On Sat, 31 Jan 1998, Richard K. Moore wrote:
> Japanese TNC's, for example, are becoming entities whose stock is traded
> globally and which produce goods in Asia for exportation to world markets
> while paying minimal taxes to anyone - what has that, really, to do with
> Japan?
Everything. Japanese TNCs are competitive because of a huge hidden
infrastructure of national subcontractors, small and medium-size firms,
plus a canny and effective developmental state which invests in education
and retraining and socializes the cost of R & D for big firms. Also, the
Japanese multis are not autonomous actors in the sense of American
corporations or their rentier elites: most of 'em are part of still larger
"keiretsu" or organized financial-industrial networks (examples include
Mitsubishi, the Fuyo group, Sumitomo, etc.). Typically, the members of the
keiretsu own each other's shares, do business with one another, and share
the costs of financing via a central bank or banks (so, for instance,
Mitsubishi Electric, a powerhouse electronics firms, takes out loans from
the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, a $700 billion behemoth rightly regarded as
the Godzilla of all banking institution, and shares strategic management
data, personnel and market information with the other members of its
group, thus facilitating long-term planning). It's important to stress
that the keiretsu are not centrally-organized bodies as such, but
communities of interest, where each firm or bank has a certain amount of
say in how things are run, but where management decisions are flexibly
decentralized -- indeed, where more money is made available for small and
medium-size firms than in supposedly entrepreneurial America.
The EU core economies -- principally, Central Europe -- does something
similar: Deutsche Bank et. al. play similar roles in fostering the
"Mittelstand" of creative small firms, who network with Siemens and
Daimler-Benz for contracts.
Interestingly, despite all the talk of the neoliberal hegemony, many of
the better-run and more successful American firms are starting to do
something similar, via strategic alliances and whatnot: Hewlett-Packard is
a classic network operator, and Microsoft shows signs of doing the same
thing via tie-ups with cable firms, NBC etc. In true dialectical fashion,
global capitalism is forcing firms to create what are essentially
non-market structures of sharing and cooperation in order to remain
competitive -- something Leftists with plans to change the world into a
more cooperative and sharing place ought to take careful note of.
-- Dennis