The Global Industrial Complex

Systems of Domination

Steven Best, Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, Peter McLaren

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2011
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739136997
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination is a groundbreaking collection of essays by a diverse set of leading scholars who examine the entangled and evolving global array of corporate-state structures of hegemonic power—what the editors refer to as "the power complex"—that was first analyzed by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic work, The Power Elite. In this new volume edited by Steven Best, Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Peter McLaren, the power complex is conceived as co-constituted, interdependent and imbricated systems of domination. Spreading insidiously on a global level, the transnational institutional relationships of the power complex combine the logics of capitalist exploitation and profits and industrialist norms of efficiency, control, and mass production, While some have begun to analyze these institutional complexes as separate entities, this book is unique in analyzing them as overlapping, mutually-enforcing systems that operate globally and which will undoubtedly frame the macro-narrative of the 21st century (and perhaps beyond). The global industrial complex—a grand power complex of complexes—thus poses one of the most formidable challenges to the sustainability of planetary democracy, freedom and peace today. But there can be no serious talk of opposition to it until it is more popularly named and understood. The Global Industrial Complex aims to be a foundational contribution to this emerging educational and political project.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One Crisis and Hope Theirs and Ours1
• Chapter Two The Corporate War Economy
• Chapter Three The Security Industrial Complex
• Chapter Four The Media-Military Industrial Complex
• Chapter Five The Criminal (Justice) Industrial Complex
• Chapter Six The Revolution Will Not Be Funded The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
• Chapter Seven Higher Education’s Industrial Model
• Chapter Eight The Agricultural Industrial Complex
• Chapter Nine Origins and Consequences of the Animal Industrial Complex
• Chapter Ten Bad For Your Health The U.S. Medical Industrial Complex Goes Global
• Chapter Eleven College Sports It’s All about the Money!
• Chapter Twelve Driving to Carmageddon Capitalism, Transportation, and the Logic of Planetary Crisis
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Editors