Multinationals unlimited?

Bernard Hollowood

Big Business C. Northcote Parkinson (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £3.95) "And then there is the clean air, the honest atmosphere of commerce; an atmosphere cleaner, brighter and more honest than any other atmosphere I know, It is almost the only department of human activity in which you can get a really clear issue, in which everything that is done is done for its own sake without ulterior motive. Such singleness of purpose is seldom possible, for example, in politics. The 'yes' or `no' of commerce, simple, straight, understandable and honest,' is hard to find in any other walk of life." Thus Ernest J. P. Benn in The Confessions of a Capitalist, quoted with obvious approval and relish by C. Northcote Parkinson. There is no doubt about Mr Parkinson's stance: he is in love with big business and has infinite faith in its capacity to rid the world of evil. Wars and economic disasters, he says, in this coffee table book for tycoons, could be averted if big business were allowed to develop its full potential and if big businessmen were given a decent say in political debate.

There is, at first sight, a lot of sense in his thesis. The world is pitifully short of harmony; and peaceful international organisations, with the exception of the business multinational, have so far proved lacking in staying power. The communist internationals fizzled out. So did the League of Nations. The United Nations Organisation has yet to prove itself and so has the Common Market. But the multinational goes from strength to strength and it is difficult to imagine any serious barrier to its progress.

Parkinson is convinced that multinationals will prove to be our salvation. They transcend the ugly world of nationalism and see the entire. human race as a single homogeneous consumer unit. Their market is world-wide and they have no interest in national frontiers and nationalist ideologies. In the quest for peace and understanding they have left the petty nationalists miles behind. Uniquely among humans, the men who operate the multinationals have learned to co-operate and collaborate and to treat all countries as zones of exploration and exploitation. Without the work of these selfless individuals the world would relapse into_chaos, anarchy and warring nationalist factions.

The trend of big business, he says, is to become more international in outlook and less subject to the control of single governments. Nationalism is on the wane and soon the need will.arise for "a supra-national organisation of the multinational firms." At times the author seems mentally dazzled by the beautiful logic of the multinational giant: Some will argue that belief in real religion should teach these [warring] people how to live at peace. So it might, but a real belief in the value of money would more quickly teach them the same lesson. They would be more usefully and innocently employed in making a profit.

Are there territorial limits to the march of the multinational? Yes, there are certain countries, comic opera dictatorships, which are unstable and obsolete and therefore hostile to the multinational, and these countries are beyond redemption. A dose of democracy is not recommended, for "it is the tendency of democracy to turn into socialism and it is the habit of socialists to nationalise industry." So democracy is a non-starter and the only viable route to security lies with the benevolent multinationals acting in concert.

But by introducing a note of benevolence into the Parkinson plan I may be doing its founder an injustice. He is opposed to multinationals which step out of line and behave "responsibly" in the public interest, for by so doing they neglect their primary duty to shareholders and deviate from the straight and narrow path of private enterprise capitalism. And here the good Professor enlists the moral support of none other than "knocker" Powell, who has written: "The citizen's responsibility, then, as a citizen, is that which the law imposes on him, and neither he nor anyone else can add to this — or only at the cost of destroying freedom under the law." So the good multinational, like the good citizen, must resist the temptation to behave responsibly. If it does more than is strictly necessary to observe safety and health regulations, to prevent pollution and meet minimum wage requirements it is exceeding its legal duty and is behaving er — undemocratically. This is, of course, an extension of the pure economic doctrine of Adam Smith. Within a set

The

Spectator October 12, 1974 legal framework nothing must be allowed to interfere with the pursuit of profit for its own sake. Supply and demand are the only significant market forces, and if the law allows big business to corner supplies and jobs and to generate demand by misleading (but legal) advertising, So much the better! In a world of competitive nation states the multinationals have enormous power, and so, far governments have not devised means ot checking or controlling it. Henry Ford ll can threaten to close down Dagenham, throw. thousands out of wor,k, upset the national economy, and transfer production to a country where unions are less militant and wages are lower. The Swiss firm of Hoffmann-La Roche can flog its drug Valium at a huge profit in countries (and to national health services) which have no access to the companY's finances.

But in an ideal world, though not, perhaps, the one Parkinson has in mind, the multinational would find its power reduced. In an ideal world (all right, my ideal world) the multinational's operations would be controlled by a world government on behalf of peoples more or. less equal in opportunity and much more equal than they are at present in terms of income an, purchasing power. Under such conditions its opportunities would obviously be curtailed. We are stuck, however, with national governments and international commercial rivalry for the forseeable future and therefore the claim that the, multinationals hold the key to peace and prosperity is phoney. A programme to make the world safe for multinationals would inevitablY mean a world safe from multinationals.

Big business may believe that the profit

motive is more rewarding than religion, but it is quite prepared, when necessary, to use religi°11 as a hard-sell marketing technique. For tWo years in the 'twenties Bruce Barton's book The Man Nobody Knows was a non-fiction best-seller in America. Jeaus was not siMP1Y„ "the most popular dinner guest in Jerusalen1,; but one of the top executives of all time. "Pe, picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks °' business and forged them into an organisation that conquered the world ... Nowhere is there such a startling example of executive success as the way in which that organisation Wast brought together." His parables were "the Mos powerful advertisements of all time" and Jou?, was, in fact, "The founder of modern business. In quoting this delicious nonsense Parkinsoicli gets nearer to the humorist who devise Parkinson's Law, and I hope it is now obvious that he is altogether, more convincing as Purvew

theory.

of irony than of serious econonli

To be fair, however, I must add that

greater part of his book consists of a full arlu frank history of the rise of the industrial giantsi Most big businesses were the creations talented, ambitious and often unscrupulolks individuals — Carnegie, Ford, Du Pont, Nobel, Lever, Marks, Morris, Krupp, Rothschild, Rockefeller and so on — who made their millions by hard work and, more often than rilDici the ruthless suppression of competitors, an then worked even harder at spending them on charitable institutions.

Would Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller be

allowed to indulge, in such large-scale Phi" lanthropy today? I think not. Modern denic)s cratic governments could not allow men 0' similar wealth to dictate so openly the pattern of welfare projects. Money is being rapidlY demoted as a store of value and we now realise that wealth can be made to materialise as bricks and mortar, museums and art galleries only by diverting labour, skill and raW materials from other uses. If the big businessmen of today hanker after recognition as philanthropists their best bet would be to PaY good wages andcharge as little as possible' Bernard Hollowood was the editor of Pullen.. from 1957 to 196E{ He has written, among othe' books, Money is No Expense