WR: First of all we need to talk about a trans-national capitalist plan. Who are the rulers of the world today that control political power? Of course they exercise economic domination of all of us and so forth. We need to talk about a trans-national capitalist class. We used to talk about capitalist classes at the local level, the national level. There's a British capitalist class, a Mexican capitalist class, a US capitalist class. But really these different capitalist classes from around the world have integrated through numerous mechanisms over the last few decades from the 1980's up to, to date. And increasingly at the apex of the global class structure of the global social order is this extremely powerful transnational capitalist class.
This is the group that owns and controls the global corporations, that drive the global economy, that affect the lives of every single person on the planet and are seeking, are implacably seeking to ever expand profit making. And that has reached extreme levels and that's really the enemy that we face. At least if we're looking at the world from below, from the mass of poor and working majority in the world, the transnational capitalist class is really the face from above from the heights of world power. They meet, for instance, in Davos Switzerland, many listeners will know about the world economic forum, that's cream of the cream of the global elite, the transnational elite. They design and organize and impose on governments, wars, policies for opening up the global economy such as most recently, the trans-pacific partnership. Which will give a free hand to global corporations without really any accountability and control to governments or to mass public and so forth. That's the first, a transnational capitalist class.
Rob: And you refer to them as the TCC?
WR: The TCC, abbreviation for transnational capitalist class. And I think it's important for those of us in social movements and political resistance movements to increasingly use this vocabulary so we understand what is going on, who are we facing off from. You know very often in our mass movements we identify the enemy or our adversaries as governments or as police forces and absolutely in the underground day to day struggles for instance, the government, you know a mass environmental movement just undermined the, had a tremendous victory in undermining the, I forgot the pipeline, would be running through the heart of the United States.
Rob: Keystone XL
WR: Exactly. So we targeted the government. But behind the governments or behind police forces that kill black and brown youth on the streets, and so forth, are the global corporations and their interests and at controlling these global corporations and their interests and a global order based on an implacably drive for profit, is the transnational capitalist class. So we need to use this vocabulary, it allows us to have the language to tie together all these different levels and understand really the enemy that we're facing, where want to go and what we can achieve.
Rob: Okay, now you use a couple other terms that we should probably talk about. Transnational Capital. TransNational State Apparatuses, and Transnational elite. And globalized systems of accumulation.
WR: Yes, well, transnational capital is referring to, we previously referred to capital at the national level and increasingly the transnational capitalist class and these global corporations represent transnational capital. Transnational capital and global corporations control 80% of world production, of goods and services. 80%. The hands of a tiny transnational capitalist class, so that's what I mean by transnational capital. As far as the transnational state, or transnational state apparatuses, I'm not referring here to a single global government, there's not, there's still some 200 nation states there might always be a world divided politically, formally, in terms of formal political organization into a nation state. And we struggle at the level of our nation states and just in parenthesis before I go back and elaborate on the notion of a transnational state, one of the problems here in poor and working people and press people resisting global capitalism is that we have nation state consciousness. People in the United States think in terms of the United States. People in Mexico, their consciousness, national level consciousness of Mexico.
But the transnational capitalist class thinks in terms of the whole world. They have truly transnational, this group has a truly transnational consciousness. Consciousness of itself as a class with its own interests operating at a global level. And so while we have to and obviously continue struggling at the most local level, as we speak today I know there's protests beginning in Chicago over the brutal murder by a police man who was just charged with murder of a black teenager. So we obviously think how consciousness is at the local level of our local community struggles and churn at the level of our national struggles but we increasingly need to develop transnational and global class consciousness and social consciousness. But going back to the transnational state I do not mean by this a global government but what I mean is that the transnational capitalist class that has the whole world as its purview and its operation, or operational theater. Operates through these dense networks of institutions and organizations such as the international monetary funds such as the world banks, such as the European Union and so forth and so on. And such as these free trade agreements which are increasingly global in nature the World Trade Organization. And these organizations and institutions serve as an institutional framework through which the transnational capitalist class attempts to impose its will and its interest on the world's people.
So we're really facing not just national oppressive, national governments representing the interests of transnational capitol but we're facing a transnational state. If you look at the trans-pacific partnership we've had these global struggles against the trans-pacific partnership. And who negotiated this partner, this trade agreement in secret, well one third of those that were there were the representatives of the national government. 12 or 13, I forgot the exact amount of governments that are signing this trans-pacific partnership. Another one third of the people there were representatives and chief executive officers of the giant global corporations and then the other one third were representatives of these super and transnational organizations. Representatives of the IMF and the World Bank, and the European Union, the European Central Bank and so forth. So we really see a dictatorship of transnational capitol with its representatives in national governments and in trans and super national organizations. And that's governments and organizations that form what I say these Transnational State Apparatuses and if I may use just a more technical or academic way of putting that, the transnational capitalist class attempts to exercise its class power and domination and carry through its exploitation through the apparatuses of the transnational state. So the transnational state is an instrument, a state an instrument in the hands of transnational capitalist class in pushing forward global capitalism.
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