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Title: The New World Order Author: Felix Frost Date: 2006 Language: en Topics: Capitalism, neoliberalism, nihilism, 21st century Source: Retrieved on August 23, 2011 from https://web.archive.org/web/20110823074234/http://nihilpress.subvert.info/nihil3.html Notes: Published in The Nihilist #3.
After the collapse of the so-called communist block we were told that we
would be entering a “New World Order” in which democracy, human rights
and international law should prevail, and rouge states were no longer
supposed to be able to operate freely. After a couple of years, however,
it turned out that the world was as screwed up as ever, and the phrase
quietly slipped out of our politicians’ speeches. Today it is only
crazed right-wingers and militia groups that are using the phrase in
describing their paranoid theories. Still, the world has changed
significantly in the last decade or two, just not exactly in the way
George Bush Sr. would have us believe...
In the rest of the world, our new world order is commonly called
neo-liberalism. This can of course be confusing in a country where
“liberal” is considered a dirty word. (In the rest of the world a
liberal usually means a moderate right-winger.) In this relation,
however, we are talking about the original economical liberalism of Adam
Smith & co., that is pro free trade and against state intervention in
the economy. If only business was left to itself, Smith told us, then
“the invisible hand of the market” would make sure that the economy
developed to everyone’s best interest. This was the leading theory among
economists, up until the great depression in the thirties, after which a
doctrine by a guy called Keynes gained more popularity. Keynesianism
told us that governments ought to intervene in the economy in order to
counteract the negative aspects of the market.
There were two problems with the way old fashioned capitalism worked.
The first was — as was explained by a certain Karl Marx — that
capitalism had an inherent tendency for going through periods of rapid
expansion only for running into crises of overproduction and economical
recessions. The same Karl Marx also claimed that the working class would
eventually organize and rebel against the deplorable conditions that the
capitalist system forced them to live under. Ironically, it was the
movements fathered by Marx that was to help the capitalists overcome —
at least temporarily — the seemingly hopeless contradictions inherent in
the system. The thing was; although Marx was occasionally brilliant in
describing the nature of capitalist society, his ideas of how to make a
revolution and how to organize the society afterwards turned out to be a
disaster.
Marx believed that the working class had to organize political parties
in order to gain control over the state apparatus. As contemporary
anarchists realized; this would only create a new class of bureaucrats
that would continue to rule over the working masses, and this was
exactly what happened. In Europe, the Social Democratic parties that
Marx had helped to set up gained power in country after country, but
instead of starting to build socialism it set out to reform and improve
capitalism. By embracing the fore mentioned Keynesian economics it
seemingly solved both of the major faults of capitalism. The building of
a welfare state, and the policy of raising the standard of living,
helped calm down the growing unrest amongst the working class. At the
same time this seemed to solve the problem of crises of overproduction
as the rising living standards meant an ever-growing market for the
products of the increasing industrial production. (In the US, of course,
there were no successful socialist parties, but much of the same
policies were put in place by Roosevelt’s New Deal.)
As much support the capitalists got from the reformist wing of the
Marxist movement, they still probably wouldn’t have made it hadn’t it
been for the involuntarily help they got from the revolutionaries. In
1917 an especially unscrupulous variety of Marxists came to power in
Russia, and declared the start of the worldwide proletarian revolution.
The seemingly successful workers revolution in Russia revolutionized
millions of workers world wide, and for a few years the capitalists were
scared stiff. But as it turned out, the Russian Bolsheviks were a
blessing in disguise for our rulers. As the revolution inevitably
decayed into a totalitarian dictatorship, it took the international
revolutionary workers movement with it, and the new communist parties
around the world were made into unwitting tools for the Soviet Union’s
foreign policy needs. The consequences were no less than disastrous. For
instance the German communists were ordered to stand by and watch as
Hitler rose to power, and were told that the real enemy was the Social
Democrats. Half a decade later the Soviet Union did send some arms to
the anti-fascist side in the Spanish civil war, but at the same time
Stalin made sure that the efforts to start a social revolution by the
Spanish anarchists were stifled. Still, the worst consequence of State
Socialism in practice was probably the bad example it gave to the ideas
of revolution and socialism. No matter how drab an existence the
American or European worker had; if the alternative was Stalin’s prison
camps, there was little doubt which alternative she would eventually
choose.
Modern capitalism succeeded in pacifying the working class, but it could
not stop the enevitable economic recession which finally hit in the mid
seventies. It became clear that it would not be possible to continue
building the welfare states and at the same time protect the profits of
capitalists. An ever more international world economy at the same time
made it increasingly difficult for national states to regulate its
economy. If one government made regulations that the now multinational
companies didn’t like, they could simply move their investments
somewhere else. Finally, the events in 1968 had made it clear that
economical welfare would not in the end be enough to thwart discontent.
The youth of sixties didn’t rebel against purely economical injustices;
they vented their anger against the sheer boredom of everyday existence;
against the emptiness of a world where everything were measured in
money.
With an economy in a recession and a continuous threat of student and
worker unrest, our rulers knew something had to be done. The answer they
came up with was a return to good old fashioned capitalism. The growing
discontent against the planners and bureaucrats were exploited to make
way for the new right. During the eighties right wing governments won
power all over North America and Europe, led by Ronald Reagan in the US,
and Margaret Tatcher in Britain. When the bureaucratic monsters called
communist societies finally collapsed on their own in 1989, it seemed
there was nothing that could stop the right-wing attack.
Freed from the popularity contest with the “socialist” world;
international capitalism has again showed its true face, and believe me,
it’s not a pretty one. The worst consequences have as usual fallen on
the third world who has been forced by the IMF and the World Bank’s
“Structural Adjustment Programs” to abandon subsidies, health care and
education to the poor in order to become more suitable objects for
foreign investment. It is probably no exaggeration to say that these
policies have cost the lives of millions of people. As for the countries
in the former East Block, they did get their political freedom, but they
also got an increase in crime and prostitution and a decrease in wages
and social services. As a matter of fact; the countries in the former
Soviet Union have seen a drop in the average male living age that is
unprecedented in countries untouched by war or natural catastrophes.
Here in the US, the consequences of the new neo-liberal world policies
have been less dramatic, but else quite similar. While the wealth of the
rich in this country have skyrocketed, the real wages for working class
people have now gone down for over two decades. Combined with the cuts
in welfare, this means that millions of Americans can look forward to a
life in poverty. The richest 500 persons in the world today controls
more wealth than the poorest half of the world’s population.
Today’s capitalists see no challenge to their world domination, but they
might have started celebrating to early. Their continuing attacks on
working people have not failed to produce resistance, even if you don’t
hear much about it in the news. Country after country have experienced
waves of strikes and unrest. The anti-IMF demonstrations in Seattle and
Prague are only the most popularized of these events. To be a little
cynical, much of these protests are more attempts by the liberals and
the union bureaucracy to contain and recuperate popular anger, than they
are real struggles. But they are an omen for times that might come. With
a more and more ruthless capitalist world order, the time looks ripe for
some genuine class warfare. The most important reason for why a working
class rebellion isn’t happening today is not the lack of popular
discontent, but rather the sorrow state of the international leftist
movements.
Communism might be dead, but the left of today still worship its
lifeless image and slowly suffocate in the foul fumes of its rotting
corpse. Still thousands of potentially revolutionary workers and
students pass through the ranks of the various leftist sects, only to
become burnt out and disillusioned and drop out of politics altogether.
Still the Trotskyists continue their quarreling and splits and
regrouping while they keep trying to organize the 42^(nd) version of
their glorious Fourth International. Having lost all hope of actually
influencing world events, the Leninists cling to the straw of being an
intellectual vanguard. Having lost their contact with the actual working
class, the Leninists still view themselves as the “bearers of the
consciousness of the proletariat and the conscience of its historic
vocation” (to quote one of the lesser known of the great Marxist
prophets, George Lukacs). Thus the Trots and the ultra-leftists need to
have the “correct line” on each and every conflict and problem. Like
theologists arguing about the true interpretation of this or that verse
in the holy scripture, the Leninists argues for their positions by
applying the authoritative writings of their dead prophets Marx and
Lenin. Naturally the only practical consequences of these elaborate (and
usually self-contradictory) positions are to waste a lot of time in
pointless debates. When for instance the International Socialist
tendency during the Gulf War decided that we ought to give Saddam
Hussain military support against the “western imperialist attack”, it
hardly mattered on the battlefield. What it did do was to disrupt a
number of anti-war campaigns around the world.
But the Leninists hardly matters any more; no one else still take them
serious, and we shouldn’t either. Too long have the socialist movement
been perverted by these revolutionary adventurists, but today their
demise is finally drawing near. With both the revolutionary and
reformist wings of the state socialist movement throwing in their
towels, one should think the way would be cleared for us libertarian
revolutionaries. To be sure, there have been some promising signs. New
anarchists and syndicalist groups and federations have been formed or
revived, even in areas with no previous anarchist traditions. On the
whole, however, we remain an insignificant force and are seldom noticed
outside the ever shrinking leftist ghettos. Our biggest problem is that
we have lived so long in the shadow of the Marxists that we have started
behaving like them. The libertarian left of today is riddled with
ideological conflicts and sectarian in-fighting. It is reveling that it
took a ragtag guerrilla army of indigenous Mexican peasants to arrange a
world wide gathering where all our different factions could come
together and exchange ideas and experiences.
It is easy to become disillusioned and give up when you look at the
miserable state of today’s left. At the same time; the material and
political preconditions for the reemergence of a revolutionary mass
movement are probably greater today than they have been in generations.
What we have to understand is that this movement most be built by the
oppressed masses themselves, not by some anarchist vanguard. If we are
to play a part in building this movement, we have to rise above our
particular dogmas and ideologies. As a first step we should bring
together all genuine revolutionaries: Anarchists; anarcho-syndicalists;
revolutionary unionists; anarcho-communists; libertarian socialists;
council communists; situationists... What matters is not which label we
prefer; what matters is whether we are committed to fight for the
self-determination of the oppressed masses; not just to exchange one set
of rulers with another.