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Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management
A highly-readable,wide-ranging study of the Trilateral Commission and the worldwide strategies of trilateralism. It demystifies national and international events, power, propaganada, and policy making from World War II through the sixties and seventies and into the eighties.
605 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1980
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November 13, 2025
Holly Sklar’s Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (1980) stands as a defining text in the critical study of transnational elites and global governance. Compiled at a moment of profound political and economic transformation, the volume brings together a diverse array of scholars, journalists, and political activists to examine the origins, ideology, and influence of the Trilateral Commission—an organization founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski to promote coordination among the political and economic elites of North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Sklar’s collection remains one of the most comprehensive and empirically grounded critiques of the emerging global management ethos that characterized late twentieth-century capitalism.
The book’s central thesis, articulated most clearly in Sklar’s introduction and commentary, is that the Trilateral Commission represents a conscious effort by Western elites to reassert control over an increasingly unstable global system. Following the political upheavals of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, the oil shocks of the early 1970s, and the erosion of U.S. economic primacy, the Commission emerged as a vehicle for the rationalization and coordination of elite interests across the industrialized world. Its members—drawn from multinational corporations, major banks, governmental institutions, and academia—sought to manage what they perceived as a “crisis of democracy” and to design a new global order conducive to stability, profitability, and technocratic governance.
Sklar’s editorial framing situates the Commission within the broader trajectory of American liberal internationalism, but with a critical emphasis on its corporate and technocratic dimensions. Drawing upon and extending the insights of C. Wright Mills, William Domhoff, and other power-structure theorists, Sklar argues that the Trilateral Commission is best understood as part of a “transnational capitalist class” whose shared interests transcend national boundaries. The Commission’s project, she contends, is not merely to preserve U.S. hegemony but to institutionalize a new form of global governance in which elite consensus replaces democratic contestation. In this respect, the book anticipates later critical theories of globalization that examine how corporate elites shape global policy networks and economic regimes.
The collection is organized thematically, with contributions analyzing the Commission’s composition, ideology, and policy influence. Several essays dissect its membership networks, demonstrating the dense interlocks among corporate boards, universities, media organizations, and government agencies. Others focus on the intellectual foundations of “trilateralism” as a governing philosophy—an ideology that privileges managerial efficiency, moderation, and international cooperation over mass mobilization and popular participation. The contributors argue that this ideology serves to legitimate an unequal global order by presenting elite coordination as technocratic necessity rather than political choice.
One of the most discussed elements of the volume is its critical engagement with The Crisis of Democracy (1975), the Trilateral Commission report authored by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. Sklar and her collaborators interpret that text as emblematic of the Commission’s underlying worldview: a belief that democratic participation had become excessive, threatening social stability and elite manageability. In Sklar’s analysis, this “crisis” narrative provided ideological justification for a rollback of the democratic gains of the 1960s, the disciplining of labor movements, and the consolidation of corporate power under the guise of restoring governability.
The book’s empirical depth is notable. Drawing on Commission publications, membership rosters, and financial disclosures, the contributors map the institutional reach of trilateral networks into the highest echelons of government and business. Figures such as Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Henry Kissinger feature prominently, illustrating the permeability between the Commission’s private deliberations and the formulation of U.S. foreign policy during the late 1970s. Through these case studies, the volume demonstrates how trilateral ideology informed approaches to economic globalization, North–South relations, and energy policy.
Methodologically, Trilateralism exemplifies a critical-political sociology that combines empirical rigor with a normative critique of capitalist democracy. The contributors draw from Marxist, neo-Gramscian, and dependency-theory perspectives, situating the Commission within the broader dynamics of capitalist crisis management and imperial restructuring. The book’s tone is unapologetically oppositional, yet its argumentation remains grounded in documentary evidence rather than speculative conspiracy. Sklar’s editorial work ensures a balance between analytical depth and political urgency, producing a volume that is both scholarly and polemical in the best sense of critical inquiry.
Critically, some readers have challenged the volume’s interpretive lens for overstating the coherence and intentionality of elite coordination. Later historians and international-relations theorists have argued that the Trilateral Commission was less an omnipotent planning body than a forum for consensus-building among elites facing shared uncertainties. Nonetheless, even if the Commission’s direct policy influence was limited, Sklar’s broader insight—that transnational elites actively shape the ideological and institutional parameters of global governance—remains profoundly relevant.
From a historiographical perspective, Trilateralism occupies an important place in the literature on U.S. hegemony and elite power. It complements the work of scholars such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Susan George in linking global economic restructuring to the reassertion of capitalist control after the social crises of the postwar era. Moreover, its analysis of the interplay between private institutions and public policy anticipated later studies of neoliberal globalization, including those by David Harvey and Stephen Gill.
Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management is a seminal contribution to the critical study of global elites and the sociology of power. Holly Sklar and her contributors expose the mechanisms through which elite networks seek to manage political dissent, shape global policy, and perpetuate capitalist hegemony under the banner of international cooperation. Though written in the political idiom of the late 1970s, the book’s insights resonate strongly in an age of transnational governance and technocratic politics. It remains indispensable reading for scholars of international relations, political economy, and the enduring question of who governs the global order.
GPT
The book’s central thesis, articulated most clearly in Sklar’s introduction and commentary, is that the Trilateral Commission represents a conscious effort by Western elites to reassert control over an increasingly unstable global system. Following the political upheavals of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, the oil shocks of the early 1970s, and the erosion of U.S. economic primacy, the Commission emerged as a vehicle for the rationalization and coordination of elite interests across the industrialized world. Its members—drawn from multinational corporations, major banks, governmental institutions, and academia—sought to manage what they perceived as a “crisis of democracy” and to design a new global order conducive to stability, profitability, and technocratic governance.
Sklar’s editorial framing situates the Commission within the broader trajectory of American liberal internationalism, but with a critical emphasis on its corporate and technocratic dimensions. Drawing upon and extending the insights of C. Wright Mills, William Domhoff, and other power-structure theorists, Sklar argues that the Trilateral Commission is best understood as part of a “transnational capitalist class” whose shared interests transcend national boundaries. The Commission’s project, she contends, is not merely to preserve U.S. hegemony but to institutionalize a new form of global governance in which elite consensus replaces democratic contestation. In this respect, the book anticipates later critical theories of globalization that examine how corporate elites shape global policy networks and economic regimes.
The collection is organized thematically, with contributions analyzing the Commission’s composition, ideology, and policy influence. Several essays dissect its membership networks, demonstrating the dense interlocks among corporate boards, universities, media organizations, and government agencies. Others focus on the intellectual foundations of “trilateralism” as a governing philosophy—an ideology that privileges managerial efficiency, moderation, and international cooperation over mass mobilization and popular participation. The contributors argue that this ideology serves to legitimate an unequal global order by presenting elite coordination as technocratic necessity rather than political choice.
One of the most discussed elements of the volume is its critical engagement with The Crisis of Democracy (1975), the Trilateral Commission report authored by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. Sklar and her collaborators interpret that text as emblematic of the Commission’s underlying worldview: a belief that democratic participation had become excessive, threatening social stability and elite manageability. In Sklar’s analysis, this “crisis” narrative provided ideological justification for a rollback of the democratic gains of the 1960s, the disciplining of labor movements, and the consolidation of corporate power under the guise of restoring governability.
The book’s empirical depth is notable. Drawing on Commission publications, membership rosters, and financial disclosures, the contributors map the institutional reach of trilateral networks into the highest echelons of government and business. Figures such as Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Henry Kissinger feature prominently, illustrating the permeability between the Commission’s private deliberations and the formulation of U.S. foreign policy during the late 1970s. Through these case studies, the volume demonstrates how trilateral ideology informed approaches to economic globalization, North–South relations, and energy policy.
Methodologically, Trilateralism exemplifies a critical-political sociology that combines empirical rigor with a normative critique of capitalist democracy. The contributors draw from Marxist, neo-Gramscian, and dependency-theory perspectives, situating the Commission within the broader dynamics of capitalist crisis management and imperial restructuring. The book’s tone is unapologetically oppositional, yet its argumentation remains grounded in documentary evidence rather than speculative conspiracy. Sklar’s editorial work ensures a balance between analytical depth and political urgency, producing a volume that is both scholarly and polemical in the best sense of critical inquiry.
Critically, some readers have challenged the volume’s interpretive lens for overstating the coherence and intentionality of elite coordination. Later historians and international-relations theorists have argued that the Trilateral Commission was less an omnipotent planning body than a forum for consensus-building among elites facing shared uncertainties. Nonetheless, even if the Commission’s direct policy influence was limited, Sklar’s broader insight—that transnational elites actively shape the ideological and institutional parameters of global governance—remains profoundly relevant.
From a historiographical perspective, Trilateralism occupies an important place in the literature on U.S. hegemony and elite power. It complements the work of scholars such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Susan George in linking global economic restructuring to the reassertion of capitalist control after the social crises of the postwar era. Moreover, its analysis of the interplay between private institutions and public policy anticipated later studies of neoliberal globalization, including those by David Harvey and Stephen Gill.
Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management is a seminal contribution to the critical study of global elites and the sociology of power. Holly Sklar and her contributors expose the mechanisms through which elite networks seek to manage political dissent, shape global policy, and perpetuate capitalist hegemony under the banner of international cooperation. Though written in the political idiom of the late 1970s, the book’s insights resonate strongly in an age of transnational governance and technocratic politics. It remains indispensable reading for scholars of international relations, political economy, and the enduring question of who governs the global order.
GPT
January 20, 2009
My thesis bible...
March 3, 2017
Ha, ha — this book, written as a stinging indictment and a forced attempt at transparency gives you, guess what, an insider's look at the "Good Guys"!
Yes, that's right folks: comparatively speaking, this organization, formed by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski as a direct response to the "Nixon shocks" (taking us off the gold standard, thwarting attempts to grasp there was an economically-reaching multinational world out there, etc.) with all their warts and awkward phrasing and even gross indifference to human life and unions and democracy ... they're more out in the open than the oligarchs in Russia, the CPC regime in China, and the alt-right nuts and god-knows-what contingents that have "overlapped" enough to give us President Smurf!
Yup, you betcha: you won't even hear of secretive meetings amongst these folks, any more than you would 'bout those bound by Omertà!
Sayonara, hope! Best to grab what infrastructure you can, and pray not everyone's ground will shift under everyone's feet.
(Still ... knowing about the prongs of the purposes of Capitalism, between its "accumulation" and "legitimation" functions, help ya navigate, sorta, what way up there people are thinkin'!)
This book came out in 1980, and is an exemplary effort (you can tell because it makes your head spin from trying to "adjust," not unlike doing 1600m as a run when you've been used to 100-200m!).
Thank goodness for Powell's! Tough shit about your "lefty-saints" who clogged the drains, and missed the point: all life is as-lived shit! They bummed you out for nothin'.
Don't believe in geopolitical stage(s)? Good luck tryin' to stay afloat!
Yes, that's right folks: comparatively speaking, this organization, formed by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski as a direct response to the "Nixon shocks" (taking us off the gold standard, thwarting attempts to grasp there was an economically-reaching multinational world out there, etc.) with all their warts and awkward phrasing and even gross indifference to human life and unions and democracy ... they're more out in the open than the oligarchs in Russia, the CPC regime in China, and the alt-right nuts and god-knows-what contingents that have "overlapped" enough to give us President Smurf!
Yup, you betcha: you won't even hear of secretive meetings amongst these folks, any more than you would 'bout those bound by Omertà!
Sayonara, hope! Best to grab what infrastructure you can, and pray not everyone's ground will shift under everyone's feet.
(Still ... knowing about the prongs of the purposes of Capitalism, between its "accumulation" and "legitimation" functions, help ya navigate, sorta, what way up there people are thinkin'!)
This book came out in 1980, and is an exemplary effort (you can tell because it makes your head spin from trying to "adjust," not unlike doing 1600m as a run when you've been used to 100-200m!).
Thank goodness for Powell's! Tough shit about your "lefty-saints" who clogged the drains, and missed the point: all life is as-lived shit! They bummed you out for nothin'.
Don't believe in geopolitical stage(s)? Good luck tryin' to stay afloat!
October 20, 2014
some decent arguments regarding international financial architecture and so forth, but any time someone starts mouthing off about the trilateral commission, the council on foreign relations, and other allegedly "elite management" organs, I start looking for the tinfoil hats.
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