Article Review
Sklair and Robbins in their article titled, "Global Capitalism and Major Corporations from the Third World", published in the Third World Quarterly, argue that in order to illuminate the discussions on the national bourgeoisie, comprador capitalism and globalization it is necessary to analyze the role of the major corporations from the Third World. Although there is extensive research done about the transnational companies from the First World, there isn't much about Third World TNCs. Yet, in fact, there is some literature concerning a number of low technology sectors in the Third World. However, the Fortune Magazine by its list of corporations by their revenues bring out that there are Third World companies that manage to take place in the top 500 firms around the World. Analyzing Third World Capitalism, Sklair and Robbins clarify the distinction of national bourgeoisie from the conventional form of imperialism that is claimed to have created a class of comprador capitalists who serve the interests of foreign masters. Whereas, in national bourgeoisie, the aim is struggling for national liberation by allying with nationalists. Another view of national bourgeoisie however, notes the capitalists of the Third World are no threat to
Although including some unclear points, the Sklair and Robbins' article points out a perspective of TCC which is more contemporary by a global perspective and distinct from the two earlier approaches of the "Dependency Theory". Also analyzing TNCs in a chronological order referring to the Fortune list, the authors enable the readers to conceptualize the development patterns of the Third World TNCs. Another vague point is in the Fortune list, where Koc Holding from Turkey was shown under the Motor Vehicles Sector. Koc Holding benefited from the foreign technology since it made a partnership agreement with the Fiat group of Italy. Considering this, is this possible to include Koc Holding to the list? Plus, Samsung of South Korea for example, was segregated in the list to three sectors each ranked as an independent corporation (Samsung in Consumer Goods and Services, Samsung Life in Insurance and Samsung Electronics in Electronics - referring to Table 5 of the article pp:92-93). Since 1950s the Fortune magazine was preparing a list consists of the top 500 firms in the world. This list was formulated on revenues in US dollars of the corporations and some Third World corporations lost their rankings from time to time when their domestic currencies were devaluated against the US dollar as results of the national economic crises. The results of examining the Fortune lists are summarized in the article as third world countries were always present in the list since its beginning and they were not restricted
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Approximate Word count = 1021
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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