ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an effort to integrate into some holistic, or at least relatively coherent, pattern a large number of the processes in the world, seeing them, essentially, as the workings of conflict formations. The process is a highly contradictory one, replete with conflicts, and it makes sense to ask who the winners are and who the losers are globally. Conflict is over value, over something "worthy of being pursued or avoided." There is, however, an actor- and structure-oriented perspective on value. Most of the Third World countries will be marked by aggravated internal gaps, class contradictions, and open class conflicts due to the New International Economic Order (NIEO) factors. The thesis is very simple—the NIEO is a strategy for unsaddling the North-West from its control position. As a matter of fact, it sometimes seems as if the actors themselves think there is going to be no new center, but that is unrealistic.
