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Leslie Sklair
© Leslie Sklair 2008
The idea of a transnational capitalist class is usually, though not always,
connected with theories of the ways in which capitalism has been globalizing
since the second half of the twentieth century. While the prime method of
analysing capitalism itself was more or less restricted to national capitalisms
and the relations between them, transnational or even globalizing aspects
of capitalism were bound to receive scant attention from scholars. Therefore,
though the idea of an international bourgoisie has been part of Marxist and
neo-Marxist theory for some time, the specific concept of the transnational
capitalist class has had to wait for the creation of theories of capitalism
as a truly global system. Theories of the international bourgeoisie tend to
be conceptualized in state-centrist terms and to focus mainly on business
leaders, usually big capitalists, and their corporations in rich and powerful
countries, exploiting capitalists, workers and peasants in poor countries.
The transnational capitalist class, in contrast, transcends national class
structures and, for some researchers, includes groups whose members do not
directly own the means of production but, nevertheless, directly serve the
interests of global capitalism.
The concept of the transnational capitalist class is anticipated by several
authors, notably in Robert Cox’s thesis on the emergence of a global
class structure (Cox 1987) and in the work of Stephen Gill (1991) on the Trilateral
Commission, where he identifies a ‘developing transnational capitalist
class fraction’, but neither of these writers sets out to elaborate
the concept fully or to establish the existence of such a class empirically.
Van der Pijl, in his research on the ‘Atlantic ruling class’ and
subsequently (1998) provides valuable conceptual indications that such a class
might extend itself beyond the regional.
The transnational capitalist class (TCC) plays a central role in my theory
of capitalist globalization (see references) where it is the characteristic
institutional form of political transnational practices in the global capitalist
system (paralleling the role of transnational corporations in the economic
sphere and consumerism in the culture-ideology sphere). In this formulation
the TCC is analytically divided into four main fractions:
(i) those who own and control the major transnational corporations and their
local affiliates (the corporate fraction);
(ii) globalizing bureaucrats and politicians (the state fraction);
(iii) globalizing professionals (the technical fraction); and
(iv) merchants and media (the consumerist fraction).
The transnational capitalist class may be seen as transnational in at least
five senses. The economic interests of its members tend to be increasingly
globally linked; it seeks economic control in the workplace, political control
in the domestic and international spheres, and culture-ideology control through
consumerism; its members tend to hold outward-oriented rather than inward-oriented
nationalist perspectives on a variety of issues, notably support for ‘free
trade’ and neo-liberal economic and social policies; they tend to be
people from many countries, more and more of whom project images of themselves
as ‘citizens of the world’ as well as of their places of birth
and/or domicile; and they tend to share similar life-styles, particularly
patterns of higher education (international business schools) and consumption
of luxury goods and services. As Carroll and Carson (2002) show, there is
evidence to suggest the existence of a network of global corporations and
elite policy groups and that this provides important structural underpinnings
for transnational capitalist class formation. Despite real geographical and
sectoral conflicts, the whole of the transnational capitalist class shares
a fundamental interest in the continued accumulation of private profit wherever
there are profits to be made.
The most radical departure from conventional theories of the capitalist class
represented in this conception of the transnational capitalist class is its
relocation of the role of the state. Most theories of the capitalist class
either see the state as ‘the executive committee of the bourgeoisie’
(to use an old-fashioned though still fairly common sentiment on the Left)
or argue that powerful states and their big capitalists (usually in the USA)
dominate the world and, latterly, the globalization process. Both Embong (2000)
in his analysis of transnational class relations in my work and that of Cox,
and Langman (2002) in his review article, for example, criticize the inflation
of the concept to include groups that are not strictly capitalist in nature,
thus obscuring the role of the state. Robinson and Harris (2000) develop a
related argument on the ways in which transnational state relations can be
articulated with three types of neo-liberalism within the transnational capitalist
class, namely free-market conservatism, neo-liberal structuralism, and neo-liberal
regulationist. It can, however, be argued that all of these critiques fail
to see the state as a site of struggle between, on the one hand, globalizing
bureaucrats and politicians and, on the other, nationalist bureaucrats and
politicians. (Bureaucrats and politicians can, of course, be globalizing on
some issues and nationalist on others). This debate continues.
While most theory and research on class continues to be state-centrist, focusing
largely on classes within specific countries, the growing influence of globalization
in the social sciences appears to be encouraging more scholars to work in
the global as well as the local context. In such an environment, increased
interest in concepts like the transnational capitalist class is to be expected.
References
Carroll, W. and Carson, C. (2002) The Network of Global Corporations and Elite
Policy Groups: a Structure for Transnational Capitalist Class Formation. Global
Networks 3/1 (January): 29-58.
Cox, R. (1987) Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making
of History, New York: Columbia University Press.
Embong, A.R. (2000) Globalization and Transnational Class Relations: Some
Problems of Conceptualization. Third World Quarterly 21/6: 989-1000.
Gill, S. (1990) American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Langman, L. (2002) (Review Article of Sklair, 2001) Theory & Society 31:
560-570.
Robinson, W. and Harris, J. (2000) Towards a global ruling class? Globalization
and the Transnational Capitalist Class. Science & Society 64: 11-54.
Sklair, L. (1991) Sociology of the Global System, first edition. London and
Baltimore: Harvester and The Johns Hopkins University Press.
----- (1998) The Transnational Capitalist Class and Global Capitalism: the
case of the tobacco industry. Political Power and Social Theory 12, pp.3-43.
----- (2001) The Transnational Capitalist Class, Boston and Oxford: Blackwell.
------ (2002) Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
----- (2005) The Transnational Capitalist Class and Contemporary Architecture
in Globalizing Cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
29/3: 485-500.
Van der Pijl, K. (1998) Transnational Classes and International Relations.
London: Routledge.
Updated version of item first published in Encyclopedia of International Political
Economy. London: Routledge, 2001.
Leslie Sklair is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at LSE and
author of Globalization: Capitalism and its Alternatives (2002).
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