Barnet, Richard J. and Mueller, Ronald E. Global Reach: The Power of the
Multinational Corporations. New York: Simon & Schuster (Touchstone), 1974.
508 pages (includes 90 pages of end notes).
In the 1970s it was still possible for scholars to affiliate with think
tanks whose budgets did not depend on huge corporate donations. This didn't
always make them less elitist, but in most cases it made them more honest.
Richard J. Barnet, who has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
for more than ten years, was associated with the left-liberal Institute for
Policy Studies when he co-authored this book. "Global Reach" is one of the
first (and only) books to examine the transnational corporation, which was
then just emerging as a separate political and economic entity, with the
potential to subvert the historic social-welfare functions of the sovereign
state, and thereby affect billions of people.
After two decades of collecting dust on our bookshelf, it's amazing
how well this book anticipated our problems. Today's issues are all here,
from free trade and the loss of U.S. jobs, to how the transnationals also
make things worse for most people in the Third World -- whether through
the replacement of culture and tradition with mindless consumerism, or
through the outright concentration of income, rape of natural resources,
elimination of jobs, and increased hunger. For the 1990s, this book merely
needs to change is its cover: it ought to be titled "Global Grab."
ISBN 0-671-22104-3
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