The Rise of Corporatocracy in a Disenchanted Age

Abstract

Political theorists such as Foucault and Giddens believed in the endurance of the ‘state’ as a political entity headed by a ‘king’. This division of the globe is contrary to the requirements of global capitalism which seeks the widest possible market and sources of raw materials and labour. The dichotomy is apparently resolved by global corporations usurping the power of the ‘king’, leaving him only a managerial role, to promote economic interests within his state. However the rootless standardisation of the globalised economy may engender a disenfranchised, disenchanted, discontented set of societies that perceive no allegiance to either king or corporation. Resistance to the global economy crystallises in a return to the enchantment of the local, which becomes a focal point for those who would dismantle the entire edifice of the multinational corporation. A middle course, between the entirely global and the entirely local, is only possible if we retain the capacity for self-determination rather than ceding our culture, our lives, to the consuming power of materialism.