PHM-Exch> Big business, poor peoples: how transnational corporations damage the world’s poor,

[Claudio Schuftan]

Big business, poor peoples: how transnational corporations damage the
world’s poor, John Madeley, paperback, 240 pages, ISBN 978-1-84813-033-3, 2
nd ed, Zed Books, 2008, £16.99.



John Madeley has specialised in development issues for more than 30 years.
In this informative book, he shows how transnational corporations [TNCs]
damage the world (not just the world’s poor). Chapters cover
agri-corporations, agri-commodities, health care, water, tourism, forests
and fisheries, mining, manufacturing, energy, corporate PR, and tackling the
power.



The poorest 149 countries have $2700 billion debts. In 2005, they paid $513
billion to service these debts, as against the $106.8 billion aid they got.



There were 79 export processing zones [EPZ] in 25 countries in 1975, and
3,500 in 130 countries in 2006. Even the OECD admits that EPZ is a
‘sub-optimal policy from an economic point of view since it benefits the few
and distorts resource allocation’.



10,000 corporate lobbyists operate at EU HQ in Brussels. The CEOs of Shell,
BAT and GlaxoSmithKline were part of a secret lobbying group that had
private access to Blair.



 Madeley claims, “It is consumers who have the power to refuse to purchase
goods from TNCs that do not act to end injustices.” But later, he
acknowledges that this doesn’t work: Nestlé, boycotted for 20 years, “is the
most boycotted company in the UK” but it’s still there: “The boycott has
little effect on Nestlé profits.”



Madeley sums up, “Structural adjustment programmes, plus TNC power, have
brought massive deregulation – the dismantling of legal and administrative
controls that the corporations, Western governments, the IMF and the World
Bank claimed interfered with the free play of market forces. Restrictions on
TNC activities have been lifted, with government boasting about
deregulation. A brochure from the UK government’s Invest in Britain Bureau,
for example, assures potential investors that ‘no new laws or regulations
may be introduced without ascertaining and minimizing the costs to
business’. Many governments have given guarantees of no labour rights so as
not to deter foreign investment.” The corporations, Western governments, the
IMF and the World Bank all aim, not to fight poverty, but to maximise
profits.



He concludes, “WTO rules are biased in favour of TNCs and benefit people in
Western countries, rather than most people in developing countries.” No,
they do not benefit ‘people in Western countries’. They benefit only the
employing class in Western countries.



Why do all writers on development ignore the reality of class? Without the
working class of each country taking responsibility for its country, there
is no development.






Will Podmore,
> Librarian
> The British School of Osteopathy
> E-mail: willp at bso.ac.uk
>
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