Think of this as Volume 18, Number 29 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.
One of the most popular conspiracy theories of my generation is that of the “New World Order.”
If someone trashes the “Trilateral Commission,” or the “Bilderberg Group,” or the United Nations, chances are they’re being influenced by this theory, which as Wikipedia notes) is becoming increasingly common on the Tea Party Right.
You might be tempted to ask why. The answer to me seems obvious. By creating an alternative, strong conspiracy theory, those working on behalf of the billionaires who cross lines routinely get to ignore the real conspiracy, the one they are engaged in, on behalf of lines.
As I noted previously, billionaires from all countries, and multinational groups, routinely jump lines to achieve their financial and political ends. They jump lines to make their money, promising investment in exchange for tax breaks. Then they jump lines to evade taxes, routing profits through tax havens, taking their own wealth to other tax havens, and constantly “working the refs” in every nation to push government’s burdens on the global middle class, which is then placated with hatred of the poor. Let the majority hate on itself, they figure, and we can get away with anything.
Which is true. There is far more uniting people like Lilian Bettancourt, Carlos Slim, the Kochs and Waltons, the Arab sheikhs, Kazakh Alisher Usmanov and India’s Lakshmi Mittal then there is dividing them. They all have the same goals in mind – to limit their own taxes, to protect their own assets, and to send those assets down to the last generation intact.
This is not true for all of the ultra-rich. Those who, like Bill Gates, go to Davos each year to engage in do-gooding don’t believe in or practice feudalism. But they don’t condemn those who do practice it, those who don’t go to Davos to promote do-gooding, and because of this they provide cover for them.
By their actions, the non-Davos billionaire list and the multinational companies they control represent world governance. Their individual power can cow national leaders, whose power doesn’t extend to where the wealthy keep their money. Their collective power can cow the whole world.
And, as the OECD, Thomas Piketty, and many others have pointed out, that’s creating a new world government, a Feudal World Order.
There are two things which can change the trend – war and reform.
We saw what war can do in the last century. It destroyed the wealth of Europe during World War I, and worked the same on the rest of the world in World War II. The events of 1929-1970 are now called the “great levelling” because they dramatically reduced the share of the world’s wealth, and income, held by the world’s wealthiest people. Rising prosperity since 1970, and less war overall, has created today’s situation.
The Feudal World Order is of two minds on war. They like little wars. Little wars create opportunity for profit, in selling the tools of war, and for creating new lines they can take advantage of. They also create opportunities for power, by standing behind leaders beset by war. They make national leaders beholden to the money, in order to fight the war, and this can lead to more power even after the war. Everyone who fears and talks about Putin right now are ignoring the fact that his struggles over Ukraine mainly benefit his own oligarchs, who can cross lines. Even if Putin is worth $60 billion, as some claim, he can’t cross lines. It’s another way in which wealth can trump power.
A general war, as we’ve seen, is something else entirely. There’s no place to hide from a general war. A general war destroys all wealth, and leaves national governments empowered in its wake. It’s at times like that, when national governments are empowered, that conspiracy theories like New World Order start to feel most right.
The other solution for the Feudal World Order is reform, which requires international cooperation.
Despite what the right wing cranks would have anyone believe, the primary means for international order are treaties, not organizations. Treaty-making is, unfortunately, an opaque process. The interests of each nation’s ultra-wealthy may seek protection in this process, and the resulting treaties may be so filled with loopholes as to be rendered meaningless. Treaties may be offered to democracies as a fait accompli – take it or leave it. Even the process for approving treaties may leave a lot unsaid.
A century ago, in his Fourteen Points, Woodrow Wilson described the aim best – open agreements openly arrived at. But Wilson was a failure. The Treaty he went to Paris to negotiate was a kludge that, most historians agree, made a Second World War inevitable.
It was the propagandists around Franklin Roosevelt who coined the term “United Nations” to describe the loose alliance of World War II. This was a deliberate rebranding away from Wilson’s “League of Nations” but it had the same aim, to create mechanisms like Breton Woods and the European Community, through which nations might put aside their own differences and move to bring everyone inside a rule of law.
What the New World Order fear-mongers don’t understand is that their emphasis on nationalism and localism has a price. That price is the creation of lines the Feudal World Order can use to its advantage. They claim to be in opposition to the “big banks” and “genetic relations” among the wealthy. They don’t understand that by opposing treaties, and the organizations that might formulate treaties, they are doing the dirty work of those same bankers.
In other words, we don’t have a choice between order and freedom. We have a choice between order under law and order under wealth, between a world where no one is above the law, where no one can evade their responsibilities, and one where a very few can, and do, and thus control the rest of us.
This is the political message that is not yet being trumpeted. It’s the part of the Obama Thesis of Consensus that most people don’t understand, because the Administration still needs the support of some among the elite in order to maintain power. But only those within the elite who understand the message are supporting the Administration anyway, and their voices should be loud in the Thesis’ behalf.
There are deserving poor and undeserving poor. There are also deserving rich and undeserving rich. It’s up to the deserving rich to point out the undeserving, and to support efforts that bring them all under some uniform code of law, for their own protection. That may simply be an order that endorses other nations’ orders, but its ultimate aim must be to encourage the recycling of capital and social mobility that goes both down and up.
It matters little that a poor boy can rise up in the world if a rich boy can’t fall down.
