Perverse Totalitarianism

Can we speak of “totalitarianism” when it comes to naming the power of multinationals as it has been built and imposed since the beginning of the 20th century? While modern political practice would like the subjects of a community to obey the laws, not the powerful, we are witnessing a perverse reversal: it is the multinationals, today, which submit the deliberation of political assemblies to other " laws”, their laws, which they make sure to make effective: the “law” of the market, the “law” of competition, the universal “law” of supply and demand. This book studies the way in which the oil companies, imitated in this by multinationals in other sectors, constitute themselves as sovereign authorities of a private nature. Total is a textbook case in this regard. To present itself as the "eighth of the Seven Sisters", in reference to the oil majors, and to call itself "total" to emphasize this claim, was, in the middle of the 20th century, to seek to impose itself in turn in a an order where multinational corporations developed independently of the states that had created them, like a Frankenstein. A hard-hitting philosophical essay that questions the power of multinationals and the concept of legality.