The purpose of this paper is to examine the politico-economic implications of multinational corporations in the present world. Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s, the world economic situation has been deteriorating every year, and the various economic frictions have occured not only among the developed countries but also between North and South. This is, in a way, a revival of economic nationalism throughout the world.
While, however, the Bretton Woods system—the postwar global economic frame—has been paralyzed, a new economic system has gradually come into being since the late 1960s. This is what we call “Multinational system”. There is no doubt about the vast increase in the international flow of capital, especially direct investment, throughout the world and big, powerful firms of the major industrial countries headed by the Americans have grown up to be multinational corporations.
Although nowadays MNCs are investing their capital in the developing counsries, international movement of capital has thus far been prominent in the advancend capitalist countries. The stock of foreign direct investment in 1975 amounted to $259 billion, of which 74% were for the developed countries and only 26% for the developing countries. These figures clearly show that there is interpenetration of capital among the major industrial countries.
MNCs are in competition with each other in the world market, but at the same time they are creating the international investment community and share the common interests in the “Multinational system”. Ideologically, we may say big international corporations are the harbinger of a new cosmopolitan age. Therefore, they probably enter into some kind of conflict with Nation-States. In the present world economy, we can see the increasing substitution of “international” trade system by that of “multinationl”. In other words, a system in which most trade is conducted between different firms in different countries is giving way to a system in which trade is conducted between the same firms in different countries. This difference means that there has developed territorial non-coincidence between MNCs and Nation-States.
After the World War II, the major industrial nations have performed certain economic functions by achieving economic policy goals such as full employment, income redistribution, welfare, balance of payment equilibrium and so on. These macro economic policies have faced very difficult problems for various reasons, one of which relates to greater interdependence of MNCs vis-a-vis Nation-States.
From the viewpoint that the relationship between MNCs and Nation-States is very important in the future, this paper examines the arguments of several scholars over some kinds of conflict between them.
抄録全体を表示