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Corporate power in a captive state |
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Captive StateThe Corporate Takeover of Britain - George Monbiot
Pan, 2001, £7.99
 Monbiot's Captive State and Naomi Kleine's No Logo have lead the charge in raising awareness of how rampant global brands control our choices. Where No Logo has ironically become essential reading for marketeers looking to create global corporate brands, Captive State offers a campaigner's guide to resisting globalisation.
Monbiot charts the “the corporate takeover of Britain using eleven stories to reveal the extent of the problem. In his chapter The Skye Bridge Mystery he examines the showcase Private Finance Initiative, arguing: “the means of financing this bridge have nothing to do with saving public money. Far from Westminster and the offices of the national newspapers, out of sight, out of mind, Skye was the ideal location in which to launch a corrupt and unpopular initiative, in which private companies were granted monopolistic control over public works.
Big developers also come under fire for the way they railroad local planning authorities into accepting development that the local community does not want often by off-site sweeteners paid for out of planning gain. Reserving special criticism for central government's role in the planning process, and condemns its cosy relationship with big business. “When we are unable to ensure that construction meets our needs, the key decisions about how we live are taken by people who hope to profit from exclusion. When planning is in the hands of the developers, development will always work against us he writes.
His investigations take him away from the nitty-gritty of local politics into the ethical grey-area of biotechnology.. He argues “big biotechnology corporations are...attempting to take over the food chain and turn the genes of plants, animals and humans into private property.
He bewails the complicity of government in this process - asking who then is to defend our rights in our common inheritance. The corporate interests denounced by Monbiot operate under the free flag of capitalism, but it is a “stultifying and conformist version of capitalism´ that Adam Smith and David Ricardo would not recognise.
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