The Transnational Corporation as Neo-Colonial Boomerang

The term "neo-colonialism" was coined in the 1950s to designate the situation of formerly colonised states still subjected to outside powers. Those powers might be other states or "consortia of financial interests... not specifically identifiable with any particular State" (Kwame Nkrumah). Transnational corporations are central to these "interests." The business corporation was a colonial invention - thus the notorious English and Dutch East India Companies. On one view, the colonial element is history. Now, transnational corporations act through law, not violence; they are market actors, not state-sponsored monopolies. Still, every corporation rests on a gift of governmental power. Western states created legal regimes for modern business corporations in the 19th century. As colonial powers, they also imposed similar regimes across the world, creating the legal framework for transnational businesses. I argue that this has boomeranged on the metropoles. Even the wealthiest states are now subject to a "neo-colonial... consortia of financial interests" – and democratic possibilities recede.

Garrath Williams
https://garrathwilliams.weebly.com/
Senior Lecturer
Philosophy
Lancaster University

About the Speaker:

I have wide interests in moral philosophy, political theory, and applied ethics. In recent years, I have focussed on Kantian approaches to moral and political questions. As part of our current AHRC-funded project, my book, Kant Incorporated (Cambridge University Press), will appear in the autumn. For 2025-26, I will be working on a Kantian approach to transnational business as a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto. This work has been inspired by earlier EU-funded work on children, health and public policy, and I continue to write about food systems and broader questions about responsibility in applied ethics.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Free pizza and refreshments will be served at the event. Sometimes we look for each other after the talk for further discussion about the topic.

The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here (link).

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai