Mark Carney-- Canada’s premier-- shocked many with his recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He spoke bluntly about illusions and realities that were features of the post-World War II international order.
He reminded listeners that until recently, it was accepted among global elites that economic life was conducted under a set of rules, governed by institutions, and protected by military alliances that guaranteed free markets, fair exchange, and integration. Granted, it was constructed and maintained by the US. But it was thought that this constituted a post-war consensus that, despite its hierarchical structure and occasional bullying of the weaker by the stronger, created a formidable framework, offering the best outcomes for all.
Now, Carney tells us that widely-held belief is an illusion. To underscore this point, he treats his audience to a silly Cold War parable about neighborhoods of greengrocers in Peoples’ Czechoslovakia, a clumsy knockoff of the tale of the Emperor without clothes, but crafted to get a chuckle out of the rabidly anti-Communist business people and politicians present.
By pandering to Cold War prejudices, Carney unintentionally reveals the context for the post-war international order. The ruling classes of countries assented to the order because they saw it as a bulwark against Communism. They allowed the US to construct the order under its own terms because the US promised to anchor the fight against the Soviet Union and its allies. Institutions, alliances, military bases, and ideological unity constituted a formidable structure to meet a new post-war balance of forces more favorable to socialism and the many social, political, and economic alternatives offered by the socialist bloc. Economic liberalism was showcased as the moral and rational response to Communism. Fear of Communism was the glue that cemented US rulers and their allies to this new order.
It is important to emphasize that the referenced international order was constructed by ruling groups and not by the people. And it was elite interests behind the construction. Too often commentators blur the distinction by loosely attributing policies or actions to countries, as though state policies or actions represent the will of a uniform, homogeneous population. Whatever else the highly-regarded post-war international order was, it was not a popular, democratic, equality-based system, but a structure to grease the wheels of capitalist commerce.
Before conceding too much to Carney’s challenge to this order, it must be remembered that it was challenged earlier with the demise of the bête noire-- the Soviet Union-- in 1991. As a result of losing the arch enemy, the US and its closest allies responded in the following ways:
1. “naturalizing” the international order, painting it as the natural order of things. Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no Alternative” insists that free markets, profit-seeking, and unrestrained competition constitute the most rational way to organize economic activity. Another Pied Piper of the post-war order is the neo-Hegelian, Francis Fukuyama, who maintained that the post-Soviet world was the result of the synthesis of all that came before it-- marking the “end of history.”
2. Finding another "ugly beast" to replace Communism. The war on drugs, the war on terrorism (and the newly minted war on narcoterrorism), the war on Islamic fundamentalism, and the war on immigrants and criminal gangs became replacements for the war on Communism.
Thanks to these responses to the demise of the long Cold War, a fragile world order was maintained with the US remaining its police officer and chief beneficiary.
But the real challenge to the post-war global order came with the twenty-first-century economic crises, especially the deep downturn of 2007-2009. Like the great powers in the Great Depression, the major players sought both individual solutions and solutions that would push the problems onto their neighbors and “allies.” In the wake of the so-called Great Recession, I wrote of “centrifugal forces” breaking apart existing alliances, coalitions, agreements, and institutions. Crisis-induced economic stress threatened to fracture formations like the EU, changed the relationship between US capital and Peoples’ China, fostered an international retreat toward economic nationalism, and intensified rivalries.
That process continues to shape our world today. The European war-- between Russia, Ukraine, and its puppeteers-- reflects that process. The radical rearrangement of the Middle East and Central and South America reflect that process. The 2007-2009 disruption of the post-war economic order changed China from a tasty morsel for Western capital into a powerful rival, thanks to China’s successful navigation of the severe global turbulence. Today’s rise of nationalist, protectionist political movements and parties is certainly related to the failure of the existing world order to survive the twenty-first-century crises intact.
Predictably new economic, political, and military alliances and coalitions are springing up in response to the shattering of the old order. Ruling classes are seeking to promote their national interests at an especially volatile, uncertain moment by realigning, by seeking more favorable terms through courting opposing great powers, or by establishing and dominating spheres of interest.
That is the message that Mark Carney sought to convey with his address at Davos:
Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints…
It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.
While these remarks shocked many for their candor and implied a break with his government’s long-standing intimate relationship to the US ruling class, they simply reflected capital in Canada’s search for a more advantageous affair with a more appreciative suitor.
Similarly, some EU states are opting for warmer relations with Russia, while others are looking East, threatening to exit their abusive marriage with the US. The fragility of these new affairs, their basis in the immediate interests of ruling classes and in the capturing of markets and investments should not escape Communists and progressives. Russia’s rulers can pull Assad’s chestnuts out of the fire and pivot swiftly and throw those same chestnuts under the bus, while maintaining solid relations with both Israel and Iran. That illustrates the opportunism of capitalists seeking to restore order out of disorder.
Attempts to establish a new order to be centered around new arrangements, new alliances, new coalitions, and new rules should not be taken for a repudiation of the imperialist system, unless those attempts also repudiate capitalism. Re-centering the global capitalist order around a rival power or rival powers in no way guarantees a more just or equitable world for working people.
This an especially unpleasant conclusion for those who have invested deeply in the BRICS and BRICS+ formation-- an unlikely, heterogeneous, ideologically diverse, and largely capitalist grouping of states loosely organized around various grievances against the existing order. They offer no trade or investment strategies directed specifically at working people, not to mention any rejection of the exploitative imperialist system.
While Carney’s exposure of the “rupture” in the international order may have led some to believe that it signaled a positive reform of global economic relations, it did not sway the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Canada. In a response to Carney’s address, they stated:
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos has been noted for its blunt talk about a “rupture” with the “old order” of U.S. hegemony. This has been seen as a breath of fresh air for some in Canada who are rightly concerned with escalating threats to our sovereignty and the U.S.’s descent into war and reaction. However, Carney’s newly articulated vision does not mark a fundamental shift towards policies that will make lives better for working people, nor does it signal a Canadian foreign policy of peace and respect for the sovereignty of all countries.
Carney’s speech confirms the sharpening contradictions within the global capitalist system and the decline of U.S. imperialist hegemony. He identifies a “rupture” in the post-WWII order, correctly noting that U.S. imperialism is moving away from leadership through dominating international institutions and toward unilateral coercion, even directed against its own allies. But we must not forget who he was addressing: the main bankers and representatives of global finance capital. His message is a strategic one for their benefit.
Indeed, the old order-- a system of predatory monopoly capitalism, maintained by finance capital-- may undergo restructuring and realignment, but it remains a system of predatory monopoly capitalism maintained by finance capitalism. A facelift should not be taken for a revolution.
Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com
