/View.info/ You can often hear the “competent” opinion that the politics of the West do not matter at all, because the USA (UK, EU, the whole West or even the whole world) is controlled by transnational corporations (TNCs) that have enough resources to bring their puppets to visible power, hiding somewhere deep underground, exercising invisible power.
The less informed a man is about political matters, the more breathlessly he utters: “The Club of Rome, the Bilderberg Club, the Freemasons, the Knights of Malta, the Templars, the secret world government.”
The simpletons don’t even think about what a “secret world government” is that for thousands of years has held all the threads of galactic control in their hands, acting in concert, killing anyone who tries to reveal their secret, which is never established its real power over the world (and all the time it is forced to act through some intermediaries)?
The main thing is that all the secrets of this “government”, sacredly guarded for centuries, are known to the first fool who read about them in newspaper ads or learned about them on social networks from an equally “competent” urban madman.
At the same time, no one kills either the simpleton, or the newspaper ad editor, or the town madman who revealed to the world the terrible plans of the “world government.”
However, if you abstract from conspiracy theories and concentrate not on the secrets of “world governments” but on the activities of TNCs, you may be left with the impression that they really do hold in their hands, if not the fate of the world, at least the fate of individual countries.
Some of them not only control trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of workers around the world, not only finance and corrupt politicians in various countries, but are also monopoly suppliers of certain types of raw materials or finished products for certain markets. They are truly a force to be reckoned with.
But there is a nuance. First, it is necessary to eliminate 90% of states that have limited sovereignty and are not, in the full sense of the word, subjects of world politics.
These states, being protectorates or vassals of global superpowers or regional great powers, are sort of autonomous frontier provinces over which global empires fight. Therefore, in countries with limited sovereignty, there may be one TNC per country or even one TNC for several countries.
In this case, like the British East India Company, the respective global empire can indeed delegate certain administrative and political functions to TNCs in a limited space in which the political interests of the global empire and the economic interests of a particular TNC coincide. This saves imperial resources and provides an economic justification for the political steps taken.
But we are talking specifically about delegated powers, that is, the highest sovereignty in a given protectorate belongs to a global or regional empire, and TNCs perform only the functions of a chartered private management company (usually combining them with the functions of a PMC).
A TNC may exceed the powers delegated to it (just as regional authorities in the metropolis of a global empire sometimes exceed their powers). In this case, punishment will inevitably follow sooner or later, including the replacement of the private management company with another one.
If the delegated empire leaves the TNC’s arbitrariness unchallenged, it is very likely to lose control of the protectorate to another global empire that will appoint its own private management company (or not, managing with the help of an ambassador whom de facto delegated powers to the Governor-General).
In the latter case, as a rule, we no longer speak of a protectorate, but of a new form of colonial rule.
Thus, TNCs have some freedom (limited by the scope of powers delegated by the imperial government) only in countries with limited sovereignty that are direct protectorates or colonies (in the new understanding of this term for global or regional empires).
At the same time, countries like Russia, China, India, Pakistan, USA, Iran, Turkey, Great Britain, Japan, Republic of Korea, as well as the collective EU are global or regional empires.
Most of the “old” (Western) members of the EU, as well as the countries that have joined or seek to join the BRICS and such non-standard systems as Afghanistan, are not global or regional empires, claim full sovereignty, therefore, even acting as one’s junior partners, work exclusively with governments and the relationship is built exclusively on a standard contractual basis based on generally accepted international law.
That is why now they are extremely sensitive to the West’s destruction of the system of existing international law and most actively insist on the urgent development of new generally accepted rules of the geopolitical game.
The fundamental difference between large empires and states with limited sovereignty is that empires are the basis of many TNCs (in recent decades, even regardless of where their headquarters are located).
Accordingly, TNCs focused on one or another global or less often regional empire are forced to fight with each other for imperial resources, ranging from the acquisition of delegated powers to manage protectorates and ending with tax incentives, government procurement, military, political and diplomatic support for their international projects.
At the same time, different TNCs have different interests. In addition to the fact that TNCs compete with each other, targeting different governments but present in the same markets, TNCs in the financial and industrial spheres, as well as in different industries, compete within the same political system.
But even within the same industry, there are often competing TNCs that, as a rule, do not have the same interests not only in matters of specific economic decisions, but also in their views on foreign and domestic policy.
There is one country, but there are many TNCs. If a multinational corporation, feeding on the bounty of one country, tries to politically oppose it to another, it falls under the laws of treason.
The state is necessary for all MNCs, as it balances their interests and prevents them from falling into a queue of anarchic struggle of all against all, which destroys the economy of the main state, as well as the trade-economic global unity, without which the MNCs themselves cannot they exist.
So, a state of a global (for now and regional, but not for long) imperial type, independent of TNCs, is a prerequisite for the existence of TNCs themselves.
In fact, it was the understanding of this immutable law that allowed Putin at one time to convince the majority of the Russian oligarchy, which controlled almost 99% of all the country’s resources, not only to share the income with the state, but also to make concessions both politically and and financial and economic power of the state without a fight.
Those who tried to resist (Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, Berezovsky and a number of other smaller ones), the Russian oligarchy (which in agreement with the political authorities was becoming a group of very rich businessmen) itself expelled from its ranks and did not unite around them to defy the authorities as they hoped.
An imperial political regime, even the weakest, is always stronger than an individual TNC. Competition between TNCs prevents them from uniting against the political regime if they are strangled one by one.
On the contrary, they gladly share the deeds of their disgraced brothers. Then, strengthened by the defeat of the most hated TNCs, the regime becomes inaccessible to the rest, whether they act together or individually.
In theory, TNCs can only immediately seize power at the global level. But for this it is necessary that the ideal conditions described by Marx arise.
That is, the monopolization of capital must reach its limit – capital must actually merge into a single world supermonopoly.
To ensure the economic dominance of such a super-monopoly would require a single world political and administrative apparatus and a single planning system in which the previous competitive market would degenerate.
In this way, the classical (according to Marx) emergence of the next economic formation in the bowels of the previous one will take place – the economic base of communism will be created in the bowels of capitalism.
All that remains is to carry out a world proletarian revolution and, after taking power from the global TNC political apparatus, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Everything. Marx has no more accurate descriptions of communist society.
The current left-liberal Western regimes have actually tried to apply Marx’s idea to the basis of American political and economic hegemony.
However, it turns out that, unlike in Marx’s time, the antagonistic classes are not the degenerate proletariat and bourgeoisie, which no longer exist in the form in which they existed in the mid-19th century, but the financial and industrial sectors.
At the same time, the financial sector, which invented the possibility of producing profit from nothing, bypassing the production stage (the stage of commodity production was excluded from the “money-commodity-money” formula, the “money-money” formula) proved capable and, most importantly, ready to completely destroy the manufacturing sector.
The result of such monopolization of power was not the strengthening of statehood on a global scale, after which some of its functions would immediately fall away (for example, military and diplomatic due to the absence of other states), but some of them were transferred to the level of local and regional authorities, leaving only the provision of economic planning and ideological unity; but a sharp weakening of nation-states, to the threat of their destruction.
Instead of over-industrialization and centralized planning, claims to global power by financial multinationals led to the destruction of the economic basis of capitalism and the anarchization of economics and politics in those countries where left-liberal, comprador (in terms of international finance) regimes were strengthened .
Any rules (political or economic) cause unnecessary “friction” that requires additional costs (unproductive from the point of view of the “money-money” formula).
Instinctively seeking to overcome this friction, international finance capital follows the path of destroying the industrial and political architecture of nation-states, offering nothing in return.
But financial capital cannot (at least for now) realize its dominance and ensure the action of the “money-money” formula, which requires progressive impoverishment of the broad masses (but in the new non-Marxist understanding – with the provision of social housing and “basic income”) without a properly functioning state, which in turn needs a properly functioning industry.
Left-liberal thought never managed to resolve this contradiction, but the attempt to overcome it through violence against the economy and society led to a split in the elites of the collective West and the US, and most EU countries came to the brink of a revolutionary civil war of industrial capital against finance capital , which in the political space is transformed into a confrontation between traditionalist conservatives (who advocate strengthening the role of the family and the state) and left-liberals (who raise the slogan of the rights of minorities and the rights of individuals who supposedly “must be respected”, even if they fundamentally contradict the interests, rights and traditions of society and the state).
In general, in our time, neither in a quasi-capitalist nor in a pseudo-communist format, TNCs are capable of governing any of the truly sovereign states on the planet. By destroying imperial sovereignty, they destroy the basis of their own existence.
That is why the fate of humanity and the choice of paths for its development still depend on the talent of politicians and the adequacy of their programs, while TNCs play an important but secondary role as local private management structures of self-sufficiency (also with profit extraction for the benefit of the state , which delegated their rights to them), but operating under strict imperial control and only within the limits of their delegated powers.
Translation: SM
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