By analyzing current world events we are often insufficiently aware of the fabulous upheavals occurring all around us. These mutations are due to overwhelming new scientific discoveries and technologies. They are revolutionary and, due to their secondary effects, affect all aspects of human thought and behaviour. When textbooks on world history talk about BC and AC, they are no longer referring to a time before Christ and after Christ, but rather to a time before and after the computer. The emerging knowledge society forms a new global paradigm, at least for an elite. For it appears that the knowledge society also produces a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding. Too much information leads to misinformation. Our societies are of an inextricable complexity. And this is what I have called ‘the law of diminishing relative knowledge’: the known increases, but the knowable increases much faster. This creates a gap between what we know and what we could or should know. The knowledge economy despite some new forms of discrimination, is however conducive to unprecedented opportunities for human betterment. The worldwide knowledge society leads to an accelerated transformation of the world into our ‘global village’. I call it ‘Globalistan’. The ongoing ICT revolution has had a shattering impact on the two dominant political-economic systems of the 20th century: Marxist-Leninist communism and liberal market capitalism. The global knowledge economy causes two major effects: one of ‘décollectivisation’ and one of ‘déprivatisation’and ‘lethal’competition.
Once human knowledge, fuelled by immense information, flows and communication channels resulting in unparalleled creativity become the dominant factor of production, socialist-communist collectivism loses its foothold, for the simple reason that knowledge and creativity are not susceptible to ‘socialist collectivization’ and expropriation of means of production. Capital, raw materials, and machines may be taken from the rich and capitalists, either by law or by dictatorial methods, and money can be redistributed and managed by the State. Individual knowledge and creativity cannot be collectivized. Knowledge must neither be shared nor divided but multiplied (inter alia through education and research). Exit collectivist socialism and Marxist communism and their recipes for redistribution and collectivization and their faded dream of the mutability of society according to Marxist principles.
From their side, the supporters of liberal market capitalism also underestimate the impact of the ongoing mutations, which lead to a ‘de-privatization’ of the major input of production. Knowledge and creativity have growing difficulties to be efficiently patented, protected, and licensed. Every invention, every idea circulates freely through the numerous planetary ICT channels, internet, google and facebook. Capitalism was founded on the ancient Roman legal concept of private property. This is no longer applicable to the protection of intellectual property (copyright is read as 'the right to copy') in a world without frontiers, in which markets are virtualized (e-bay), de-territorialized, and even dematerialized due to the dominance of knowledge and creativity as the main factors of production. There is also a phenomenon of ‘disintermediation’, whereby supply and demand are in direct contact without intermediaries. Markets are ‘de-institutionalized’ as state authorities lose their grip on them (VAT, in the case of electronically concluded trade, is not easily collected). As a consequence of the growing unification of our planet, due in the first place to scientific and technological developments, the economic playing field has become worldwide, with giant enterprises operating and competing on it. Their competition is of an ‘oligopolistic type’ and corresponds to what the Americans call ‘the cut the throat over competition’. Small and medium sized enterprises are satellites orbiting around the big firms. These multinationals have huge financial needs, which lead to enormous concentrations in the financial sector. ICT and computer technologies have made it possible to elaborate a whole range of new financial products which were often quite speculative, causing erratic stock market volatility. The financial crisis of 2008-09 undoubtedly undermined the credibility of financial capitalism. The so called sub prime debacle was the trigger for a worldwide financial collapse. The abuses, the huge bonuses for managers and trading scandals confronted the leaders of the banking sector with virulent criticism and the need to sharpen deontological rules of conduct.
Communism and capitalism, both foster fathers of the societal ideologies, political regimes and economic systems of the 19th and 20th centuries, are to a great extent and in a fatal way affected, if not devastated, by the onrushing and growing scientific and technological whirlwinds. In the world of tomorrow the United States of America, the European Union, and China will probably be the main test areas where, due to much trial and error, a new societal framework will be elaborated in order to cope with the new needs and challenges. A new, internationally developed regulation and monitoring system of the financial markets is urgently required. This implies an inescapable ethical dimension. The most important challenge for our global village, ‘Globalistan,’ is to transform all the changes, that are so overwhelmingly facing us, into real human progress. But this requires that a consistent and usable understanding is worked out with respect to what is meant by human progress. This refers to an essential ethical question: what is good and what is bad for humans? And who is going to answer this question? Assessing economic, technological and thus greatly material progress in the light of a consistent scale of values appears to be an essential task and challenge for the decades ahead.
Read a longer version of the article on my personal website.
Prof. em. Mark Eyskens, Former Prime Minister and Minister of State of Belgium