Abstract

While the rise of a globalist bloc in the field of transnational historical materialism continues to become substantiated (via capital flows, historical materialism, interlocking directorates), this research adds evidence from the perspective of rhetorical criticism, based in an ideological rhetorical materialist critique. In the focus of this research is the superstructural position of the World Economic Forum (WEF) as an ideational fulcrum for the transnational capitalist class (TCC) for hegemonic project consensus building. Using economic documents from the WEF’s proposed Gross Domestic Product replacement composite index, I conduct rhetorical analysis and ideological criticism asking two questions: Does the WEF rhetorically constitute a policy group for the Globalist Bloc? If so, what are the hegemonic ideologies promulgated by such a body. As materializes rhetorically, the documents simultaneously exhibit that the WEF is a space for consensus building and project planning amongst the TCC. What is revealed by the text is that the TCC (immanent to the WEF) is self-conscious and is monitoring global civil society’s frustrations, responding to these frustrations in a rather sophisticated manner, and implementing its own desired agenda through the governments of the world via surface level hegemonic actions elucidated in the discourse. In the final steps of the ideological criticism, we can identify that the ideologies of the growth paradigm and ecological modernization are integral to the ideological hub of the transnational historic bloc’s superstructure.