Global Councils of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Discussion
"to supplant all inter-state mechanisms with global governance in the hands of business corporations"
Javier Tolcachier:
"Every social problem, from hunger, disease, climate change, inequality, even loneliness or death can – according to these proponents of capitalist reconversion – have a technological solution, as long as there is a business opportunity, that is, always.
As an essential addition, and legitimised by themselves, they organise from their think tank Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution an attempt at strategic design for global governance called Global Councils of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Among the functions of these councils, according to their descriptive document, would be to “identify gaps in public policy or private practice that could benefit from the development of multi-stakeholder policy frameworks and governance protocols”. Another intended remit is to “create a structured but informal process among key policy makers, practitioners and experts for the exchange of information, experiences and learnings from innovative policy and governance experiments around the world to shape the trajectory of emerging technologies” as well as “act as early adopters and ambassadors to test, refine and improve the interoperability of Fourth Industrial Revolution policies and protocols.”
What sounds like conspiracy theory is an ongoing reality. Listed are the Global Council on Artificial Intelligence, the Global Council on the Internet of Things, the Global Council on Blockchain Technology, the Global Council on Urban and Autonomous Mobility, the related Drones and Air Mobility, and Precision Medicine. To prevent democratic intrusions, the pamphlet is explicit: “participation by invitation only”.
Not for nothing, the founder of the World Economic Forum and author of the book “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”, German economist and businessman Klaus Schwab, has also been a board member of the Bilderberg Club.
This aspiration to supplant all inter-state mechanisms with global governance in the hands of business corporations was already embodied in the Global Redesign Initiative in 2009.
In an introductory commentary by its three co-chairs Schwab, Malloch-Brown, (then WEF vice-president) and Samans (its executive director), to the 600-page report presented in Doha ‘Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World’ – quoted in the book by Manahan and Kumar mentioned below – one can read: “The time has come for a new paradigm of international stakeholder governance, analogous to that embodied in the theory of corporate stakeholder governance on which the World Economic Forum itself was founded”.
The Davos Economic Forum’s initiative known as “the great reset” aspires to be the launch of a new stage (or “reset”, to better use digital technology terms) of capitalism.
Following the interpretation of an old business adage derived from the Japanese and Chinese word for “crisis” (kiki and wēijī respectively, an ideogram composed of the terms “danger” and “opportunity”), the WEF sees in the global consequences of the pandemic not the logical correlate of the deterioration of a system of appropriation and destruction, but the possibility of infusing capital with new horizons through the model conceived by Schwab himself and called “stakeholder capitalism”.
This capitalism would come to replace “shareholder capitalism” -predominant in Western corporations- and “state capitalism”, which has had an important role in the emerging economies of Asia. Capitalism that, according to the same author, aims for “companies to pay a fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance for corruption and respect human rights in their global supply chains”. As if that were not enough, it suggests respecting competition on a level playing field, including when operating in the “platform economy”, which requires new metrics and a new purpose for investment that includes “environmental, social and governance objectives”.
The positive marketing of this proposal, a continuation of the failed idea of “corporate social responsibility” after the social catastrophe caused by neoliberalism imposed by blood and treaties in the last decades of the last century, has excited many corporations. Although we do not know for sure, it is possible that the donations with which they support the development of this innovative strategy in propagandistic terms are deducted from their tax declarations, nowadays tending towards absolute minimums.
Far from being a bad joke, this ecological and charitable whitewashing of capital (always fond of whitewashing) is increasingly making inroads into the multilateral system of the United Nations. The capture of the system of global governance parameters is taking place through the eponymous “multistakeholder system”.
In the book “The Great Takeover”, authors Mary Ann Manahan and Madhuresh Kumar mapped and analysed 103 “multistakeholder” initiatives with prominent corporate involvement in the fields of education, environment, health, internet and data, and food and agriculture.
In the introduction to the text, the editors note: “By shifting the centre of key policy decisions in the multilateral system to mixed mechanisms in which the private sector rules – with the support of some states, international institutions and major philanthropists – the phenomenon of “multi-stakeholderisation” of global governance has become systemic.”
The financial crisis of the United Nations, motivated among other things by declining contributions from its richest members, particularly the United States of America, opened the floodgates for an increasing involvement of transnationals and philanthropy in sectoral action partnerships with the multilateral organisation.
“Over time, the creation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which incorporated multi-stakeholder partnerships as a cornerstone of their implementation and realisation, further entrenched multi-stakeholderism in the UN system,” the authors note.
Correlating this process, “on 13 June 2019, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum signed a Strategic Partnership Framework under the pretext of “deepening institutional arrangements to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs”.