The divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country when, as a result of joint-enterprise, ownership is broken up between innumerable individuals who buy their interest today and sell it tomorrow and lack altogether both knowledge and responsibility towards what they momentarily own. But when the same principle is applied internationally, it is, in times of stress, intolerable.

The planning system sustains a sizeable priestly class which, for modest compensation, is available for industry meetings, customer and investor indoctrination, sales conventions, executive seminars and other corporate rites, where it combines a slightly extravagant didactic skill with a superficial aspect of deep thought. In recent times the favored topic of all such artisans has been the deeper meaning of the multinational corporation. They picture the multinational corporation – IBM, General Motors, Nestlé – as a major discontinuity in the general process of economic development, something very different that, depending on the preference of the speaker and the need of the audience, is fraught with breathtaking potential for good or, more often, for evil. Standing astride of international boundaries, it is an assault on political sovereignty. Perhaps it is making obsolete the national state. And, since many of the corporations are American in origin, it is singularly a manifestation of American energy, enterprise and power.