London School of Economics

Capitalist globalization, corporate social responsibility and social policy This article outlines how the twin crises of capitalist globalization – of class polarization and ecological unsustainability – combine to produce the need for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to attempt to bridge the gap between the rhetoric and reality of corporate conduct. The first section outlines how CSR relates to capitalist globalization and how it is integrated into the activities of the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC). The role of CSR in relation to social policy is examined next leading on to an account of the uses to which CSR is put in policy discourse, par-ticularly its strategic use in lobbying and the advance of corporate power. Key words: class, corporate social responsibility, globalization, lobbying, transnationalis