Super-Corporations: More Powerful than States?
Économie & Finance
Many commentators highlight the economic and political power of mega-corporations: their excessive market capitalisation, their capacity for influence and lobbying, tax optimisation, control of critical infrastructure, and their growing role in sectors linked to state sovereignty.
But perhaps the real novelty lies elsewhere. It lies in their cultural power, in their ability to shape the collective narrative.
Unprecedented economic, geopolitical and cultural power
Major technology companies now control critical infrastructure: the cloud, operating systems, digital platforms, data and artificial intelligence capabilities. In the financial sector, players such as BlackRock and Vanguard hold stakes in thousands of companies, thereby becoming structural shareholders in the global economy.
This power is also geopolitical. Critical infrastructure in the fields of space, cybersecurity and energy increasingly relies on public-private partnerships. The boundaries between private industrial capacity and strategic sovereignty are becoming blurred.
It is also a matter of taxation and regulation. Globalised companies have the capacity to optimise their tax arrangements and arbitrage between jurisdictions, which erodes tax bases. Added to this are lobbying and the growing involvement of large companies in the drafting of regulations.
But large technology companies are no longer content simply to produce goods or services. They now talk of general artificial intelligence, the end of work, a radical increase in life expectancy, space colonisation and even new mechanisms for income redistribution. They are creating visions of the future. Yet this sphere has historically been the preserve of states, major political ideologies or collective national projects.
Europe and its lack of vision
This is particularly evident in Europe. European social democracies remain extremely sophisticated systems of protection and redistribution. Yet they are finding it increasingly difficult to formulate narratives of transformation capable of rallying people collectively around a technological, industrial or strategic vision.
The prevailing rationale behind public policy centres on safeguarding existing gains, managing vulnerabilities and addressing inequalities. These essential functions come into conflict with the dynamics of technological and industrial disruption, which entail economic restructuring and the reallocation of capital, tasks and jobs.
Against this backdrop, mega-corporations are gradually filling the void left by governments that have become more cautious in their approach to risk, large-scale investment and strategic planning.
A power that thrives alongside states, not against them
However, this observation needs to be qualified.
On the one hand, mega-corporations do not thrive in opposition to states; they thrive alongside them. American innovation is based on close links between public research, energy policy, defence, financial markets and private capital. Behind the power of large American corporations lies the power of the United States itself.
Furthermore, social protection does not necessarily stand in the way of innovation and risk-taking. European societies do not merely redistribute wealth amongst insular groups. They provide comprehensive social security schemes which can encourage risk-taking and make it easier for disruptive technologies to be accepted.
The concept of the ‘super-company’ thus serves as a litmus test. It speaks less to the disappearance of states than to the differences in models of power between major economic regions. Perhaps the question is not one of the power of super-companies. It is one of our collective ability to define a desirable future and to mobilise the economic, political and cultural resources needed to build it.