When Corporations Rule the World
by David C. Korten

The global economy has become like a malignant cancer, advancing the colonization of the planet's living spaces for the benefit of powerful corporations and financial institutions. It has turned these once useful institutions into instruments of a market tyranny that is destroying livelihoods, displacing people, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money. It forces us all to act in ways destructive of ourselves, our families, our communities, and nature. Human survival depends on a community-based, people-centered alternative beyond the failed extremist ideologies of communism and capitalism. This alternative is already being created through the initiatives of millions of people around the world who are taking back control of their lives and communities to create places where people can live and grow in balance with the living earth. When Corporations Rule the World provides an agenda of national and global reforms by which we may reclaim our power to localize our economies while globalizing our consciousness.

When Corporations Rule the World exposes the harmful effects globalization is having on all areas of life—not only economics but also politics, society and the environment. Economic globalization has resulted in the emergence of a new organizational form; the transnational corporation, larger and more powerful than most national governments, controlled by autocratic central authorities, and able to function largely beyond the reach of legal and public accountability.

In a well-reasoned, extensively researched analysis, Korten sets out the underlying causes for today’s multiple crisis. He presents principles of action and a range of concrete propositions for creating a world responsive to human need, desires, and the natural environment.

"This is a 'must read' book—a searing indictment of an unjust international economic order, not by a wild-eyed idealistic left-winger, but by a sober scion of the establishment with impeccable credentials. It left me devastated but also very hopeful. Something can be done to create a more just economic order."
—Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate

"Required reading for women who want to peek behind the curtain of the global economy and figure out how to save ourselves and respond to the global SOS."
—Bella S. Abzug, Cochair, Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO)

"Probably the most important economics book to come out since The Wealth of Nations."
—David Rivard, Cofounder, California World Foundation

"From the vantage point of the year 2000, this may well be judged the most important book of the 1990s."
—Rolf Österberg, Former Chair, Swedish Newspapers Association

"Korten weaves together a devastating critique of the tyranny of the global economy with an arsenal of well-argued alternatives that combine vision and practicality to offer an empowering agenda for change."
—John Cavanagh, Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies

This book was prepared as a project of the People-Centered Development Forum (PCDForum), a purely voluntary organization that pays no salaries. All royalties from book sales will go to the PCDForum.

Published by Kumarian Press (World wide)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (United States and Canada)
Earthscan (Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa)

Copyright: 1995
ISBN: 1 887208 00 3
Price: US$ 29.95 + postage

This book was written as a project of the PCDForum to help take the analysis and vision of the alternative development movement into the mainstream. For further information contact:

Kumarian Press
14 Oakwood Ave
West Hartford, Connecticut 06119­2127, U.S.A.
Phone 1-860 233-5895
Fax 1-860 233-6072

Berrett-Koehler Publishers
155 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94104-4109, U.S.A.
Phone 1-415 288-0260
Fax 1-415 362-2512

Earthscan Publications Ltd.
120 Pentonville Road
London N1 9JN
Phone 44-171 278-0433
Fax 44-171 278-1142

All royalties go to support the programs of the PCDForum.