The World as a company town : multinational corporations and social change / ed. Ahamed Idris-Soven, Elisabeth Idris-Soven and Mary K. Vaughan

suburbs. Uprooted from their cultures, often separated from their families, subject to discrimination, generally unprotected by labor unions, and harassed by immigration authorities, these people form a permanently migrating pool of surplus labor as well as cultural pockets divorced from the mainstream of society. Because of the concern of U.S. policymakers to know the revolutionary potential of unemployed rural migrants in the Third World and of Third World minorities in the United States, most U.S. social scientists in their work among slum-dwellers have examined attitudes, expectations, and potential for politicization rather than documented the grim realities of urban slum life. Assuring us that the urban poor are not to be feared, most of these studies emphasize factors inhibiting politicization -such as perceptions of betterment over the rural situation and contentment with minor improvements. Although we do not doubt the weight of these factors, is this type of research a reflection of the class bias of social scientists? Is it, as Gedicks and Huizer suggest, a reflection of class distance, insensitivity, and biased research methods and techniques? How do social scientists explain the extensive politicization of Chilean slum-dwellers during Allende's regime, frequent urban land invasions in Mexico and Colombia, the proliferation of the community-control Income inequality is perpetuated in dependent industrialization tied to local elites. While the Keynesian model assumes competition, monopoly of wealth and political power is characteristic of Third World countries (Girling 1973b:90). Economic opportunity is open to those with political power, whose interest in profit rather than development influences their growing association with the multinationals. That the dominant political-bureaucratic bourgeoisie stands to gain in influence and wealth through collaboration with the MNC's is shown by Steven Langdon in the case of Kenya. There, Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers of England and the U.S.-owned Continental Ore Company coveted the fluorspar deposits operated by a local Swahili entrepreneur. Through their contact with the Kenyan Government the foreign firms succeeded in stripping the local businessman of his claim and persuaded the government to establish a joint venture through which the political elite apparently sacrificed Kenyan control over a valuable mineral for their own particular gain. Langdon further illustrates how the political influences of MNC's with the local government, manifest in large concessions in finance, land, and taxes, banking and import-restriction exemptions, and generous profit-remittance allowances, place the local economy at the mercy of foreign corporations, who control markets, prices, the amount of national income retained, and the direction of its reinvestment. 2 Competition between U.K.-and U.S.-based meatpackers operating in Argentina was regulated by a 1912 agreement (Treviflo 1972). 3 Pre-1914 trends toward establishment of a Franco-German steel cartel were documented by the French revolutionary syndicalist militant Alphonse Merrheim (1913). This work is all the more remarkable in that its author was forced to leave school at age ten to take a job in a metalworking factory. 4 A good example of this phenomenon is the 1925 agreement (still in force) between AT&T and ITT, whereby the former agreed not to compete with ITT abroad in exchange for a free hand on the U.S. market (Sampson 1974:25). s The ITF was not, however, the first international trade secretariat. The International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), for example, was founded in Zurich in 1893. β Flores Magon, who died in Leavenworth prison in Kansas in 1921, was a major figure in the 1906 strikes that effectively launched the Mexican Revolution (Ferriia 1971). LEVINSON, CHARLES 1972 International trade unionism. LUXEMBURG, ROSA 1951 The accumulation of capital. Translated by Agnes Schwerzschild. New Haven. Yale University Press. MARTIN, MARIE [pseud.] 1976 "L'inevitable bureaucratie du syndicalisme international." Interrogations 7:31-47. MERRHEIM, ALPHONSE 1913 La Metallurgie. Son origine et sa developpement. Les forces matrices. Paris: Federation des metaux.

This book-series, initiated in 1992, has an interdisciplinary orientation; it is published in English and German and comprises research monographs, collections of essays and editions of source texts dealing with German-Jewish literary and cultural history, in particular from the period covering the 18th to 20th centuries.

The closer definition of the term German-Jewish applied to literature and culture is an integral part of its historical development. Primarily, the decisive factor is that from the middle of the 18th century German gradually became the language of choice for Jews, and Jewish authors started writing in German, rather than Yiddish or Hebrew, even when they were articulating Jewish themes. This process is directly connected an historical change in mentality and social factors which led to a gradual opening towards a non-Jewish environment, which in its turn was becoming more open. In the Enlightenment, German society becomes the standard of reference – initially for an intellectual elite. Against this background, the term German-Jewish literature refers to the literary work of Jewish authors writing in German to the extent that explicit or implicit Jewish themes, motifs, modes of thought or models can be identified in them.
From the beginning of the 19th century at the latest, however, the image of Jews in the work of non-Jewish writers, determined mainly by anti-Semitism, becomes a factor in German-Jewish literature. There is a tension between Jewish writers' authentic reference to Jewish traditions or existence and the anti-Semitic marking and discrimination against everything Jewish which determines the overall development of the history of German-Jewish literature and culture. This series provides an appropriate forum for research into the whole problematic area.

General Editor’s Preface Introduction SECTION ONE: THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT Multinational Corporations: The World as a Company Town The Blocked Path: International Labor and the Multinationals The Multinational Corporation as a Stage in the Development of Capitalism Ecology and Ideology Financial Colonies: Inflation, Recession, Debt, and the Multinational Corporation SECTION TWO: THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION AND THE SOCIAL SCIENTIST Applied Research on the Multinational Corporation: A Symposium at the IX International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences Anthropology and Multinational Power: Some Ethical Considerations on Social Research in the Underdeveloped Countries Alternatives to Ethnocide: Human Zoos, Living Museums, and Real People SECTION THREE: THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE The Social Responsibility of Anthropological Science in the Context of Contemporary Brazil New Strategies for Multinational Enterprise in the Third World: Deltec in Brazil and Argentina The “Native Reserves” (Bantustans) and the Role of the Migrant Labor System in the Political Economy of South Africa by Bernard Magubane Export-Oriented Industrialization Through the Multinational Corporation: Evidence from Kenya Plantations, Peasants, and Proletariat in the West Indies: An Essay on Agrarian Capitalism and Alienation The Role of Peasant Organizations in the Struggle against Multinational Corporations: The Cuban Case Taxes, Tourists, and Turtlemen: Island Dependency and the Tax-Haven Business Notes on a Corporate “Potlatch”: The Lumber Industry in Samoa The Nationalization of Copper in Chile: Antecedents and Consequences Automobiles: An Obstacle to Socialist Construction Biographical Notes Index of Names Index of Subjects