Chomsky | Taking Control of Our Lives: Freedom, Sovereignty, and Other Endangered Species | Feb 26, 2000

Taking Control of Our Lives: Freedom, Sovereignty, and Other Endangered Species
(IRC 20th Anniversary Speech)
Noam Chomsky
Delivered at the International Relations Center, Feb 26, 2000
 
Excerpt:

This concentrated global power is called by various terms, depending on which aspect of sovereignty and freedom one has in mind. So sometimes it’s called the Washington consensus, or the Wall Street/Treasury complex, or NATO, or the international economic bureaucracy (the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and IMF), or G-7 (the rich, Western, industrial countries) or G-3 or, more accurately, usually, G-1. From a more fundamental perspective, though it takes longer to say, we could describe it as an array of megacorporations, often linked to one another by strategic alliances, administering a global economy which is, in fact, a kind of corporate mercantilism tending toward oligopoly in most sectors, heavily reliant on state power to socialize risk and cost and to subdue recalcitrant elements.
 
 
Note:
 
For readers who may not already be certain, as I was not, of the meanings of "mercantilism" and  "oligopoly":
 
I take corporate mercantilism as used here to mean, roughly, a system in which state and corporate power are significantly merged to exercise control and dominance. This is my working definition; more research is required before I can use the term with a high level of confidence.
 
Oligopoly is the dominance by a small number of companies over production or sales. (from the Greek oligos "few" and polien "to sell")

Also, I looked up recalcitrant because I couldn't think of a good synonym, and found "uncooperative," which I think works well.