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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