Abstract
A few hundred giant corporations now straddle the world, exerting a pervasive influence over its destiny. They control between a quarter and a third of all production, and a larger percentage of its trade. They sustain their predominant and expanding economic position through privileged access to technology, finance and marketing facilities, and also exert a powerful influence over the activities of smaller local firms which rely on them as suppliers, buyers, creditors and providers of high technology. Because they create employment and can usually afford to pay above-average wages, they can also often secure the support of trade unions and working-class political movements for their activities.
We thus see that the growth of the world economic process, having as its basis the growth of productive forces, not only calls forth an intensification of production relations among various countries, not only widens and deepens general capitalist interrelations, but also calls to life new economic formations, new economic forms unknown to past epochs in the history of capitalist development.
Nikolai Bukharin,Imperialismand WorldEconomy, 1918
What is at issue is whether — in an era of international transfer pricing — government control of the private economy based on national price systems is any longer adequate.
Robin Murray, Multinationals Beyond the Market, 1981
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
See N. Hood and S. Young, The economics of multinational enterprise (London: Longman, 1979) p. 47.
For the classic statement see, C. A. R. Crosland, The future of socialism (London: Cape, 1956).
I have developed this argument, and the critique of it, in chapters 2 and 3 of International money and the capitalist crisis; for an excellent review of the recent literature on the subject and the development of an ‘eclectic theory’ of the ‘market imperfections’ approach to the problem see J. H. Dunning, International production and the multinational enterprise (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981). In my view his examination of the factors leading to the dominance of MNCs is an excellent one, though I do not accept his assessment of the consequences of this tendency.
See S. Hymer, The multinational corporation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) and especially ch. 2.
R. Solomon, The international monetary system1945–1976 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) p. 18.
G. Helleiner, ‘Intra-firm trade and the developing countries’, in R. Murray, Multinationals beyond the market (Brighton: Harvester, 1981) p. 53.
G. M. Meier, ‘Private foreign investment’, in G. M. Meier, Leading issues in economic development, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) pp. 373–4.
For an excellent outline see R. Murray, ‘The internationalisation of capital and the nation state’, in H. Radice, International firms and modern imperialism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).
C. Vaitsos, Employment problems and transnational enterprises in developing countries (Geneva: ILO, 1976) p. 1.
Here see S. Langdon, ‘Multinational corporations, taste transfer and underdevelopment’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 2, 1975; and
J. de Coninck, Artisans and petty producers in Uganda, PhD thesis, Sussex University, 1980.
The economic benefits of this process to capital and the corresponding tendency for it to intensify the ‘agglomeration’ on concentration of capital is clearly set out in R. Murray, ‘Underdevelopment, international firms and the international division of labour’, Society for International Development, Towards a new world economy (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press, 1972); I have also treated the problem at much greater length than is possible here in International money, ch. 3.
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1985 E. A. Brett
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brett, E.A. (1985). Multinational Corporations, Nation States, World Economy. In: The World Economy since the War. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17896-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17896-4_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-37200-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-17896-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)