We begin our discussion of transhumanism with its 2018 description from the World Economic Forum (WEF), “What is transhumanism and how does it affect you?“:[i]
The central premise of transhumanism is that biological evolution will eventually be overtaken by advances in genetic, wearable and implantable technologies that artificially expedite the evolutionary process…. The result is an iteration of Homo sapiens enhanced or augmented, but still fundamentally human….
Some distinguished scientists, such as Hans Moravec and Raymond Kurzweil, even advocate a posthuman condition: the end of humanity’s reliance on our congenital bodies by transforming “our frail version 1.0 human bodies into their far more durable and capable version 2.0 counterparts”.
Transhumanism is the political ideology promoted by the globalist elite in their quest for immortality. “Humanity 2.0” is the biological objective of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and stakeholder capitalism is its economic engine.
Klaus Schwab, the premier 21st-century humanitarian huckster, is selling stakeholder capitalism as the central feature of the Great Reset, WEF’s economic recovery plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Schwab is selling enslavement dressed up as freedom, with the infamous slogan “You will own nothing and be happy.” In reality, stakeholder capitalism is a return to the binary sociopolitical system of feudalism, where you will be an indentured serf who owns nothing because the elite own everything, including you.
The reader will remember that ownership is an ambivalent word as it relates to private property. Ideological Marxism rejects private property and promises that the people will own everything. Of course, the elite leadership deceitfully omit the essential operating principle: that the elite control the production and distribution of everything. So, the Big Lie of Marxism is public, not private, ownership; “the people” have no agency over that which they “own.” Whoever controls the production and distribution is functionally the owner.
On December 1, 2019, Klaus Schwab, founder of the WEF, posted an article on its website under the heading “Corporate Governance”: “Why we need the ‘Davos Manifesto’ for a better kind of capitalism.”[ii]
What kind of capitalism do we want? That may be the defining question of our era. If we want to sustain our economic system for future generations, we must answer it correctly.
Generally speaking, we have three models to choose from. The first is “shareholder capitalism,” embraced by most Western corporations, which holds that a corporation’s primary goal should be to maximize its profits. The second model is “state capitalism,” which entrusts the government with setting the direction of the economy and has risen to prominence in many emerging markets, not least China.
But, compared to these two options, the third has the most to recommend it. “Stakeholder capitalism,” a model I first proposed a half-century ago, positions private corporations as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges.
On December 2, 2019, Klaus Schwab posted a lofty description of stakeholder capitalism and its trustees in “The Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution“:[iii]
A. The purpose of a company is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation. In creating such value, a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders—employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large. The best way to understand and harmonize the divergent interests of all stakeholders is through a shared commitment to policies and decisions that strengthen the long-term prosperity of a company.
i. A company serves its customers by providing a value proposition that best meets their needs. It accepts and supports fair competition and a level playing field. It has zero tolerance for corruption. It keeps the digital ecosystem in which it operates reliable and trustworthy. It makes customers fully aware of the functionality of its products and services, including adverse implications or negative externalities.
ii. A company treats its people with dignity and respect. It honours diversity and strives for continuous improvements in working conditions and employee well-being. In a world of rapid change, a company fosters continued employability through ongoing upskilling and reskilling.
iii. A company considers its suppliers as true partners in value creation. It provides a fair chance to new market entrants. It integrates respect for human rights into the entire supply chain.
iv. A company serves society at large through its activities, supports the communities in which it works, and pays its fair share of taxes. It ensures the safe, ethical and efficient use of data. It acts as a steward of the environmental and material universe for future generations. It consciously protects our biosphere and champions a circular, shared and regenerative economy. It continuously expands the frontiers of knowledge, innovation and technology to improve people’s well-being.
v. A company provides its shareholders with a return on investment that takes into account the incurred entrepreneurial risks and the need for continuous innovation and sustained investments. It responsibly manages near-term, medium-term and long-term value creation in pursuit of sustainable shareholder returns that do not sacrifice the future for the present.
B. A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfils human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system. Performance must be measured not only on the return to shareholders, but also on how it achieves its environmental, social and good governance objectives. Executive remuneration should reflect stakeholder responsibility.
C. A company that has a multinational scope of activities not only serves all those stakeholders who are directly engaged, but acts itself as a stakeholder—together with governments and civil society—of our global future. Corporate global citizenship requires a company to harness its core competencies, its entrepreneurship, skills and relevant resources in collaborative efforts with other companies and stakeholders to improve the state of the world.
The Davos Manifesto 2020 is an advertorial masterpiece of deceit. It presents the universal purpose of a company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but it does not define the Revolution or its global implications. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. It is a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), Web3, blockchain, 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies.
A bit of history is helpful. The steam engine launched the initial Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, moving industry from hand tools to machines. Electricity launched the Second Industrial Revolution, called the Technological Revolution, which brought mass production to industry. The Third Industrial Revolution, called the Digital Revolution, introduced computer technology in the 1950s. Each industrial revolution brought seismic social changes. So, what are and will be the social changes brought by the 4IR?
Klaus Schwab presented his perspective in 2016, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, and how to respond“:[iv]
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.
The most notable social change announced by Klaus Schwab is in the size and scope of the 4IR, which requires a unified planetary response provided by the private corporate “trustees of society.” Today, in 2024, the WEF describes itself and its mission on its website:[v]
The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests. The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.
Our activities are shaped by a unique institutional culture founded on the stakeholder theory, which asserts that an organization is accountable to all parts of a society. The institution carefully blends and balances the best of many kinds of organizations, from both the public and private sectors, international organizations and academic institutions.
We believe that progress happens by bringing people together from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.
What is the foundational “stakeholder theory” that distinguishes the WEF’s plan for positive change, and how does it differ from traditional shareholder capitalism? First, the reader will note the similarity between the word shareholderand stakeholder. Many people won’t notice the difference, and will assume the WEF is supporting an improved capitalist system that includes upward mobility and a robust middle class, rather than the binary feudal replacement ideology the WEF actually supports. This is the same ambiguity that duped voters into assuming Obama’s hope andchange were improvements on our capitalist society, not the Marxist ideology he planned to put in place.
Stakeholder capitalism distinguishes itself from shareholder capitalism in both form and content. The words stakeholder and shareholder, different by only two letters, are intentionally confusing. They are worlds apart. In shareholder capitalism the investor invests assets in a company by purchasing shares of ownership in that company. The shareholder is a stockholder and understands the risks and rewards of his capital investment.
Stakeholder capitalism is global in form and social in content. The Stakeholder Model is a marketing masterpiece, an emotional appeal to psychological yearnings for purpose, recognition, and union. It identifies people and planet as the central stakeholders. The planet is the center of the interconnected global economic system, and all decisions made must support the health of the planet. The well-being of both people and the planet is the interconnected center of business.
The Davos Agenda 2021,[vi] presented by the WEF, includes an article posted on the WEF website, “What is stakeholder capitalism?“[vii] It identifies four main stakeholders, with a stunningly sophomoric assumption that since the four main stakeholders consist of people who make use of the planet, they will necessarily seek to optimize the well-being of everyone and also the well-being of the environment:
Stakeholder capitalism is a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long-term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large….
To ensure that both people and the planet prosper, four key stakeholders play a crucial role. They are: governments (of countries, states, and local communities); civil-society (from unions to NGOs, from schools and universities to action groups); companies (constituting the private sector, whether freelancers or large multinational companies); and the international community (consisting of international organizations such as the UN as well as regional organizations such as the European Union or ASEAN).
All these stakeholders crucially consist of people and make use of the planet. It is no surprise, then, that they should want to optimize the well-being of all of us as well as that of the environment. But equally, it should be clear they have specific objectives that make them distinct organisms in the first place.
- Governments focus on creating the greatest possibly prosperity for the greatest number of people.
- Civil society exists to advance the interest of its constituents and to give a meaning or purpose to its members.
- Companies aim to generate an economic surplus, measurable in profits in the short run, and long-term value creation in the long run.
- And the overarching goal for the international community is to preserve peace….
The model is simple, but it immediately reveals why shareholder primacy and state capitalism lead to suboptimal outcomes: They focus on the more granular and exclusive objectives of profits or prosperity in a particular company or country rather than the well-being of all people and the planet as a whole.
American scholar Dr. Michael Rectenwald provides a brilliant analysis of the humanitarian hoax of the Great Reset in his November 7, 2021, article, “What Is the Great Reset?“[viii] Excerpts from the article expose the Big Lies, word obfuscation, and disguised intent of Schwab’s Stakeholder Theory:
The WEF is the source for the stakeholder and public-private partnership rhetoric and policies embraced by governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, and international governance bodies worldwide. Public-private partnerships have played a key role in the response to the covid crisis and are instrumental in the response to the supposed climate change crisis….
On June 13, 2019, the WEF signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations (UN) to form a partnership centered on advancing the UN “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The WEF published the “United Nations–World Economic Forum Strategic Partnership Framework for the 2030 Agenda” shortly thereafter. The WEF promised to help “finance” the UN’s climate change agenda. The framework also commits the WEF to helping the UN “meet the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” including providing assets and expertise for “digital governance.” Agenda 2030 appears to have been tailor-made to accommodate the UN-WEF partnership. It adopts the stakeholder concept introduced by Schwab decades before. The word “stakeholders” is used no less than thirteen times in the 2030 resolution. The Great Reset, then, may be understood, in part, as the WEF’s contribution to Agenda 2030….
While approved corporate stakeholders are not necessarily monopolies, the tendency of the Great Reset is toward monopolization—vesting as much control over production and distribution in these favored corporations as possible, while eliminating industries and producers deemed either unnecessary or inimical. To bring this reset about, “every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,” writes the authoritarian Schwab….
The Great Reset combines resets in all conceivable domains of human life: economic, environmental, geopolitical, governmental, industrial, technological, social, and individual….
Stakeholder capitalism includes not only corporate responses to ecological issues such as climate change, “but also rethinking their [corporations’] commitments to already-vulnerable communities within their ecosystems.” This is the “social justice” aspect of stakeholder capitalism and the Great Reset. Governments, banks, and asset managers use the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) index to squeeze non-woke players out of the market. The ESG index is essentially a social credit score for rating corporations. The collectivist planners drive ownership and control of production away from the non-compliant.
One of the WEF’s many “strategic partners,” BlackRock, Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, is solidly behind the stakeholder model of the Great Reset program. In a 2021 letter to CEOs, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink declared that “climate risk is investment risk,” and “the creation of sustainable index investments has enabled a massive acceleration of capital towards companies better prepared to address climate risk.” Fink states that the pandemic accelerated the flow of funds toward sustainable investments:
We have long believed that our clients, as shareholders in your company, will benefit if you can create enduring, sustainable value for all of your stakeholders…. As more and more investors choose to tilt their investments towards sustainability-focused companies, the tectonic shift we are seeing will accelerate further. And because this will have such a dramatic impact on how capital is allocated, every management team and board will need to consider how this will impact their company’s stock.
Fink’s letter is more than a report to CEOs. It is an implicit threat. Meanwhile, investment according to the ESG index and other financial tools is gaining the force of law in the U.S., with the Biden administration’s recent “U.S. Climate-Related Financial Risk: Executive Order 14030” [which removes barriers to considering ESG factors in retirement plan investments].
Rectenwald explains that Schwab’s reference to “neoliberalism” is a euphemism for the free market:
That is, “neoliberalism” refers to what is otherwise known as the free market. Stakeholder capitalism is thus opposed to the free enterprise system. It means not only corporate cooperation with the state and NGOs but also vastly increased government intervention in the economy…. Schwab and company erect the straw man of neoliberalism as the source of our economic woes….
Unsurprisingly, stakeholder capitalism has been seen as a new approach to achieving socialism, even by socialists. As I’ve suggested, stakeholder capitalism tends toward “corporate socialism,” or “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” two ways of understanding the overall economics of the Great Reset.
The Great Reset represents the development of the Chinese system in the West, only in reverse. Whereas the Chinese political class began with a socialist political system and introduced privately held for-profit production later, the West began with a degree of capitalism and is implementing a socialist political system now. It’s as if the Western oligarchy looked to the “socialism” on display in China, and said, “yes, we want it.” This Chinese-style system includes vastly increased state intervention in the economy on the one hand, and the kind of authoritarian measures that the Chinese government uses to control the population, on the other….
The corporate stakeholder model of the Great Reset spills into its governance and geopolitical model: states and favored corporations in “public-private partnerships” in control of governance. The configuration yields a corporate-state hybrid largely unaccountable to the constituents of national governments….
This usurpation has led political scientist Ivan Wecke to call the WEF’s governmental redesign of the world system “a corporate takeover of global governance.”
This is true, but the WEF model also represents the governmentalization of private industry. Under Schwab’s stakeholder capitalism and the multistakeholder governance model, governance is not only increasingly privatized, but also and more importantly, corporations are deputized as major additions to governments and intergovernmental bodies. The state is thereby extended, enhanced, and augmented by the addition of enormous corporate assets. These include funding directed at “sustainable development” to the exclusion of the non-compliant, as well as the use of Big Data, AI, and 5G to monitor and control citizens. In the case of the covid vaccine regime, the state grants Big Pharma monopoly protection and indemnity from liability in exchange for a vehicle to expand its powers of coercion. As such, corporate stakeholders become what I have called “governmentalities”—otherwise “private” organizations wielded as state apparatuses, with no obligation to answer to pesky constituents. Since these corporations are multinational, the state essentially becomes global, whether or not a “one-world government” is ever formalized.
As if the economic and governmental resets were not dramatic enough, the technological reset reads like a dystopic sci-fi novel. It is based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)…. The significance of Schwab’s and the WEF’s take on the new technological revolution is the attempt to harness it to a particular end, presumably “a fairer, greener future.” …
In short, 4IR technologies subject human beings to a technological management that makes surveillance by the NSA look like child’s play. And Schwab lauds developments that connect brains directly to the cloud and enable the “data mining” of thought and memory, a technological mastery over decision-making that threatens autonomy and undermines any semblance of free will. The 4IR accelerates the merging of humans and machines, resulting in a world in which all information, including genetic information, is shared, and every action, thought, and unconscious motivation is known, predicted, and possibly even precluded. Naturally, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World comes to mind. Yet Schwab touts brain-cloud interfaces as enhancements, as vast improvements over standard human intelligence.
Unless taken out of the hands of corporate-socialist technocrats, the 4IR will constitute a virtual, inescapable prison of body and mind….
In partnership with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the legacy media, national and international health agencies, and compliant populations, hitherto “democratic” Western states are being transformed into totalitarian regimes modeled after China, seemingly overnight….
The Great Reset, then, is not a conspiracy theory; it is an open, avowed, and planned project, and it is well underway.
Like Karl Marx, Klaus Schwab identifies capitalism as the source of human suffering and economic hardship. Schwab’s solution, stakeholder capitalism, is a fancy word for collectivism that goes far beyond other species of Marxist collectivism.
Schwab paints lipstick on the familiar Marxist pig and expands it to unprecedented planetary proportions. Stakeholder capitalism is the blitzkrieg of globalism’s war campaign designed to transform the world’s economic structures and enslave the world’s population.
Stakeholder capitalism rejects private property, meritocracy, and shareholder capitalism’s free-market economic system. It replaces them with corporate socialism and Environmental, Social, and Governance scoring as its social/monetary system.
Klaus Schwab is the consummate huckster selling one-world government to a trusting and fearful public, presenting it as the solution to the seismic social changes being brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Modeled on the totalitarian system of the CCP, stakeholder capitalism is the perfect humanitarian hoax for eliminating any and all individual agency.
Stakeholder theory, like Marxist Critical Theory, operates on the Hegelian dialectical model. Its foundational hypothesis is the Big Lie of man-made climate change. The Earth’s climate has fluctuated naturally throughout its history. The man-made problem of pollution must be addressed, but pollution must never be confused with the fiction of man-made climate change. That term is a political narrative designed for seismic social change, the redistribution of wealth, and the imposition of globalism’s planetary managerial Unistate.
The Big Lie of the COVID-19 pandemic was similarly exploited to advance stakeholder capitalism. Rectenwald explained how “private” corporations were deputized as extensions of government and intergovernmental bodies. So, Big Pharma, protected by total indemnification from liability in the COVID “vaccine” debacle, became a “governmentality,” to use Rectenwald’s coined word, and a powerful vehicle for increasing global centralized control. Big Pharma and its representatives in government were empowered to interpret the social aspect of stakeholder capitalism. They determined what was “best” for society, which, of course, enriched Big Pharma and expanded the government’s powers of coercion.
The humanitarian hoax of COVID-19, previously discussed in the Introduction and Chapters 2, 4, and 6, terrified people into surrendering their freedoms to stakeholder capitalists for deceitful promises of health and safety. Instead of health and safety, they got more government control, which continues to expand with “vaccine” regimens that now include mRNA jabs for babies.
Klaus Schwab is selling feudalism to the public as stakeholder capitalism. His marketing scheme is an Orwellian perversion of the word “stake.” To have a stake in something means to have an interest or share in a business, a situation, or a system. In shareholder capitalism, the shareholder has a financial stake in the business. In stakeholder capitalism, the only stakeholders who benefit are the managerial elite, because the elite always and only take care of the elite.
Stakeholder capitalism’s deceitful hypothesis leads to its equally dishonest conclusion: that stakeholder capitalism led by global corporations will solve the world’s problems and bring peace on earth. It most assuredly will not.
[i] What is transhumanism and how does it affect you?; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/transhumanism-advances-in-technology-could-already-put-evolution-into-hyperdrive-but-should-they/
[ii] Why we need the ‘Davos Manifesto’ for a better kind of capitalism; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/why-we-need-the-davos-manifesto-for-better-kind-of-capitalism/
[iii] The Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-2020-the-universal-purpose-of-a-company-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/
[iv] The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, and how to respond; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/
[v] website; https://www.weforum.org/about/world-economic-forum
[vi] Davos Agenda 2021; https://www.weforum.org/events/the-davos-agenda-2021/
[vii] What is stakeholder capitalism?; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/klaus-schwab-on-what-is-stakeholder-capitalism-history-relevance/
[viii] What Is the Great Reset?; https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/great-reset-essays-interviews/what-is-the-great-reset
*Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier––Reality Is is available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats on barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, and directly from Ingram in paperback.
