Our hyper complex global existence is facing formidable challenges. These protracted problems might not find their resolutions within the existing world system. Wallerstein’s bifurcation (ascending multi-polarity) is inevitable. To recall; the current world system has been around for over half a millennium. One can take the settlement of the Europeans in the Americas as the beginning of the prevailing world system. The world system analysis, which was developed by Samir Amin (1931-2018), Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005) and Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009), asserted that before West European’s incursion into the Americas, the then world system was centered more to the East, around the Arab-Indo-Chinese civilization. Long ago, world system analysis predicted the rise of the East/Eurasia (again read multi-polarity), which was later outlined by Gunder in his last book–‘Reorient’ (1998)!
The current system, which is called the modern world system, (by the above world system analysts) has managed to incorporate all of humanity under its overarching logic of brutal accumulation. The system leveraged gross inequalities, such as slavery, colonialism, ethnic-ism and sexism within the human family to advance its objective. The political organization of the interstate system facilitated groupings that were leveraged for widespread/worldwide accumulation. The proliferation of supra states institutions, still anchored on the nation-states configuration, are now the seats of real power, economic, social, cultural, military, etc. (UN, NATO, EU, WTO, etc.) The ever-expanding technosphere solidified and entrenched the hierarchical world system across the planet. In late modernity, the system, utilizing its supra state institutions and technology has managed to subdue all of humanity’s aspirations under its archaic straight jacket ideology. The cumulative result: a highly complex global system, which was not and is not keen on furthering the welfare of the global sheeple (human mass) or the planet’s ecosystem. Every aspect of collective human existence is now (directly or indirectly) dictated by the old senile system of blind accumulation. This ambition of accumulation at any cost, even at the price of all life/ecosystem, cannot be sustained within the organic human universe, without massive coercion of barbaric proportion!
Consequences of the modern world system are now surfacing all over the planet. Climate change, resource depletion, economic and social inequality leading to increased global disharmony, man-made pestilences, or WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in general, etc., etc. are the most obvious signs of decay. To reiterate: the underlying unsustainable economic order is the main culprit behind the calamities we are currently witnessing. To add insult to injury, this global system is being led by the worst elements/psychopaths of the human collective. In short, global rule is a bona fide kakistocracy. Kakistocracy is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens. One of the system’s economic gurus described the existing order as follows. ‘Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.’ John Maynard Keynes.
Parasitic structures to benefit only the 1%, at the expense of the 99%, have been in place for quite a while. Everything under the sky has been employed to hide as well as maintain this lopsided global order. Many institutions are created, formally & informally, to this end. The very existence of the ‘deep state’, which operates outside the jurisdiction of democracy and electoral governance, is a case in point. Today, the ‘deep state’ is very effective in secretly executing extreme measures that illude the sheeple’s blurring eyes, severely numbed taste and soft head/heart! In addition, the reigning hegemon continues to exhibit behaviors that holler; ‘the time is nigh’! There are further evidences that clearly show the system is on its final leg. In this times of protracted challenges, what might be surprising, particularly to the left, is the order’s determined move away from its continual project of pacifying the global sheeple. It seems the bosses of the system have decided to boldly move towards feudalism, neo-feudalism to be more precise. The current decision by the US to allow the FED (Federal Reserve Board) to literally buy/own everything under the sun is a new chapter in the brave new world of late modernity! This private institution, which serves as the US central bank, is owned by other western banks. The FED’s new mandate includes, besides its old prerogatives, the followings. To buy government bills/bonds outright, (monetizing debt), to buy/own commercial bonds/papers, including the useless junk bonds, to set up an extensive dollar swap arrangements with all central banks of the world. The FED can also buy shares of companies in the equity market, even though there has always been a law against this. No sweat, the FED and accomplices have come up with proxies to do this, ‘legally’! Here is what world’s largest asset manager said about the new situation. ‘Investing is dead. We can now buy whatever the central banks are buying.’ Blackrock’s Rick Rieder. ‘Fed has carved central planning into the bedrock of the US financial system, and moral hazard is not just universally accepted but a widely expected component of the investing process (or what’s left of it), it probably also means that conflicts of interest are also a thing of the past.’ Rabobank. This is the perfect heist, a stealth steal!
Thanks to Covid-19, what we now have is a situation where the 1% class of banksters are allowed to own all the significant ‘means of production’, free of charge, while the 99% are to toil for pittance that can hardly sustain life. This scheme of disfranchising people will be hastened by the massive introduction of robotics, automation, etc. Don’t forget, as it stands, institutionalized democracy (electoral democracy) is not capable of challenging the basic tenets of the existing economic order, since organized politics is under the diktat of the reigning global kakistocracy. It is the unelected dictatorship of money, led by its human psychopaths that wield all power, economic, political, social, etc.! “We have achieved the Orwellian prediction – enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. ” Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery. Good Day!