"Requiem" connotes Catholicism, namely, a Catholic symbol for a sacred mass held on behalf of a person or persons who are deceased. but in another sense 'requiem' may be used in a less sacred way to designate [perhaps with a mixture of vitriol and nostalgia] a sober note honoring, nevertheless, the demise of a rather universal human social order -- an all-encompassing transformation of once pivotal institutional systems, a centuries-long set of political economies holding sway within nations states, with each desperately hanging on to its sovereignty over a long history of struggles for hegemony on international frontiers, or else confronting destabilizing forces from within. In short, a struggle to maintain immunity against internal and external aggressions, reprisals, revolutions, demise.

Thus a requiem for an old world order of nations. But what was it like? has it vanished altogether? What new order is taking its place, and will it be better -- for whom? such questions are unanswerable without certain knowledge of what the old order, presumably involving 'capitalism' and 'democracy', was like. Nor can one derive an answer to "how better will the new one be?" chiefly because scarcely anyone engaged in implementing domestic and foreign fiscal polices, knows what sort of world we are now living in. Neither is there any accurate understanding of what is replacing once-national economies in Euro-American and Asian political economies. All nation states have the power to destroy, but none in the West has the power to control mass production and all that this implies.

From the demise of feudal institutions until the present, a long line of scholars disputed each others' conceptions of feudal and post-feudal social systems, in advancing their own versions of the nature of the industrial revolution and what came beforehand. This issue of how to define, describe or characterize the structures and processes of 'capitalist', 'secular', 'democratic' or 'modern' societies' has never been resolved -- especially with regard to the relation of the economy to the nation state. The dilemmas prevailed in all efforts to understand 'feudal' institutions. Even the folks living in 'feudal' times probably did not know they were 'feudal'. Burckhardt's Renaissance turned out to be a rosy image of individualism, freedom and creativity for all -- especially if one omitted reference to women, peasants and paupers.

Today of course CNN newscasters and junkies, not to mention the rest of the mass media, hail the demise of 'socialism' and of 'Communism' with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reemergence of nation states, each engaged in winning sovereignty under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a plethora of supranational and commercial banks. Still, in passing, it can be argued that there was no collapse of 'communism', no downfall of 'socialism', simply because they never emerged. The structures of socialism and/or communism were never erected. Their initial impetus was truncated. The revolution in each country stopped way short of its utopian goals, the processes for their achievement were corrupted, and the result was that each 'revolutionary' nation was engulfed again in an state capitalism, but on the basis of empire. Why the media, including the left, still speak of the demise of communism is not a simple oversight. The concept of demise of communism, is part and parcel of the equally imbecilic notion of the success of capitalism in 'its' defeat of 'communism' in the cold war.

If one closely examines the ways in which the term 'capitalism' is used in the media, in educational institutions, texts, and on the street, one finds a veritable tossed salad. Still 'capitalist' society is typically envisioned as a political-economic system with national boundaries [in some cases the overflow of money, trade and production is observed]. In this national context, for example, members of the U.S. the congress, not to mention George Bush and his entourage of CEOs, even while protesting "isolationist" ideas, speak of 'the' American Economy as if it were operating as a national thing, operating in some kind of a sandwich bag bordered by Canada, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Mexico and the gulf of Mexico. Thus congressmen speak of 'turning our economy around'. The muddy trend of political and lay thought is that a recession is principally American, and that tinkering with taxes and the prime rate, while making trade agreements with Japan and Mexico, for example, will turn red ink into black ink, in balancing the U.S. budget -- ridding 'our economy' of payments and trade deficits on the international front.

This way of seeing things was more accurate during Franklin roosevelt's New Deal administration, when mass production was still done for the most part within our continental boundaries, and while markets for our trade goods were mostly internal. In such a situation progressive public and corporate taxation, deficit spending, public works could, and did, in fact turn "our" economy. Keynesian policies to create 'full' employment were vindicated in their consequences. But this is no longer possible, and the reason is that 'our' economy' is not ours anymore. If there were a political system enveloping the globe and having hegemony over all production, services and trade, and capable of enforcing fiscal and domestic policies on a catholic, universal basis, then a world-wide Kenesian-type policy could possibly be administered successfully against any recession or depression. But this has not come to pass, nor is it about to do so, at least not for a very long time, perhaps centuries from now, if ever.

George Bush's "new world order" is, hardly more than a slogan, albeit one that can be rationalized as the raison d'etre, of "operation desert storm" -- a war given a name even before it started. Despite Bush's insistence that the Gulf War was waged by a UN coalition, and not exclusively by the United States military forces under his command, his concept of the new world order appears to contradict that claim. This point has been made by his democratic critics and was repeated [3/25/92] by Gary Brown on a CNN Larry King Live interview.

That is, Bush's new world order is one in which US hegemony is singular and global. It infers that there is now but one 'superpower' [but keep an eye on Japan], that hegemony can be maintained 'only' by a global American police force, centered in the Pentagon, keeping tabs on and coercing all other nation states to see to it that no nation state will obstruct "free enterprise" -- namely those transnational corporations, chartered in America, which took production from America and established it in "friendly" nations abroad. Heads of unfriendly nations, like Allende, Goulart, Jimeniz can be toppled to make room for more 'democracy' and an open door policy.

Bush seems to rationalize that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emancipation of its national fractions, has won for the United States and their government an unchangeable, singular and global hegemony. As such, the United States government is now seen by Bush, and his corporate CEOs, as the world police force -- ready now to back politically what "American" corporations want to do at home and abroad. In this role there is no "peace dividend".

One may infer from this that all domestic efforts to alleviate suffering and to socialize and educate the general citizenry in America is to a last priority, perhaps too great a chore.

If this is the "new world" order,, then what is left out is more important than what it includes. As Powell pointed out earlier [1969] the Roman Empire collapsed onto its heartland, because of the many factors leading to its inner, increasingly anomic condition. Its power to rule over such a vast terrain eventually subsided; any elan to continue in spirit what came about militarily simply vanished. Is this to be the path of our future also? The answer could very well be, "yes." but a great many countervailing factors stand squarely in the way. Hegemony is not a static condition, especially not at this end of the 20th century. States economically better off than America are potential challengers.

To begin with, any state, to remain a state, must maintain immunity against reprisal -- reprisal from within and reprisal from outside forces, however great or small. Punishment of any national group by any other state must be accepted as punishment, as legitimate, and not as an act of war calling for retaliation in kind. Minimally this calls for total command over the means of doing political violence. Can 'the new world order' achieve this command -- over the nations of western and eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America? Could it maintain such an achievement without internal dissent and revolutionary movements? The US government cannot even police itself. How then can it police the whole wide world -- all other national entities and all of conflicting fractions within them?

Powell's "touchstone" statement here, addresses Alexander Berkman's question, what makes states exist? Berkman's answer:

The armies and navies? yes, but only apparently so. What supports the armies and navies? It is the belief of the people, of the masses that that government is_______, it is the generally accepted idea of the need of government. That is the real and solid foundation of the State. Take that idea or belief away and no government could last another day [Berkman, 1929].

. . . by-passes the protective shell of the state in which] nothing short of global rule can satisfy the security interest of any power . . . each superpower's logical objective is the destruction of the other. But this is not practical since thermonuclear warfare would involve one's own destruction, the means of defeat, the end. if this is so, then the short term objective of states must surely be mutual accommodation . . . Not that destruction threatens everybody, the common interest of all mankind is sheer survival [Herz, "The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State", 1957].