Hamid Akhavi
National Crises and the Global Contradictions of Capitalism in the Light of “A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness”
Review date: October 20, 2026
The world today confronts a fundamental contradiction: its capacity to produce, learn, communicate and process information is expanding, yet for large numbers of people, access to housing, education, healthcare, stable employment and an imaginable future is becoming more difficult. Society has more advanced tools for meeting its needs, but many people feel they have less control over their lives. This gap forms part of the material basis of the discontent visible in the streets of Brussels, French and Italian cities, Spanish squares, Argentine universities, and workers’ and farmers’ protests in India.
The expression “explosive situation,” however, requires precision. Belgium and Brussels are not separate countries: Brussels is both Belgium’s capital and the seat of important European Union institutions. Nor can Brazil and India be described as approaching an identical explosion simply by extrapolating from European protests. The scale, timing, organization and demands of social movements differ. Workplace protest, civil disobedience, urban unrest, electoral competition and a crisis of governance are also distinct phenomena.
This article argues that these differences do not rule out common roots. Capital accumulation can coexist with the erosion of social security; the social production of wealth can coexist with concentrated ownership and decision-making; and society’s expanding technical capabilities can generate greater profits and control without a corresponding expansion of freedom and universal well-being. These are among the questions raised by the book A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness.
Events and figures in this article are referenced to identifiable sources. The explanation of class mechanisms and their relationship to the book is the author’s analysis. Simultaneous protests alone do not establish either a single cause or capitalism’s imminent collapse.
1. Global Crisis: Continuing Growth, Deepening Insecurity
In its October 2026 outlook, the International Monetary Fund projects global growth of 3.1 percent for this year and 3.4 percent for the following year. “Global crisis,” as used here, therefore does not mean that every economy is simultaneously in recession. The same report identifies fiscal vulnerabilities, trade tensions, war and a possible reassessment of expectations surrounding artificial intelligence as important risks. [1]
Growth in output must be distinguished from security in everyday life. An increase in gross domestic product does not tell us who owns the additional income, how much is absorbed by rent and interest, what quality of employment has been created, or which groups bear the costs of environmental damage. Employment can increase while jobs remain exhausting and insecure. Inflation can fall while the price level remains unaffordable for wage earners. Lower inflation means prices are rising more slowly; it does not necessarily mean prices or purchasing power have returned to their earlier levels.
In the book’s framework, productive forces include knowledge, skills, tools, the organization of work and society’s capacity to cooperate. Relations of production determine who owns productive assets and infrastructure, who decides on investment, and who benefits from collective activity. Crisis intensifies when expanding productive capabilities fail to serve public needs and control over them remains concentrated.
This approach does not eliminate the role of specific policies. Housing law, taxation, union strength, administrative quality and government decisions affect the severity of a crisis. Capitalist structures shape constraints and incentives; politics and social struggle help determine who pays the costs and which possibilities become available.
2. Belgium and Brussels: Who Should Bear the Cost of Balancing the Budget?
On October 9, 2026, tens of thousands demonstrated in Brussels against the economic and social policies of Bart De Wever’s government. Police estimated participation at around 30,000, while organizers put it at 50,000. Railway workers, teachers, school students and public-service employees took part. Opposition to austerity and changes to social protection was central to the mobilization. [2]
The central issue is a conflict between two meanings of “balance”: balancing government accounts and maintaining a viable balance in people’s lives. For an employee or pensioner, a change in benefits or an increase in transport costs is not simply a numerical adjustment in a budget; it affects the possibility of getting by. When government presents spending cuts as the principal solution without addressing how income and wealth are distributed, a budget dispute becomes a struggle over the value of work and social rights.
Brussels also matters at the European level. In June 2025, the Council of the European Union recommended that Belgium correct its excessive deficit by 2029 and set a path for net expenditure growth. France and Italy have also been subject to deficit-correction procedures. These rules form part of the institutional background to fiscal pressure, but they do not prescribe precisely which tax each government must raise or which service it must cut. [3]
Governments can choose among different combinations of revenue and spending. This is where the class question arises: does adjustment fall mainly on labour income, public services and pensions, or do holders of wealth and higher incomes also make an effective contribution? Debt and the costs of an aging population are real; how the costs of addressing them are allocated is political.
From the book’s perspective, public services are not merely consumers of wealth. Schools, healthcare, transport and care work form part of the infrastructure through which society produces and reproduces its capabilities. Weakening them to improve short-term accounts can undermine long-term social capacity. Brussels thus brings together pressures on social welfare, fiscal rules and the distance between people and decisions that shape their lives.
3. Spain: Housing as a Right to Live or an Asset Yielding Returns?
An EFE report dated October 2, 2026 describes how the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old Madrid resident, became a symbol of a new wave of housing protests. Protest encampments and parliament’s rejection of two housing decrees turned access to shelter into a political crisis. [4]
The event matters symbolically because it connects the abstract “housing market” to identifiable human lives. For tenants, a home is a condition for maintaining employment, health, children’s education and networks of support. For a landlord or investment fund, that same home can be a tradable asset and a source of income. Conflict becomes acute when increasing the return on an asset undermines residents’ ability to remain in their city.
“Speculation” alone does not explain the crisis. The OECD’s 2025 economic survey also highlights supply constraints in high-demand areas and the small social rental sector, reported at approximately 3 percent of the housing stock. [5] Buildable land, infrastructure, permits, employment locations and the ways homes are used all matter.
But these factors also deepen the ownership question. If construction mainly serves higher-income demand, adding units does not necessarily produce housing affordable to the majority. In places where short-term rentals compete with permanent residence, a tourism boom can raise urban income while putting pressure on residents.
In the book’s framework, urban value is collectively produced: public transport, schools, services, culture and the work of thousands make a neighbourhood liveable. When increases in that value chiefly become income for owners, the social production of value and its private appropriation move further apart.
The response cannot be reduced to either rent regulation or construction alone. It requires a combination of public and cooperative housing, tenant protection, regulation of short-term rentals, land and infrastructure provision, and residents’ participation. Technology can help identify needs and capacity; decisions on the right to remain housed and on investment priorities must rest with accountable institutions and the public.
4. France: Public Services in Crisis and the Erosion of Political Representation
During France’s October 2026 protests, problems in schools became connected to wider social discontent. Le Monde’s account of the October 17 demonstrations records the participation of school and university students, unions and varied social groups. The Interior Ministry reported around 550,000 participants; organizers gave a higher estimate. Some gatherings also saw clashes and damage. [6]
The movement’s significance lies in the relationship between present hardship and the future. Employees face rising living costs and insufficient resources for public services; students ask what future their education will make possible. Schools become a meeting point of experienced inequality, expectations of progress and fears of exclusion.
France faces another difficulty: turning social discontent into a durable political agreement. Parliamentary fragmentation after the 2024 elections and conflict over the budget form part of the current governance crisis. [7] When citizens see only a weak relationship between voting and tangible improvements in their lives, distrust of representative institutions grows.
Public debt cannot be ignored, but its composition and the choices embedded in budgets must be examined. Reducing services is not the only form fiscal adjustment can take. Cuts to education and health can also generate costs invisible in the current year’s accounts: deteriorating quality of life, exhausted staff and weaker opportunities for the next generation.
The connection to the book is clear. An economy in which knowledge and understanding are increasingly important undermines one of the foundations of future wealth when it weakens public education. If access to high-quality education becomes ever more dependent on family income, the knowledge economy can reproduce class hierarchies.
Discontent has no predetermined political direction. It can foster solidarity and wider participation, or serve authoritarian politics and the scapegoating of migrants. Defending the right to protest and examining responsibility for violence must proceed together. Images of confrontation cannot substitute for an analysis of social demands.
5. Italy: Pressure on Living Standards, Weak Growth and a Security Response
On October 17 and 18, 2026, Milan and several other Italian cities saw protests over living costs and public services, with some episodes escalating into clashes. Reuters reported on October 19 that the government had announced the reinforcement of the military presence in Milan with 500 personnel. [8]
Street scenes alone do not explain Italy’s crisis. In its current assessment, the OECD projects Italian growth of around 0.5 percent in 2026 and warns that a renewed energy shock is weighing on consumption, investment and exports, while eroding recent gains in real wages. This is a forecast, not a final annual result. [9]
Under these conditions, a single cost increase can simultaneously squeeze employees, farmers, transport operators and small businesses. Their interests are not identical, however. Lower fuel taxes, higher wages and better-funded public services may create short-term budget tensions. Turning shared anger into a shared programme requires organization and negotiation.
Regional differences, business structures and unequal access to opportunity also matter. Integration into global markets can benefit some activities while exposing others to competitive pressure. Productivity gains in one sector do not automatically become job security and better incomes throughout society.
From the book’s perspective, the question is how technology enters this structure. Automation can reduce burdensome work, but if its gains remain under concentrated ownership, it can intensify pressure on employees and weaken bargaining power. This is an argument about the direction of technological change; artificial intelligence cannot be treated as the direct cause of all current protests.
Protecting public safety is a government responsibility, but security measures do not resolve a crisis of wages and services. If protest is primarily defined as a policing problem, its economic causes remain unanswered and political distance may increase.
6. Albania: Development for Whom, and Under Whose Control?
In Albania, student and anti-corruption protests in October 2026 brought together education, living costs and controversy over tourism development. On October 15, Reuters reported demands for Edi Rama’s resignation and opposition to a tourism project linked to Jared Kushner’s investment. The government, in turn, emphasizes economic development and continued progress toward EU membership. [10]
Tourism growth cannot simply be dismissed as having no benefits. The World Bank has documented job creation and the revival of some southern Albanian towns through tourism and infrastructure investment. Its materials also identify migration and limited employment opportunities as important challenges. [11] The analytical question is how ownership and decision-making determine the share of benefits reaching local communities.
A project can create jobs, yet its social balance remains contested if employment is seasonal and poorly paid while people’s access to land, the coast or housing is restricted. The value of an investment alone does not establish what society gains and loses.
Allegations of corruption must also be distinguished from proven misconduct. Assessing a particular contract requires access to transfer documents, ownership records, environmental assessments and the decision-making process. Structural criticism begins with precisely this demand for transparency: why should decisions with public consequences be made with limited public access to information?
In the book’s framework, coastlines, land and ecosystems are more than economic inputs; they belong to shared life and a common future. Transferring long-term control without meaningful residents’ participation can represent a specific form of converting common resources into opportunities for private accumulation.
Albania illustrates a crisis of development: a country can attract investment and construct buildings while still failing to offer young people a stable future. Measuring progress must go beyond counting projects to encompass job quality, social rights, environmental sustainability and public agency.
7. Brazil: More Employment, More Indebted Lives
Brazil must be carefully distinguished from the pattern of recent European unrest. Official IBGE data for June–August 2026 show an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent. This labour-market improvement is a real achievement and should not be ignored to validate a theoretical framework. [12]
At the same time, Folha reported in October that improvements in employment and income coexisted with household debt pressure: around 82 percent of households had outstanding debts falling due in the future, while about 29.9 percent were behind on payments. Having debt and being in arrears are not the same; these indicators must be read separately. [13]
Their coexistence reveals a particular crisis in sustaining everyday life. A person may be employed, yet spend a large share of income on rent, instalments, commuting and interest. The issue is then not simply access to work, but the relationship between earnings, essential costs and financial commitments.
The expansion of platform work makes this contradiction more visible. In a report dated October 20, the Financial Times examines the “Uberisation” of work in Brazil and some workers’ dependence on transport and delivery apps. [14] In this model, scheduling flexibility can coexist with the transfer of vehicle, maintenance, insurance and demand-fluctuation costs to workers.
The connection with the book is more direct here than in many other cases. A platform service is built through drivers’ work, customers, urban networks and large volumes of social data, while control over algorithms, ratings and income rules can remain concentrated in the company. Service production is social; decision-making over its conditions is not necessarily social.
Brazil also shows that redistributive policies can produce genuine improvements, while reducing insecurity additionally requires regulation of credit markets, public services and job quality. Reducing the issue to the “success” or “failure” of one government obscures this network of relationships. Alternatives include collective rights for platform workers, algorithmic transparency, and cooperative and accountable forms of ownership.
8. Argentina: Fiscal Stability at What Social Cost?
In Argentina, conflict over economic austerity and university funding is an important focus of crisis. El País’s October 16, 2026 report describes a broad university mobilization and the conflict over the government’s implementation of university financing legislation. [15]
A fair analysis must also consider the preceding crisis. High inflation and monetary instability destroy fixed incomes and the ability to plan. Bringing inflation under control is a social demand; it cannot simply be portrayed as a demand of financial markets. The questions concern the methods used, how costs are distributed and their long-term consequences.
In September 2026, Reuters cited new data showing a poverty rate of 32.3 percent in the first half of the year, describing pressure on households despite progress in controlling inflation and public accounts. [16] This illustrates why improvement in a single indicator is not a sufficient measure of social success.
When university budgets or employees’ earnings are not adjusted in line with prices, purchasing power and effective capacity can decline even without the formal abolition of an institution. Budgets must therefore be assessed in real terms and by their ability to sustain services.
In the book’s framework, public universities form part of the infrastructure for the social production of knowledge. Training specialists and producing knowledge are financed over time through society’s contributions. Weakening that infrastructure can increase inequality and constrain future productive capacity.
Defending universities does not exempt them from accountability. Transparent expenditure, educational quality and democratic administration are essential. The central dispute is whether reform strengthens public-service capacity or becomes a cover for its erosion. Argentina provides a clear example of conflict between short-term accounting stability and the long-term reproduction of society’s capabilities.
9. India: Rapid Growth and the Struggle over the Quality of Work and Life
India cannot be described as a simply stagnant economy. Its global importance and productive and technological capabilities are expanding. Yet growth in a large economy can coexist with fragmented labour markets, regional differences and insecurity for broad sections of the population.
The nationwide strike on February 12, 2026 was an important example of organized protest. Citing preliminary union assessments, the global federation IndustriALL reported participation by more than 300 million workers, farmers and others. This was a union estimate encompassing strike action and mobilization, not an independent count of people physically present in the streets. Opposition to labour codes, demands for job security and social protection were central to its report. [17]
The 2024 India Employment Report, produced by the International Labour Organization and the Institute for Human Development, also provides important structural context on youth employment, education and skills. It must be read with its publication date in mind; its data should not be presented as current October 2026 statistics. [18]
India is characterized by the coexistence of advanced technology sectors with informal employment and vulnerable agriculture. A technology boom may create opportunities for some professionals while access to stable work remains difficult for others. Evaluating growth therefore requires attention to the type of employment, wages, social protection and the ability to organize.
Workers and farmers do not occupy identical positions, but energy and credit costs, services and the power of large corporations can connect their concerns. Demands concerning land and crop purchasing differ from workers’ rights to strike or insurance; a common programme must recognize those differences.
Within the book’s framework, a digital leap becomes social progress when people share in both its benefits and its decisions. Data, software and automation can improve services, but without rights and public oversight, they can also enable further concentration of power. This is an institutional risk, not a claim that all of India’s present problems are caused by artificial intelligence.
Class is not the only axis of inequality. Gender, caste, religion and region affect access to opportunity and power. An analysis of capitalism must explain how these relationships are intertwined, rather than erase the historical differences of Indian society.
10. Shared Mechanisms: How Do Capitalism’s Inherent Contradictions Surface?
These countries do not repeat a single crisis, but several common mechanisms can be examined across them.
Social Production, Concentrated Control
Homes, universities, platforms and cities are built through collective work and knowledge. The issue is how control over their use and benefits is allocated. Concentrated ownership can allow a limited group to decide the fate of resources on which much larger populations depend.
Wages as Both a Cost and a Condition of Demand
Each business has an incentive to contain labour costs, yet workers and their families are also purchasers of goods and services. If downward pressure on labour income becomes widespread, the gap between productive capacity and purchasing power can widen. Credit and exports can compensate for a time, but they have their own limits and risks.
The Financialization of Essential Needs
Housing, education, transport and daily life can become increasingly dependent on loans and financial income. Pressure is then exercised not only at work: rent, instalments and interest also claim part of future income. Spain’s housing crisis and Brazil’s debt pressure represent different forms of this relationship.
Private Gains and Public Costs
Investment can create employment while transferring costs to society: pollution, pressure on water and electricity, congestion, worker exhaustion or lost access to land. Each project must be assessed by its total costs and benefits and by their distribution. Investment alone does not guarantee public benefit, nor is every private project necessarily harmful.
Government between Financial Credibility and Social Rights
Governments face pressure to maintain financing and investment, while their social legitimacy depends on sustaining services and security in everyday life. When debt and essential costs rise, the conflict becomes more visible. “Economic necessity” often combines genuine constraints with political choices about how costs are distributed.
A Crisis of Representation and the Possibility of an Authoritarian Turn
If people believe fundamental decisions are made beyond their reach, economic anger can become political crisis. Its outcome is not necessarily progressive. Crisis can lead to stronger social rights and participation, or to concentrated power and repression. Organization, programmes, freedom and the quality of collective leadership help determine its direction.
11. Artificial Intelligence: Intensifying Contradictions or Helping to Resolve Them?
A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness locates a new historical possibility in the socialization of knowledge and society’s growing capacity to learn and make decisions. Artificial intelligence draws on scientific inheritance, language, culture, labour and collective data. Ownership and power are therefore central questions, not secondary issues.
But a gap remains between technical possibility and social outcome. A system may estimate housing needs more accurately, while investment objectives are still determined by the public or by an owning institution. An algorithm may speed up work, but whether the time saved becomes shorter working hours or job losses depends on institutions and bargaining power.
There is no evidence establishing AI as the principal direct cause of every protest examined here. The article’s central connection is this: the existing order struggles to translate present capabilities into universal well-being; concentrated ownership of new technology can intensify that problem, while democratic governance can offer ways to respond more effectively.
Nor is there any technical guarantee that an intelligent system will make the best social decision. Data quality, model error, conflicting values and minority rights remain at issue. AI should expand the ability to compare and criticize decisions; legitimate decisions require the free participation of human beings.
12. A Practical Horizon: From Protest to Participation in Power
Connecting these crises to the book becomes fruitful when it yields assessable principles for change.
First, the measure of progress must extend to security in everyday life: the share of income spent on housing, effective access to healthcare and education, job quality, free time and environmental quality. These must be assessed alongside output and productivity.
Second, essential services and resources require varied forms of ownership and control: public, cooperative, social and other accountable arrangements. State ownership alone does not guarantee public benefit; without freedom, transparency and independent oversight, it can become bureaucratic concentration.
Third, technological gains should return to society through wages, shorter working hours, public services and social protection. The balance among these routes depends on national conditions, but decisions about that balance should not rest exclusively with owners of capital.
Fourth, “participation in power” must go beyond periodic voting: workers and residents need an effective role in workplace and neighbourhood decisions, access to information, participatory budgeting, rights to organize and strike, oversight, and the ability to challenge automated decisions. These institutions must also protect individual and minority rights.
Fifth, transition must address real constraints. Financing, housing supply, energy, workforce education and environmental sustainability are not resolved by declaring an ideal. An intelligently organized economy requires transparent planning, careful use of data, free discussion and the possibility of correcting errors, rather than a claim of absolute knowledge by a state or an algorithm.
From Brussels to Delhi, a shared issue can be seen in the gap between social capacity and social control. People participate in producing wealth, knowledge and data, but do not necessarily have a proportionate role in decisions about the results. In each country, this gap becomes discontent through a particular historical route.
Today’s crises expand the possibility of criticism and transformation, but they do not guarantee a particular future. Transition to a new social order gains meaning when collective productive and cognitive capacity is connected to freedom, security in everyday life and people’s continuing participation in power. The issue is not only producing more: it is society’s ability to determine the direction of production, the distribution of its gains and its shared future.
Sources and Methodological Note
This article draws on sources available through October 20, 2026. Protest estimates may differ between police and organizers, and economic estimates and forecasts are not final outcomes. The theoretical argument is the author’s interpretation based on the book and does not necessarily represent the views of the news organizations or economic institutions cited.
Book framework: Hamid Akhavi, A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness, Volume One, Persian web edition, particularly Chapter One on conscious transition and participation in power; Chapter Two on the social production of knowledge; Chapter Three on data and power; and Chapter Four on capitalism and the crisis of productive forces. This edition was consulted in preparing the article.
1. IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2026
2. Le Monde, Brussels demonstration, October 10, 2026
3. Council of the European Union, fiscal recommendations for Belgium and other member states; Additional source
4. EFE, the Maricarmen case and housing protests, October 2, 2026
5. OECD Economic Surveys: Spain 2025
6. Le Monde, French demonstrations of October 17, 2026
7. Reuters, unrest and political paralysis in France, October 19, 2026
8. Reuters, government response to Milan unrest, October 19, 2026
9. OECD, Italy Economic Snapshot
10. Reuters, protests in Albania, October 15, 2026
11. World Bank, tourism and jobs in Albania; Western Balkans report; Additional source
12. IBGE, Brazilian labour-market data
13. Folha de S.Paulo, employment, income and debt, October 2026
14. Financial Times, the Uberisation of Brazil’s working class, October 20, 2026
15. El País, Argentine university protests, October 16, 2026
16. Reuters, poverty in Argentina, September 24, 2026
17. IndustriALL, nationwide strike in India, February 16, 2026
