Anti-War Caucus Reading Group: The New International Economic Order

Our inaugural reading group concluded with reflections on a question posed by Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper: “Can we imagine forms of sovereignty that are better able than either empires or nation-states to address both the inequality and diversity of the world’s people?”

Four and a half decades ago, the Third World grappled with precisely this question. Acting through an array of international institutions, like UNCTAD and OPEC, nations freshly liberated from colonialism sought to create a New International Economic Order—a global system more egalitarian than the one left in empire’s wake. But by the 1980’s this dream of a non-imperial world gave way to the realities of our decidedly unequal Neoliberal International Order. What was the New International Economic Order? Why did it wither away? And should socialists in the twenty first century try to salvage any parts of the project? Join our second reading group as we discuss these and other questions. (open to new DSA members and other newcomers)

The required readings have been organized together here: Antiwar Caucus NIEO Reading Packet