Newsletter No 14

Date: 30 July 2025

 

So, what should we do about corporate power?

This month Critical Takes published So, what should we do about corporate power? which is a briefing that gathers ideas on this question from across civil society. It’s only eight pages long and I hope you have time to read it.

The argument of So, what should we do … is that harmful corporate behaviours (violation of human rights, the destruction of nature, rent-seeking, tax abuses and many others) can’t be redressed beyond a certain point without confronting corporate power as a structural or institutional problem in its own right.

And, as we’re seeing in the US, the sheer scale and embeddedness of modern corporate power is such that reforms to corporate behaviour which have been won are always at risk of being rolled back.

So I feel that we need to think long-term about how to transform the institution of the multinational or very large corporation (often, though not always, the same thing) until it no longer poses a threat to democracy and justice.

So what is corporate power? My working definition is that it:

" … concentrates capital and control over assets, market power, proprietary information and strong legal advantages in an entity owned and controlled by a small and wealthy part of humanity and designed, above all else, to maximise its own profit”.

Obviously corporate power is not the only problem of economic justice in the world and transforming this power would not, by itself, solve other problems. But because the very large corporation is a keystone institution of the economy, any attempt to build a more just world has to include the transformation of corporate power as one of its goals.

What might an agenda for transforming corporate power actually consist of? Perhaps a set of global principles which can influence hard and soft law: if you look at the lists of propositions in So, what should we do …  you can imagine what such a set might look like. Oxfam published its own ideas last year (see this report from Page 49 onwards).

People across the diversity of worldwide civil society can reasonably take different views about what those principles should be. The role of Critical Takes is to explore those views, rather than to advocate for its own policy positions, but I’d suggest a few framing points:

· Because corporate power is so huge and entrenched, a transformative agenda would need to be based on points of consensus which people with quite different standpoints and priorities can agree to work on in tandem. It’s more realistic to work from where people are now, in terms of ideas, than to try and devise a new blueprint from scratch or to strive for perfect consistency.

· Because corporate power is multi-dimensional, the response must be holistic. In other words, it’s about preventing human rights abuses and the trashing of nature and rent extraction and tax abuses and political capture and many other things at the same time. There’s not going to be a “golden key” - a single reform which unlocks all the others.

· The agenda would need to be broad and flexible enough to be legitimate and relevant in many different countries, while also being concrete and specific enough to offer a solid basis for campaigning.

I think that to offer hope of transformation, such an agenda couldn’t just be the sum of existing campaigns. It would also need to respond to basic questions about the design and role of the very large corporation in a more just world.

For example, what is a “fair profit” amid enduring poverty and deepening ecological crisis? What should be the objectives of the very large corporation in law, beyond making profit? Are there parts of our lives in society that corporations should not be allowed to influence? And so on.

It’s not easy to arrive at this kind of common agenda. The only way to do it, I think, is through patient and inclusive conversations in many places which gradually give rise to points of consensus. That’s a process which would need years rather than months. Critical Takes is intended to be one of the spaces where such conversations can happen.

The good news is that, as you can see from the lists of ideas in So, what should we do ... a broad consensus already exists on some issues. For instance, most if not all people in civil society would agree that multinationals must be meaningfully bound by human rights law and must pay their fair share of taxes. Other points of consensus seem to be emerging (for instance, on democratising the digital world) or will emerge over time.

So, let’s talk! I hope you can find time to read the briefing, comment on it and share it with others. If you disagree with anything, or think something important is missing, please say so.

 

Also this month:

Sadhana Sanjay of IT for Change explains that big US firms have captured the market for access to India’s Unified Payments Interface, a ground-breaking public payments system.

She argues that to stop Big Tech from encroaching on digital public infrastructures, governments need to engage with their citizens as rights-holders in the digital world rather than just measuring success in terms of access and volume.

 

Coming up:

I’m planning to take a closer look in August at the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations which, as Matti Ylönen has written, did important work in the 1970s and 1980s before being killed off by neoliberalism.

Perhaps it’s time to revive this commission and its plans for a Code of Conduct for multinationals, as a global space where ideas for taming corporate power can be discussed and gain legitimacy.

Until next time, good luck with your work (or have a good holiday!)

Diarmid