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The Great Turning
YES! Magazine
David C. Korten

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The Sun interviews David Korten September 2007

"Living Wealth"
YES! Fall 2007

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The Great Turning
When Corporations Rule the World
The Post-Corporate World
Globalizing Civil Society
Getting to the 21st Century

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In Loving Memory
Donella H. Meadows (1941-2001)
The Global Citizen

PCDForum Books in Print

In The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely a contemporary manifestation of what he calls “Empire”: the organization of society by hierarchies of domination grounded in violent chauvinisms of race, gender, religion, nationality, language, and class. The result has been the same for 5,000 years, fortune for the few and misery for the many. Increasingly destructive of children, family, community, and nature, the way of Empire is leading to environmental and social collapse. The Great Turning makes the case that we humans are a choice making species that at this defining moment faces both the opportunity and the imperative to turn a potentially terminal crisis into an epic opportunity to bring forth a new era of Earth Community grounded in the life-affirming cultural values shared by most all the world’s people and eloquently articulated in the Earth Charter.

A modern classic, When Corporations Rule the World, issues a wake up call to people everywhere. Some call it the "bible" of the international protest movement against corporate globalization. It describes how the processes of economic globalization, deregulation, and privatization, have transferred the power to set social, economic, and political priorities from people, communities, and national governments to global financial institutions and corporations that place the needs of money ahead of the needs of people and the environment. The result is a global crisis in which the few become wealthy beyond imagination while the many live in dehumanizing poverty and desperation, critical life support systems fail, and the social fabric disintegrates.  Originally released in 1995, the classic edition has sold more than 90,000 copies in thirteen languages.

The Second Edition of When Corporations Rule the World, released in April 2001, updates and expands the original edition. It is more accessible to the general reader in language and price. Five new chapters trace the further deepening of the destructive forces of corporate globalization and document the emergence the citizen protest movement dedicated to democracy, economic justice, and environmental sustainability. It concludes that the power and legitimacy of the institutions of the global economy rest on the foundation of a falsified culture. It finds new reasons for hope in both the growing citizen resistance and the evidence of an awakening of cultural consciousness that is preparing the way for deep transformational change. 

Protest to stall corporate globalization's assault against democracy, community, and the natural environment is essential. Yet protest alone is a losing strategy. Those seeking to create a world that works for the whole of life must work toward consensus on proactive agendas grounded in the principles of healthy living systems. This is the underlying premise of The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, the visionary sequel to When Corporations Rule the World.

The world is headed toward deepening poverty and environmental destruction not for lack of money, but because the power to set human priorities resides with deeply flawed institutions. A more hopeful human future depends on restoring control to people and communities control of the resources on which their livelihoods depend. Globalizing Civil Society: Reclaiming Our Right to Power is a pamphlet size condensation of the basic arguments of When Corporations Rule World.

Driven by the imperatives of economic growth, humanity's dominant institutions are destroying the resources on which all life depends and intensifying the competition between rich and poor for what remains. Because these institutions lack the capacity for self-transformation, change necessarily depends on the voluntary action of people with the courage and freedom to work outside the framework of conventional institutional financial and political rewards. Published in 1990, Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda presents the ideas that launched the PCDForum.  

[ Home ] [ The Great Turning ] [ When Corporations Rule the World ] [ The Post-Corporate World ] [ Globalizing Civil Society ] [ Getting to the 21st Century ]