New Research on Global Corporate Control
Ladislau Dowbor
January 3, 2012
“There is a big difference between suspecting the existence of a fact
and in empirically demonstrating it”
We have all followed, for decades in a row, the news about large companies buying one another, forming increasingly larger groups, in theory to become more competitive in the increasingly aggressive international market environment. The process, naturally, has its limits. In general, in the main production chains, the race ends when there are few companies at the top. Instead of being at war, they find out that it is more convenient to mix competition with collaboration, for their mutual advantage. Not necessarily, as it is obvious, for the good of us all.
Controlling a production chain in an organized manner naturally generates large economic, political and cultural power. Economic through the immense resource flow – bigger than the GDP in numerous countries –, political through the appropriation of a large portion of the public decision process, and cultural by the fact that the global mass media creates, through heavy propaganda campaigns, a consumer culture and behavior that favors corporations, generating an overall loss of balance between corporate muscle and the essential but less focused interests of society.