Revisiting Paul Baran’s The Political Economy of Growth for Today

And this brings me to what I referred to earlier as a reaffirmation of my views on the basic problem confronting the underdeveloped countries. The principal insights, which must not be obscured by matters of secondary or tertiary importance, are two. The first is that, if what is sought is rapid economic development, comprehensive economic planning is indispensable… if the increase in a country’s aggregate output is to attain the magnitude, of, say, 8 to 10 per cent per annum; if in order to achieve it, the mode of utilization of a nation’s human and material resources is to be radically changed, with certain less productive lines of economic activity abandoned and other more rewarding ones taken up; then only a deliberate, long range planning effort can assure the attainment of the goal…

The second insight of crucial importance is that no planning worth the name is possible in a society in which the means of production remain under the control of private interests which administer them with a view to their owners’ maximum profits (or security or other private advantage). For it is of the very essence of comprehensive planning for economic development - what renders it, indeed, indispensable - that the pattern of allocation and utilization of resources which it must impose if it is to accomplish its purpose, is necessarily different from-the pattern prevailing under the status quo… (xxviii-xxix, Foreword to 1962 printing) The Political Economy of Growth, Paul A. Baran [emphasis added]

It is surely of some interest that the late Professor Baran-- reassessing his important, insightful, and extremely influential 1957 book, The Political Economy of Growth-- grounds his contribution to the liberation of the post-colonial world in two “insights”: 1. The necessity of “comprehensive” economic planning over the irrational decision-making of the market, and 2. The impossibility of having effective planning with the major productive forces in the hands of private entities operating for profits. 

Put simply, Baran is arguing that the most promising humane and rational escape from the legacy of colonialism is for the developing countries to choose the socialist path going forward and adopt planning as a necessary, rational condition for achieving that goal.

It is of equal interest that many who consider Baran to be one of the fathers of dependency theory-- the theory that development is most significantly hindered by the state-to-state structural barriers imposed by the “core” on the “periphery” or the “North” on the “South” -- have abandoned Baran’s key “insights” for an approach that argues for open, unhindered “fair” exchange and the rationality of markets. 

For many of today’s Western left, the locus of international inequalities is found in the economic relations between states. Exploitation-- in the form of taking advantage of uneven development or resource differences-- undoubtedly occurs in the relations between states, systematically in the colonial era, more indirectly today. That is just to say that competition between capitalist states within a global imperialist system will produce and reproduce various inequalities. It is popular to capture this as conflict between an advantaged North and a disadvantaged South-- while the geographical reference is most inexact, it is widely understood. From Wallerstein, Arrighi, and Gunder Frank, through Amin, and an important consensus today, the central feature of imperialism is thought to be the vast differences in wealth between the rich and poor countries. Moreover, they share the belief that existing structures maintain those differences, structures established and protected by the richest countries.

Of course, they are right to object to these inequalities and the practices and institutions that preserve them. And Paul Baran was acutely aware of these structures, but also attendant to the specific historical conditions influencing the individual countries-- their differences and similarities. He understands the trajectory of the post-colonial states:

Thus, the peoples who came into the orbit of Western capitalist expansion found themselves in the twilight of feudalism and capitalism enduring the worst features of both worlds, and the entire impact of imperialist subjugation to boot. To oppression by their feudal lords, ruthless but tempered by tradition, was added domination by foreign and domestic capitalists, callous and limited only by what the traffic would bear. The obscurantism and arbitrary violence inherited from their feudal past was combined with the rationality and sharply calculating rapacity of their capitalist present. Their exploitation was multiplied, yet its fruits were not to increase their productive wealth; these went abroad or served to support a parasitic bourgeoisie at home. They lived in abysmal misery, yet they had no prospect of a better tomorrow. They existed under capitalism, yet there was no accumulation of capital. They lost their time-honored means of livelihood, their arts and crafts, yet there was no modern industry to provide new ones in their place. They were thrust into extensive contact with the advanced science of the West, yet remained in a state of the darkest backwardness (p. 144). 

At the same time, Baran is fully aware of the predatory nature of foreign capital, denying its “usefulness” and affirming its sole domestic benefit to the merchant class.

Perhaps his clearest statement of the logic of imperialism appears on pages 196-197: 

To be sure, neither imperialism itself nor its modus operandi and ideological trimmings are today what they were fifty or a hundred years ago. Just as outright looting of the outside world has yielded to organized trade with the underdeveloped countries, in which plunder has been rationalized and routinized by a mechanism of impeccably ‘correct’ contractual relations, so has the rationality of smoothly functioning commerce grown into the modern, still more advanced, still more rational system of imperialist exploitation. Like all other historically changing phenomena, the contemporary form of imperialism contains and preserves all its earlier modalities, but raises them to a new level. Its central feature is that it is now directed not solely towards the rapid extraction of large sporadic gains from the objects of its domination, it is no longer content with merely assuring a more or less steady flow of these gains over a somewhat extended period. Propelled by well-organized, rationally conducted monopolistic enterprise, it seeks today to rationalize the flow of these receipts so as to be able to count on it in perpetuity. And this points to the main task of imperialism in our time: to prevent, or, if that is impossible, to slow down and to control the economic development of underdeveloped countries.

Notice that Baran acknowledges, along with today’s fashionable dependency theory, that imperialism’s “main task” is to impose underdevelopment. But imperialism’s agent is identified as the “monopolistic enterprise” and not specifically an antagonistic state or its government. Of course, the state hosting monopoly corporations does all it can to promote and protect their interests, but it should not be confused with either the exploiter or the beneficiary of exploitation: it is “the well-organized, rationally conducted monopolistic enterprise” that bleeds the workers of the developing countries. With monopoly capitalism dominating the state, the state plays a critical, essential role as an enabler for the most powerful monopolies in the global economy.  

For Baran, the key to liberating the former colonies from the stranglehold of rapacious monopolies is not a reordering of international relations, not a campaign for a level international playing field, not alternative market institutions, nor a coalition of dissenters from the status quo, but a radical change in the social and economic structure of the oppressed country.

In this regard, Baran differs from many contemporary dependency theorists who pose multipolarity as an answer to the North-South inequalities and welcome the BRICS development as constituting an anti-imperialist stage. They believe that breaking the stranglehold of the dominant great power-- the US-- will somehow eliminate the logic of contemporary imperialism, that it will disable the “mechanism of impeccably ‘correct’ contractual relations” at the heart of “core” / “periphery” relations. 

But this is not Baran’s thinking. He opts instead for an active engagement of the workers, peasants, and intellectuals on the periphery. His is a class approach. For Baran, working people are not dried leaves, blown this way and that by the powerful winds of great powers. Rather, they are the agents of their own liberation.

Baran draws out the potential of the post-colonial masses through his innovative concept of “surplus.”1 Baran asks revolutionaries in the emerging countries to realize the potential surplus that they may access for development provided that they engage in a “reorganization of the production and distribution of social output” and accept “far reaching changes to the structure of society.” (p. 24). Baran emphasizes four available sources for the surplus:

One is society’s excess consumption (predominantly on the part of the upper income groups…), the second is the output lost to society through the existence of unproductive workers, the third is the output lost because of the irrational and wasteful organization of the existing productive apparatus, and the fourth is the output foregone owing to the existence of unemployment caused primarily by the anarchy of capitalist production and the deficiency of effective demand. (p. 24)

By recovering this surplus, Baran contends that the post-colonial world can begin “the steep ascent” -- the escape from the legacy of colonialism and the stranglehold of capitalism. At the same time, Baran concedes that a resource-poor country, an economy violently distorted by a close neighbor-- a country like Cuba-- will need assistance from the socialist community, an assistance that has been less forthcoming since the demise of the Soviet Union.

The Multipolaristas and the BRICS advocates do not share Baran’s confidence in working people. They cannot conceive a revolutionary answer to the problem of development. They relegate socialism to the far, far-off future, and argue for a more humane capitalism. Their vision ends with establishing a new regime of “structural adjustments” that will blunt the economic power of the US to make way for a plurality of powers competing for global markets, but in a “friendly” way. This is the social-democratic vision taken to the global level. But this is not Baran’s vision.

Like their national counterparts, these global social democrats envision a world in which reforming capitalist social relations-- taming the worst monopoly scoundrels-- will result in the proverbial arc bending toward justice. BRICS, they believe, will give us a level playing field for the monopoly corporations to roam more fairly.

*****

Is Baran’s 1957 (1962) recipe for development relevant to today’s world? Could the so-called global South escape the clutches of the imperialist system by applying the “insights” offered by The Political Economy of Growth?

A recent Oxfam report on inequality in Africa suggests that there is plenty of potential surplus available for building a developmental program based on a class-based approach of appropriation and surplus recovery:

● Africa’s four most affluent billionaires have $57.4 billion in wealth, which is greater than ~50% of the continent’s 1.5 billion people.

● While Africa had no billionaires in 2000, today, there are 23 with a combined wealth of $112.6 billion. The wealth of these 23 ultra-rich Africans has grown by 56% in the last 5 years.

● The richest 5% on the continent have accumulated almost $4 trillion in wealth, more than twice the wealth of the rest of the people in Africa (by comparison, the richest 10% of US households hold two-thirds of US wealth).

● Almost half of the world’s most unequal countries are in Africa.

● The bottom 50% of Africans own less than 1% of the wealth of the continent (by comparison, the bottom 50% of US households own 3% of US wealth).

Presumably, the report does not include the billionaires like Elon Musk, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Rodney Sacks, and many others who relocated and invested outside of Africa. Eight of the top foreign-born US billionaires are from Africa.

Clearly, class, and not state-to-state relations, is at the center of Africa’s human development problem. The “potential surplus” accumulated in the hands of so few would well serve a peoples’ development program that could reverse the concentration of wealth now starving the continent’s poor. Appropriated wealth could well serve an industrial drive and the rationalization of agriculture. More than enough wealth is available in Africa to implement Paul Baran’s twin insights that open this article. 

The BRICS movement-- a coalition of partners aligning to create a different international exchange network that would be less one-sided, less privileging wealthy nations-- is not itself a bad thing. The proverbial level playing field-- the fair and free marketplace-- is a proper goal for capitalist participants competing internationally. But it is not a Left project. It moves the goal no closer in the struggle for justice for working people. It is not class-partisan, and thus ultimately will likely benefit those who gain from the proper functioning of capitalist economic relations in the various countries disadvantaged by existing relations. And we know from the Oxfam report who they are.

One can see the limitations of multipolarity from the recent Rio de Janeiro meeting of BRICS leaders. There is much talk of a “more equitable global order,” of state-to-state “cooperation,” of broader “participation,” even a pledge to fight disease and extreme poverty. The foreign ministers and heads of state dutifully denounce war and aggression. The current President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “called BRICS a successor of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).” What he didn’t say was that NAM broke up when Cuba transcended toothless resolutions and declarations and actually defended Angola against apartheid South African aggression in a bloody war that brought the criminal regime to its knees. The BRICS response to the attack on Iran brings “toothlessness” back to mind.

Baran’s revolutionary path is not an easy one. Others have tried and failed. From Nkrumah and Lumumba to Thomas Sankara, revolutionaries in Africa have taken steps in this direction, only to be thwarted by powerful forces determined to snuff out even a beginning. That alone should tell the EuroAmerican left that it is the path worth following. 

We should not pretend that reforming global market relations—any more than reforming national market relations-- will secure justice for working people. That will come when the workers, peasants, and intellectuals of the global South decide that justice is impossible while “the means of production remain under the control of private interests which administer them with a view to their owners’ maximum profits.”

1  While useful in this context, the concept of surplus is less successful as developed in Baran and Sweezy's 1966 work, Monopoly Capital.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

What’s Next?

There is a growing sense among many that we may be on the verge of a new world order or-- to be more accurate-- at the end of an old one. Opinion polls show very low confidence in the familiar institutions of governance and high uncertainty about the economy. Voters are rejecting traditional centrists parties, with new alternative parties and movements growing in popularity. There is little or no popular consensus on the path forward and an abiding sense that matters are, in general, going badly.

The global economy is variously afflicted with inflation, stagnation, or both, and growing insecurity. Political leaders are rigidly defending the old consensus or unsuccessfully advancing “new” wrinkles on the old that go nowhere. Inequality of wealth, income, power, and outcomes grow dramatically.

Few are satisfied that we can continue in the old way, but even fewer know of a way forward.

So, it should come with little surprise that intellectuals have taken on the daunting task of describing where we are and where we might be going.

Within the broad left, two characterizations of the current “international order” have been popularized: a policy, “neoliberalism” and a process, “globalization.” Much nonsense has been written and spoken about both. As the terms grew in popularity and usage, their meaning became fuzzier and fuzzier.

There have been useful accounts of neoliberalism that place it both in an historical context and within the evolution of modern capitalism (see my discussion of Gary Gerstle’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order). Gerstle, notably, gives a credible account of neoliberalism’s origins in the late 1970s and strong reasons for its fragility today.

Similarly, Branko Milanović has offered a credible account of globalization in an article that I recently reviewed. However, he dates it from 1989, when, in fact, the expansion of trade has been consistent from the establishment of the post-war global trade architecture, with qualitative leaps coming from the 1978 “opening” to China, the 1991 demise of the European socialist states, and again with China’s entry into the WTO, but followed more recently by globalization’s wane after the Great Recession of 2007-09. 

It is important not to confuse the two: neoliberalism is a political initiative that gained traction from the failings of New Deal Keynesian policy and became policy with the establishment of centrist consensus and its subscription by mainstream political parties, spreading throughout the world as dogma; globalization is an expansive process accelerated with new technologies and the migration of capital to new and expanded labor markets. While they overlap in many ways, they are different phenomena.

An even more recent participant in this discussion is Perry Anderson, writing in The London Review of Books. Contra Gerstle, Anderson sees a still-resilient neoliberalism locked in a political struggle with populism-- “The political deadlock between the two is not over: how long it will last is anyone’s guess.” 

Within the various fora of left-wing intellectuals, Anderson is a well-known, important, but controversial figure. His writing, his editorship of New Left Review, and his hand in Verso books placed him in the center of UK left intellectual life-- independent of Communist and socialist parties-- in a role similar to that played by Monthly Review in the US. Wherever Marxism rose in fashion in student and professorial circles, Anderson’s influence could be found.

The publication of Domenico Losurdo’s book, Western Marxism, in 2017 (2024 in English) placed Perry Anderson at the center of Losurdo’s critique of Euro-American trends, a critique generating much attention with the anti-imperialist left. There was certainly some merit to Losurdo’s charge that some of the “Marxism” exercised in Europe and the US was stained by Eurocentrism. Certainly, Losurdo was on to something. 

Anderson’s leftism was decidedly hostile to, real-existing-socialism-- both East and West-- and the various Communist Parties. He opted, instead, for some pure vision of socialism, a version that Marx would have scoffed at as utopian. Moreover, Anderson encouraged a left scholasticism that took young activists further and further from changing the world and more and more toward an academic career.

But the failings of the Western left lie less in any “geographical” disposition, but more centrally in the virus of anti-Communism and the disillusionment after the demise of the USSR. Gary Gerstle-- no friend of Communism-- captures it:

The collapse of communism… shrank the imaginative and ideological space in which opposition to capitalist thought and practices might incubate, and impelled those who remained leftists to redefine their radicalism in alternative terms, which turned out to be those that capitalist systems could more, rather than less, easily manage. This was the moment when neoliberalism in the United States went from being a political movement to a political order.

Ironically, Anderson concedes as much:

[Behind] neoliberalism’s apparent immunity to disgrace-- lay the disappearance of any significant political movement calling robustly either for the abolition or the radical transformation of capitalism. By the turn of the century, socialism in both of its historical variants, revolutionary and reformist, had been swept clear of the stage in the Atlantic zone.

But notice the difference. Gerstle-- the liberal-- identifies the socialist left as in retreat from socialism, with not a little suggestion that the “redefinition” was based on opportunism. There really was an alternative, despite what elites wanted us to believe.

Anderson-- the Western Marxist intellectual-- describes the retreat in the passive voice, as though there was no agency in the retreat, merely a “disappearance.” Who or what caused the “disappearance”? Who or what swept socialism clear from the stage? Did it fall from the sky?

There are no regrets of the setbacks to the socialist world. There is no remorse over the sponsorship of student rebellion over worker actions. There is no reflection on the dalliance with the renegades, malcontents, and dreamers on the margins of the left. 

Anderson writes of “the widely differing set of revolts… united in their rejection of the international regime in place in the West since the 1980s.” “What they oppose,” he asserts “is not capitalism as such, but the current socio-economic version of it, neoliberalism.” And what was the role of New Left Review in taking socialism off the table? 

Like so much of the academic left, Anderson and his colleagues were fully compliant with the post-war Western intellectual catechism: ABC – “Anything But Communism.” 

Not surprisingly, Anderson sees a bleak future: either a continuing neoliberal nightmare or an ineffective populism, possibly offering worse outcomes.

In the last few weeks, the discussion of the next international order further develops with an intervention by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, an establishment figure who has taken the rare enlightened position on Ukraine and Palestine. In Giving Birth to the New International Order, Sachs argues that:

The multipolar world will be born when the geopolitical weight of Asia, Africa, and Latin America matches their rising economic weight.  This needed shift in geopolitics has been delayed as the US and Europe cling to outdated prerogatives built into international institutions and to their outdated mindsets. 

Sachs endorses a view widespread on the left, a utopian view that a diverse and multi-interested group of states organized around diverse and often contradictory grievances against the reigning US-centered international order-- the BRICS alliance-- can produce “a new multilateral order that can keep the peace and the path to sustainable development.”

Almost instantly, Sachs article was met with a critical response from Dr. Asoka Bandarage, who challenges the BRICS commitment to social justice for the smaller, weaker, less powerful nations:

Unfortunately, BRICS appears to be replicating the same patterns of domination and subordination in its relations with smaller nations that characterize traditional imperial powers. Whether the world is unipolar or multipolar, the continuation of a dominant global economic and financial system based on competitive technological and capitalist growth and environmental, social and cultural destruction will fundamentally not change the world and the disastrous trajectory we are on.

Through her intimate knowledge of Indian-Sri Lankan relations, Bandarage shows how decidedly unequal power relations function even with the BRICS founders, questioning: “...would this truly represent a move towards a ‘New International Order,’ or would it simply be a mutation of the existing paradigm of domination and subordination and geopolitical weight being equated with economic weight, i.e., ‘might is right’?”

A welcome voice joins the conversation with the April 16 issue of the Morning Star. Andrew Murray-- Marxist trade union and anti-war leader-- affirms that “[t]his is a moment of transition, so we should hold firmly in our heads that the destination is not foreordained.”

Indeed.

Murray, like the others, sees neoliberalism as the current order: “a prolonged assault on working-class institutions, on the social wage and on the sovereignty of the countries of the global South, with the state receding from some of the obligations it had assumed after 1945-- the maintenance of full employment for example.” 

Unlike the others, he sees 2008 as the apogee of neoliberalism’s ascendance: 

Neoliberalism met its own Waterloo in the crash of 2008. The stagnation in living standards since has been paralleled by an intellectual stagnation of the ruling classes, unable to easily preserve the old systemic assumptions yet equally incapable of transitioning to new ones.

Murray reminds us that the previous transitions always included the socialist options, noting a fascinating quote from former French socialist president François Mitterrand-- frustrated by difficulties around the Programme commun of the Communists and Socialists-- reportedly saying “in economics there are two solutions-- either you are a Leninist or you won’t change anything.”

Until Murray’s contribution, no one even hints at a Leninist solution.

The leading oppositional candidate for a “solution” today is right populism. And we must take note of Murray’s warning: “Previous transitions have been accompanied by war, or at least violent social convulsions.”

If elites continue to cling to neoliberal dogma, “that hands the initiative to the Trumps, Le Pens and Weidels who embrace a lot of Hayek and a little of Hitler, a rhetorical dash of Roosevelt and nothing of Lenin,” concludes Murray.

Conclusion 

The growing sense that neoliberalism is a spent force, both popularly and in practice, leads to the question: “What comes next?”

Ruling circles offer only two choices:

1. Clinging to a nearly 50-year consensus of deregulation, privatization, public/private partnership (socialism for the capitalists), dismantling of social safety nets, austerity, growing inequality, and money-democracy.

2. A right-populism that postures as anti-establishment, but maintains existing unequal relations of power and wealth, employs bully-democracy, while dismantling the institutions and organizations of their opposition, and scattering their forces.

Neither choice challenges the socio-economic system that spawned both options: capitalism. Neither option serves the interest of the people.

The liberal Gerstle, the social democrat Milanović, the academic Marxist Anderson, and the multipolarista Sachs offer us a return to a disastrous neoliberalism or blind faith and hope in a yet-to-be-discovered solution. 

Only Murray offers an approach with historical antecedents and the prospect of a sharp break with capitalist malignancy.

We must remember that those who have been swayed toward right-wing populism were despairing for better alternatives. Blaming their votes when they are offered no real choice is arrogant foolishness. Better we find a real alternative.

Without another alternative emerging, the neo-nationalism of right populism-- expressed today as tariffs, sanctions, barriers (protectionism)-- will inevitably lead to war.

The only answer to an obscenely inhuman capitalism hell bent on a catastrophic path is the “Lenin” answer: socialism.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

The Tragedy of Syria

It is cruelly fitting that one of the acknowledged cradles of civilization is now a showroom for the cruelties, irrationalities, and injustices of the modern capitalist world. 

At various times, Syria was part of the lands that were widely admired for their enlightened governance, tolerance, and economic development. 

Today, Syria is a wasteland, divided into parcels, and occupied by alien forces that show no regard for the country's legacy or the unity and well-being of its people. 

After four hundred years of reasonably stable, tolerant, and peaceable existence under Ottoman rule, the people of the country now known as Syria experienced the heavy hand of European imperialism. With the Sykes-Picot agreement, Syria became the “responsibility” of France after World War I, existing essentially as a French colony with its artificial boundaries established by European powers.

Understandably, the colonial subjects resisted. As it always does, the anti-colonial struggle provided the impetus for consolidating a nation in a space where a country never existed. As with the seminal anti-colonial victory in what is now the US, the fight against the French was an essential condition to the forging of the Syrian nation-state. Nation-building emerges from and advances from the struggle against domination, for independence.

But it was not a sufficient condition. After World War II, when France proved unable to maintain its colonies, the new Syria had to fulfill other difficult conditions of nation-building. Decolonization left the scars of oppression-- social, political, and economic backwardness.

Without independent political organizations and well-established institutions, the military-- made up of anti-colonial fighters, tribal militias, even former French collaborators-- served as a unifying force. Politics was conducted through the often-violent clash of military factions. Countering this chaos was the impact of Arab nationalist and Arab socialist secular trends emerging throughout the Middle East. Ba’athism and Nasserism were two progressive influences tempering Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism, and the complacency of feudal and primitive capitalist economies.

Concurrent with aid from the Soviet Union and the guarantee of Syrian sovereignty against imperialist aggression, the alliance of the military, the Ba’ath Party, and the Communist Party consolidated and took a leftward turn, strengthening their hand against the backward elements. This progressive development in the energy-rich Middle East did not go unnoticed by the United States and its then-designated local police agents: Israel and Iran. 

In the ensuing years, Syria continued to struggle for national unity, agrarian reform, and modernization under the 30-year presidency of Hafez Al-Assad. Assad brought a measure of stability and peace, while imperialism encouraged and materially supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalists to undermine these secular developments. 

Typically, European and US ideologues railed against the fragile state, condemning its failure to embrace modern capitalist institutions while these same ideologues were encouraging feudal jihadists to rebel against secularism. 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the death of the elder Assad, the tenuous progress of Syria, its independence, and its unity were weakened. Under the leadership of the younger, less visionary Bashir al-Assad, without any powerful allies, and with active and determined plotters in Washington, the future of Syria was in doubt. Assad’s flirtation with market economics and privatization brought his regime no respite from imperialist machinations.

In 2011, protests against Assad’s rule were co-opted by foreign security services. Through the auspices of the CIA, through its vast network of ready and willing jihadists, and armed with weapons shipped from the overthrown government of Libya, a brutal proxy war was launched. Neo-Ottoman Turkey threw its own jihadists into the fight. And the US armed and unleashed Kurdish nationalists to further pressure the Assad government and serve US interests.

What the mainstream media called “a Revolution and the Syrian Civil War” was, in fact, a conflict of proxies and of foreign intervention. In response to Turkish and US meddling and to the arrival of hordes of foreign jihadists, Hezbollah militias and Iranian and Russian forces came to the assistance of the weak Assad government forestalling the chaos that follows forcible regime change.  

As the war reached somewhat of a stalemate, Assad stood in Damascus, ruling the little that was left of the country’s infrastructure, housing, economy, and territorial integrity. US Marines occupied a portion of Syria with its oil resources. Kurds ruled in another part of the country under US protection. The US’s NATO ally, Turkey-- hostile to the Kurds-- ruled in another part of Syria, supporting their favored brand of head-chopping jihadists. Israel took advantage of weakened foes and occupied a large slice of Syria nearer to Damascus, while destroying all Syrian military assets in Southern Syria. 

If this reverse of nation-building, this nation-degrading process seems familiar, it should. It resembles all too well the willful, post-Cold War, systematic destruction of fragile states constructed around multiple ethnicities and enjoying a measure of national independence. Without the international leverage of a socialist bloc, led by the powerful Soviet Union, the imperialist bloc disposed of contrarian states like Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, usually by fomenting ethnic strife or supporting elite demands. Failing states throughout Africa and Asia bear similar scars, inflicted by great powers bent on strengthening their spheres of interest, as France attempts in sub-Saharan Africa. 

In late 2024, Turkey unleashed its own stable of radical, fundamentalist head-choppers, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, against the Assad regime from its lair in Idlib province. The demoralized, spent forces of Assad’s military were swiftly overwhelmed. Despite designation as a “terrorist group” by the UN (and the US), HTS was heralded by most of the US and European mainstream media as victorious freedom fighters. Reporters flocked to Damascus-- after staying far away for years, while reporting from Beirut and the US embassy-- to “prove” the evil of the Assad regime. Easily duped by local opportunists, much of the reportage collapsed as facts and evidence came forward.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of HTS anointed himself the new Syrian head of state, adopted a proper Western suit, shaved his beard, and pronounced a new era of peace and harmony, while outlawing political parties, postponing a new constitution, and cancelling elections until far off in the future. Such is the new Syrian Democracy.

But public relations cannot restrain the blood lust of the fundamentalist head-choppers. In 2025, HTS elements began a vengeance campaign against Baa’ath cadre, former military leaders, and religious “infidels,” killing and attacking civilians in Alawite and Christian villages. 

Understandably, a new resistance is emerging. Bizarrely, EU authorities blame the massacres on those resisting HTS.

No doubt at the urging of its foreign sponsors (especially the US), HTS and the Kurds were herded into a cooperative agreement in March that includes the merging of its “military institutions” -- a move that hopes to strengthen their hand against future Syrian resistance and present an image of unity to the rest of the world. The Kurds give the US greater influence at the expense of the Turks.

The last pages of the Syrian tragedy are yet to be written.

There are lessons to be learned.

The post-Soviet era has emboldened a ruthless, cruel imperialism. Without the threat of Soviet power to present a counterforce, the US, NATO, and other powers are free to impose their will on other states, including taking their own rivalries to the brink of World War. Few remember that the then-real threat of Soviet intervention, stopped the Israelis from passing beyond the Golan Heights and marching to Damascus during the Six Day War-- a principled act of international solidarity.

As a corollary, it is impossible to fail to note that there are no similar counterbalancing forces today. There have been no political, economic, or military powers demonstrably committed to a principled defense of weaker states threatened by imperialist aggression since the Cuban and Soviet defense of Angola and the defeat of South African apartheid aggression in the 1980s.

That reality is not only a tribute to the socialist internationalism of the past, but a sobering message to those on the left who interpret the realignment of great powers-- the so-called tendency to multipolarity-- as a new kind of anti-imperialism. The experience of Syria-- left on its own to defend its integrity and sovereignty against the agents of backwardness and great-power interests-- speaks to the impotence of the so-called BRICS block. Issuing protests, resolutions, and condemnations is no substitute for action or material aid. Russian support, once so vital to Assad’s defense, failed to rise against HTS and is now offered shamelessly to its former foe. 

Capitalist alliances around spheres of influence or temporary common interests are far removed from principled anti-imperialism, a stance only possible apart from the logic of capitalist competition. Anti-imperialism is a principle, not a self-interested calculation.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Multipolarity and BRICS Once More

The debates over “multipolarity” and the significance of an allegedly multipolar BRICS grouping continue. In an opinion piece in People’s Voice (Multipolarity, BRICS+ and the struggle for peace, cooperation, and socialism today, June 16-30, 2024) writer Garrett Halas mounts an earnest defense of multipolarity and the BRICS+ “as a positive step towards socialism.” 

Halas joins many others in envisioning all twenty-first-century resistance to US imperialism and the imperialism of its (largely ex-Cold War) partners as the same as resistance to imperialism in general. They divide the world into the US and its friends and those who, to some extent or another, oppose the US. Sometimes they characterize this as a conflict between the global North and the global South. Sometimes they refer to the imperialist antagonists collectively as “the West.”

From the perspective of the multipolarity proponents, if the countries resisting the US should neutralize US domination and that of its allies, then the world will become peaceful and harmonious. In their view, it is not capitalism that obstructs enduring peace, but US imperial aspirations alone. Accordingly, in the idealized future, multiple friendly, cooperative states (poles) will engage in peaceful, equitable economic transactions that all agree will be mutually advantageous-- what Chinese leaders call “win-win.” If this isn’t achieved immediately, it will soon follow. Is not socialism down the road?

The reality is that as important as resisting US domination and aggression surely is, its decline or defeat will not put an end to imperialism, as long as monopoly capitalism continues to exist. 

In the history of modern-era imperialism, the decline of every dominating great capitalist power has spawned the rise of another. As one power recedes, others step up and contest for global dominance-- that is the fundamental logic of imperialism. And, all too often, war ensues.

• CLASS: Glaringly absent from the theory of multipolarity is the concept of class. Advocates of a multipolar world fail to explain how class relations-- specifically the interests of the working class-- are advanced with the existence of multiple capitalist poles. Halas tells us that the “BRICS+ is a coalition with a concrete class character rooted in the global South” but he doesn’t tell us what that “concrete class character” is. This is a critical question and a significant problem, given that Halas concedes that “most BRICS+ nations are capitalist”! Of the original BRICS members, capitalism is unquestionably the dominant economic system in Russia, India, South Africa, and Brazil. Of the candidate members scheduled for entry in 2024-- Argentina (likely a withdrawal), Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates-- all are capitalist. The idea that working class interests will be served, and socialism advanced by this group seems far-fetched.

• CLASS CONFLICT: Class struggle-- the motor of the struggle for workers’ advances, workers’ power, and socialism-- has been stifled by the governments of nearly all the BRICS and BRICS+ countries. In Iran, for example, Communism is illegal and Communists have been executed in large numbers. Communism is likewise illegal in Saudi Arabia. Modi has conducted class war against India’s farmers. South Africa’s working class has seen unemployment and poverty rise under the disappointing government. Egyptian workers labor under a brutal military government. How does their entry into BRICS promise socialism?

• GLOBAL NORTH/GLOBAL SOUTH: Halas and the “multipolaristas” would have it that the “contradiction” informing multipolarity is the clash between the “global north” and the “global south” or, paradoxically, the “West” and the rest of the world. Apart from the fact that the geographical division captures little—other than the imagination of social-media leftists-- it gives the impression that Australia and New Zealand have something in common with impoverished Burundi. Or that Serbia and Germany are Western partners in exploiting small African countries. There is, of course, a division between wealthy countries and poor countries, between exploiters and exploited. Historically, the sharpest fault lines have been defined by colonialism and its successor, neo-colonialism. But the imperialist cards are shuffled from time to time due to resource inequities, uneven development, or other gained advantages. For example, the Arabian Peninsula was once a dominated colony of the Ottoman empire. That empire’s dissolution and subsequent developments led to an emergent Saudi Arabia infused with resource wealth and high up on the imperialist hierarchy. Today, India has three of the top 20 corporations in Asia by market value, larger than all Japanese corporations except for Toyota. India’s Tata Group has a market capitalization of over $380 billion, with its tentacles spread to 100 countries. The June 28 UK Morning Star editorial informs us: “Tata Steel’s threat to shut the blast furnaces at Port Talbot three months earlier if Unite goes ahead with strike action is blackmail. The India-based multinational does not believe steelworkers should have a say in the plant’s future… It’s outrageous that the future of British steelmaking should be at the whim of a billionaire on a different continent.”

• DECOUPLING: Halas suggests that BRICS+ offers an opportunity for countries to break out of the capitalist international financial structures imposed after World War II and the dominance of the dollar in global transactions. Such an option may exist in the future, but clearly it is intended as an option and not a substitute for existing structures and exchange instruments. As recently as late June of this year, PRC Premier Li Qiang said that “We should broadly open our minds, work closely together, abandon camp formations, (and) oppose decoupling…” [my emphasis] It is clear that the picture of global country-to-country relations-- as envisioned by Peoples’ China’s second most prominent leader, Li, at the “Summer” Davos-- offers no challenge to existing financial arrangements or to the dominance of the dollar. The antagonistic conflict between the old order and the new multipolar order is more a fantasy in the minds of some on the left than a real policy goal of the leading country in BRICS.

• ANTI-IMPERIALISM: Halas would like us to believe that twentieth-century anti-imperialism is multipolarity embodied in BRICS. He cites the UN votes on Palestinian status and oppression (predictably vetoed by the US) as an example of “global south” anti-imperialism. While symbolic and not without significance, it is hardly the principled anti-imperialist action we came to know in earlier times. It is worth reminding that Saudi Arabia was on the verge of abandoning Palestine for better relations with Israel before October 7. Egypt has long sold out the cause of Palestine, as has much of the Arab world. According to Al Jazeera, India is currently selling military supplies to Israel. Virtue-signaling at UN forums is not a substitute for concrete, material solidarity.

• CHINA: This is not the place for debating whether the Peoples’ Republic of China is a socialist country, a favorite parlor game of the Euro-US left. However, it is worth stating that-- as the only self-acclaimed socialist country currently in BRICS-- the PRC does not claim to be advocating, encouraging, or materially aiding the struggle for socialism outside of China. Unlike the former Soviet Union, the PRC does not prioritize or privilege investment or material support for countries embarking on the socialist path. The word “socialism” is largely absent from its foreign policy statements. While the Chinese leadership defends its outlook as “socialism with Chinese characters,” it does not demonstrably support “socialism with anybody else’s national characters.” Yet, some on the left see multipolarity and a largely capitalist BRICS as a road to socialism for the rest of us?

• WE HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE: In the 1960s, it was common for the left in Europe and the US to lose hope in the revolutionary potential of the working classes. Where working-class movements in Europe aligned with Communist Parties, they fully committed to a gradualist, parliamentary road to socialism. An anti-Communist New Left proposed a different vehicle of revolutionary change: The Third World. In the common parlance of the time, the Third World was the newly emergent, former colonies that were neither in the US camp nor the Soviet camp. Per this view, revolutionary change (and ultimately) socialism would grow from the independent road chosen by the leaders of these emergent nations. But instead, they were overwhelmed by the neo-colonialism of the great capitalist powers and absorbed by the global capitalist market, with few exceptions.

• AND EVEN EARLIER: Karl Kautsky, the major theoretician of the Socialist International, anticipated multipolarity in 1914, introducing a concept that he called “ultra-imperialism.” Kautsky believed that great power imperialism and war had no future. The imperialist system would, of necessity, stabilize and, due to declining capital exports, “Imperialism is thus digging its own grave… [T]he policy of imperialism therefore cannot be continued much longer.” For Kautsky, a stage of “concentration” of capitalist states, comparable to cartelization of corporations, will lead to inter-imperialist harmony. Lenin rejected this theory out of hand. For a discussion, go here.

Imperialism is not a stable system. Capitalist participants are always seeking a competitive advantage against their rivals. Sometimes they find it useful or necessary to form (often temporary) coalitions or alliances with others in order to protect or advance their interests. One such alliance was forged by the US after the Second World War in opposition to the socialist bloc and the national liberation movements. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US sought to keep existing coalitions intact by selecting or devising new enemies-- the war on drugs, the war against terrorism, and wars of humanitarian intervention. Beneath these political ties existed a US established and dominated global economic structure privileging the US, but deemed necessary to protect the capitalist system.

This politico-economic framework served capitalism well, until the great economic crash of 2007-2009 and the ensuing cracks and fractures in the framework. The turmoil unleashed by the crisis dampened the pace of growth in international trade and accelerated the competition for markets. Further challenging the US-centered framework was the ability of People’s China to navigate the crisis rather painlessly. Where the US ruling class formerly saw the PRC as an opportunity, it began to see China as a rival in the imperialist system. 

The post-Soviet global market-- cemented by the so-called “globalization” process-- began to unravel in the wake of twentieth-century economic instability, especially the 2007-2009 crash. Rather than defend existing free-trade dogma, capitalist countries were drawn to protectionism and economic nationalism. Beginning in the Trump Administration and accelerating during the Biden Administration, the US waged a tariff-and-sanctions war against economic competitors. US dominance of international financial institutions and the nearly universal dependence upon the US dollar gave US leaders even more weapons in this competition. 

The US “pivot” to China in its defense posture and its growing hostility to Russia were reflections of its losing ground to the PRC’s growing economic might and Russia’s dominance of Eurasian energy markets. 

Understandably, in this new era of economic nationalism, Russia, China, the leading power on the subcontinent, India, Africa’s top economic power, South Africa, and the largest economy in Latin America, Brazil, would look to counter aggressive US and EU competition. The era of mutual cooperation was ending, and the era of intense rivalry and national self-interest was emerging. It was in this environment that BRICS was born. 

It was a capitalist response to a capitalist problem, not a path to socialism.

The main task for Communists and progressives is not to take sides, but to fight to ensure that these fractures and frictions do not explode into war.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com