Corporations Are Gonna Get Your Mama.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew

I 'm not big on anthologies. I don't like the grab-bag approach, the shifts in tone and style, the repetition of examples and arguments. I much prefer a single author tackling a major subject from beginning to end, with a logical argument and a seamless style.

Alas, when it comes to one of the most important issues of our day--the overarching power of global corporations--no one author seems up to the task.

So I sat down with two new anthologies on the subject, Corporations Are Gonna Get Your Mama, edited by Kevin Danaher (Common Courage) and The Case Against the Global Economy, edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (Sierra Club Books).

Despite the inherent flaws of the species, these anthologies are worth reading. The Danaher book is the breezier of the two. It features short chapters from some of the leading leftwing thinkers in the field, including Ralph Nader, Richard Barnet, John Cavanagh, Robin Broad, Jerry Mander, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Jeremy Rifkin.

The introduction by Noam Chomsky sets the ideological framework. Chomsky notes that the vast majority of the American public already understands that big business has too much power. But this hasn't changed the way the mainstream media cover the issue. As Chomsky tartly observes, "The new broadened spectrum of responsible debate now extends from those who believe that the rulers of the private economy should ruthlessly seek profit, to the other extreme, where it is felt that they should be more benevolent autocrats."

A few other contributors write with particular zest. I enjoyed Kirkpatrick Sale's diagnosis. He says our society is suffering from "technophilia," "consumptivitis," and "giantism."

But I cringed when Ralph Nader and Russell Mokhiber, just five pages apart, both said that societies "rot from the top down." More attentive editing would have spared me that double dosage of cliche. (A few too many typos--including one on the second line of the introduction--also get in the way of the presentation.)

Still, Corporations Are Gonna Get Your Mama gives you all the facts you need about runaway corporate power: the maldistribution of wealth and income; corporate welfare; corporate crime; the failures of GATT, NAFTA, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund; the assault on the environment; and the tawdry triumph of technology.

And best of all, it doesn't content itself with...