“Great Reset” Equals Greater Tragedies For the People
Much has been said in recent months about the so-called “Great Reset,” also known as “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Klaus Schwab, founder and executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and Thierry Malleret, founder of the Monthly Barometer, have even co-authored a 2020 book titled “COVID-19: The Great Reset.” Prince Charles of the U.K. has also played a major role in formulating and promoting the “Great Reset” agenda.
The WEF is based in Switzerland and was founded in 1971. It hosts an annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland attended by thousands of millionaires, billionaires, and their political and media representatives. The large gathering is an important opportunity for the international financial oligarchy to figure out how to maintain their domination over the world’s peoples and resources under the banner of high ideals. The meeting is notorious for being non-transparent, undemocratic, and opulent.
This year the global oligarchs are specifically exploiting the never-ending and exhausting “COVID Pandemic” to push for restructuring international institutions and arrangements to maintain Anglo-American imperialist hegemony, which ultimately means more tragedies for the world’s peoples. The “COVID Pandemic” has proved to be a priceless pretext for all kinds of assaults on people’s rights, while concentrating even greater amounts of wealth in even fewer hands. The rich see the current global crisis as an opportunity for a new world order in which their class power and privilege can be further consolidated.
In the current context, the international financial oligarchy is deeply concerned about people’s growing consciousness of the failures of the capitalist economic system, including growing poverty, inequality, hunger, unemployment, debt, and political marginalization. They are worried that this precious consciousness will morph into an unstoppable demand and agenda for a human-centered alternative to the status quo, which would mean an end to the superfluous rich and their outdated economic system. The stakes are too high for the world’s billionaires to stand idly by as their outdated political and economic system lose greater legitimacy. Around the world more people are losing faith in defunct old governance arrangements and institutions because these no longer work or resolve matters in a way that favors the people. Nor are they capable of resolving the internal conflicts of the ruling elite. Old arrangements and institutions cannot provide a new aim and direction for the economy or society.
How to overwhelm people’s growing social consciousness with anti-consciousness and disinformation is a key concern of the global oligarchs. Convincing people to ignore the harsh and worsening realities in front of them naturally involves great conceit and illusion-mongering of the first order. The rich and their allies are eager to “save capitalism” and to convince people to ignore their own concrete experience and blindly believe that everything “will be OK” under capitalism with billionaires at the helm. Capitalism can supposedly be saved. There is no need for a pro-social alternative. Capitalism is allegedly resilient and can be made to provide for the needs of the people; it can be “reborn” and “reset.” In this way, there is great pressure for people to go along with the self-serving agenda of the rich instead of breaking free with a new and independent vision and agenda for humanity.
This new capitalism, this new world order, according to Schwab and his ilk, is “stakeholder capitalism,” a recycled hackneyed expression from years ago. “Stakeholder capitalism” is the irrational idea that social classes and class struggle do not exist and that everyone supposedly has some sort of stake or interest in capitalism, which is why capitalism is worth saving and should not be questioned, let alone replaced. It is straightforward disinformation designed to fool the gullible. It is another form of “one-nation” politics. It is another way of saying that there is no alternative to the retrogressive status quo and that there is such a thing as “responsible capitalism” or “ethical capitalism.” No matter what, everyone is to accept neoliberal polices and state arrangements that funnel even more socially-produced wealth to a tiny ruling elite that is historically exhausted and out of touch. It is no accident that the rich are more aggressively blurring the critical distinction between public and private and promoting public-private “partnerships” (PPPs) as a way to seize more public wealth to avert falling profits. PPPs are essentially pay-the-rich schemes masquerading as projects that benefit everyone. The “Great Reset” agenda specifically calls for the private sector to play the main role in creating a “brighter future” for humanity.
Objectively, the only interest working people have in capitalism is its replacement by a human-centered society based on a diverse, balanced, and self-reliant economy that serves the needs of all and a political system that vests sovereignty in the people themselves. There can be no social progress while people remain disempowered and reduced to lining up behind the antisocial and antiworker agenda of the rich and their cartel parties. Society does not need the rich or their political representatives.
The proposals put forward in the “Great Reset” post-Covid-19 agenda “to improve the state of the world” and to “shape the recovery” in a “more inclusive and resilient way” include developing the “green” economy, fighting climate change, digitizing everything, increasing surveillance, ensuring “sustainability” through “entrepreneurial solutions,” “changing the priorities of societies,” and altering the “direction of national economies.” We are cynically told that, “We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems” and that this “is not some impossible dream.”
This “new” vision and agenda full of lofty buzzwords and phrases is supposed to replace the old tattered social contract with a “new social contract that honors the dignity of every human being.” The key thing, though, is to keep decision-making power out of the hands of the people and to convince everyone that big disruptions, sharp contradictions, and constant crises can somehow suddenly be overcome under capitalism, and that this is the time to do so. No matter what, the destiny of humanity and the world must continue to be determined by the world’s billionaires and their cheerleaders, not someone else. The role of the people is to abandon all thinking, experience, and analysis and blindly believe that the global oligarchs responsible for all the major unsolved problems and wars of the last 100 years are now going to suddenly usher in a world that affirms human dignity and provide everyone with a bright, inclusive, equitable, sustainable future. Does this make sense to anyone? Why was this not done decades ago? Were there not many serious crises and big problems in the past as well?
Additional Layer of Disinformation
In an attempt to further confuse people, many commentators and writers on the internet have introduced their own illusions, muddled thinking, and disinformation into the equation. Some, for example, have tried to characterize the “Great Reset” as Marxist, socialist, or communist in order to discredit all three and to glorify capitalism. But they forget that the “Great Reset” is the agenda of the biggest owners of capital and staunchest opponents of communism and Marxism. There is nothing Marxist or communist about “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” There is nothing in this agenda of billionaires that empowers working people or changes the narrow aim of the economy to maximize profit for major owners of capital. The last thing billionaires want is a society that deprives them of their ability to deprive people of their rights and power. Major owners of capital have been vigorously fighting Marxism and communism for more than 160 years. They are desperate to extend the longevity of capitalism and are increasingly restructuring the state to do this. Different commentators and writers have misinterpreted this to mean that capitalists are destroying capitalism and promoting collectivism. They fail to realize that private interests seizing greater functions of the state is the way private interests are funneling more public funds into their pockets while keeping working people marginalized and disempowered. The new world order being envisioned and planned by major owners of capital will further enrich billionaires and lower living and working standards for more people. The only economic planning the rich are interested in is planning that serves their narrow interests at the expense of everyone else. The “Great Reset” will do nothing to affirm the rights of workers and the general interests of society.
Everyone should consciously reject the post-“COVID Pandemic” world laid out in the “Great Reset” plan advanced by the global imperialist oligarchy. It is a recipe for more slavery, insecurity, and tragedies. It solves no problems because the people themselves remain marginalized and disempowered. People have wanted an alternative to capitalism for a long time, but the New is still being powerfully blocked by the Old.
Fortunately, the contradictions in the historically unprecedented situation we find ourselves in do provide cracks and openings that working people can take advantage of and seize the initiative to make some substantive headway. The rich and their allies are not invincible and do not have complete control over life. They have failed in many previous endeavors because of their short-sightedness, pragmatism, and megalomania. The “COIVD Pandemic” provides an opportunity for all forces in society to think and act in new ways. The complicated here and now requires the world’s peoples to develop new ways of thinking, analyzing, fighting, acting, and advancing. Some of the old demands and forms of struggle remain viable, but many do not. Already, new demands and new forms of consciousness and movement have emerged here and there in the context of the “COVID Pandemic.” Some new language and thinking is even finding its way into more meetings, discussions, groups, books, articles, the internet, and social media platforms.
Now is the time to become even more vigilant about the various plots the rich are preparing for the people so as to not be sabotaged and derailed from the task of creating a brighter future for all. No one should be fooled by the claim that the world’s billionaires and their governments are interested in “a better, fairer, greener, healthier future for humanity.” The current crisis cannot be overcome so long as power remains in the hands of international monopolies and out of the hands of those who actually produce the wealth of society. All attempts to block people from developing their own independent thinking, aim, politics, and outlook must be opposed.
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