Transnational Capitalist Class
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The transnational capitalist class (TCC), also known as the transnational capitalist network (TCN), in neo-Gramscian and Marxian-influenced analyses of
international political economy International political economy (IPE) is the study of how politics shapes the global economy and how the global economy shapes politics. A key focus in IPE is on the power of different actors such as nation states, international organizations and ...
and
globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...
, is the global
social stratum Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). It ...
that controls supranational instruments of the global economy such as
transnational corporation A transnational corporation is an enterprise that is involved with the international production of goods or services, foreign investments, or income and asset management in more than one country. It sets up factories in developing countries as land ...
s and heavily influences political organs such as the
World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...
. Up until 1960s capitalist class was studied mostly within the national context. Study from 1974 titled ''Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporation'' by Ronald E. Muller and Richard Barnet started the discussion about
multinational corporation A multinational corporation (MNC; also called a multinational enterprise (MNE), transnational enterprise (TNE), transnational corporation (TNC), international corporation, or stateless corporation, is a corporate organization that owns and cont ...
s and to what authors referred as “international corporate elite.” According to Professor
William I. Robinson William I. Robinson (born March 28, 1959) is an American professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on political economy, globalization, Latin America and historical materialism. He is a member of the ...
it is "that segment of the world
bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...
that represents transnational capital". It is characteristically
cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Internationalism * World citizen, one who eschews traditional geopolitical divisions derived from national citizenship * Cosmopolitanism, the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community * Cosmopolitan ...
and often unconstrained by national boundaries. The transnational
capitalist class The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with ...
is expressed as a global
ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply ...
and essential players of global capitalism by
William I. Robinson William I. Robinson (born March 28, 1959) is an American professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on political economy, globalization, Latin America and historical materialism. He is a member of the ...
and Jerry Harris. Different factions within this class exist. Harris, for example, identifies statist-factions of the TCC in Russia, China, and the Persian Gulf. Various studies have examined the role of the TCC in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, and Oceania. Professor Leslie Sklair argues that the transnational capitalist class is made up of four fractions which he identifies as corporate, state, technical and consumerist. The four fractions stated by Professor Leslie Sklair, bring together transnational corporations (TNC), globalizing bureaucrats, globalizing professionals and merchants as well as the media as members of the TCC. Also according to Sklair's book Sociology of the Global System, the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows the existence of the TCC as the corporate fraction and the state fraction gather in
Davos Davos (, ; or ; ; Old ) is an Alpine resort town and municipality in the Prättigau/Davos Region in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of (). Davos is located on the river Landwasser, in the Rhaetian ...
, Switzerland. The theory of the Transnational Capitalist Class has two main principles: # The transnational capitalist class collaborate to benefit their own interests (powerful
lobbyists Lobbying is a form of advocacy, which lawfully attempts to directly influence legislators or government officials, such as regulatory agencies or judiciary. Lobbying involves direct, face-to-face contact and is carried out by various entities, in ...
and super PACs); # Nation states have less control over transnational capitalist corporations aiding in
globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...
. "Davos Man" is a
neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
referring to the global elite of wealthy (predominantly) men, whose members view themselves as completely "international" and who despise the people of their own country, being loyal only to global capital itself. According to political scientist
Samuel P. Huntington Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affair ...
, who is credited with inventing the phrase "Davos Man", they are people who "have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the élite's global operations". In his 2004 article "Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite", Huntington argues that this international perspective is a minority elitist position not shared by the nationalist majority of the people.Samuel Huntington
"Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite"
, ''
The National Interest ''The National Interest'' (''TNI'') is an American bimonthly international relations magazine edited by American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn and published by the Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank based in Washington, ...
'', Spring 2004
Ian Richardson sees Bilderberg group as the transnational
power elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (, from , to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the ...
, "an integral, and to some extent critical, part of the existing system of
global governance Global governance (or world governance) refers to institutions that coordinate the behavior of transnationality, transnational actors, facilitate cooperation, resolve disputes, and alleviate collective action problems. Global governance broadly ...
", that is "not acting in the interests of the whole".


References


Further reading

* Carroll, William K. (2010) ''The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class'' (Zed Books, U.S.). * Harris, Jerry (2008) ''The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World'' (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK). * Harris, Jerry (2016) ''Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy'' (Clarity Press, U.S.). * Liodakis, George (Routledge, UK). * Robinson, William I. (2004) ''A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World '' (Johns Hopkins University Press, U.S.). * Robinson, William I. (2014) ''Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity'' (Cambridge University Press, U.S.) * Robinson, William I. (2019) ''Into the Tempest: Essays on the New Global Capitalism'' (Haymarket Books, U.S.) * Sklair, Leslie (2001) ''The Transnational Capitalist Class'' (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK). * Sprague, Jeb (2019) ''Globalizing the Caribbean: Political Economy, Social Change, and the Transnational Capitalist Class'' (Temple University Press, U.S.). * Van Der Pijl, Kees (1998) ''Transnational Classes and International Relations'' (Routledge, London and New York). Marxist theory Social classes Transnationalism {{poli-stub