"Conglomerates" (1973) Summary and Analysis

The multinational conglomerate (corporation) is an unfettered beast without loyalties to any state or group, save its stockholders, Vidal says after reading Anthony Sampson's The Sovereign State of ITT. The author "views with alarm the way these nomadic holding companies [such as International Telephone and Telegraph] have transformed themselves into sovereign states able to treat with nation states from a position of strength," Vidal says. Created by Virgin Islander Sosthenes Behn in 1928, ITT benefited from a takeover by dictator Juan Peron; Behn later did profitable business with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

ITT holdings included Avis Cars, Sheraton Hotels, Levitt towns, and The Hartford, then the third largest insurance company in the world because, as Vidal notes, "cash in-flow is very important for a business which is in the business not of making things but of making money...