The sphere of international relations and the balance of power at the global level has seen a fundamental reorganization in the short period since the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, with its accompanying satellite sphere of state socialist economies.  This change could be expected by any study of the sudden collapse of a balancing political force that leaves its opponent free to pursue its own agenda unhindered by major opposition.  A much larger economic hegemony has emerged to fill this vacuum: between those diverse countries, collectively described as the "Global South", the emerging markets of neo-capitalist and post-communist nations such as China and the Russian Federation, the economically wealthy and influential oil-producing nations and the previously dominant economies of the old imperial nation states.  Presiding over this global consolidation is the one remaining superpower of the Cold War era: the United States of America.

   From either side of the ideological divide regarding the nature of this sphere of economic relations, there is no argument that this process is being transformed into a truly global phenomenon.  The market practices of global capitalism, previously held partially in check by the Soviet Block, have penetrated all continents of the planet and an interdependence within its economic sphere has emerged that essentially surpasses the prior claim to legitimacy of the nation states existing within it.  Under the technological military dominance of the United States' nuclear arsenal and internationally positioned military forces, the arena of nation state relations has moved into the stage of high capitalism that Lenin once claimed for the birth of the twentieth century.  This transformation has brought with it a significant change in the politics of class relations, which were previously confined to a much greater degree by the bounds of their respective nation states.  The contemporary nature of power relations between classes can be defined by the emergence of an increasingly free-floating financial and technical elite, which transcends the world of the nation states its members exist within.  This class is counterbalanced by a multi-faceted class of workers and farmers largely bound within traditional spheres of the nation states, combined with a disenfranchised and superficially illegitimate (though tacitly accepted within the new economic sphere) pool of international labourers imported between national boundaries.

   These new class distinctions have been established through the increasingly multinational character of economic investment within the borders of nation states, along with the erosion of many economic claims to legitimacy and sovereignty by the governments of nation states (save as the enforcers of the legal rights of the superimposing economic sphere).  Such global relations are backed up by the increasing willingness of the United States to use its own military and economic sovereignty and its prior legitimacy of superior force, at will, to police the practices and jurisdiction of the new economic order over any nation state whose government resists such relations.

   This new balance of power may be seen at its barest in the relation of power between the General Assembly of the United Nations, and its Security Council.  While the United States may look towards the body of the United Nations to legitimize its own unilateral actions, it shows no hesitation in enforcing its dominance over the body by ignoring resolutions of the General Assembly, treaties made at the international level which may hinder its own economic processes, and by vetoing any attempt made to reform that body's more undemocratic structures by other members.  Although the underlying concept of a body such as the United Nations is not inherently flawed, the legal structures that underlie the existing body, as well as the overwhelming predominance of financial support by the United States to its continued existence, do contain such flaws, and were intentionally designed to do so at its inception.  Its architecture conceived at the end of the Second World War, it was designed to preserve the economic privileges and dominions of the victors.  And while piecemeal reforms of the Security Council have been granted, the underlying flaw of the automatic veto powers and the existence of permanent Security Council member nations remain as fundamental principles of that body's functioning.

   But to say that the entity of the nation state under this new arena of power relations is redundant and its existence as a political entity is waning is an error of perception.  While the propagandists of the new global order of economic dominance are keen to trumpet the erosion of borders within its sphere, the concept of the nation state, and its accompanying model of a community of nation states, that has predominated international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia, has shown no sign of disappearing.  Rajwant Mangat recognizes this in her analysis of the trends within globalism at the international level when she writes:

 

   “Neither the modern state nor the modern world system is necessarily eternal; however, it is too simplistic to assume that the salience of the nation state as the fundamental unit of international relations is threatened simply because the processes of globalization are underway.  Both state and system are continually in flux.  States today are different from states in the eighteenth century.  They obviously have somewhat different challenges to confront.  Nonetheless, the notion of statehood remains salient.  Today there are conspicuous differences between the various member states of the United Nations, yet the ontological significance of statehood is the same for Australia as it is for Somalia…  Simple determinism is erroneous; processes of globalization and interconnectedness do not imply a fundamental transformation of the society of states.  By making a distinction between globalization as a means and globalism as an end, I argue two points: globalization does not necessitate globalism; and, while the autonomy of the state may be diminishing, its autonomy remains intact.” (1)

 

    In fact, the body of the nation state, and the underlying integrity of its borders has grown in importance within the overseeing global hegemonic system in vital ways.  While economic independence has largely been wrested from the singular control of the governing bodies within the nation state, and international bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank have assumed increasing control and importance within this sphere, the role of the nation state as a physical space governing the various populaces of the globe itself is of vital importance to the new economic order.  In this way, the nation state works to enforce the fundamental economic distinction between the new ruling class of the global sphere, and those it seeks to rule.  The role of the government within the nation state, while surrendering its powers of economic self-determination, has received, in trade-off, a strengthening of its physical legitimacy over its borders.  As Mangat further notes,

 

The foundation of statehood is the concept of sovereignty, understood through the principle of par in parem non habat imperium [equals hold no jurisdiction over one another].  Sovereignty is neither strict autonomy nor absolute freedom from restraints.  So long as there is a system of states, states will not be free from outside influence in economic and political policy-making.  Sovereignty remains the cornerstone of international relations, as it is the essential norm of the society of states.  Fundamental change in the society of states will only occur if state sovereignty is eroded…  Globalization has not resulted in the erosion of state sovereignty.  The state is increasingly losing its autonomy in decision-making, but still remains the sovereign agent of change in international relations.  Processes of globalization and internationality are not necessarily a prelude to globalism or strict internationalism.

 

Arguably, unless the sovereignty of the state is fundamentally undermined, globalism will not become institutionalized. (2)

 

Practical application of this attitude can be seen in the growing popularity among political elites of the concept that the rights of the government of a country precede those of the citizens it governs.  What the new global arena has seen is the final severing of a government's practices while in power, from any interests of the full body of those it pertains to govern.  A further point that is often overlooked in the argument for the disappearance of the nation state is the vital role that cooperation between the state and finance capital plays in the capitalist economy.  While it is trumpeted that consumers now have the power of choice over their investments, this is untrue in the fundamental area of taxation of the citizens by its government.  Much of this taxation is then invested back into the financial system in terms of public spending on contracts, tax alleviation policies for corporate growth, military spending, the construction of roads and infrastructure to support the motor industries, the privatization of natural resources and publicly-owned institutions and investment in research and development within public institutions that inevitably works to benefit private industry, to name but some forms of support.  The citizen, as the taxed unit, has little to no say in how this taxation is spent, and it is now largely seen as the duty of the government of the day to divide it as it will, as it belongs to the government by right.

   Even the United States, as the remaining superpower from the days of Cold War geopolitics, has shown little sign that it’s fundamental legitimacy as a State has been eroded by the new economic order.  While the prevailing ideology of free market liberalism and subsequent free trade agreements such as NAFTA have awarded its corporate elite a much higher degree of flexibility in transferring its labour pool beyond national boundaries and disenfranchising the working population of the nation, this global order is inherently dependent upon the subsidizing of core economic industries within its borders, so as to guarantee continued economic dominance of the global market, an extreme degree of government investment in the major industries of defence contracting and the fossil fuel industries, and large-scale military intervention within the borders of other nation states to preserve the economic interests of US corporations in other nation states throughout the world.  In his essay on modern United States influence in world affairs, Doug Stokes points out that,

 

“Instead of arguing that the US state now acts to secure a transnational outcome for transnational capital, I would argue that when the US state acts it is because of the structural power of the US economy within world capitalism with transnational outcomes primarily benefiting US capital through the US’s preponderance of global market power.

   Thus the US state acts to secure the generic global conditions for transnational capital accumulation less at the behest of a TCC, and rather as a result that in doing so the US state is, by default, acting in the generic interests of its national capital due to its high level of internationalisation.  In short, the US is the first state amongst capitalist equals.” (3)

 

   The language imbedded within The Project for a New American Century makes this strategic goal abundantly clear: the core directive of US foreign policy is the assurance of the continuing dominance of the United States within the international sphere.  The clear threats are those states that threaten this global order.  As such, although lip service is paid to the threat of terrorism within the global sphere, the fundamental threats to be seen are those emerging economies of nation states whose continuing rise will threaten the hegemony of the United States over the other capitalist economies.

   And while the technical elites of other capitalist nations, and the technical and capital elites of other nation states within the sphere of global capital are experiencing a sense of liberation from the constraints of their respective nation states, the core of financial capital remains within the economic control of the prevailing hegemonic power.

   At the other end of the spectrum of this global world order lies the disenfranchised international labour force, depopulated to serve the increasingly free-floating nature of global corporate enterprise.

   This demonstrates a core distinction between the economic orthodoxy of the new global order of economic relations and that of classical economics.  While early free market proponents such as Adam Smith recognised that a fundamental principle of such an economy is the free movement of the labour force to the sources of employment, the new global economy is one governed by the principles of absolute control over the movements of populations and the ownership of land and natural resources by the ruling financial elite.  In no other way can the discrepancies in wealth that characterise the social relations between the rulers and the ruled remain preserved.  Rather than a world of open borders and the withering of nation states, what has appeared is a system of absolute control over movement: no space is left to escape from the overriding system of economic control.  Even the illegal movement of labour between the global south and the first world of economic prosperity: one that is absolutely necessary to the continuing prosperity of the new, global economy; is geared towards the strengthening of that system.  This is achieved through an internal profit from the exploitation that coexists with the censure and through the threat of punishment and the example provided to the larger mass of the disadvantaged.  Additionally, the global markets are able to enjoy the economic stimulus created by increased spending on border security within the first world states.  What this creates is the perfect system of monolithic, totalitarian control by capital, with no movement unobserved, and no alternatives available to those made desperate by the very system of their exploitation.

   In such a way, the global economy has been able to achieve equilibrium between the postponement of crisis within the system and its necessary collapse (through the fundamental nature of its practices).  While the selling talk of its advocates is always that of peace and prosperity for the world, the reality is a picture of eternal warfare and wastage.  This process ensures the endless propagation of new markets necessary for the continued expansion of profit (thus generating further wealth to further ensure the continuing distinction and power of the ruling global elite) and the necessary wastage of the material products of production that ensures future demand.  So the system can preserve itself, without resorting to the type of global warfare that was vital to save the system from stagnation in previous centuries, but has now become impossible, due to a nuclear arsenal whose presence assures the preservation of the status quo, but whose use would ensure the destruction of the entire system of class distinction based on wealth that its existence is meant to ensure.  And despite the continual propaganda from the intellectual sphere of elite opinion that these processes will guarantee freedom of choice and individual liberation, the practices demanded by this economic system are guaranteeing precisely the opposite.  Economic growth under the system of global capitalism can only occur through the creation of new markets, yet this growth is denied by the very principle of scarcity that governs all economic theory.  To defeat this principle, the only true arenas of growth are the continual occupation and takeover of the only growing resource left to it: the minds and bodies of its consumers.  Thus we have the prerequisites for the creation of a system of totalitarian control that far exceeds even the direst predictions for the dictatorships of the twentieth century.

 

This process was pointed out by Rosa Luxemburg at the beginnings of the previous century:

 

The growing consumption of the capitalists can certainly not be regarded as the ultimate purpose of accumulation; on the contrary, there is no accumulation inasmuch as this accumulation takes place and increases; personal consumption of the capitalists must be regarded as simple reproduction.  Rather, the question is: if, and in so far as, the capitalists do not themselves consume their products but ‘practice abstinence’, i.e. accumulate, for whose sake do they produce?  Even less can the maintenance of an ever larger army of workers be the ultimate purpose of continuous accumulation of capital.  From the capitalist’s point of view, the consumption is a consequence of accumulation, it is never its object or its condition, unless the principles (or foundations) of capitalist production are to be turned upside down.  And in any case, the workers can only consume that part of the product which corresponds to the variable capital, not a jot more.  Who, then, realises the permanently increasing surplus value?  The diagram answers: the capitalists themselves and they alone. –And what do they do with this increasing surplus value? –The diagram replies: they use it for an ever greater expansion of their production.  These capitalists are thus fanatical supporters of an expansion of production for production’s sake.  They see to it that ever more machines are built for the sake of building – with their help – ever more new machines.  Yet the upshot of all this is not accumulation of capital but an increasing production of consumer goods to no purpose whatsoever. (4)

 

Her findings are as applicable to the world of global capital today as they were for the pre-World War I imperial system of international finance and colonialism.  A number of economists have pointed out the same tendencies of movement towards crisis in the modern financial system, such as the study of the fall and level of recovery of the profit rate in the post-World War II United States economy by Dumenil and Levy (5)

 

Hence the drive and preoccupation of the global economic sphere with technological advancement and obsolescence of machinery: this is a necessary development to the consumption of accumulated surplus allowing for continued expansion of capitalist production.  Hence, too, the creation of ever more esoteric fields of consumption: advertising becomes a commodity within itself; media consumption becomes ever more a preoccupation with continual reinvention of entertainment as industry; as the technical improvements of industry progress further and further with the corresponding shedding of surplus labour, new and more esoteric forms of employment are created in the burgeoning service sector to accommodate a redundant workforce.  The continual accumulation of capital that Rosa Luxemburg observes and its subsequent need for continual expansion of markets (previously the domain of imperial expansion and conflict between the great powers) necessitates the need for continual warfare as a field to continuously expend the products of accumulation and surplus labour.  The continual need for new markets necessitates the continual smashing of the infrastructure of the peripheral states of the developing world, so as to provide a continual renewal of market resources in a world exhausted of new colonial conquests.  Also the necessity of government funding of military spending and renewal of contracts, funded through the pool of variable capital in taxation, leading to reduced spending on the social strata of the nation state, hence to an ever-increasing need for propaganda and diversionary entertainment within the phantom production industries, leading to higher and higher deficit and breakdown of infrastructure – spiraling into an ever higher sequence of crisis and denial.

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