The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class: Corporate Power in the 21st Century - Hardcover

Carroll, William K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848134428 ISBN 13: 9781848134423

Publisher: Zed Books, 2010

Synopsis

Throughout the world, there has been a growing wave of interest in global corporate power and the rise of a transnational capitalist class, triggered by economic and political transformations that have blurred national borders and disembedded corporate business from national domiciles. Using social network analysis, William Carroll maps the changing field of power generated by elite relations among the world's largest corporations and related political organizations. Carroll provides an in-depth analysis that spans the three decades of the late 20th and early 21st century, when capitalist globalization attained unprecedented momentum, propelled both by the transnationalization of accumulation and by the political paradigm of transnational neoliberalism. This has been an era in which national governments have deregulated capital, international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the World Economic Forum have gained prominence, and production and finance have become more fully transnational, increasing the structural power of capital over communities and workers. Within this context of transformation, this book charts the making of a transnational capitalist class, reaching beyond national forms of capitalist class organization into a global field, but facing spirited opposition from below in an ongoing struggle that is also a struggle over alternative global futures.

About this title

About the Author:

William K. Carroll is the author of a number of books, including The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class, also published by Zed Books.

Review:

"William Carroll provides a superb analysis of global corporate power and the complexities surrounding the issue of transnational capitalist class formation. Sensitive to the relations between the global, regional, and national, the challenges posed by state capitalism, and the early impact of the global financial crisis, this will remain the definitive work on the subject for years to come." —Stephen McBride, McMaster University "With this exciting book Bill Carroll has written a landmark study on transnational class formation setting a new standard for years to come. The longitudinal approach, rigorous empirical research, and great theoretical sensitivity and nuance give the book a unique and exemplary quality. It raises numerous questions for futher research and debate and makes a major contribution to critical social research." —Henk Overbeek, VU University "Carroll and his co-workers take the debates on global capitalism and the network society to a new level. Identifying the emergence of a transnational capitalist class, they document its changing contours over the last two decades and its position in the global distribution of wealth and advantage. Powerful research using techniques of social network analysis shows that corporate power holders have become increasingly cosmopolitan and are the key agents of regional and global financial hegemony within the world economic system." —John Scott, University of Plymouth "Building on Fennema's pathbreaking research on corporate networks in the 1980s, Carroll and his colleagues have produced an impressive array of evidence to suggest that a transnational capitalist class is in the making. Mapping the social organization of this class through the network-analytic approach, the book reveals a multitude of corporate interlocks over space and time showing that transnational corporate and political linkages have been growing, particularly in the case of Fortune Global 500 corporations from 1996 to 2006. All this is accomplished with the help of dozens of tables and figures, making this very complex subject much clearer to understand than would be the case with text alone. This book is the most significant recent contribution on the transnational capitalist class." —Leslie Sklair, London School of Economics

About this edition

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1848134428
• ISBN 13: 9781848134423
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288