The Coming Clash: The Impact of Multinational Corporations on National States

The Coming Clash: The Impact of Multinational Corporations on National States, by Hugh Stephenson (Saturday Review, 186 pp., $7.95). In the last couple of years we have had to deal with a flood of books on international corporate life, all of them deploring this strong new trend. The deploration arises from the correct observation that these corporations are forever trying to escape from the heavy hand of governmental control. They are “agents” of an “economic system” that exists “outside” the “traditional sixteenth-century concept” of the “national state.” And if you happen to think it’s the function of national governments to produce soap, attach bumpers to Chevies, drill for oil, and hustle chocolate bars, then you will deplore this. Thus Mr. Stephenson, taken by and large. On the other hand Mr. Stephenson deplores the tendency of a company like IBM to start up new subsidiaries in each new country where its sales get to a certain level, because this “internalizes” the manufacture and reduces the statistical measurements of international trade. IBM does this, says Stephenson, in order to cooperate with national governments and maintain good relations. Is there a contradiction here? Is there a contradiction in the notion of government control of enterprise? Is the sky blue?

WR

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W. F. Rickenbacker

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The Coming Clash: The Impact of Multinational Corporations on National States, by Hugh Stephenson (Saturday Review, 186 pp., $7.95). In the last couple of years we have had to deal with a flood of books on international corporate life, all of them deploring this strong new trend. The deploration arises from the correct observation that these corporations are forever trying to escape from the heavy hand of governmental control. They are “agents” of an “economic system” that exists “outside” the “traditional sixteenth-century concept” of the “national state.” And if you happen to think it’s the function of national governments to produce soap, attach bumpers to Chevies, drill for oil, and hustle chocolate bars, then you will deplore this. Thus Mr. Stephenson, taken by and large. On the other hand Mr. Stephenson deplores the tendency of a company like IBM to start up new subsidiaries in each new country where its sales get to a certain level, because this “internalizes” the manufacture and reduces the statistical measurements of international trade. IBM does this, says Stephenson, in order to cooperate with national governments and maintain good relations. Is there a contradiction here? Is there a contradiction in the notion of government control of enterprise? Is the sky blue?