If that argument sounds a little like the old saw about the chicken and the egg, Transnationalists make no apologies. Instead, they use that old saw again and again, to their increasing advantage. The complex issues presented by the interdependence that is already upon us, say the Transnationalists, require new dimensions of cooperation and collaboration at the global level. But collaboration not only of the old kind between governments and society: they see that effort as, at best, an evolutionary stage on the way to their own solution. What the world needs now, argue the Transnationalists, is a new sort of interdependence pegged to a regulated system of fresh and innovative interrelationships that cross all former boundaries, include all sectors and take in all disciplines.
In other words, effective and practical interdependence calls for a new systemic approach.
The Transnationalist mind draws back from the Internationalist solution of treaties and pacts, largely because that path implies a political consequence the Transnationalist mind is not ready to accept.
The Transnationalists, therefore, have in mind a different path to the same general goal, a different program for the nations. Quintessentially, they are managers—money men and company men. And their systemic approach is expressed in the creation of the global company.
The global company of the Transnationalists is sometimes confused with the multinational company, which has been around for quite a while. But the difference between those two creations is critical in this context. For, as Sir Edwin Sharp, chairman and CEO of the UK’s Cable and Wireless Corporation, told an economic summit meeting in 1989, no matter how wide the network of a multinational company may be, the company itself remains essentially “a one-way street back to the parent company.”
By contrast, the global company must have a genuinely international management: a management composed of several nationalities. And its decisions must have a worldwide character, so that plants and factories, for instance, will be located without regard for nationality.
The Transnationalist leaders themselves already transcend political and ideological boundaries. Television commentator Bill Moyers found out during a fifteen-day, globe-spanning trip in the company of David Rockefeller that “just about a dozen or fifteen individuals made day-by-day decisions that regulated the flow of capital and goods throughout the entire world.”
In truth, Transnationalists form a social class—aptly dubbed the managerial class—that came into being only after World War II. And within that social class are to be found the very select few who regularly participate in weighty decisions about the regulated flow of capital, of capital goods and of capital services among the nations.
Their backgrounds usually include training in major business schools and sometimes graduation from prestigious colleges. They locate in companies of substantial monetary capital and “status” capital. They have strong ties with other corporate financial leaders and enjoy membership in elite groups around the world. They wield direct and indirect but always potent political power, belong to select clubs, and hold down multiple directorships and board memberships.
Together, these corporate leaders constitute a managerial system; this is the latest form that Western capitalism has taken—in a kind of chicken-and-egg process again—in response to the multilateral trading system as it has so far developed over the past forty years.
As multinational trade has developed, the flow of production and finance has become increasingly internationalized. Logically, that internationalization has resulted, in turn, in still further globalization of the policies by which trade and investment are carried out. Just as logically, therefore, the interests of Transnationalists are increasingly global, because their investments and their very lives have become global, encompassing all manufactured goods and all services, including money management.
In this Transnationalist managerial system, decisions are not dictated by the laws of individual nations or according to any system of morality based on religious beliefs and principles. Moreover, while Transnationalist decisions involve all-important elements in the economic and social lives of nations, they are not made primarily according to the political will, ethical consensus, traditional morality or social trends of those nations.
David Rockefeller once summed up the Transnationalist point of view in a nutshell: “We don’t really mind what sort of government a country has, provided they can pay their bills.”
The basic laws governing Transnationalist decisions refer to the balance needed between the supply and demand of goods and services—trade, in other words. And they refer to the movements of liquid assets—the global financial underpinning for trade. And they refer to the need to avoid any sociopolitical tensions or clashes between differing national interests that might upset the trade and finance applecart. And finally the basic laws refer to the need for homogenization of goods and services as produced and consumed all over the world.
Increasingly, decisions made on such a fluctuating basis follow the pragmatic judgment of nonpolitical men—Transnationalists—who occupy managerial positions within diverse but interlocking organizational groups. The professional occupation of these managers is primarily economics, industry or finance. And increasingly, as the chicken-and-egg syndrome spirals, those spheres transcend the boundaries of all political units—the units of city, state and nation.
As complex as this Transnationalist managerial system may be, its purpose is simplicity itself: the formation of the “good life.” And at least in this respect, these globalists are exactly like the Piggyback Globalists. The goal is plentiful food, modern hygiene and medicine, an abundance of convenience and luxury goods, an abundance as well of the labor-saving devices of modern technology, from cars and computers to microwave ovens and toasters. And, not least, ever more plentiful and varied and audacious modes of entertainment—film and video, audio and print—for the general public everywhere.
Just how far the Transnationalists have come toward achieving their own hegemony to replace the leadership formerly exercised by nations such as Great Britain and the United States is clear to Pope John Paul in the reality that the most outstanding feature of international life today is, in fact, the interdependence of nations.
And it becomes clearer still to the Pontiff in the reality that such interdependence is based on the Transnationalist model; that it is furthered by the Transnationalist formation of global companies and related activities; and that it thoroughly reflects the materialist philosophy of the Transnationalist mind.
In a word, Transnationalists have already entered successfully on a new path in order to cope with the change in the fundamentals of the world economy. And the cause-and-effect element of the Transnationalist system itself—complex in nature and global in scale—continues to shape the future of the nations.
Some random samples of the impact the Transnationalist approach has on our lives, both as producers and consumers of goods and services, illustrate Pope John Paul’s observations and reasoning here.
Every weekday afternoon, employees of New York Life Insurance gather all the claims that have come in that day and dispatch them by jet plane to Ireland, 3,000 miles away, to be processed.
Georgia Institute of Technology has established a privately held venture, China/Tech, with offices in Atlanta and Beijing.
British Petroleum is a British company; Siemens is a West German company; Honda is a Japanese company. Yet all of them have more employees and executive offices outside their home countries than inside. Honda, in fact, will soon produce and sell more cars in the United States than in Japan.
Fiber optics span all continents today. Millions of dollars move literally in seconds from Tokyo to New York to Milan to Frankfurt. Goods move around the world in a single day. One product emerging from an assembly line in Detroit, Michigan, can contain parts manufactured in five other countries. In point of fact, the major automobile companies can no longer accurately be called automobile “manufacturers.” They are “assemblers” of aut
o parts manufactured elsewhere in the world.
The case is similar for electronics. As the chairman and CEO of the Sony Corporation, Akio Morita, observed in 1989, “Already our companies are partially American, partially European and partially Latin American companies, using local management, local raw materials and local production around the world…. Our slogan is local globalization.” Michael P. Schulhof and Jakob Schmuckli, both Americans, were nominated to the board of Sony Corporation in 1989.
Major banks today have an effective physical presence in all the chief financial centers of the world. And the first truly global investment bank—CS First Boston, Inc.—has now been created by Rainer E. Gut, chairman of Switzerland’s Credit Suisse. With operations in North America, Asia and Europe, 44.5 percent of CS First Boston is owned by Credit Suisse, 25 percent by its employees and 30.5 percent by the Olayan Group of Saudi Arabia.
The Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beckman Corporation has merged with the London-based Beecham Group P.K.C., to form the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical company after Merck & Company. Their plans for management include a mixing of different nationalities, with special attention paid to the differing histories and cultures of those who will make up a Transnationalist management group. And they have a new business plan from the bottom up, reflecting how the newly united businesses could operate in combination, situated as they are on both sides of the Atlantic and in Japan. The target is a new corporate entity. A globalist entity.
Even film entertainment is going global in a way never before contemplated—a way that is becoming one of the most visible models of the Transnationalist success track. Hollywood is the repository for the seven major existing film libraries and studios in the world—Walt Disney Co., Paramount, MGM/UA, Warner Brothers, 20th Century-Fox, Universal Studios and Columbia Pictures. All of them possess powerful marketing and distribution systems to get films into theaters and on the air all over the globe.
Hand in glove with this global capability in distribution of existing product, an inexorable demand is created for what is now called new “software”—new entertainment programming.
Just as inexorably, therefore, companies and investors in other nations—notably Britain, Australia, Italy and Japan—are starting to snap up studios and production companies in the United States and elsewhere, while foreign concerns and U.S. producers are joining in financial deals, joint ventures and coproductions almost as a matter of course. Studios themselves, meanwhile, are starting to cast stars with an important eye on their international draw—Sean Connery as Harrison Ford’s father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example, because Connery’s profile is high in Europe, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Altogether, the global character of entertainment becomes more pronounced with each passing year. “What you end up with,” concluded Charles B. Slocum of the Writers Guild of America/West, “is companies in all countries looking outside their borders.” And that is as deft a description as you will find of one essential stage on the road to the Transnationalist goal.
In the chicken-and-egg, cause-and-effect syndrome that is such a hallmark of Transnationalist success, the consumer side of our lives is every bit as globalized as the production side.
Food tastes around the world are beginning to converge. Marketing experts point out that this convergence arises because of companies marketing their products on an increasingly international basis; because of increased travel; and because of vastly improved telecommunications. In short, and almost literally, the chicken-and-egg principle applies. Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Nescafe sell in areas literally from A to Z—from Alabama to Zambia. Companies such as Kraft, Inc., Quaker Oats and Pillsbury are intent on creating global supermarkets.
McDonald’s, which has already exported throughout much of the world what one supporter has called “McCulture,” trained its first cadre of Soviets in that company’s standardized food preparation techniques, and opened its first branch in Moscow in February 1990. Because the ruble is not presently convertible, McDonald’s knows it will not benefit financially in the immediate future from the expansion of its franchise into the Soviet Union. But the benefits for its globalist aims are undeniable.
To speak of “McCulture” as a Transnationalist aim is neither lighthearted nor too farfetched. For while the agenda of this group is concentrated in the successful growth and operation of the global company, its full agenda is far more inclusive than that. For example, another important trait of the Transnationalists’ agenda that receives close attention from Pope John Paul in his assessment of their new globalism is the Transnationalist formula for education.
That formula was summed up by Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Schools must possess “an understanding of the new global agenda,” said Boyer, and must reform their curricula so as to communicate that agenda to their students. Or, as President Claire Guadiani of Connecticut College said a bit more colorfully, schools must begin to satisfy the educational needs of people “who will operate in an increasingly internationalized environment, even if they never leave Duluth.”
Transnationalist thinking is extremely thorough in this promotion of globalist education. It is not a matter of stuffing a few extra courses into the curriculum, along with some area studies and perhaps a foreign language. At most, such an approach would reduce global education to the status of just another subject. The Transnationalist idea is that globalism should permeate every subject taught; it should be a pervasive orientation. The globalist outlook and approach must predominate at least from junior high school through college and postgraduate studies. The cultural outlook must be such that no subject is regional in its focus.
Furthermore, issues of particular importance to Transnationalists must be studied at every level. Such issues as the environment, world hunger, the twin epidemics of AIDS and drug addiction, physical fitness, population control. At the moral level, equivalence must be the watchword. The cultural and legal values of, say, Sri Lanka’s Tamils and Nigeria’s Ibos must be studied for their own excellence, and not be added on by way of contrast or be seen as clashing with or inferior to our Western values.
Transnationalist educators have no serious fears concerning standardization of education in the so-called hard sciences. They are confident enough that what high-schoolers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, will learn about mathematics, computer programming, engineering, chemistry, and the like will be exactly the same as what their counterparts learn in England, the United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, South America and Japan.
In the so-called soft subjects, on the other hand—in culturally loaded subjects such as history, literature, art, music, religion and ethics—the Transnationalist educator meets with greater difficulties. For example, in all the areas of the world molded by Western civilization, schools have taught those soft subjects with what Transnationalists regard as a pervasive “bias.” That is, from a Western point of view.
A candidate for college has been expected to know about Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Goethe’s Faust, about the Magna Carta and the Napoleonic Wars. But he has not been expected to quote from the Indian Upanishads, or to describe the outlook of Gautama Buddha.
In short, education in schools of the Western world suffers from what Transnationalists have begun to call Eurocentrism—a provincial outlook that focuses overwhelmingly on European and Western culture, while giving short shrift to Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Only a Eurocentric mind would say, for example, that Columbus “discovered” America, as if there had been nobody on that continent before he arrived. Or again, history is Eurocentric when Westerners learn about Japan, India and China in terms of colonialist wars and other encounters Europeans and Americans have had with those peoples. By the same principle, African art is “primitive” to the Eurocentric eye. Schoolchildren learn about Marco Polo’s travels to the Orient but never about Ibn Batutah, the fourteenth-century Muslim who tr
aveled more extensively and in places Marco Polo did not even know existed.
All of that, according to the Transnationalist mind, must change. And Transnationalist educators are seeing to it.
In all of California’s elementary and high schools, for instance, there is a new world history curriculum, explaining events through Hispanic, Asian and African eyes; and the civilizations of China, India, Africa and Islam are studied extensively. At Stanford University, Western civilization courses have been expanded to take in Oriental and African civilization. New York’s Juilliard School of Music now has courses on the music of Japan, Africa, India and the Pacific islands.
The goal of such extensive changes and adaptations in educational curricula is to rear a new generation of men and women who will be able to view non-Western cultures not through a Western lens, but with the eyes of the peoples who make up those cultures—or at least, with the eyes Transnationalist educators attribute to the peoples of those cultures.
Education, then, is seen as the first step in fashioning a truly global outlook from the cradle onward. It is to be an outlook able to adapt with ease and according to circumstances to a point of view that may be Eurocentric or Afrocentric, Latinocentric or Asiacentric. An outlook that will be open to all cultural forms on an equal basis.
To make this Utopian educational step a universal reality, ideally the same textbooks should be used all over the world in both the hard sciences and the soft curricula. And sure enough, a concrete initiative in this direction has been under way for some years now, undertaken by Informatik, a Moscow-based educational organization, and the Carnegie Endowment Fund.
In any case, whatever the specific steps and means employed to achieve the Transnationalist global education policy, that policy itself envisages a world permeated by cooperation and peace for the sake of constant and evenly distributed material development, a world permeated with freedom that is no longer exploitive, a world that allows for the diversity of the various cultures—provided cultural values never outweigh economic requirements. It will be a world that rejoices in the diversity of religions—provided theological differences never interfere with efforts to achieve the Transnationalist version of peace.
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