A world government in 100 years time?

16:46 28.01.2010 • Armen Oganesyan , Editor-in-Chief, International Affairs


Since the time the famous dispute between the "physicists" and "lyricists" first took place, the "economists" won, and the lyricists finally had to take a back seat. But for what good reason! Firstly, they should be inspired that thanks to the vanguard of economists nearly all of the physicists moved to the lyricists’ camp. Secondly, the determined attempt by world-class economists to hoist the victory banner over the carcass of modern civilization with the inscription: "The End of History" was not as strongly swept away by the harsh reality. In addition, the same fate changed the thesis of Bill Clinton to "It's the economy, stupid!" Face to face with the economists, who by conviction the lyricists had always lacked an understanding of the economy, as the humanities are not an exact science. As for the physicists, the "scientific minds strictly raised on the natural sciences ... allow themselves to doubt the scientific political economy", in which pragmatism "not only prevails, but is clearly rampant" (Sergey Bulgakov). Yet neither the one nor the other is the answer to the question, "Where shall we sail to from here?" How do we overcome the crisis of the modern ideology of development?

 

One of our best-known political analysts quipped: "The problem of the Moscow debate is in their contextual misery." Well, let’s go for the context! Two remarkable minds, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and the not inferior to him in depth of analysis, Frenchman Jacques Attali, dominate today as critics of the economic world order. Aware of the weakness of economic calculations, Stiglitz, very boldly for an economist, recognized that, "despite the fact that our understanding of economic processes has increased by a great number of times in the last 50 years, crises around the world have become more frequent and deeper. According to some estimates, during this time nearly 100 countries faced a crisis head-on. “Globalization,” according to Stiglitz, "is a strong push from the international corporations that move across borders not only capital and goods, but also technology."

 

I remember that at the dawn of globalization one of the elite club-meetings was asked a simple question: "Does this process come from stakeholders generating power, as the active conductors of globalization, or does it come spontaneously from a globalized world?" Most were inclined to the latter. It was very cute and very naive. But Stiglitz, as subsequent events showed, was not right about everything. The locomotive power of TNCs, actually producing real energy has been used as an attacking force in a breakthrough. But this racing across borders and sovereignty by express was carrying in their luxury carriages passengers of an entirely different kind. By the beginning of globalization instead of the "bourgeois-producer" post-industrial society had pushed the "bourgeois-moneychanger" to the forefront. It is through these "passengers", that globalization has led to an unprecedented "separation of money from commodity mass movement." By the beginning of 2000, the annual trade in exchange was more than 400 trillion dollars, and that is 80 times higher than the world trade in goods.

 

Money can let all things change their parents and end in the capable hands of "educators" who hold a public competition, called an exchange. Previously, the market for goods was considered as a market selection process open to the most efficient producers in the system in the effective promotion of the market. Now, when it comes to the stock market and the manipulation of short-term speculative capital, the market becomes a process of expropriation - of wealth, with no residue dissolved in banknotes and disappearing without a trace during global financial games. The money left from the tokens are the only clean signs ... The question is not in the exchange itself. The issue is that everything in the world can be expropriated ... (Alexander Panarin). So the "philosophy of management" is replaced by the "philosophy of money."

 

You may ask, "But does not a normal and healthy mind understand that in this post-industrial society this measure is not just absurd, but ultimately an impossible phantom and, is it in fact, doomed for all its participants?" My answer is: "To understand something is to understand it, but can one change it? - That's the question. One of the apocalyptic revelations of the 20th century shows a picture of empty streets and piles of banknotes billowing in the wind. Gold is also abandoned. A lone passerby wanders past without noticing them. Something comes to mind: "The monetary system is destined to die because of money" (Alain de Benoist).

 

However, for the "bourgeois-monetarists" productive profit is not just a transitory historical episode, for him all the cultural and moral values are coming, which have been developed in the" great capitalism” era.  The laws of the market, where all values are measured in monetary terms, of the pure market concept have evolved into an overt principle of society; they have become the new socio-cultural reality, and have become, in the words of Gilles Leclerc, "the doctrine of thin totalitarianism."Also, betting on the "mobility of resources," he ignores any "particular social and territorial environment" and "instead of a difficult journey through time" together with his people he "prefers an easy journey in space." Finally, post-industrial society, which is building a "new bourgeoisie", "has at its center not a university (or other institutions of cultural production), as was promised by the intellectual elite, but a bank." In the era of monetarism it is "extremely difficult to imagine how to combine morality and the economy,” not least because the majority of educational institutions, as ironic as it may sound, have become servants to the economy and business groups (Roland Robertson). And yet, according to Jacques Attali, "there is still a chance to avoid an irreparable development of events. For this we need to understand that the main reason for what is going on is the inconsistency between the market and the law. As a consequence, demand is reducing, debt is forming and the largest (criminal!) financial loans are being created.” Here are his recipes: accessibility to economic information; the financial markets, international in their nature, must be subject to international law; the end of financial games; the monitoring of liquidity; revision of the system of bonuses; and the separation between the market and banking activities. "The craft of the banker will once again be humble and boring, as it has been and must remain so forever." In the meantime, the scientist notes with regret, "the taxpayers are paying the insurance obligations of the bankers who plunged them into their plight," as the saying goes, "the turkeys voted for Christmas again."

 

There is one common thread between the approaches of Attali and Stiglitz. They both believe that to change global governance, a global government has to come that would be accountable to the people of any country. However, according to Attali, "what separates us from this obvious need is at most a century." Apparently, the author does not believe that, without the centralization of power over the world we can realize the measures proposed for its recovery. Here he shows an almost tragic utopianism that sees the coming world government through a kind of rose-tinted glasses. After all of the above, he says that it is impossible to solve the problems of the world within the "centric economic" issues of morality and economics, the pairing of which is blatantly obvious. "Without dropping the paradigm of mentality and actions of their opponents," a world government cannot become a collection of the wise of the world, because the wisdom of the world "was swept away" and "the salt of the world" is no longer salty. You cannot create the "mechanics of kindness", as Professor Kartashov said, which modern social wisdom is vainly looking for. "We need to realize the diagnosis made at the time by Vasily Rozanov: voids were formed in European humanity from the Christian past, and the world is falling into these voids. Otherwise, the world government will inevitably result in global dictatorship. Deliver us, O God, from this and the future 100 years. Of course, we need not just a "concert" of nations; we need them to learn to play the symphony together, as there seems to be no other option for mankind.


 

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs