Qur’anic Perspective

At this point it would be interesting to look at what Ali Unal has to say as to why no past civilization could resist decadence and time’s corrosive power. His approach refers more to the individual and free will, rather than visible causes:1

. . . [C]ontrary to the fatalism of all other philosophies, including even Ibn Khaldun’s, the Qur’an stresses the individual’s free choice and moral conduct. Although the Divine Will, as emphasized in the Qur’an, could be regarded in some respects as the counterpart of Hegel’s Geist or as other philosophies’ absolute and irresistible laws of history, the Qur’an never denies human free will

. . . . Ibn Khaldun, Toynbee, Spengler, and other philosophers of history formed a mistaken conception of history because they did not try to discover the real dynamics of historical movements. Rather, they sought to explain the apparent causes behind a civilization’s establishment, flourishing, and decay. Whoever looks to the past will arrive at the same conclusions. But just because no community has remained at its peak this does not mean that this is an inevitable end or a determinist grip on the fate of each nation. Past civilizations collapsed because they did not heed the warnings of what had happened to earlier peoples. Accepting historical determinism causes us to nullify free will and consider the warnings and advice found in the Divine Scriptures and social sciences as useless and absurd.

This is strongly confirmed by the Qur’an in the following verses:

. . . surely God does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition. (Rad 13:11)

. . . God never changes the grace He has bestowed on any people until they first change that which is in their hearts. (Anfal 8:53)

Theories concerning the collapse of civilizations

There are many theories concerning the collapse of civilizations, but of course, if a theory does not conform to reality, it is worth nothing. In this article, I will first give a brief account of widely held beliefs about the collapse of civilizations, explain the weaknesses of these theories, and then give a rationale that I believe better explains the historical data we have. As for most social problems, we will perhaps never know the truth about why societies collapse. However, the stakes at hand are so high that we must make every effort to understand, and to an extent, solve this problem.

The most common explanation for such collapses is some insurmountable natural disaster, like an epidemic, hurricane, drought, or earthquake that leads to the demise of a civilization by killing the population and crippling the economy. Widely-cited examples are the eruption of the volcano in Thera that preceded the collapse of the Minoan civilization, the malaria epidemic in the Roman Empire or earthquakes in Mesoamerican societies. These arguments, which are very appealing to our human nature, that desires simple explanations for all questions, are in fact very unsound. Societies constantly experience such disasters, yet survive them. The potato blight in Ireland in 1845 halved the island’s population but there was no cease of sociopolitical complexity as a result of the disaster. It is strange to think that the Roman Empire, which survived many disasters before, including the eruption of Pompei in AD 79, fell to malaria. We should consider that complex civilizations are designed to absorb such disasters, and they do. Just recalling the constant earthquakes in Japan added to the loss of a world war with two nuclear bombs exploding in the heart of two large cities will sufficiently prove this notion. Japanese civilization did not collapse. On the contrary, it is one of the strongest economies in today’s international arena. It is peculiar then that some civilizations are no longer able to fight such disasters. However, an act of God can certainly collectively destroy any civilization, as it did in the past like Sodom and Gomorrah. This is clearly narrated in the divine scriptures.

The other common explanations for such collapses are intruders and competition with other civilizations. The barbarian tribes, which brought the end of Rome in the fifth century, and the Mongolians that invaded Baghdad in the thirteenth century are clear examples of the intruder argument. This argument suffers from the realization that civilizations are attacked by outsiders throughout their existence, yet for some reason they cannot defend themselves near the time of their collapse. Competition with other societies however, is in principle expected to lead to growth and expansion instead of collapse. There is no end to the examples from this category too, like the competition of the Ottoman Empire with Persia, which indirectly weakened its western front. But the competition argument is both intuitively confusing and it fails to account for major cases, like the fall of the Roman Empire.

Another widely held belief about such collapses is that at a certain point in the life of a civilization a resource is depleted and the civilization that depends on this resource is prone to collapse. The Romans and the Ottomans both depended on military expansion for their economy, and when the relatively weak nations around them were engulfed or when they were barred from further expansion by geographical limitations, such as seas or large mountains, they were no longer able to use this resource. There seems to be some truth and lessons in this argument. To the uninformed, it is a very curious fact that the cradle of civilization was Mesopotamia, where modern day Iraq is. How is it possible that the superpowers of that era, the Sumerians (~3000 BC) and the Babylonians (~1000 BC) chose to live in these deserts? How is it possible that they irrigated the land, raised armies, and built world wonders in these sand dunes? These questions actually are easily answered when we realize that Mesopotamia was not a dessert in that era after all. It is now a generally accepted theory that this place had a fragile ecosystem, which was destroyed after thousands of years of environmental pressure. The potential for these lands to accommodate great civilizations was lost after this fragile ecosystem was slowly destroyed by its inhabitants.

However, the argument of resource depletion inherently asserts that the elite of a civilization facing resource depletion passively waits for the predictable demise. I will argue below that this case, although strange, is true. Another difficulty of the resource depletion argument is that in some instances of collapse resources were never depleted. The fertile lands of Mesopotamia still remained green until later than 1000 AD, while many civilizations experienced collapses. The Romans, who used irrigation as a resource, kept farming till the very end. Finally, one may wonder why societies aim at possessing a higher amount of resources all the time. Population increase is only a partial answer to this question. We can easily imagine a society whose population stays the same; it is not a far-fetched hypothesis that this society will naturally also try to increase its resources to fend off a variety of calamities it may experience, such as intruders and catastrophes. I believe herein lies an interesting rationale that brings together the mentioned theories that are flawed. To understand this, we first have to appreciate a law in economics, called the “law of diminishing returns.”

It is very rare in economics and in general social sciences that some series of observations can be identified as a “law.” However, the “law of diminishing returns,” first put forward in 1965 by Ester Boserup, is so comprehensive in its nature and explains such a variety of trends that it is now universally accepted. It goes: The return for an investment in a particular activity is great at the beginning, and then it gradually decreases. At a point, further investment brings no further benefits. At this point, the facility (a person, a group, a society, a factory) can no longer increase its returns, however much they would invest in that activity.

A simple example will clarify the law. Suppose we have a piece of land that we want to use for irrigation. In the beginning, we would just disperse seeds and wait for the crops to grow. Notice that our investment is minimal (say 1 unit of investment), and we get some food for our investment (again define this to be 1 unit of return). Then, if we want to increase the amount of crops we have, we may dig some canals for watering. It is straightforward to recognize that the canal digging is a lot harder than just dispersing seeds (say 5 times harder). However, it is again straightforward to recognize that although now we make 6 times more investment, we probably will not get 6 times the crop. Nevertheless, we want to maximize our return, so we still dig the canals. The next step would be to use motorized vehicles, which is maybe a 10 times increase in investment, but everybody will surely accept that it is not possible to get a crop that is 16 times greater than our original from the same plot of land. (Readers who may object that once the investments of canals and vehicles are made they will provide constant returns are reminded of the maintenance costs of these investments.) A further increase in returns may require genetically engineered crops that will require years of expensive research (more investment). The return per investment will always decrease for a certain type of activity, in this case irrigation.

This law is everywhere in life: If one week of studying suffices a result of 80 on one exam, in order to get 90, you need to study two more weeks. Most healthy people can run 100m in 20 seconds; to run it in 10 seconds you need years of exercising. Depending on one’s abilities (which determine an individual’s possible investment) these may even be impossible for many people. A vivid example is the heating problem in England during the nineteenth century. Heating, which was primarily carried out by burning wood from forests, with the increase in population had to be switched over to the burning of coal. The mining and distribution of coal, which is much more difficult than simply getting some wood from a nearby forest, was made even more difficult when the easily mined surface coal was rapidly depleted and deeper tunnels with lighting and airing problems had to be developed. It is intuitive why this law is in effect: Obviously, always, the easier solutions are adapted first, then the harder ones. Mining coal when you have easily available and plentiful wood is not reasonable. Consequently, we have a decline for our returns per investment.

The resources that civilizations use are no exception. A civilization that uses irrigation as a resource is bound to be limited by a certain level of return. Resource does not have to be depleted; it just cannot produce a return more than at a certain level. Another civilization that is dependent on taxation, mercenary or military expansion can achieve no more return after a certain level, no matter what adjustments it makes to its existing policy. Having said this, we can understand why a civilization that depends on a certain type of energy or resource cannot expand its influence beyond a certain level. Moreover, when energy becomes scarce, the civilization can become less agile in terms of trying new resources and new ways to produce returns, since agility and innovation mostly depend on using some of the surplus resources on strategies that will most probably yield no returns. Hence the rise of large architectural structures and many inefficient military operations are carried out during the ascent of a young civilization. These activities, which are easily buffered by the large returns that come from initial investment on the main resource of a civilization become impossibly costly later when the returns from the same investment is declining.

One last piece of the puzzle completes the rationale as to why civilizations collapse, and this piece is an easily accepted assumption: A civilization is like a dinosaur. It is large and strong, but it is adapted to the conditions into which it was born. The conditions change, however, the dinosaur cannot change its behavior. It helplessly tries to maximize the returns for the type of resource that it is adapted to use, and after a point, it simply cannot, thanks to the universal and unforgiving law of diminishing returns. At this point, another civilization, that primarily uses another superior resource, will have larger returns, build a larger army to invade the former civilization, build larger ships to cut off the trade routes, and produce goods to cripple its economy… This is just a matter of time, and it is unavoidable (see Figure 1b). The strength of the civilization in its golden age is now its weakness. In such a weakness, since there is no extra resource to fight new problems-all resource is either used up by the population, or goes toward defense costs-even a natural disaster can bring an end to a civilization that once seemed to be indestructible.

The Ottoman Empire’s strength in its rise was its perfect hierarchical organization which led to the accumulation of all power under the Sultan. Its main resource was military expansion and taxation of trade. These adaptations, which were ideal for the time between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, led to one of the most powerful empires that have ever reigned. However, by the sixteenth century, these strategies had become burdens: Due to the strong hierarchy, an intelligentsia that supported science and art as in the West could never develop. Military expansion had to stop. Taxation could no longer work since the Mediterranean Sea was no longer used for trade. The strategies were not abandoned though, instead, more investments were made in order to increase the returns, which as we saw above is a nonviable alternative. Eventually, other civilizations that used better resources brought about the end of the Empire. A similar order of events can be observed for other civilizations that collapsed. The great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun of the fourteenth century likens the lives of civilizations to the natural lifespan of individuals. They are born, they grow old, and they die. In my view, a civilization does not die because it gets old; it dies because it cannot compete with a stronger civilization.

The natural question to ask is if our current civilization will collapse. From the analysis above, we can conclude that there are two reasons for the collapse of a civilization: 1) Dependence on a certain type of investment and failing to adapt to the new conditions. 2) The invention by another competitor civilization of a new type of investment with higher returns. In today’s world, both of these reasons are in some ways different than those that existed in the past. First, with the advancement of science, the current civilizations are flexible in the resources they utilize, the options are constantly evaluated, the heating in United Kingdom does not collapse when wood is depleted; instead, coal, then gas, then nuclear power is used. The return for the investment made for some utility is similar to the curve shown in Figure 1c: whenever the return for a type of investment declines, we can shift to the next resource. Second, by the immense advancement in information processing and communication, the whole world is aware of the types of investments other societies are using, and a leading civilization that follows the developments in other countries is very unlikely to be threatened by a sudden development in a rival civilization. Third, because of progress in international trade, the old sense that any other civilization is an enemy has lost its significance.

Notwithstanding these reasons, only a few decades ago, at the height of the cold war, we witnessed the possibility of the immediate collapse of our civilization. Global warming and the depletion of petrol reserves were only two of the many alarming cues that we may have turned to declining returns for our investment curve. It is imperative to remember again that the stakes are very high. The next civilization to fall may bring about the fall of the human species.

Notes

1. Tainter, J. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1988.
2. Grigg D. Ester Boserup’s theory of agrarian change: a critical review. Prog Hum Geogr. 1979; 3 (1): 64-84.
3. Unal, Ali, Islam Addresses Contemporary Issues, Kaynak, Izmir:1998, p. 142.

Other developments supported this trend, the most important being:

The invention of the silicon chip (1958-59). Subsequent improvements have so miniaturized computer components and compressed data that data transmission is now practically instantaneous. When combined with Web browsers, search engines, and the Internet, access to financial and other data can be exploited to its full potential. The U.S. Congress’ approval of Internet commerce and the falling prices of home computers and phone calls was a boon for transnational corporations (TNCs). Now they can micromanage their far-flung operations, direct money to the best economic opportunity, avoid taxes and financial losses, cripple unions and labor gains, skirt environmental legislation, and find other “creative” ways to increase profits.

The deregulation of financial capital (1973). This was signaled by abandoning the Bretton Woods system of fixed currency exchange rates, which had been maintained by America since 1944 and supported by its adherence to the gold standard, in favor of letting the market determine a currency’s value. Now that governments could no longer control the outflow of national currency, TNCs were free to move it as they wished.

Breaking the large banks’ and insurance companies’ monopoly on providing financial loans. With the rise of the bond market in the late 1960s, securitization of home mortgages in the 1970s, and “junk bonds” and the securitization of the international debt market in the 1980s, the current phase of globalization quickly blossomed.

These developments opened once-closed markets to millions of individual investors and mutual fund managers whose first concern is profit. As a result: “Not only can investors now buy and sell stocks and bonds from all over the world, not only can they now do that buying and selling from their home computers, but Internet brokerage sites are now giving them-for free-the information and analytical tools to make those trades, without ever having to call a broker. The more people do that, the more they will demand more information and analyses about different economies and companies, and the more easily they will move their money around, punishing the bad performers and rewarding the good ones.”¹

The underlying philosophy of increasing profits meshed nicely with a firm belief in social Darwinism. Developing and then applying “economic” Darwinism was a logical outgrowth. Just as individuals and species survive by adapting and becoming stronger, so companies survive by means of rapid adaptation.

This can take the form of corporate mergers or understandings, paying lower wages to and providing few if any benefits for overseas workers, and justifying everything in terms of increased efficiency. A new vocabulary has emerged for such activities: downsizing, outsourcing, streamlining, business restructuring or re-engineering, cost rationalization, retrenchment, redundancy, rationalization, risk minimization, profit alignment …

Benefits and Drawbacks

Those who dream of vast legions of Chinese consumers assert that globalization will make China a more open society. First, they say, Beijing’s official monopoly on information will end because foreign and local investors must have access to the Internet. Internal dissident groups can use it to contact sympathizers and publicize their causes at home and abroad.² Second, as China is drawn further into the world community, Beijing will have to adhere to international business law and treaties on workers’ rights, working conditions, fair payment, and so on. It also will have to adjust to globalization’s driving economic philosophy of neo-liberalization, which means liberalizing the economy, privatizing state-owned businesses and utilities, opening the financial and banking sectors, establishing transparency and accountability, and providing accurate financial data. Supposedly, such reforms will counteract China’s tendency to put politics and ideology above all other concerns. Third, those Chinese who work with foreign investors will learn about democracy, individuality, personal responsibility, human rights, governmental accountability, and how people in other countries actually live. In addition, foreign investment will open up new opportunities for Chinese entrepreneurs and those who want to improve their lives. They might even be paid above the normal hourly or daily wage, and thus can send money home to help their families.

Such arguments can be applied to many developing countries with only slight variations. These arguments sound great and really do have some merit, but reality sometimes does not conform to theoretical expectations. The following examples are by no means confined to the countries mentioned.

In Mexico, economic development is concentrated in Mexico City and along the northern border with America. The agricultural sector is largely ignored, despite the large numbers of people involved in it. Looking for debt relief, foreign investment, and entrance into the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), the government gutted Article 27 of its constitution, which made all communal land belonging to indigenous communities off-limits to foreigners and TNCs. It had to do this because America and Canada want access to Mexico’s untapped wealth, most of which is under indigenous-held land. The result was the Zapatista uprising on January 1, 1994, which continues to enjoy wide support, and a host of problems that drove the 71-year old ruling party from power in 2000.

In northern Thailand, villagers untouched by Bangkok’s modernization and development can see how their urban counterparts live thanks to television. Hoping to reap some of the benefits, some families sell their daughters to Bangkok’s brothels. Large sectors of Thai society and the government silently support this, finding an easy way out of this moral dilemma by saying that it is the girls’ karma. The result is an out-of-control AIDS epidemic and a booming sex-tourism business based upon the unbelievable exploitation of young women. Neighboring Cambodia has the same problem, while many Russian women see prostitution as the key to the good life.

In Ecuador, Amazonian Indian tribes and other affected peoples sued Texaco in an American court (1993) to force it to clean up the contamination it left behind. Texaco, which no longer operates in Ecuador, dumped “4.3 million gallons per day of toxic oil waste water over a period of 20 years … [but] claims the dumping caused no appreciable damage.” It also left behind more than 300 open waste pits contaminated with heavy metals and other carcinogenic compounds. “In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs cite a wave of deadly cancers, skin lesions, birth defects and other abnormalities among the areas indigenous peoples, and massive die-offs of plants, crops, and animals from air and groundwater pollution as well as poisonous “black rain.” In some villages near polluted water sources, the rate of cancer is 100 times higher than the historical norm.” The case has yet to be resolved.³ There are similar problems with Shell in Nigeria, Nike in Indonesia, Union Carbide in India, and Rio Tinto in Papua New Guinea.

Areas of Concern

Agriculture. The Green Revolution of the 1960s globalized agriculture and introduced the concept of “cash crops.” It also brought the promise of higher crop yields, reduced malnutrition, and rural development. However, along with it came traditional crop varieties and farmers displaced by agribusiness and hard-currency-earning cash cops, expensive imported fertilizers and pesticides, increased land distribution inequity, foreign corporate patenting of seeds and crop strains developed by local farmers over the centuries, and the diversion of financial and natural resources to agribusiness.

All of this undermined local agriculture, a devastating blow to indigenous farmers. Even worse, the Food and Agriculture Organization says that about 75 percent of all plant species have become extinct. In more than 80 of the 154 countries surveyed in 1995, this loss was attributed to “the spread of modern, commercial agriculture and the introduction of new varieties of crops.”⁴

Medicine. On February 1, 2001, America threatened to complain to the World Trade Organization about Brazil’s national and highly successful AIDS treatment program. By producing local and cheap generic drugs and delivering them for free, Brazil has halved its AIDS victims’ death rates and substantially reduced treatment costs. On April 19, 2001, after a protracted battle in South African courts, several pharmaceutical TNCs dropped their quest to block the South African government’s plan to import cheap generic drugs to treat its AIDS victims. Cilpa, an Indian company that produces cheap generic drugs for AIDS victims, routinely faces pressure from pharmaceutical companies and their governments to cease and desist.

In each case, the charge is the same: violation of the intellectual property and patent rights held by Western pharmaceutical companies. That these same companies are among the richest in the world, and that their clients are among the poorest countries in the world, is rarely mentioned. Prices have been reduced as a result of such negative publicity, but many victims in Asia and Africa still cannot afford the medicine they need to survive.

In the Amazon, researchers have discovered many plants and herbs with medicinal value from the indigenous peoples. However, most of them sell the data to the large pharmaceutical companies and both become rich. The Amazon’s people do not benefit; in fact, their situation deteriorates as even more TNCs descend upon them.

National Sovereignty. The rise of 24-hour computerized and almost instantaneous financial transactions and currency speculation makes it hard to know who is in control. Governments face an impossible situation: “Central banks and elected governments [are] regularly compelled to choose between [their obligations to domestic economies and the new force of the global market] … This was often a ‘no win’ choice for political leaders since yielding to the market’s idea of ‘sound economic policy’ frequently required them to depress their own economies, increasing unemployment or cutting social spending.”⁵

George Soros, perhaps the best known of all individual and institutional currency speculators, has humbled governments with this strategy. Working together, they humiliated the Bank of England in 1992 and destroyed Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1993. Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad blames Soros for the Asian economic crisis of 1997-98. No individual currency speculator can do much on his or her own, but when big players like Soros begin to move, others jump on the bandwagon. The results show who is really in charge of a nation’s economy and, to a certain extent, social policy.

Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) are another controversial matter. In the 1980s, America began tying its aid to World Bank and IMF economic prescriptions and reforms (reducing inflation, promoting exports, meeting debt-payment schedules, and decreasing budget deficits) and to facilitating increased American trade and investment.

However, they generally entail “severe reductions in government spending and employment, higher interest rates, currency devaluation, lower real wages, sale of government enterprises, reduced tariffs, and liberalization of foreign investment regulations…. But while government balance sheets may improve, SAPs have failed to establish a base for sustainable, balanced economic development … [and] have bankrupted local industries, increased dependency on food imports, gutted social services, and fostered a widening gap between rich and poor.”⁶

In addition, they tend to keep poor countries in debt, for new loans are needed to pay off existing debts and to qualify for future loans. Despite this, they remain the usual “cure” for countries seeking international financial aid and investment. This could change if anti-SAP protests continue, and if demands that lending institutions become more transparent and make allowances for social policies succeed.

Political Development and Human Rights. Decades of Western investment in oil-rich Middle Eastern and resource-rich African countries appears to have strengthened dictators of all persuasions. Instead of supporting human and religious rights in Chinese-occupied Tibet and Sinkiang, not to mention in China itself, American business interests persuaded Washing-ton to grant China permanent normal trade relations on September 19, 2000. Thus, China’s violations of human, labor, and religious rights no longer has to concern the American business community. Unfortunately, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

Conclusion

Global capitalism, based upon unfettered consumerism and the idea that continued profits through continued growth leads to ultimate happiness, now runs the world’s economy: “The culture-ideology of consumerism is the set of beliefs and practices that persuades people that consumption far beyond the satisfaction of physical needs is, literally, at the center of meaningful existence and that the best organized societies are those that place consumer satisfaction at the center of all their major institutions.”⁷

If this is true, human unhappiness is sure to increase. Poor people viewing the “real” lives of the rich through foreign television programs or movies see a lifestyle and possessions forever beyond their rich. Workers face constant job insecurity. Rural migrants in cities have their hopes dashed when they cannot find jobs. The media report the rise of sweat-shop and child labor, environmental devastation, a loss of corporate accountability and responsibility to their home bases, a hollowing of hard-won labor gains by threats of relocating overseas, and declining taxes as TNCs juggle their books.

Even those who benefit cannot feel secure. Their job might be outsourced in the interest of higher profits, abolished by corporate streamlining, or lost because they cannot acquire new skills fast enough. Shareholder dissatisfaction can destroy their companies, and job-related demands upon their time can make a normal family life and friendships impossible.

In sum: “Given their narrow premise, market economists never attempted to calculate all of the collateral damage that could also be attributed to the liberalization of finance-the capital investments destroyed when viable factories were abruptly abandoned, the economic output lost when economies grew more slowly, the public welfare costs from rising unemployment or declining wages, the instability for companies and nations caused by the sifting money values.”⁸

Economic globalization does have its good and bad points. But its emphasis on always-increasing profits as the way to ultimate happiness and meaning in our lives is misguided, for how can what is transient give lasting satisfaction? It has nothing to offer those who fall behind but dreams that will be fulfilled “sometime in the future.” And one day they will demand the fulfillment of those dreams…

Footnotes

1. Thomas L Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Anchor, 2000), 71.
2. China’s first “cyber-dissident” was tried in Shanghai on December 4, 1998, “on charges of subversion for having given the addresses of 30,000 Chinese computer users to VIP Reference, a journal that Chinese dissidents publish in the United States.”
3. Ibid., 68.
4. Cristobal Bonifaz and Joseph C. Kohn, “Amazon Tribal Leaders Blast U.S. Judge For Blocking Texaco Pollution Case,” 31 May 2001. Online at: www.amazonwatch.org.
5. The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Chapter 1: “The State of Diversity,” (Leipzig: 1996). Online at: http://web.icppgr.fao.org/ wrlmap_e.htm.
6. William Greider. One World, Ready or Not (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 242.
7. Carol Welch and Jason Oringer, “Structural Adjust-ment Programs,” Foreign Policy In Focus, vol. 3, 3 (Apr. 1998). Online at: www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/ vol3/v3n3sap.html.
8. Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capital Class (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2001), 4-5. 8 Greider, One World, 250.

Other References

• Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 2000.
• Barnet, Richard J. and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. New York: Touchstone, 1995.
• Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World. 2d ed.
• Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2001. Madeley, John.
• Big Business, Poor People: The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor. New York: Zed Books, 2000.