Deck 2: Corporate Power in 21st Century Canada

Question 1

What term does Peter Blau assign to the results of systemic inequities in society?

A) Class power
B) The modern joint-stock company
C) Transnational corporations (TNCs)
D) Multilateral independence
E) Unilateral dependence

Answer 1

E

Question 2

What does Marx give us as a starting point for the empirical analysis of corporate capitalism?

A) A system of class power
B) A system of corporate power
C) A system of social honour
D) A system of surplus
E) A system of commodity fetishism

Answer 2

A

Question 3

If we argue that corporate power is "Janus-faced," what are the faces?

A) Economic and religious
B) Political and religious
C) Economic and cultural-political
D) Historical and social
E) Cultural and human

Answer 3

C

Question 4

What form of corporate power involves control of the labour process within the firms that actually produce the economic surplus?

A) Strategic power
B) Operational power
C) Allocative power
D) Social power
E) Managerial power

Question 5

Which of the following does not apply to the notion of strategic power?

A) Directors are elected annually by the shareholders.
B) Workers, communities, and consumers are excluded from the election of corporate directors.
C) The election of corporate directors is based on one vote per person.
D) The dispersal of corporate shares among many small investors leads to "people's capitalism."
E) The election of corporate directors is based on the number of shares owned.

Question 6

What structure is said to be constituted when allocative, strategic, and operational forms of economic power are taken together in directorate interlocks and inter-corporate ownership?

A) A structure of manufacturing capital
B) A structure of managerial control
C) A structure of exploitation
D) A structure of finance capital
E) A structure of political control

Question 7

What term best describes the economic approach in which national economies revert to old nineteenth-century ideas?

A) Neo-conservatism
B) Neoliberalism
C) Liberalism
D) Conservatism
E) Laissez-faire

Question 8

What is meant by Fred Block's famous claim that "the ruling class does not rule"?

A) The ruling class is undergoing a slow process of decay.
B) The ruling class controls the political process and its outcomes.
C) The ruling class does not need to reach into civil society to maintain its rule.
D) The ruling class must exercise active leadership of the subordinate class(es).
E) The ruling class assumes the consent of subordinates.

Question 9

What must the corporate elite achieve and maintain to be a hegemonic cultural and political force?

A) Social cohesiveness as a business community
B) Direct control of political parties
C) Control over the mass media, including news reporting
D) Control over the nation's central bank
E) Control over policy planning think-tanks and academia

Question 10

The concentration of corporate capital in Canada in the late twentieth century largely coincides with what event?

A) The formation of the World Trade Organization (formerly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)
B) The consolidation of the continental "free trade deals"
C) The creation of the International Monetary Fund
D) The election of the Progressive Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney
E) The newly-created Canada Health and Social Transfer

Question 11

Over the past six decades, a close, positive relationship is evident between what two phenomena?

A) The number of firms listed on the TSX and economic equality
B) Concentration of income and concentration of corporate capital
C) Concentration of corporate capital and concentration of political power
D) Concentration of income and concentration of political power
E) The growth of the welfare state and concentration of income

Question 12

A version of which narrative was applied to Canada in the late 1960s and 1970s?

A) Canada's pattern of economic development resembled that of colonial economies
B) Leading industrial companies and financial institutions have comprised a dominant fraction of indigenous financial capital
C) Canada's capitalists act as agents allied with American TNCs in a process of compradorization
D) Canada's capitalists lost control of domestic capital in a process called "silent surrender"
E) Canada experienced a kind of exceptionalism in terms of the geographic concentration of capital

Question 13

What trend did not occur in Canada at the close of the twentieth century?

A) The corporate power became re-centred on a core of transnational banks and corporations controlled by capitalists based in Canada.
B) Transnational financial capital radiated from Canada in a way that embedded it more extensively in a circuitry of global accumulation.
C) Transnational financial capital radiated from Canada in a way that disorganized the national network.
D) The Canadian network had become organized around an expanding sector of Canadian TNCs.
E) Canada's business community participated with other nationally-based corporate elites in a global process of capital concentration and centralization.

Question 14

Which of the following statements exemplifies Arthurs' interpretation of dependency?

A) Many of the "rising stars" of corporate capital were firms controlled in Canada.
B) Corporate Canada was being hollowed out as foreign parent corporations tightened control of their Canadian subsidiaries.
C) Primarily interlocks among corporations that are controlled in Canada integrated the elite network in Canada.
D) Canadian-based investment abroad continued its long-run expansion.
E) Canadian controlled TNCs had elite connections that extended transnationally.

Question 15

What is the name of the pattern to which American hegemony partly yielded by the close of the twentieth century?

A) Silent surrender
B) Hollowing out
C) Compradorization
D) Geographical concentration
E) Multilateral cross-penetration

Question 16

What term describes cultural and political leadership that shapes the common-sense understandings of what is socially possible, and what is deemed to be in the "common interest"?

A) False consciousness
B) Political formulae
C) Meritocracy
D) Governmentality
E) Hegemony

Question 17

Which of the following trends exemplifies moral reform within the corporate elite?

A) The continuation of aristocratic forms of closure
B) The growth of private clubs and private schools that act as a mechanism of social closure
C) Corporations mandated closed recruitment of directors
D) Educational credentials are more important than exclusive club membership for membership in the corporate elite
E) A transition within corporations towards reduced diversity and openness

Question 18

In the early 1970s, the culture of solidarity in the business community was primarily one of what?

A) Leisure
B) Capital
C) Activism
D) Diversity
E) Merit

Question 19

Which of the following phenomena resulted from the shifting basis of elite solidarity in recent decades?

A) The "bringing-together" of organic intellectuals and leading capitalists in agencies of business activism
B) The emergence of elite policy groups while older think tanks took a neo-liberal turn
C) The emergence of a network linking the directorates of Canada's largest corporations to right-wing policy groups
D) A dramatic policy transition from the Keynesian welfare state to the neo-liberalism
E) All of the above

Question 20

Why did NAFTA have important implications for the structure of corporate power in North America?

A) It "locked-in" the neo-liberal policies of the three regimes from future government change.
B) It advocated regional interests over international governance.
C) It protected the autonomy of the state in economic decisions in Canada, the US, and Mexico.
D) It drew a sharp distinction between the desired policies and understandings of the largest corporations in each nation.
E) It proved that neo-liberal continentalism would proceed even without the support of all elite groups.

Question 21

Karl Marx theorized that corporate capitalism is a system of ____________.

A) Class power
B) Corporate power
C) The means of production
D) Social relations
E) Transnational capitalists

Question 22

What power do corporations have in the current era of globalizing capitalism?

A) Corporations have structural power to play one national workforce off against another.
B) Corporations can conceptualize their power in sociological terms, so they are able to make decisions to counter union activism.
C) Corporations are able to accumulate workers from regions all over the world.
D) Globalizing capitalism reduces the power of corporations.
E) Corporations are able to make decisions on behalf of the state.

Question 23

What does it mean to have control over economic surplus?

A) The dominant class has control over the means of production and can appropriate the surplus produced by a subordinate class
B) An exorbitant standard of living for the dominant class can be funded
C) The economic future is placed at the dominant class's disposal
D) People can be relegated to positions of unilateral dependence
E) All of the above

Question 24

In 2009, the profits of 1.3 million companies in Canada were claimed by how many giant corporations?

A) 34
B) 60
C) 1,434
D) 60% of the 1.3 million companies
E) 34% of the 1.3 million companies

Question 25

What is transnational investment?

A) The social organization of Canadian corporate power
B) A distinctive structure of class inequality and underdevelopment
C) A process where capital becomes concentrated and transnational corporations are the most powerful and are able to play one workforce (or state) against another
D) Corporate capital's nationality
E) None of the above

Question 26

What does the term "compradorization" refer to?

A) Foreign-controlled companies that have not participated extensively in Canada's corporate-elite network
B) Canada's capitalists act as agents who are allied with American transnational corporations
C) Weakened American global hegemony
D) High levels of foreign control
E) Canada-based finance capital

Question 27

In the chapter, it was discussed that Canadian TNCs have a national network of corporate power and are simultaneously interlocked with foreign-based TNCs inside and outside of Canada. What does this trend suggest?

A) Increasing cross-penetration of capital across national borders
B) Decreasing cross-penetration of capital across national borders
C) Capitalist globalization is slowing down
D) Corporate Canada is being hollowed out
E) Nothing could be concluded

Question 28

Which one of the below is NOT a component of neoliberalism?

A) Regulation of capital
B) Diminished relative autonomy of national states
C) Less direct government involvement in the economy
D) Freer markets
E) All of the above

Question 29

What did the investor-rights provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allow investors to do?

A) Sue a government for compensation against measure that deprive them of future profits
B) Obtain an enormous flow of foreign investment that further integrates the world economy
C) Extended operational, strategic and allocative power to investors that did not have them yet
D) Empower communities and workers to become investors
E) None of the above

Question 30

Over the past few decades, there has been a close relationship between what?

A) The Toronto Stock Exchange and the top 60 corporations
B) Canadian families and individuals
C) Concentration of corporate capital and the extent of income inequality
D) Concentration of corporate capital and the poorest 34% of the population
E) Concentration of corporate capital and the Corporations Returns A

Question 31

Marx's omission of corporations is a major shortcoming of his economic and political remarks.

Question 32

The cross-appointment of directors interlocks boards of major corporations with one another.

Question 33

The two faces of corporate power are economic and religious.

Question 34

Strategic power is rooted in the democratic character of corporate capital, evident in the election of directors by shareholders.

Question 35

In practice, corporations are controlled by the propertied few who own large concentrations of corporate shares.

Question 36

Allocative power accrues to agents and organizations that control the financial assets that fund new investment.

Question 37

The notion of hegemony means that the consent of subordinates is not required to rule.

Question 38

Neo-conservatism refers to an economic approach in which national economies revert to old nineteenth-century ideas about the role of governments in the regulation of capitalism.

Question 39

In civil society, the ruling class seeks to universalize the interests of capital in profitable accumulation as the general interest of society.

Question 40

The earlier pattern of extremely concentrated corporate capital in Canada was eroded in the post-World War II era and was never re-established.

Question 41

Just 60 gigantic corporations claimed most of the profits of 1.3 million companies in Canada in 2009.

Question 42

There is no relationship over the past six decades between the concentration of corporate capital and the extent of income inequality in Canada.

Question 43

Over the past six decades we see the further centralization of strategic control over capital except in a geographical concentration of corporate head offices.

Question 44

Borrowing the narrative of the economic development of the global south, Levitt (1970) described Canada as "the world's poorest developed country."

Question 45

Groups of interlocked capitalists who own or manage supra-corporate blocs of indigenous finance capital are at the centre of Canadian corporate power.

Question 46

The dependentist interpretation argues that firms in the West and the East of Canada are controlled by the firms located in Montreal and Toronto.

Question 47

Corporate-governance reform initiatives (e.g., 1995) had nearly no effect on the structure of finance capital or the structure of the elite.

Question 48

Hegemony refers to maintaining class rule through the repressive state apparatus.

Question 49

Moral reform within the corporate elite has brought gender and ethnic composition in line with the general population.

Question 50

In the early 1970s, voluntary associations were still the key sites for building elite cohesion.

Question 51

The "confraternity of power" refers to how the elite found its collective identity in the 1970s.

Question 52

In recent decades the elite's basis for solidarity shifted from the sphere of activism to that of leisure.

Question 53

When we place the new business activism in a broader context, we see that it is not a uniquely Canadian phenomenon.

Question 54

Agreements such as NAFTA form an integral part of the globalization process.

Question 55

NAFTA's investor-rights provisions formed the basis of the WTO's new norm for international governance.

Question 56

Structures of inequality are reproduced through exercises of power; yet, power is rooted in inequality.

Question 57

Workers, communities, and states depend on large corporations that may or may not choose to invest in a given place at a given time.

Question 58

Between 1950 and 2007, the average profit of the top 60 corporations on the Toronto Stock Exchange shrunk from 14,278 times the average profit to 234 times the average profit, indicating a decrease in capital concentration through accumulation by giant firms.

Question 59

The geographical concentration of corporate head offices in major urban centres such as Toronto and Montreal indicate centralization of strategic control over capital.

Question 60

Cross-penetration of capital across national borders is not considered integral to capitalist globalization.

Question 61

"Hot money" refers to mobile financial capital searching for short-term profit, and this is inherent throughout the neo-liberal era of globalization.

Question 62

Corporate-governance reform initiatives were first implemented in 1995 by the Toronto Stock Exchange, which sought to strengthen relationship-based finance.

Question 63

In the 1970s, the "old boys" network was a centralized network of private clubs for building elite cohesion, often composed of the leading directors of dominant corporations.

Question 64

The new business activism since the mid-1990s cannot be placed in a broader context because corporations are separate entities.

Question 65

Corporate power is inseparable from accumulation of capital.

Question 66

What does Fred Block mean when he says "the ruling class does not rule"? Cite examples of how the ruling class maintains its "control" over the political process and outcomes.

Question 67

What is finance capital? Briefly explain how it has been integral to advanced capitalism.

Question 68

What is the connection between control of the corporation and ownership of shares? Explain whether you find this to be a democratic relationship.

Question 69

It was discussed in this chapter that "financialization" has influenced the organization of corporate power. What is meant by "financialization"?

Question 70

Explain the importance of maintaining internal cohesion among the corporate elite.

Question 71

How do we conceptualize corporate power in sociological terms? How do corporate boards show traces of these kinds of power?

Question 72

What is hegemony? Explain how this relates to the way that business interests are manifest in Canadian politics and how this manifestation has changed historically.

Question 73

How is economic power concentrated in Canada? What trend has this concentration undergone? How is it related to other forms of centralization?

Question 74

Why is corporate power referred to as "Janus-faced"? What are its two faces, and why is this significant? How does this relate to the three forms of power?

Question 75

Is the business community always a cohesive entity? Can you think of examples where they are at odds with each other?

Question 76

Think of examples from your favourite TV show or movie about how the interests of the ruling class are represented as being universal. How do you feel about the ruling class reaching into civil society? Is resistance possible? Is it desirable?

Question 77

Read a policy paper from a think tank such as the Fraser Institute or the C.D. Howe Institute. How do they present their positions? What worldview(s) do they espouse? How are these positions linked to their research fellows and board members?

Question 78

Consider capitalist globalization. Besides the examples from the text, can you think of other features of this global phenomenon? How does it impact other regions of the world differently? Please discuss.