The Retreat to Unfreedom

For the first two decades after the second world war, it appeared as if mankind was embarking on a remarkable journey towards freedom. Millions of people awoke to independence, sovereignty and a chance to better their conditions through a collective effort at development. The socialist world underwent a rapid expansion, incorporating the most populous country on the earth. Even the advanced capitalist countries restructured themselves, ushering in the ‘golden age’ of capitalism which saw unprecedented employment, technological progress and rising real wages for the workers.

The world today, however, presents a totally changed scenario. Not only has the Soviet Union collapsed and the socialist project regressed, but the hope of freedom that underlay the loss of support for extant socialism has been completely belied. On the other side, the ‘golden age’ of capitalism has become a faded and distant memory, with pervasive unemployment. Above all, there has been a veritable rolling back of ‘decolonization’, with the third world once again being pushed back under metropolitan hegemony. Poverty has increased over much of the third world. And, almost everywhere, there is a growth of fascism of different hues.

An important factor underlying this substantial change is the emergence of a new form of international finance capital. This has undermined the capacity of the nation-state – the only agency hitherto available that could, in principle, intervene to improve the human condition. If progress along the road to freedom has come to a halt and has in fact been reversed, if there is a retreat to unfreedom, as the title of this book suggests, then, the analysis of the causes of this retreat requires an exploration of the immanent logic of this new form of international finance capital. The essays in this book constitute a preliminary attempt at such an exploration.