Sound Bite
The end of the Cold War was not just the collapse of an empire, but the beginning of a global economic revolution. The New Commonwealth delivers a powerful analysis of this pivotal moment, arguing that both Soviet communism and laissez-faire Western capitalism were fundamentally flawed systems pushed to their limits by decades of military competition.
This book dissects the clash between "individualistic" and "communitarian" forms of capitalism and identifies the rise of a new, more effective "Social Market" model based on managed competition. Rooted in a deep historical perspective that examines the parallel development of the U.S., German, and Russian economies, it challenges conventional wisdom on the nature of profit, enterprise, and global power. The New Commonwealth culminates in a startling and provocative vision of an emerging Eurasian economic order.
About the Book
The New Commonwealth offers a thought-provoking reinterpretation of the end of the Cold War, arguing that it marked not an end-point for history, but the beginning of a radical economic transformation for the entire industrialized world. This incisive work posits that both Soviet central planning and American free-market capitalism were reaching their limits, distorted by the immense weight of their respective military-industrial complexes.
The author provides a penetrating analysis of different capitalist models, contrasting the "individualistic" Anglo-Saxon system with the more "communitarian" and strategically managed economies of Germany and Japan. In the wake of communism's collapse, the book reveals the pitfalls of applying crude "free market" reforms in Eastern Europe while also exposing the deep-seated vulnerabilities within the American economy, from its deteriorating leadership to its stark wealth disparities.
At the heart of this analysis is the emergence of a new global model: the "Social Market". This system moves beyond ideology to embrace "managed competition", fostering a cooperative partnership between government, industry, and labor to achieve long-term social and economic advancement. It represents a synthesis of the most effective practices developed across different economic systems.
With its broad historical scope and sharp analytical focus, The New Commonwealth challenges readers to rethink fundamental concepts of profit, competition, and the role of the state. It culminates in a compelling vision of a new global alignment, centered on the rise of a vast Eurasian economic commonwealth. It offers an eye-opening perspective for readers seeking a deeper understanding of the forces that have reshaped our world.
Introduction
For anyone who has followed closely the events in Eastern Europe for the past thirty years, the systematic absence of one possible scenario from the mainstream media dialog is baffling namely that today's Russian troubles may be only a shield behind which a more powerful regeneration is in progress. The New York Times Magazine, August 10, 1997, brings up one of many questions to which modern history awaits a convincing answer. On the occasion of former Defense Secretary McNamara's revisiting Vietnam, it reminds us of one such unelucidated inconsistency: "If the reason [for the war in Vietnam] was to fight communism, why did the U.S. not help China in 1949, or why did the U.S. not help the Batista regime in Cuba in 1959?"
There are indeed significant and puzzling inconsistencies in the story of the Soviet Union's "collapse." Consider the artfulness, bordering on the Machiavellian, and the lengthy effort that went into its demise and one has sufficient grounds for a different tale. The process of "collapse," basically from 1983 on, came about as the country's establishment applied blow after blow to the highly coherent and resilient Soviet system.The most intriguing aspect of this incredible series of events is that behind it was the political will of the elite the Soviet elite who had decided that the Soviet system must be dismembered, while the so-called disgruntled masses played a minor role. That amounts, but only on a superficial look, to the impression that the elite itself might have voluntarily decided to dismantle and demobilize its own lines of defense and submit to a condition of servitude to the rest of the world.
On the contrary, I am not only in agreement with Weir and Kotz and others who ascribe perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet system to the Soviet elite, but I suggest that today's troubles are not a result of a failed perestroika but are only Phase II of perestroika.
From socialism to capitalism and back to a superior form of socialism is how the old Marxist dialecticians would phrase it. By compromising both models the old communist orthodoxy as well as the newer aspirant, casino capitalism the power establishment makes it possible to bring the country safely back to socialist capitalism. But if one accepts this hypothesis, then it becomes the premise of an unsettling line of reasoning.
The elite of the second most powerful corporation in the world, the Soviet Union, must have had a self-serving reason to take such risks and must as well have had the opportunity to reformulate its modus operandi. If this is so, the further implication would be that the "collapse" was possible not in reaction to a stronger U.S. but precisely because the other superpower also showed every sign of weakness and crisis so that it could not mount any credible offensive, economically or militarily, while the Soviet Union went through its own version of the Great Depression en route toward economic restructuring and political modernization.
The most plausible interpretation of the series of international issues of the 1980s (the new economic assertiveness of Western Europe and Japan, the war in Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq craze, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the world debt crisis, etc.) is that they were already setting the framework for a future covenant "the new world order" between the former superpowers, to their mutual advantage.
That presupposes an early, even pre-1980, agreed armistice and rethinking of the exhausting confrontation. If Russia was in a position to let down its guard to the extent that we are witnessing today, it was only because it found itself not in a weak position but in the strongest military-strategic position in its history, free from imminent outside threat as enshrined at Helsinki in the 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Given its control of the world's richest reserves of oil, gas, nuclear material, and raw materials, together with its educated professionals, an unmatched nuclear arsenal*, space technology leadership, etc. all Russia needed was to repackage its system as a benevolent system, to make it into a soothing and attractive social and economic model, to launch a successful public relations scheme. To succeed at that would be worth the costs and the risks!
From such a strategic viewpoint one may infer that the dismantling of the Soviet Union was only the first step of the former Soviet elite's new policy of Soviet "market" outreach to the West as well as to the South. In the west, Western Europe today seems at its zenith, however, its fate may well have been determined by (1) its military emasculation (by the Treaty of European Conventional Arms Reduction, the 1988 Soviet-U.S. Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement and START II) and (2) its dependency on Russian controlled oil and gas. In the south, oil producing Iran and Iraq, isolated by United States' Middle East diplomacy, are quietly and slowly sliding further into the deadly embrace of the northern bear.**
The centuries long Russian-Anglo-American love-hate relationship has been evolving dramatically from late 1978 until today, for sure. However, one might notice that it is being redesigned in such a way as to accommodate in the long run a more assertive, more successful and more powerful Russia overlording its European and southern peripheries. A first sketch of such an analysis I presented in 1992 at the ISA conference in Atlanta. For a more detailed analysis of the historical background, of the economic, military and political circumstances of such a probable scenario, you are invited to read the following pages.
Table content
Chapter I. The Social Market
Chapter II. The Historical Context
The Historical Curve toward Global Market Socialism
The International Power Market
Chapter III. The Economic Models Question
In Pursuit of an Industrial Policy with a Capitalist Face
The Interventionist PhilosophyA Historical Framework
The Traditional Centrally Planned Model
The French Auto Industry's Experience
To Reform or Not to Reform
The Japanese Semiconductor Industry's Experience
Internal Factors of Decline
The German Steel Industry's Experience
External Factors of Decline
The United States' Experience In Pursuit of Socialism with a Human Face
Chapter IV. Life Cycle of the Cold War Industries Intelligentsia in Power
The American Pursuit of a Military Economy
The Air Industry
The Air Industry's Support Industry
The Militarized Economy of the Soviet Union Detente
Chapter V. The Global Economic Scene
Social Market Capitalism
The Soviet Union's Dramatic Decline
The Accounting Nature of Capitalism
The United States' Deteriorating Leadership
Closed vs. Open Capitalist System
The Question of Labor Shortages in the Modern Economy
Individualistic vs. Communitarian Capitalism
Russian-Style Industrialization
Forms of Socialized Capitalism
The Russian Agricultural Revolution
The Profit Motive
More Labor through Service Automation
Social Capitalism
Reinventing the Feudal Work System
The Social Market Commonwealth
The Industrial Technocracy
Chapter VI. Pitfalls of a Competitive Market
The German Way
The Market Economy and Privatization
The American Way"Free Market" without Markets
The Russian Way
Growing Transatlantic Trade Disputes
The Interconnected World System
European Investments vs. American Investments
The Mediterranean Ecosystem
Similarites in the Former Comecon Countries' Reforms
European Inland Farming
Playing the Market along with the Socialist Nomenklatura
The Affluent Farming Societies
Playing Socialism at the Stock Market
The Emergence of the Military-Industrial Corporation
The Concept of Managed Markets
The Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs
Chapter VII. The Invisible Revolution
The Battle over Europe
Ownership Distribution in the United States
The Balkanization of the World Employee Stock Ownership Programs
Chapter VIII. The Making of Eurasia
Reforms and Their Results
Convergence within Europe
Motivation vs. Management
The Thaw, Finally
The Ambiguities of Decentralization
Events within Regularities the Cycle of History
Market Competition under Central Planning
The Aristotelianism of Global Politics
International Markets National Competition
Soft vs. Hard Style Management
Managed Social Markets
Hypothesizing on the Future
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.