With the issues of sub-prime mortgages failures, liquidity crunch, problems in the financial structure, I could not help remembering reading a book called ” the Great Depression of 1990 (http://www.amazon.com/Great-Depression-1990-Ravi-Batra/dp/0440201683 ) which was quite famous in 1987 and was one of the top economic books. It was one of the top sellers and was being published just at the time when the stock market was in trouble that year. As we all know now nothing of that sort happened. In fact the author, Dr.Ravi Batra an US economist and professor at Southern Methodist University,Dallas, Texas, had followed this book with another which advises people how to avoid these crashes. With this Dr.Batra went obscurity. He tried a come back with a another set of predictions called The Crash of the Millennium. But it failed of course even before prediction proved to be wrong. Well, considering the market situation and economics right now, may be his predictions could come true but with a delay. But what really grabbed my attention in that book was the detailing of the Law of Social Change, a theory put forward by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar.He brought forward this theory under very controversial circumstances and also it got mixed up in Indian politics and in a religious quagmire. In fact he was arrested and spent a lot of time in prison.
To put it in simple form, The Law of Social Change, basically states that the human society undergoes cyclical changes. The cycle consists of a period which is controlled by the workers, warriors, then a period by intellectuals and then by money people.This cycle can be explained in a logical sense as follows.
The workers slowly build their world. They rule their world on their own in a collective sense. Slowly some go up the social hierarchy to become strong men. These power now shifts to these muscle men. As the muscle power peaks, some with brain power slowly gain control over them. The intellectuals then slowly acquire money. With this money power gains. At the peak of money power, the workers rebel to gain back their share and the cycle starts all over again. This is just my interpretation of the idea. This is not just one cycle. It contains more smaller cycles inside. It could that in the period of the intellectuals, soldiers also take control in the second level.
Generally many things in history could be explained in retrospective. But it gets more difficult to find out what cycle are we in now. It depends on very much whom you ask and how he or she perceives the current situation. If I look at the power, power money holds many would say this is the cycle of money. The major intellectual growth being the period of twentieth century. Within this cycle power of soldiers, workers and intellectual going up and done. What should happen now for the money guys to give up their power.? Will it be a depression causing havoc in the money and then the actual working hands get to do their jobs and rewarded as was before while the high and mighty CEO and executives be brought down to their knees.? Seems like a communist dream!!. Or is it that suddenly the ever shrinking armies suddenly faced with a crisis of nuclear armed rogue regimes start expanding some supported by bloodless or bloody coups!! Tech workers dream world handed over to the soldiers?
