Global Elites
Professor Andrew Kakabadse
Steve Macaulay
Hello I’m Steve Macaulay and I am interviewing Professor Andrew
Kakabadse about a book that he is co-authored and edited called Global
Elites. Now Andrew, who or what are global elites and why are they
important to business?
Andrew
Kakabadse
Global elites are basically the people that control transactions and funds and
the way they are used across the world. This is nothing new, this is a
phenomenon that goes back to Rome to Ancient Athens, the British global
elites ran the world for a long time, the French had a go at it, the
Portuguese, the Spanish had a go at it, so this is no new phenomenon but it
is a very powerful force that really determines the way we use finance and
resources.
Steve Macaulay
Now as you said elites have existed for a long time I suspect global elites
haven’t existed in the same way that they do today so what’s different today
about these global elites?
Andrew
Kakabadse
Their reach. We have had global elites since the Romans. The Romans
reached Mecca, the Romans reached Hadrian’s Wall, the British were a
global elite, the Spanish were a global elite, the Portuguese were in Japan
more than anybody else and the Spanish were there before the British. So
technology has not been a hindrance to global elites it’s been driven by
trade and where the money is and where the trade takes place and where
the resources are that is where you will find the people who have got the
resources to excavate those resources and sell them and use them
worldwide.
Steve Macaulay
Now perhaps a naïve question but how do I recognise these global elites?
Andrew
Kakabadse
You don’t. You hardly see them. One of the most interesting things is that
the nature of global elites is that they are opaque and most of them you will
find in various networks, so you will find there is probably a network of
CEOs, there is a network of Chairmen. In Europe there is a network of the
Bilderbergers who’s the mixture of finance, business and politics so Peter
Mandelson is one of the prominent players in the global elites. Some right
wing politicians throughout Europe are part of the global elites and so are
left wingers as well. Kissinger is the Chairman of the Bilderbergers so unless
you are actually a member of these elite groups you don’t actually see them
unless you watch them on television, unless you have to work with them in a
company and unless you read the various reports and articles about them
and their biographies.
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Steve Macaulay
Now if I am sitting on a global board how am I likely to be impacted by these
global elites?
Andrew
Kakabadse
You may not know it because most of global elite work is driven by what the
American diplomats call soft power or what the British academics called
third level power which is a very subtle form of influence. Global elites are
really operating at the level of business transaction we’re out there to get
these resources but also at the level of mind-set which is helping shape
thinking. They don’t tell you what to do but they help shape the thinking
that forms particular attitudes that drives a pattern of thinking with the
press and media, it often drives a pattern of thinking with the political
system so long before we get into the thinking about legislation, the drafting
of legislation, behind our Parliaments, behind our legislative processes there
are networks that really are shaping the way thinking is going on in Europe,
in the United States. Now if you wanted to find out more about them go
onto the web and tap in one world government and you will find that there
is a series of French global elites who really are, together with the
Americans, trying to create a one world government based entirely on
shareholder value and based entirely on some of the inequalities that
shareholder value has created and they are quite open about it, so you will
find on the website Bianca Jagger is one of the supporters, so people who
come from different walks of life, I don’t know if they actually know what
this group are actually doing but most of these elites are resource driven,
very soft in their approach, shape the way you think about things so you
don’t ask the awkward question.
Steve Macaulay
Conspiracy theorists would read all sorts into that kind of behaviour and it’s
very easy to jump to the conclusion that there is a very self-interesting
group of people that look after themselves and actually harm wider society.
Now is there a case to say there is some good in global elites?
Andrew
Kakabadse
There is a case to say they do harm and there is a case to say they do good.
The conspiracy theory element is really people who are not used to policy
design. If you take a look at the Roman Empire, people who have done
history even at school, isn’t it amazing that the Romans has such a small
military force and actually the majority of the soldiers in the Roman Empire
were soldiers of other nations who kept their own people suppressed. So
there you had a very smart policy design mechanism that went from one
country to the next in the country structures of the time and it was based
around one concept, citizenship, to become a Roman citizen was the
ultimate goal of many individuals and if you read a lot about Roman history
as a gladiator if you were going to die in the ring, which you were, to
become stamped as a member of the brotherhood of the Roman gladiatorial
group, that was another fantastic thing and if you look at it from today’s
common sense, it doesn’t make sense, why would you put yourself in a ring
to die quite deliberately to become a member of a brotherhood when you
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yourself had been suppressed and taken from your own home as a slave. So
this is part of policy design, this is part of the way the international political
processes interact with each other and sometimes they do harm to citizens
but other times they prevent wars because if we didn’t have these
interactions and negotiations taking place you could have uncontrolled
conflict emerging. So at least in one sense through global elites conflict
comes under some control. You will equally find with many global elites like
many of the big business people of today there are funds created massive
philanthropic funds to help. The negative side to global elites is ultimately
their job is to present and preserve and to protect their resource base, their
interests, and within that paradigm then they can be particularly
philanthropic but unfortunately life doesn’t live within paradigms, things
move on and that’s why you have conflicts often created by the elites
themselves as they shift from one way of working to another.
Steve Macaulay
Now finally could we just have a look at the future of global elites because
some people are saying, look the world of social media is with us, things are
opening up a lot, the internet, communications is a lot greater, how do you
see the future of global elites?
Andrew
Kakabadse
We are at the stage of a major division between the elites and this division is
what you might call shareholder value capitalism which we know as
transactional capital and socialised capital which is more the investment in
long term infrastructure projects. Now it’s interesting that have you noticed
that with the press and the media they are taking a very right wing
perspective, shareholder capitalism is okay. If you look at the data, the
derivative debt that exists in the Western world is one quadrillion dollars,
it’s more than the whole world economy. So what are we doing putting
further and further investment into transactional short term high interest
rate gain when that is becoming more difficult, putting it into debt that we
won’t realise except it could collapse when our major concern is how we
deal with our communities and develop them we need to be able to have
water grids in Europe, we need to have new transport systems, we need to
be able to prevent flooding, we need to be able to think about new types of
grain crops that will feed a world population. We can actually feed twice the
world’s population if we re-structure ourselves differently and that’s the
point we reached. So the advent of new technologies, they are slowly being
controlled, have you noticed with the British Government that in fact the
Internet is going to be under greater scrutiny. Do you see how many press
and media barons we have in the United States, actually we have five
communication companies which control radio, television, books, journals,
academic books, novels and they control about ninety six per cent of the
market. How much of the British press is controlled by just one or two
sources. So we are at the point of a major tension in the world and thinking
that we have a free press and media is not the case. The press and media
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actually belong to two very separate camps and on the one hand you have
the Anglo Americans and on the other hand you have the German socialised
capital system together with the Chinese and it’s the Chinese that are really
providing the challenge to the Anglo American shareholder value.
Steve Macaulay
So global elites are alive and well and thriving.
Andrew
Kakabadse
Global elites are alive and well and thriving and divided and interestingly
enough that is exactly what has happened in all of the world’s major
evolutions. There has only been one country believe it or not where the
elites did not create the revolution amongst themselves and that is Ireland.
Ireland was working class revolution, Russia, France, Germany, Britain, all of
the major revolutions, the American War of Independence, they were all of
elites on elites, it was never the poor, it was never the middle level it was
the top and the reason was, one set of elites wanted to use resources in a
different way to the other set of elites and we have reached that point now
but just simply on a bigger scale.
Steve Macaulay
Andrew, thank you very much.
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