Global social democracy and the new international economic order

Abstract

So far, the basic unit of socio-economic analysis has been the country or the nation, with the outer world being brought into the analysis only at a later stage, as a superimposition: in the case of bourgeois theory to assert and extend the demonstration of basic harmony of interests, given the free play of market forces, between classes and nations; and in the case of orthodox, nineteenth century-early twentieth century, Marxist theory, merely to provide an additional arena in which the internal contradictions of highly developed capitalist countries are being played out. In both cases, the basic approach has been Eurpo-centric. It is time this order was reversed, and the whole world was taken as the basic unit of social analysis. This, it is true, has been done by a certain strand of Marxist thought, ever since the appearance of socialism in the Soviet Union and the progressive division of the world into two parts, the capitalist part and the socialist part, whose contradictions we're said to have become the overriding ones which govern all other contradictions. The beginning of world integration into one socio-economic system, however, hence the appropriate basic unit of analysis, dates much further bach to the sixteenth century, the century which witnessed the appearance of the capitalist system.