Dear Richard,
Once again, you have pretty much told it "like it was." Your
analysis corrsponds closely to mine in A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, and
of course I've been calling the multinational giants "megacorps" since
1989. There are places where I would choose different words or emphases,
and places where I might make a few probably lame excuses for the
Powers-That-Be (they're just doing what comes naturally...). For example,
I think the word "fascism" is out of place in your analysis, unless you
mean it in Bert Gross's usage (see FRIENDLY FASCISM, South End Press,
1980). The co-option of nearly the whole intelligentsia by giving them
academic tenure is a particularly fiendish but not particularly fascist
way of de-fanging a potential foe. Let's save "fascism" for the
conservative populist totalitarian nationalism of the period 1920-45 and
think of a better word to describe the much smoother operators of our
half-century (okay, they're "smoother" only to certain potential domestic
foes; not to Vietnamese villagers, Bangladeshi sweatshop workers, and
Iraqi soldiers buried alive in their trenches by the heroes of Desert
Storm).
But I do not wish to quibble. The next stage? Hey, I thought we
settled that last summer. Organize the World Party!
Warren Wagar
Binghamton University, SUNY
USA