Word: sampson
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...Sovereign State of ITT, Sampson...
...SOVEREIGN STATE OF ITT is an absorbing chronicle of the first half century of a firm whose exemplary pursuit of profits has spanned 70 countries and dozens of industries. It's a tribute to Sampson's research that the Watergate hearings have not made his book seem dated, with the exceptions of its bewilderment at Dita Beard's sudden appearance in a Denver hospital and one reference to "the President's counsel, James Dean" (the index gets it right). And it's a tribute to Sampson's writing that we find the accounting techniques which have made ITT's pursuit...
...conclusion, Sampson confesses to bewilderment at the effects of ITT and other multinational corporations--a bewilderment apparent in his insistence that the company is both a "maverick" and an organization that "takes the capitalist system to its logical limits," so that "for any ambitious businessman, it is an anticlimax to retreat back from those limits." There is no obvious reason not to believe both these statements: few organizations carry anything to its logical limits. ITT offers us a chance to study the workings of the profit motive in as pure a form as they are likely to assume. Like Gerrity...
...DELIVERING the goods, ITT and other multinationals have helped to bind the world into the single economic network social anaaysts have predicted for centuries--Sampson has a particularly good passage on the Americanization of ITT employees--and in so doing, these companies have helped bind the world in a tighter political network, as well. Chilean workers face the accumulated strength of American capital; at the same time, though Sampson doesn't stress this much, American capital faces the emerging strength of Chilean workers. For if it is true that ITT proposed to devote its American profits to defeating revolution...
Although it is excellent to have a giant's strength, it is tyrannous to use it like a giant, and a giant acting for himself can't use it any other way. By deepening our understanding of this truism, Sampson's book may hasten--in however slight a degree--the day when the people of the world assume the power their capital has built...