Abstract
If cosmopolitanism is the culture of global capitalism, then transnationalists are arguably that set of actors whose interconnections form the global corporate elite. This includes the idea of globally elite cosmopolitans transgressing national boundaries just as effortlessly as do transnational corporations or global finance markets. But what sociological evidence is there that transnational elites represent the emergence of a new social class, or indeed that the activities of such elites should be of vital political concern?
The complex, contradictory ways in which transnational corporate elites reach beyond national forms of organization into a global field is the focus of William K. Carroll’s The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class. The book is a remarkable feat of sociological analysis, skillfully weaving together social network analysis and empirical data in a sound critique of the interlocking corporate ties across the global capitalist network.
Carroll, a sociologist at the University of Victoria, is the author of previous books on the political economy of corporate capitalism. This latest work extends these previous interests to a consideration of the networks of corporate power, mapping as it does the formations of a transnational corporate community. The book is arguably the best work on corporate elites since Leslie Sklair’s The Transnational Capitalist Class (2001), which has clearly influenced Carroll—and who has named this new book in its honor.
Massive institutional change is seen by Carroll as underpinning the new social organization of a transnational capitalist class. New information technologies, the global electronic economy and its digitalized finance markets, the near universalism of consumer capitalism: these are the essential institutional foundations of twenty-first century forms of corporate power.
Carroll uses a mass of empirical data—looking in depth at statistics on global policy groups, leading billionaire families, financial institutions in the global corporate network, trends in capital accumulation, and the spread of transnational business councils—to contextualize the embedding of networks in social structures and to trace the multiple affiliations of elites in terms of global corporate power. And he makes a good fist of this, producing a persuasive institutional account of corporate interlocks within the accumulation processes of late capitalism.
Carroll’s somewhat predictably provocative thesis is that the global electronic economy remains dominated by Euro-North American corporate networks—a case which, in casting globalization as an objectivistic structure, allows him to speak of “global class-wide hegemony.” There is, it is true, some attention devoted to the rise of the global South—though insufficient attention is paid, I think, to the combined impact of Chinese and Indian corporate networks on capital control, coordination and allocation throughout the world economy and, in particular, finance markets.
Even so, the book ranges widely across the economic and political networks of transnational corporate power today. There are illuminating chapters on the changing organization of corporate power, global cities, transnational corporate-policy networks, billionaires and super-wealth, as well as analysis of corporate Europe and its complex patterns of inter-corporate relations.
Carroll has produced a full-bloodedly sociological account of transnational corporate power, the value of which lies in its close attention to rigorous empirical research while all the time keeping an eye on the big questions of capitalism, globalization and hegemonic power structures. But is this enough? While the institutional analysis developed by Carroll is of incomparable value, the activities of global corporate elites press equally for sociological attention in terms of lifestyle politics, culture and the transformation of values. Carroll’s study refuses to have much truck with such issues, which is more than a pity because the personal and cultural ramifications of the practices and discourses of global corporate power unearthed in this book need to be examined.
Another way of putting this is, given all the facts and figures Carroll reviews in respect of the interlocks of global corporate elites, how are such elite linkages actually forged, sustained and transformed into symbolic power? If global elites roam the planet in first-class comfort, overseeing vast capital investments and transnational operations, then what role does networked power actually play in the constitution of such lives? Or, more to the point, how do global elites achieve extremely high forms of connectivity with other global elites via networks, connectors, and hubs? What is the role of travel in elite linkages? What import new information technologies? These are not issues Carroll directly raises, because the bulk of his efforts are directed to establishing the nature and distribution of such elite linkages.
Carroll is the kind of sociologist any professional would want on their side, an author who combines intense empirical engagement with interesting institutional perspectives. The limit of The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class, however, is that it closes down discussion on new global elites just at the point where the topic gets most interesting. He is still owed our considerable appreciation, though, for mapping in such fine detail the geopolitics of corporate power in the twenty-first century.