restructuring are lawless. They "don’t stop at national boundaries," as all lawful agents are obliged to do. The first principle of domestic and international law, to respect the boundaries of others, is overridden by these forces as the destiny of the world’s future.

(3) The forces of corporate global restructuring are unaccountable. There is no electorate or standard of behaviour or anything else that they answer to or have to answer to for their domination because "they wait for no-one and no nation" and "drive the future."

(4) The forces of corporate global restructuring are nihilist. For they "respect no tradition"–ethical, legal, or cultural–and there is no exception. Civilisation’s highest tradition of life-protective order itself cannot, and as powerless to resist, ought not to try to regulate these forces.

As we unpack the inner meaning of Blair’s representative statement, we need to ask what political leader has not acted in conformity to the demands of these transnational corporate forces? What "democratic" political or legal leadership yet seeks to make accountable, or hedge in by enforced law, or raise any other power above, or in any way morally question the transnational corporate agenda which these forces express?4

The sad fact is that our leaders demand that we accept what they themselves describe as lawless and unaccountable–like the changes of the seasons, between which there are now in fact disturbing connections.

John McMurtry is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, ON

1 Madelaine Bunting ‘Stop the Wheel, I Want to Get Off,’

Guardian Weekly, December 2-8, 1999, p.13.

2 Blair has as I write, for example, successfully resisted taxes on foreign-registered stockholders of British seock, and reversed the French-German project for a charter of human rights to include economic, social and gender rights, and monitoring of environmental protection data. He has done all this to ensure against "new costs to business" (the sanitised report in ‘Blair Claims Victory on EU Tax,’ Guardian Weekly, June 22-28, 2000, pS).

3Prime Minister Chretien’s captaincy of Team Canada is an illuminating case. As the CanadExport journal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs puts it, this is "the one-stop shop, Team Canada Inc." which "use[s] governmental status to sign and guarantee sales contracts on behalf of Canada [sic] exporters (CanadExport, January 2000, p.16 and Message From the President).

4 The courts seem as supinely collaborative with the "universal forces" of global corporatism as corporately financed political parties. In response to the constitutional initiative of Canadian lawyer Connie Fogal and supporters of the Defence of Canadian Liberty Committee, the Federal Court of Appeal in a June 12, 2000 ruling sidestepped the legal challenge to Cabinet’s right to make decisions in secret and bind Canada to overriding transnational trade treaties with no consultation with or input from Parliament. The Federal Court ruled in a Kafkaesque decision to avoid decision and continue passing on legal responsibility to higher authorities, with costs and fees for the long journey to discover whether Canada’s government can lawfully be handed over to foreign powers in secret without Parliamentary approval being wholly borne by concerned citizens (www.canadianliberty.bc.ca).

–from Economic Reform, September 2000