Coming out of their London meeting, the G20 leaders congratulated themselves about their achievements. Each went on to boast, for the benefit of his domestic public opinion, of having "shown the world" the road to end the crisis. As to Brown, he rushed towards the TV cameras, to herald the advent of "a new world order" - no less!
The whole affair revealed itself as the propaganda exercise it was always meant to be. Its aim being to lure the crisis-stricken working class and poor into believing that the governments are finally moving against the crisis, instead of just lining the pockets of the bankers, and that the profit system may have a future, provided it is duly "regulated".
Big numbers and hot air
The joint declaration of the G20 leaders starts by boasting of having put together "an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy."
However, commentators point out that around 35% of that amount is not "additional", because it had already been committed in the past. Another 25% of the total is money collectively printed by the G20, most of which will go to the rich countries' central banks, to be used just like all central banks' money lately, to cover the losses of big finance companies.
The claim that this "package" will bail out the poor countries, is simply farcical. Firstly, because it will be channelled via the International Monetary Fund, which is in the habit of turning the screw on borrowers, resulting in intolerable suffering for the populations. Secondly, because it is hard to see how this aid, which is only a small fraction of the public money lavished on the rich countries' banks, could possibly meet the needs of the vast poor majority of the world's population!
Just as farcical is the joint declaration's claim that "the era of banking secrecy is over" and that the publication of a name-and-shame list of the world's tax-havens will force their resident tax evaders to come clean. Ten British dependent territories are on the list, including Jersey, which is said to have signed up to the G20 "transparency standard". One wonders what this really means, knowing that £466 billion is currently stashed away in Jersey, for a population of just 89,000! On balance, the summit will probably be remembered only because of the extravagantly costly deployment of 5,000 police to protect the rich world's VIPs.
The "new world order" we need
For all his rhetoric, Brown's "new world order" is just the old one, based on the same profit system which is responsible for the present crisis. Because, contrary to what the G20 leaders would have us believe, they are no more capable of "regulating" this system, than they have been capable of predicting, let alone pre-empting, its meltdown. The last thing these trustees of big business are able to do, is to put any serious constraint on the profiteering of their masters!
Yet, if this capitalist system keeps repeating the same devastating crises, it is because of the same built-in cause - the reckless search for profits by a tiny minority of capitalist profiteers. And it is because this tiny capitalist class owns or controls all the means of production and distribution, that its recklessness has such a catastrophic impact on the world economy, with such disastrous consequences for the population as a whole.
Over the past century, even during the periods of so-called "affluence", the capitalist order has forced a growing proportion of the world population into increasingly abject poverty. Now that this superficial "affluence" has gone, it is the whole of mankind which is threatened with impoverishment, with tens of millions of workers pushed onto the junk pile and thousands of perfectly viable production facilities left empty, to rust. Such is capitalism's way of "regulating" itself and such it will remain, as long as private profit rules the world.
A system so senile that it can only go forward by destroying what the world's populations create through their labour, should not be allowed to survive any longer. It has long passed its sell-by date.
So yes, we do need a "new world order". But unlike Brown's, it will have to be designed to cater for the needs of all, rather than the greed of the few - that is, a social order free of today's private profit!