A new world order arising
When President George Bush, the Elder, declared his intention to create a new world order, he had to back away quickly and never mentioned the phrase again. Not only did he sound like the resurrection of Adolph Hitler, but wiser heads in his Cabinet understood that world order is not a subjective thing that can be placed or displaced at will.
Like anything else, the creation of a new world order rests on the introduction of something new. It is not imposed, but arises on the basis of that new quality. Looking back in history we can say that a new world order, dominated by Great Britain, emerged during the middle of the 1880’s. By creating and dominating the industrial world, Britain became the greatest naval power, the greatest colonizer, and world exploiter. Hitler failed in his attempt to create a new order because he simply tried to rearrange the existing forces to replace Anglo-American imperialism with German imperialism on the basis of existing industrial means of production. A new world order emerged in 1945 based on the destruction of WWII. This was shored up by America’s monopoly of the atomic bomb.
The turmoil we see around the world is the prelude to the rising of a new world order based on the growing predominance of electronics over industrial production. An old world order does not simply fade away. Like any living thing faced with destruction, it becomes more violent, more dangerous, and more determined to live. The threat of war increases in tandem with the rise of this new order. We apply our dialectics to understand the process: leap forward, stagnation, backsliding, polarization, destruction, and leap forward.
We are again, under different circumstances, seeing the beginnings of a vast American revolution. The emergence of new productive forces antagonistic to the existing industrial productive relations is wrecking the foundations of society as we have known them. Giant global corporations are replacing local and national companies. Wage labor is replaced by computer controlled robotic, wage-less production. Value, which is based on labor, becomes disconnected from price, which is now set arbitrarily by global corporations.
Consequently, wealth and poverty polarize. Each stage of this process further disconnects base from superstructure. The social destruction that we have seen in the past twenty-five years is only the beginning of the process. Homelessness will increase, education of working class youth will continue to decline, war will become part of the American way of life, health care will slip further and further from the grasp of the poor.
All this will become the school where the American people learn of class and class solidarity. This is where the people grasp the concept of revolution and a vision of a peaceful and abundant future. Let us shoulder our revolutionary responsibilities to bring this education and vision to the masses. Again, the die is cast and there is no turning back.
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