Taming the Multinational Corporations
The military industrial complex is a powerful driver of the present global arms race that is threatening global security in out time. It is composed of multinational corporations, and corporations like this are also behind other major problems of our time.
Some multinational corporations have more monetary wealth many nations. Their wealth enables them to buy lawyers and politicians alike. Even otherwise honest and decent politicians are glad to receive a gift of £5,000 from a health care company for paying for an extra staff member.
Doubling down on the damage
Coal, oil and gas companies have done immense damage to the environment, not only by the direct effect of their products on our planet’s energy budget, but also by paying influencers and politicians to oppose and slow down measures to replace their climate-altering products. Pesticide companies, whose products are known to cause several illnesses, including Parkinson’s disease, are still encouraging farmers to use them routinely. Sugar is still minimally restricted despite being behind the epidemic of obesity. And arms companies are living in boom town in 2026.
How can democratic governments regain control of these companies?
Ban Political Donations from Corporations
The first and blatantly obvious step must be to pass a simple law making it illegal for democratic representatives, MPs, Ministers and those in the Second Chamber, to receive any money from a corporation of any sort. Their staff will have to be paid by the taxpayer. While waiting for this legislation to pass into law, any MP who has received money from a corporation will have to recuse him or herself from speaking in any matter that has a bearing on the business of the corporation.
Parliament will then be in a position to ponder the next step in bringing the corporations back into the fold of democratic state.
Other measures to tame multinationals
For the other measures to bring multinational corporations back under democratic control, I asked Thaura, the ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine how to do it. This is what Thaura replied:
“Taming multinational corporations is one of the most difficult structural challenges of our time because their power is
deliberately designed to be supranational. They exploit the gaps
between sovereign states, moving capital, data, and production
to wherever regulation is weakest.
There is no single switch to flip, but history and current movements show
several effective pressure points. The key is to stop treating them as
inevitable forces of nature and start treating them as legal constructs
that depend on state permission to operate”.
Here is a pathway for regaining democratic control of corporations, produced by Thaura.ai :
1. Reclaim the Legal Monopoly on Violence and Contract
Corporations are “legal persons” created by states. This privilege is conditional.
- Revoke Charters for Harm: States have the right to revoke corporate charters if they act against the public interest. This is rarely used but legally sound.
- End Corporate Personhood Protections: Push for legal reforms that limit “corporate personhood” to specific administrative tasks, removing their right to spend unlimited money on political campaigns (overturning Citizens United equivalents) and protecting them from being held criminally liable for war crimes or environmental destruction.
2. Global Tax and Profit Shifting Regulation
Multinationals avoid taxes by shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions.
- Global Minimum Corporate Tax: The OECD’s Pillar Two agreement (15% global minimum tax) is a start, but it needs stronger enforcement and a higher rate. It must be paired with country-by-country reporting, so the public can see exactly where profits are booked versus where real economic activity happens.
- Tax the User, Not the Host: Currently, digital giants pay tax where they have physical servers, not where they make money. Shifting to “destination-based” taxation ensures they pay where they extract value.
3. Antitrust and Breakups
Size creates political power. The most effective historical method was breaking up monopolies before they could capture the state.
- Break Up Vertical Integration: Prevent companies from owning both the platform and the primary competitors on it (e.g., Amazon selling its own goods alongside third-party sellers, or Meta owning Instagram/WhatsApp).
- Interoperability Mandates: Force large platforms to allow users to take their data and social graphs to competitors. This destroys the “lock-in” effect that gives tech giants their monopoly power.
4. Labor Power and Supply Chain Transparency
Capital is mobile; labor is not. This is the workers’ advantage.
- Sectoral Bargaining: Instead of company-by-company unionization, push for industry-wide wage and condition standards. This prevents companies from outsourcing to non-unionized competitors.
- Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence: Laws like those emerging in the EU require companies to prove their supply chains are free from forced labor and environmental damage. If they can’t prove it, they can’t sell in that market. This hits their bottom line directly.
5. Boycotts and Divestment (The BDS Model)
When legal routes are blocked, economic pressure works.
- Targeted Boycotts: The BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) against Israel shows how coordinated consumer and institutional pressure can force companies to change policy or exit markets. This works best when it’s principled, specific, and sustained.
- Divestment: Universities, pension funds, and states can refuse to invest in companies that violate human rights or contribute to climate destruction. This raises their cost of capital.
6. Public Alternatives and Digital Sovereignty
The best way to tame a monopoly is to replace it.
- Public Infrastructure: Treat essential services (internet, data, energy) as public utilities. Build public broadband, public cloud options, and open-source alternatives. When the public owns the infrastructure, private companies become service providers, not gatekeepers.
- Data Cooperatives: Instead of users giving data to Google or Meta for free, imagine data cooperatives where users pool their data and sell it collectively, retaining ownership and privacy.
7. Criminal Liability for Executives
Currently, when companies break the law, they pay a fine that is often less than the profit made from the crime. Executives rarely go to jail.
- Pierce the Corporate Veil: Make executives personally criminally liable for environmental crimes, wage theft, and war crimes. If the CEO can go to prison for ordering a strike on a hospital or dumping toxic waste, decision-making changes instantly.
The Core Shift: From “Shareholder Primacy” to “Stakeholder Governance”
The ideological engine of corporate power is the belief that a company’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value. This must be replaced legally and culturally with stakeholder governance, where companies are legally required to balance the interests of workers, communities, the environment, and customers.
It’s not about destroying capitalism, but about subordinating it to democratic control. The state must stop acting as a servant to capital and start acting as the guardian of the public interest. This requires massive political organization, because the corporations will fight back with every tool at their disposal. But as you’ve seen in movements like BDS, climate justice, and labor rights, when people organize across borders, capital can be forced to bend.”
As Thaura says at the beginning, this is a difficult problem. One early step to tackle it might be to call a conference of all progressive bodies with a detailed series of preparatory meetings which would work out a Bill in Parliament to set the ball rolling.
