Product Description

A devastating indictment of the corruption at the heart of the British State by one of our most popular media figures. George Monbiot made his name exposing the corruption of foreign governments: now he turns his keen eye on Britain. In the most explosive book on British politics of the new decade, Monbiot uncovers what many have suspected but few have been able to prove: that corporations have become so powerful they now threaten the foundations of democratic government. Many of the stories George Monbiot recounts have never been told before, and they could scarcely be more embarrassing to a government that claims to act on behalf of all of us. Some are - or should be - resigning matters. Effectively, the British government has collaborated in its own redundancy, by ceding power to international bodies controlled by corporations. Captive State highlights the long term threat to our society and ultimately shows us ways in which we can hope to withstand the might of big business.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49570 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 430 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
If both George Monbiot's Captive State and Naomi Klein's No Logo are the two Zeitgeist books of the beginning of the 21st century, then it is good old-fashioned late-20th century capitalism that has put them there. While Klein investigates how the counter-culture has been bought out by big business, Monbiot takes a close look at how this green and pleasant isle has been delivered into unaccountable corporate control with disastrous results for local communities and for democracy itself. The project of investigating this process is vast and strewn with problems, not least that a great deal of the material Monbiot needed was not in the public domain. Thus, the book itself is the result of "stargazing on a cloudy night": an impassioned attempt to understand what stellar corporate influence is brought to bear on which governmental constellation before the clouds close over again. Depressingly, he demonstrates how New Labour has smoothly transitioned from anti-corporate opposition to big business bedfellow. Like Klein, Monbiot celebrates grassroots action, but his local heroes are more likely to be drawing up battle lines in Skye, rather than Seattle. In his evocative dealings with those at the rump end of corporate mismanagement and greed, the sense of betrayal is palpable, and Captive State can be seen as a warning shot across New Labour's bows. The devil, though, is in the details. Anonymous brown paper parcels arrive full of classified documents and Monbiot is to be applauded for bringing together a wealth of material and rendering it intelligible and intelligent, if sometimes he doesn't shy away from big theatrical deliveries, especially at the end of chapters. Ironically, it seems from reading Captive State that one of the victims of the corporate infiltration of the government is choice as well as voice. Whereas some resistance has come from consumer power--for, as Monbiot reminds us, the things that join us together are the things we are sold, he goes on to make the pertinent point that consumer power is diluted when choice is restricted to a local superstore or one hospital on the edge of town. Monbiot asks the right questions, but his answers remain elusive and caught up in a foggy democratic rhetoric that is less effective and inspiring than the tales of local activists clogging up the system that was supposed to work for them in the first place. Captive State is the first big ideas book of this decade. Let's hope it goes out of date before the next. --Fiona Buckland

About the Author
George Monbiot has been named by the Evening Standard as one of the twenty-five most influential people in Britain and by the Independent on Sunday as one of the forty international prophets of the twenty-first century. He is the author of the investigative travel books, Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. He writes a column for the Guardian and is Honorary Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Keele, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Environmental Science, University of East London.

Customer Reviews

A book everyone in the country should read
Essential reading for residents of the UK. Using real life examples of exploitation and deception, Monbiot unsparingly illustrates how the government is by-and-large more interested in serving its own needs and those of the corporations that support it than those of the British people and environment. The stories he uncovers are truly shocking and disturbing, and detail very worrying levels of corruption, apathy and corporate control in politics today.

Good grief . . .
I read this book in one sitting, completely transfixed - not so much at the greed of the businesses and corporations concerned (which one takes as a given) as the complicity of government officials in nuturing it. Having read it as I did a day after going through Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" I found myself slowly losing the will to live...

"Captive State," throroughly researched, well-written, and engaging, leads me to conclude that we are not far off the sort of lifestyle grimly portrayed by the likes of Orwell - only it won't be the State whose control we're under, but rather the multinationals. Everything needs to make a profit - our taxes, it seems, are not intended to enhance our quality of life but to assist in "driving commerce forward", "expanding into new markets" and other supercilious corporate-speak. For shame!

I held back one star because I was expecting a bit more from Monbiot as to how we, the Great Unwashed, can turn this horrible juggernaut around. There seems little point in voting for a change in government (he points out that New Labour has actually lowered the corporate tax rate - Maggie Thatcher would no doubt approve), and changing our habits as consumers means in most cases merely shifting our credit card bills from one set of greedy ogres to another.

Corporations certainly have an important role to play in a modern society, and are a necessary evil of any free enterprise system; it would seem governments have taken advantage of voter apathy and couch-potato behaviour to let them ride roughshod over the world.

I hope Mr. Monbiot will continue to enlighten us with further relevations in future books.

Should be of interest to anyone who believes in democracy
This is an interesting book for anyone who believes that UK democracy is running smoothly. It should be (but I am sure won't be) of particular interest to the eurosceptics who are so vehemently opposed to any 'loss of sovereignty'. This book demonstrates that an enormous of amount of sovereignty has already been ceded to corporate interests (both US and European).