New World Order from the Ashes by Saba Navalan

From Pope to Barack Obama, everyone is feels the need for a New World Order and come out with statements every day. World’s most influential economists have been debating alternative economic policies. The economies of US and Europe have been protected for just three years from an imminent downfall.

This is not the first time a New World Order is being proposed. In the 1940s, capitalism and world economy were redefined according to the ideas proposed by economist John Maynard Keynes. When world economy took a hit in the 1970s, neo-liberalism and globalisation helped recharge a new world order.

The economic crisis of the 1990s aggravated globalisation. The structural crisis faced by global economy led to the downfall of capitalism.

In 2009, 150 years after Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital, leaders of world monopolies remember him for the third part of his treatise. The knowledge world requires both Marx and electronics to sustain itself in the new era of politics.

In 1940s, a summit similar to the present G20 summits was held to discuss the then economic crisis. The summit which was attended by 66 countries discussed a new world order. The conference created new superpowers and new alliances. The economic contradictions of the that era created Germany’s dictator Hitler.

Tthe new world order of 2000s enact several genocides, the then world order killed innocent Jews in its first genocide.

The acceptance of economist John Maynard Keynes’s proposals in the 1940s saw formation of International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Centre and led to global dominance under United States.

When this economic structure faced a crisis in the early seventies, Marxism and its related dialogues witnessed a revival. The G5 meet held in Paris in 1975 discussed a new world order again. It was then that the concept of globalisation and related paradigms originated.

The structural crisis created by globalisation helped Asian economies take centrestage. The basis of capitalism is maximizing profit and is a variable factor. Only if this factor has an ever-increasing quality, functioning capitalism is a possibility.

The varying nature of profit forms the basis of many factors defining functioning capitalism

Workforce and the process of converting money into capital.

The growth of technology which is an important part of the forces of production.

Mediating the varied interests of production relationships.

The process of maximizing profits ensures the continuance of functioning capitalism. During the period of Karl Marx, capitalism extracted all the work from labourers and made them as a class which has nothing to lose.

There was a clear classification in the society he lived. There were two classes: the capitalists and the workers. That is why he mentioned in the Communist Manifesto that capitalism exhibited contradictions clearly.

But post-1940, the clear contradiction was deliberately altered. A new managerial class was created in between the two classes. The creation of a class beyond capitalists and workers brought about qualitative changes in the character of the classes.


A class without the ability for production.

A working class with the ability for production.

The managerial class without the ability for production has several layers and many inner contradictions. The direct control by the owner of the capital was made possible by the managers. From the top manager to the office assistant, a new class without production capabilities was born. The entire middle class was attracted towards capitalism by the creation of the new class. This has also made the owner-worker relationship an indirect one. This new capitalist order is called managerial revolution.

The owners of the capital acquired the power to create their own managers following the managerial revolution. Capitalist owners can convert governments into their agents or managers and this has led to the present structural crisis of capitalism. Governments have come to a point when they cannot even control owners of the capital in the interests of capitalism.

The unlimited powers acquired by the capitalists made them leave their high-ranking managers – the governments – in the lurch. They moved to Asia to maximize their profits. The capital which moved to Asia has made China and India superpowers in the region.

The production relations which formed the basis of Western superpowers created countries which are dependent on banking credit mechanisms. The owners of capital – who are not controlled by anybody – moved their capital from the western countries to Asia in order to increase their profits.

The neo-liberalism developed after the economic crisis of the 1970s created an all-powerful world capitalism. The neo-liberalism which established the power of the giant corporations across the globe has created Barack Obama in the US and Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka.

In the backdrop of the dominance of world capitalism, the future of Indian people presents a bleak picture. During the initial phases of globalisation, a part of the money earned by the monopolist owners in the third world countries went to the jobless and the poor in the West in the form of social security guarantees. In many western countries, the stipend for the jobless was as high as basic pay of regular workers.

The tax money required for the social security programmes was extracted from world corporates by their respective managerial governments or managerial states. As the production costs of giant corporations went up due to their contribution to social security schemes, they moved towards third world thereby creating a society without production capabilities in the West.

With the absence of production, the credit mechanism of the bank capital decided the relations of production at local levels. Bank capital also moved to the Asian countries at the behest of capitalism, leading to the downfall of western economic structure.

Giant corporations which moved to countries like India to evade tax in the West introduced massive structures of production in Asia. The corporations modernized the forces of production in agriculture, information technology, service sector and other areas. The class of people who lose jobs in this process of modernization will never get any social security in Asian countries.

If the large section of people alienated from production should be given social security, it should be extracted from large corporate organisations. If a social security amount is fixed, the basic pay of regular workers should be above that. It will lead to an increase in the price of labour. While fixing the basic cost of living, the tax on profits of the corporates will also go up. If such a development occurs, the corporates will leave countries like India. It will lead to another crisis and destabilise the new world order and Asian economy. This will create another structural crisis.

Capitalist countries like India who cannot offer social security programmes will only have solutions like annihilating the people living below poverty line (BPL). That is how two lakh farmers committed suicide. People are killed in Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh for the same reasons. Maoists who try to represent these sections are annihilated in police operations without any mercy.

While American supremacy is on the wane, a resurgent India is killing its own people. A research done by US intelligence center says that the biggest problem of India in 2020 would be unemployment.

If India follows the western model of social security to deal with unemployment, its economy and capital will slip away. In the coming years, Indian democracy will create an economy favourable to its upper middle class amidst countless murders without evidence and unprecedented bloodshed. All the sections of people who cannot withstand the upsurge of the economy are doomed to be annihilated.

No Western power will worry about these annihilations. Indian Establishment rehearsed only this in Sri Lanka. All the massacres will be enacted in full public glare of the United Nations (UN) and other human rights organizations of the West. The genocide in Sri Lanka and the police operations in Singur only proved this.

Thus, the world constructs a new world order with a new power configuration. The creation of a new Indian upper middle class, the poor who lose their jobs and production capacity and driven to death, Indian capitalism which stands tall with world capitalism, the disintegration of feudal system, the new power configuration – all these have to be studied and the new means of struggle have to be devised accordingly to safeguard people from the upcoming human catastrophe and to win power for the oppressed people.

With the new monopolist capitalism emerging as a mature and experienced form, the people opposing it are equally experienced and mature. This gives us a new hope. Open debates, new research and the coming together of progressive forces on a common minimum platform is the immediate need of the hour.

Don't Forget to Mobilse for Sri Lanka Protest Against Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing on 21st August 2010 in London - Westminster - see details

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