New data on global corporate control confirms Lenin’s...

[blindpig]

New data on global corporate control confirms Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’

Researchers in Zurich, Switzerland, have used a powerful computer database to analyze which transnational companies dominate the world economy. Their findings, called “The network of global corporate control,” appeared this summer at arxiv.org, an online publisher of scientific material.

Using information from the financial database ORBIS, which provided them with data on “37 million economic actors, both physical persons and firms located in 194 countries, and roughly 13 million directed and weighted ownership links (equity relations),” the team of scientists from ETH Zurich, headed by Stefania Vitali, used a new mathematical analysis to tease out the structures linking transnational corporations to their subsidiaries and to each other.

The result? Out of this vast number of corporate actors, in 2007 “a mere 147 companies controlled nearly 40 percent of the monetary value of all transnational corporations,” wrote Rachel Ehrenberg in an article summarizing the group’s findings. (“Financial world dominated by a few,” Science News, Sept. 24)

The authors say their work is the first attempt ever made to plot the myriad connections among the transnationals, defined as companies that have at least 10 percent of their wealth in more than one country. They describe the structure that emerged as resembling a “bowtie,” with lots of corporate entities in the periphery but a small group at the center controlling the flow of wealth.

more.....

http://www.workers.org/2011/us/new_data_1102/

[PETRUS]

1. kick

[woo me with science]

2. K&R Finally the world's people are being educated

about what is being done to them.

[leftstreet]

3. 'If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism...

...we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.'

K&R

[TBF]

4. Here's the text of Imperialism - much easier read than Marx imho ...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

[Cal Carpenter]

6. Thanks for this link

Recommended reading for anyone interested in truly understanding this rather than relying on the mediocre, apologist crap people are writing about economics today.

[Cal Carpenter]

5. Excellent, thanks for posting

While mainstream economists (including those favored by many on this site) scramble for excuses and explanations for this concentration of wealth and power as though it is an anomaly or 'capitalism gone awry', the fact is that this is the inevitable result of the capitalist system and was predicted a hundred years ago (and more).

We don't need to relearn everything. There is a scientific basis for understanding this capitalist crisis and how it infects every nook and cranny of the globe now. It's time to get rid of the knee-jerk reaction against Marxism-Leninism and recognize the truth. It's right in front of our faces.

Rec'd.

[socialist_n_TN]

7. BINGO!! The system of today is NOT an anomaly

This is what capitalism does. At first, capitalism WAS a system for redistributing wealth and therefore power into more hands than feudalism does. But eventually at the end stage, it is concentrates wealth and power just like feudalism. IOW, at it's end stage, it's not an improvement over feudalism. When the concentration gets like this, it's time to change the paradigm into REdistribution of the wealth and ergo the power. That's what Marxism aims for. Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here. :)

The first time I saw this research, I was tempted to say something snarky like "Duh!", but upon further thought I realized that this is what the AVERAGE person needs. Independent proof that Marx and Lenin were correct.

[socialist_n_TN]

8. Kick. This Marxist interpretation of this research

needs to stay on the front page for a while.

[malaise]

9. I've been saying this for a while

Thanks for the link

[Cal Carpenter]

10. Kick

.