Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?

Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?

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Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?

Samir Amin Trans lated by Vict o ri a Bawtree

Pambazuka Press At) impr int o f Fa hamu

roJ CODESRIA

~~ BOOKlk~

Internatio nal Publish ing House

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Tlus English edition first published 2011 by Pambazuka Press, an imprint of Fahamu Ca peTown, o.-.kar, Nairobi and Oxford www.pamba zukapress.org I\'ww.fahamubooks.org \VwI \'.pambazuk.o-..org CODESRIA Dab r \\-.vI\'.codcsria. org and Books for Change, Bangalore \\'\\·\\'.booksfo rchange.info Fahamu, 2nd /l oor, 51 Cornmarkel Street, Oxford OX I 3l-J A, UK Fah amu Kenya, PO Box 47 158, 00 100 GPO, N airobi, Kenya Fah>!mu Senegal, 9 Cite Sonatel2, roB 2502 1, Dakar-I'arm, Dakar, Seneg,,1 Fahamu SouUr Africa, c /o 19 Nerina Crescent, Fish Hoek, 7Cf75 Cape Tow n, South Africa CODESRIA, Avenue Chcikh Antn Diop X Canal IV; BP 3JO.1, CP 18524, Dakar, Senegal Book!> for CJ1<1nge, 139 Richmond Road, &:mg
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All rights reserl'ed . Redistribu ti on of the material presented in this work encouraged by the publis her, prol'id i..-d thai the ori ginal text is nol a1ten.-d, lhal the o rigin>!1 source is properly and fully acknoll'lcdgi..-d an d that the obJectil'e of the redis tribu tio n is not conunercial gain. Please con tact the publisher if youlI'ish to reproduce, redistribu te or tnnsmit, in any form or by any mea ns, thi s work o r
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Contents Translator's note Introduction The financial col lapse of li beral globalisation

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Th e contras t between the Europ ean and the Chi nese historical developments 40

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Historical capitalism - accumulation by di spossession

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Revolutionary advances and catastrophic retreat s

78

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Peasant agricu lture and modern family ag ricu lture

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6

Hum an itarianism or the internationalism of the peoples"

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Being Marxist , bei ng com munist , being international ist

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Index

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Translator's note I feel it might be helpful 10 clarify so me o f the wo rds and phrases in this boo k which, beca use they refer to specifi cally Fre nch phenome na, canno t be trans lated w itho ul dis torting the meaning . For example ' bobo' , a te rm w id ely used in French newspape rs and journals in recent years, s ignifies ' bohe mian bo urgeo is' ,md it refers, in the word s o f the author o f this book, to those of the uppe r middle classes w ho lean t o the left as long as their privileges are maintained. O f course ' champag ne socia lists' gives the idea but it some how Limits the term to those w ho gel togethe r fo r expe nsive eating a nd dr inking, while proclaiming themselves to be of the left. 80bo is a rathe r deepe r co ncepl and refe rs to more gene ral politi cal and social behiwio ur. Then the re is the phrase ' ac tu ally exis ting socialism' (and, by ex te nsio n, tho ug h less ofte n, ' act ually existing capitali sm' or eve n 'actually existing globalis a tio n' ). It came to be used seve ral decades ago by independent thinkers on the left w ho, while ad vocating socialism, felt the nL>ed to distance themselves from the 'socialist' socie ties in Eas te rn Euro pe, set up und er the dorninati on of the Sovie t Union. In the minds of people like Ernes t Mandel and RudoU Bahro these socie ties were in many ways a tra vesty of soc ialism. Samir A min oft en uses the Frel1 ch wo rd ',t hivi" , referring to the way in w hich princi ples or po li cies gradually lose their impe tus and end up in positio ns quite contrary to their o riginal purpose. So me times this is a delibe rate de cision on the pa ri of a group or pa rty bu t in any case the process is usually s low (and ofte n unrecogni sed ), hence the word 'derive', w hich seems to me to be best trans lated as' drift ' . The a utho r uses the word ' n'111"I'S l'I1 tatioll ' not to refe r to a theatrical pe rforman ce or in the se nse o f an agent, bu t as Marx used it to describe the way in w hich a sy ste m presents itself to the me mbers of its society in su ch a way that is con venie nt for those w ho dominate socie ty but s till co nvincing e no ug h to obtain the co nse nt of the dominated (if only tacit) if the syste m is to work. See parti cularly the sectio n hea ded 'The Libe ral Virus' in Chapter 7. The n there arc word s w hi ch have differe nt connotatio ns in vi ngntea IT

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TR ANSLATOR'S NOTE

Eng lis h an d French. O ne of th em is 'pnplllaif!", w hich cannot normally be transl,1 ted by ' pop ul ss, loutis h. 'VII/gaire' in French more o ften means ordin ary, w idespread or banal This is the sense in which Samir A rnin uses it when he refers 10 conventional economjcs, which, fo r so many years of llis lile he has been at pains to try and demolish.

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Copyrighted material

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Introduction

Capitalism, a parenthesis in history The principl e of endl ess accumwal ion that defines capitalism is sy nony mous w ith ex po ne ntia l growth a nd the latter, like cancer, lea ds to death. Jo hn Stuart Mill, w ho recogni sed this, imagined that a stationary stale o f affairs would put an e nd to this irr<1 lionaJ process. Jo hn Mayn;nd Keynes shared this op timis m of reason . Bu illci lher was equ ipped 10 understand how the necessary overcoming of capitalis m could prevail. By contras t, Marx, by giving prope r imporlan ce to the new class s truggle, couJd imagine the reversal of the po wer of the (<1pilali51 class, concentrated nOW
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ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

wave of s trugg les in fa vou r of the e mancipation o f the wor kers and the peoples. Accumulation by dispossessio n continues before our eyes in the late modern ca pitalis m of the co ntempora ry ol igopolies. In the centres, monopoly rents - whose beneficiaries are the ol igopolistic p lutocmcies - are syno nymous wi th the dis possession of the entire producti ve bilSis o f society. Ln tJle peripheries, this pauperising dispossession manif~ t s itself in the ex propriation of the peasant ry and the plundering of the natural resou rces o f the regions i.n questio n. Both these practices co ns titute the essential pillars of the expansion strategies o f the o Ligo polies' late capitalism. In this context, I situate the new ag rarian question at the heart of the challenge for the 21st century. T he dispossession of the peasantry (in Asia, Africa and Latin Americ<1) is the major contemporary form of the tendency towards pa uperisation (in the sense w hich Marx ascribed to this law), linked to accumulation. Its implementation carumt be dissociilted from the strC any name for this other than socialism. The plundering of the So uth's IMtura] resources, w hi ch is dem<1nded by the pursuit of the mod el o f w<1steful consumption to the exclusive benefit o f the North's affluent societ ies, destroys any pros pect of development worthy o f th is name fo r their peop les
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difference if the utilisatio n of these resources rema ins the same as it is now (wasteful and energy-d evouring) or if it were s ubject to environmentally fr iend ly measures and new correc ti ves. I d educe from this that the pursuit o f the exp ansionis t strategy of the late cap italis m of o ligopo li es w ill inevitably clash with the growing resistan ce of the nations of t he South . T he current crisis is therefore neither a finan cial crisis nor the s um of multiple systemi c crises, but the crisis of the imperialis t cap italis m of oligopolies w hose exclusive an d supreme power risks being ques tio ned once more by the struggles of the entire popular classes (see Translator's note) and the nations in the do minated peripheries, even if they a ppear to be emerg ing markets. This cri sis is also si multaneo usly a cr isis of US hegemony. The fo llowing pheno mena are in ex tricably li nked to o ne ano th er: the capitalis m of o ligopo lies, the po litical power o f o ligarc hies, barbaro us g lobalisatio n, financ ialisation, US hegemony, the mi litarisation of the way g lobal isation is operated in the service o f o ligopolies, the d ecline of democ racy, the plundering of the p lanet's reso urces and the abandoning of develo pment for the South. The real cha llenge is therefore as follows: wi ll these struggles man age to converge in o rder to pave the lo ng w ay - or ways towards the tnms itio n to world 50ciill is m? Or wi ll these s truggles remain separate from one another, or will they even clash with each o ther ilnd therefore become ineffective, leaving the initiati ve wi th the cap ital of the oligopo lies?

From one long crisis to another The financ iill meltdown in Septe mbe r 2<X.l8 probably took by surprise the con vention al economists who ad vocated hilp py globa lisalion and tltrew into d isarrilY some of the filbri cil tors of liberal discou rse, w ho hild been triwn p hant since the filII o f the Berlin Wall . If, however, this event did not s urprise me - I expected it (withou t of course predicting its dilte, like so me astroJogi st) - it is sim ply becil use for me this event is part of the unfolding of the lo ng crisis of an ilgeing capi tal ism, begun in the 1970s. It is good to return to the firs t lo ng crisis of cap italism w hich fa s hioned the 20th century, ilS the parillle is between the s tilges o f the unfo lding of bo th crises are 50 s triking . 3

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

The indus trial cilpitalis m tha t WilS triumphilnt in the 19th century entered il crisis from 1873 onwards. ProfH riltes dropped, for the reilsons highlig hted by Milrx. Cilpitill TCilcted with il do ubl e move : concentriltion and glo balised ex pansion . The new monopolies confiscated in ilddition to their profits a rent levied on the massive ildded villue generilted by the exp loitiltion o f lilbour. They reinforced the co loniill conquests of the plmlCt. These structural transformations a llowed a new s urge in profits. These tmnsformiltion s led to the belle epoque - fro m 1890 to 1914 - which is the period o f glo balised domination by financial mo nopoly ca pital. The dominant disco urses of the time praised colonisatio n (its civi lising mission) and d escribed globalisation ilS synonymous with peilce, and the workers' sociill democracy rall ied to the cau se. However, the belle cpoque, announced as the end of his tory by the ideo logues of this period , ended in the Firs t World Wa r, ilS only Lenin hild predicted. And the period which followed and las ted until the ilftermath of the Second World War was the period of wars and re vo lutions. In 1920, after the Russian Revo lution (the weak link in the sys tem) had bL>en iso lated fo llow ing the d efeat o f the hopes o f revoluti on in cen tral Eu ro pe, the capitill of the finiln cia.lised monopo lies restored, ilgains t all the odds, the system o f the belle 6poque; a res toration, denounced by Keynes at the time, which was at the origin of the financial collapse o f 1929 and the G reilt Depression to w hich it led and which lilsted until the beginning of the Second World War. The lo ng 20th century - 1873-1990 - is therefore the century o f both the deployment o f the fir s t systemi c and profound crisis of ilgei ng ca pitilLis m (to the po int w here Lenin th oug ht tllilt thi s cap italism of monopolies constituted the supreme phase o f capitalis m) and that of the first triumphmll wave of anti-capit alist revol utions (Russia, China) and o f the anti-imper ialis t movements of Asia and Africa. The second sys temic crisis of capi taJism begiln in 1971, wi th the abandoning o f the go ld convertibility o f the dollar, almost exact ly a century after the co mmenceme nt of the first crisis. Profit rates, inves tment levels and growth Tilles all co llapsed (iUld never ilgilin reverted to the levels of the perio d 1945-75). Cap itill responded to the challenge, as in the previous crisis, with a do uble movement 4 ngntea IT

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INTRODUCTION

of concentration and g lobalisation. In tllis way, cap ital es tablished s tructures that d efin ed the second belle e po'!ue (1990-2008) of finan cialised g lobalisatio n, allowing oligopo listic groups to levy their monopoly rent. The same discourse accompanied this process: the market guarantees prosperity, democracy and peace; it is the end of his tory. The sa me rallying occurred, this time by Europcan socialists to thc ncw liberalis m. Howcvcr, this new bellc epo,!ue was from the outset accompanied by war, the waf o f the North versus the South, started i.n 1990. Ju st as the firs t financial ised globalisalion had led to 1929, so the second p rodu ced 2008. Today wc have rcnched this crucial mo ment whi ch announces the probability of a new wave o f Wilrs and revolutio ns. T he chances of this are even g reater since the ruling powers do not enviS
A systemic rather than just a financial crisis Be hind the financial crisis, there exists a systemi c cri sis o f the capitalis m of oligopolies. Contemporary capitalism is firs t and foremos t a capitalism o f o ligopo lies in thc full sense of the term (w hi ch so far cnp italism has only been in part). W hat I me an by this is that the oligopolies a10ne command the production of the economic system in its entirety. They are finan cial ised in the sense that they alone ha ve acccss to capitnl markets. This financinli satio n grants the mo netary and financial market - their market, on which they co mpete wi th each o th er - the status of d o minilllt market, whi ch in turn fa shions nnd command s the labour and commodity exchange markets. This g lobalised financiali S
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

T he new form of capitalist g lobali sati on whic h corresponds to this transfo rmation - by contras t w it h the one whi ch characterises the fir st belle epoque - is also im por tant to specify. I have ex pre&>ed it in a phri\se: the passage from plural imperialisms (that o f the imperialist powers in permanent confli ct wi th each other) to the collecti ve imperialism of the Triad (the Uni ted States, Europe and Japan). The monopolies that emerged in res ponse to the fir st crisis of the rates of profit const itu ted themselves on bases that have reinforced the violence of co mpe tition between the major imperialist powers of the time, and led to t he armed conflict begun in 1914, which continued through the peace of Versailles and then the Second Wo rld War unti l 1945 . That is wha t G iovanni A rrig hi Andre G under Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein and J described in the 1970s as the ' war of thirty years', a notion that has bccn taken up by ot hers since then. By con trast, the seco nd wave of o Ligopolistic concen tration, begu n in the 1970s, constituted itself o n totally other bases, w ithin the fr amework of a system which J ha ve descr ibed as the collective imperialism o f the Triad. In this new imperialis t globalisalion, the do minati on of the centres is no longer exercised by the mono pol y of industri al production (as had been the case hitherto ) but by o ther means (t he control of technologies, financial markets, access to the planet's natura l resou rces, informa tion and communi cations, weapons of mass destructi on). This system, which I have descri bed as ' apartheid o n a g lobal scale' implies a permanent war agains t the states and the peoples of the recalcitrant periphe ries, a war already beg un in the 1990s by the deployment of military con trol over the world by the United States and its s ubordinated NATO allies. According to my analysis, the finan ciaJisation of tllis system is inextricably linked to its clearly oligo polistic as pect . There is a fundame ntally organic relation between them. This point of view is not prevalent, nei ther in the expansive literature of conventional economists nor in the majo ri ty o f crit ical writings o n the cur rent crisis. It is the enti re system whic h hen ceforth is in difficulty. The fact s are clear: the 2008 financial co Uapse is already produ cing not a recession but a veritable, profound depression. But beyond 6 "

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INTRODUCTION

th is, othe r dime nsions of the crisis o f this syste m had s urf,ICed in public consciousness even before the financial meltdown. We know the sort of labels - ene rgy cr isis, food cris is, e nvironmental cris is, climate change - a nd nume rous a nalyses o f these aspects o f the contemporary challenges are produ ced on a d aily bas is, some o f w h.ich are of the highes t quality. I remain none theless cri tical abo ut this mode o f treating the syste m ic cris is o f capitalism beca use it excessively iso la tes the diffe re nt dime nsions of the challe nge. I wou ld, therefore, redefine the d iverse crises as facets o f the sa me chal lenge -t hat of the system o f conte mporary capitalist g lobalisation (whet he r libe ral o r not), fou nded upon the principle that the imperialis t rent operates on a g lobal scale, to the benefit of the plu tocracy of t he ol igopolies o f the imperialist Triad . T he real bailie is foug ht o n this decisive ground between the o ligo polies - w ho seek to produce a nd re p roduce the cond itions that allow them to approp riate the im periali st rent - and all their victims - the worke rs of all the countri es in the Nort h and the So uth, the peop les o f t he d ominated peripheries co ndemned to g ive up any perspect ive of develop me nt worthy o f the name.

Ending the crisis of capitalism or ending capitalism? T his formula - retained in the title of this book - was first s uggested by An dre G under Frank and myseU in 1974. The analysis which we d eveloped about the new great cris is that we tho ught had beg un led us to the major conclusion that capital wou ld respond to the cha llenge with a new wave o f co ncentration o n the basis of w hi ch it wou ld proceed to massive dislocations. Later developments largely confirmed this. The title o f ou r intervent ion at a co nfe rence o rganised by II A IIlI/ifi'S to in Ro me in 1974 (' Let u s not wai t for 1984', referring to the work by George O rwell) in vited the radi cal left at that time to renounce an}' strategy of coming to the aid of capital by looking for exi ts from the cris is in o rder to SL'Ck strateg ies a imed a t an exit from capitalism . I have pursued this line of ana lysis with a stubbornness I do not regret. I have suggested a concept ual isa tion of new forms of domina tion on the part of the imperialis t cent res w hi ch is ground ed in 7

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

new modes o f control that replaced the old monopoly over exclusively indu strial produ ctio n; the rise of the cou ntries referred to as emerging markets has confirmed this co nceptualisation . I have described the new glo balisation which is being built as an ' apartheid at the g lobal level', caUing for the militarised managemen t of the planet and in this way perpetuating in new conditi ons the polarisation that canno t be dissoc iated from the expansion o f aclually ex isting capitnlism.

The second wave of emancipation by the people There is no alternat ive to a socialis t perspective. The contempornry world is governed by o ligarchies: the finan cial o ligarchies in the United States, Europe nnd Jnpnn who do minnte not on ly economic life bu t also politics and daily [jfe; Ru ssian ol igarchies in their image, which the Russian s tate tries to control; s tatocracies in Chinn; nutocrncies (so metimes hidden behind the appearance o f an elecloral democracy of low intensity ) inscribed into this worldwide syste m elsewhere across the globe. The management of con temporary globalisation by these oligarchies is in crisis. The o ligarchies o f the North seek to remain in power once the cris is is over. They do not feel threa tened. By con trast, the fra g ility of the power held by the autocracies o f the Sou th is d early visible. The model of globalisation that is currentl y in place is therefore vulnerable. Will it be questioned by the revolt in the South, as was the case in the previou s cen tury? P robably, but that wouJd be cause for sadness. For humanity will only commit itself on the rond to socialis m - the only humane alternati ve to chaos - o nce the powers o f the o ligarchi es, the ir allies and their servants have been defea ted bo th in th e coun tries of the North and those in the So uth . Long li ve the internationalism of the peop le in the fil ce o f the cosmo politanis m of the olign.fchies. Is the reins tntemen t of the capitali sm o f financiali sed and g lobalised o ligopolies possible? Cnp italis m is liberal by nature, if by liberalism we mean no llhe pretty label w hi ch Ihi s notion inspires but the plnin and lo tal exefcise o f the do mination of cnpilal nol only over work and the econo my but over all ns pects of soci al life. There can be no market economy (a vulgn! - see Translator' s 8 ngntea IT

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INTRODUCTION

note - expressio n fo r capitalis m) witho ut a market society. Capital s tubbornly pu rsues this unique objecti ve: mo ney; accumuJati on for its o wn sake. Marx, and after him other criti cal thinkers s uch as Keynes, understood this perfectly, but not o ur conventional econorrus ts, those on the left i.ncl ud ed. This mod el o f total a.nd ex cl u sive domin ation by ca pi tal had been imposed ruthlessly by the ruling classes throug hout the prev io us long crisis up to 1945. O nly the triple victory of democracy, socialis m and the national liberatio n of the peo ple allowed a replace ment fro m 1945 to 1980 of thi s permanent model of the capitalis t ideal with the conflictua l coexistence of three social, regulated models: the welfare s tate o f Western social democracy, the actually ex isting socialis m i.n the Eas t and the popular nationalisms in the South. The demise an d collapse of these three models made the return of the ex clusive domination by capital possible, this time described as the neolibe ral phase o f capitalis m. I have lin ked this new liberal.ism to a series of new characteristi cs w hich appears to me to merit the description of senile ca pitalism . My book with the epony mo us titl e, publi shed in 2001, is probably one of the very few writings at the time whi ch, far from viewing g lo bali sed and financi a lised neo liberalism as the end o f history, analysed the system of ageing capitalis m as uns table, co ndenmed to eventual collapse, precisely in terms of its finan cialisatio n (its 'Achilles' heel', as I wrote then). Conventio nal econo mis ts have re mained persistently deaf to any questioning of their own d ogma, so m uch so that they were unable to foresee the fin ancial collapse of 2008. Those w hom the media have po rtrayed as critical hardly deserve this descriptio n. Even Joseph Stig Htz remai ns co nvin ced that the sys tem as it s tands - globalised and finan cia lised liberali sm - ca n be fi xed by means of so me corrections. A martya Sen preaches mo rality witho ut da ring to think of actually existing capitalism as it necessarily is. The socia l disasters, whi ch the d e pl oyment of liberal ism - ' the permanent utopia o f ca pital', a s I wrote - would cause, have insp ired quite a bit of nos talg ia in relation to the recent or dis tant past. But such nostalgia canno t respond to the present challenge. For it is the p rod uct of an impoveris hed criti caL th eoreti ca l thinking which has gradu ally stop ped itself from unders tanding the 9

ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

internal contmdictions and the limits of the post-194S systems, whose erosio ns, di versions and coll
INTRODUCTION

thereby ilbilnd oning Marx, who hild discovered the irmti onaJity o f mill'kets from the point of view of the workers and the peoples, a perspecti ve deemed obso lete. Accordi ng to this left-wing pers pective capitalism is fl ex ible and adjusts itself to the requirements of prog ress (technologiCil I and even sociill) if it is co nstrained in thi s way. These lefti st economists weTe not p rep ared to understand that the crisis which h as erupted was inevitabl e. They are even less prepill'ed to confront the d lilllenges that the peo ples face as a res ult. Like the other v ulgilf economists, they w ill seek to repair the damage witho ut understanding t ll"t it is necessary to pursue ano ther route to be su ccessful - that of overcoming the fund a mental logics o f cilpitalism. lnsteild o f loo king for ex its from ca pitillis m in cris is, they think they can simply exit the crisis o f cap it"lis m.

US hegemony in crisi s The G20 s ummit in London in A pril 2009 in no w"y marked the beginning of a reco ns tru ction of the world . And it is perha ps no coin cidence ami dst the flurr y around the G20 that it WilS followed by a summit meeting of NATO, the rig ht hand of contemporary imperialism, and by the rei nforcement of NATO' s military in vo lvement in Afg hanis tan. Th e permanent war of the North against the South mus t continue. We al ready knew that the governments of the Tri "d - the United St" tes, Eu rope
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part of thi s s tra tegy to trick the pu bHc. O bviously, one could not expect otherw ise from the OligMChs who control the real power and their polit ical debtors. The p oint of view I have d eveloped, which puts the emphasis on the inextricable links between the dornination of the o li gopoli es and the necessary financialisation o f man"ging the world eco nomy, is confirmed by the results o f the G20 summit. More interesting is the fael that the in vi ted leaders of the emerging markets chose to remain silent. A sing le inte lligent sentence w"s s"id throughout thi s d"y of great s pect"c1e - by the C hinese President Hu jint ao, who observed in passing, without insis ting and with a (moc king?) s mile, that it would be necessary to envisage the creat ion o f a g lo bal financial sys tem that is not based on the US d oll ar. So me com mentators immed iate ly linked thi s - correctly - to Keynes's proposals in 1945. This remark is a rude reminder that the crisis of the capitalist system of oligopo li es is inex tricab ly linked to the crisis o f US hegemo ny, whi ch is on the ropes. But who w ill rep lace it? Certainly not Europe, which docs not ex ist apart from or o utside Atlanti cis m and w hi ch has no ambition to be ind epe ndent, as the NATO sununit meeting o nce more confirmed. C hina? This threat, w hich the med ia undoubtedly repea t ad l1"u se" m (a new yellow peril ) in o rder to justify the Atl ant ic alignment, has no found ation in reality. The Chinese leaders hip knows that the country does not have suc h mea ns and they do 110 t have the wil l. China's strategy is confined to promo ting a new globalis" tio ll wit hout hegemony - something which neither the United States nor Europe deem acceptable. T he like lihood of a possible evol uti on in this direc tion depends once more o n the co untries of the South . And it is no coi n cide nce tha t UNCfAD (the United Natio ns Conference on Trade and Develop me nt) is the on ly ins titutio n wi th in the UN u mbrella which has taken ini tiat ives th"t a re fundamen tally differe nt from those of the Stigl itz Co mmissio n. It is no coi ncidence t hat UNCTA D' s Secretary -Gene.ral Supachai Panilchpakdi from T hailand, hitherto con sidered to be a perfect liberal, has dared to propose in a re port entitled 'T he global economi c crisis' o f March 2009 reaJis ti c ideas th " t are part of a second wave of a Southern awaken ing. 12 ngntea IT

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For its pmt, C hina hils begu n to build - in a g mdual and co ntro Ued manne r - a lterna tive regional financi al syste ms free from the US do ll ar. Such initi at ives complete on t he econo mic levc lthe promotion of po litical a lli ance w ithin the Shanghai Coo pe ration OrgiUliziltion (Seo). which is a major obstacle to NATO's belligere nce. The NATO s ummit meeting, con vened in the same month as the G20 summit, agreed o n Was hington's decision not to s ta rt a g radual military downsizi ng but on the con trary to reinforce the scope of its militilry involvement, il lways und er the misgU ided p retext of the 'war on terro r' . Pre sident Obama dep loyed his tale nt to save C linton's and Bush's programme of im posing glo bal mi litary control, w hi ch is the only way of prolonging the days o f US hegemo ny now unde r threat. Obama scored poi nts and obtained a total unco nd itio nal s urrender fro m Sarkozy's France - the e nd of Gaullism - w hich has now rejoined NATO's milita ry command, some thing tha t WilS d iffic ult during Bus h's reign w hen Washington s poke w ithou t in telligence bu l nol w ithou t arrogance. Mo reover, Obama acted like Bu sh by ignoring Europe's inde pende nce a nd g iv ing lessons about how Turkey shou ld be allowed to e nte r the European Union.

Second wave of victorious struggles for the emancipation of workers and peoples A re new advances in the st ruggles for the emancipation of the wor ke rs
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

of the international co nununity and has thereby margi naHsed the UN -the only ins titution entit led to speak under thi s name. O f course, these real goals canno t be openly acknowledged. ]n order to mas k them, the powers in question have chosen to instrumentalise the discourse o n democracy and have arrogated to themselves the rig ht to intervene so as to impose ' res pect fo r human right s'. A tthe same time, the absolute power o f the new o ligarc hi c plutocracies has hollowed ou t the substance of the prilctice o f bou rgeois democ Tilcy. iJl former times, poli tical negotiatio n between the different social parties of the hegemonic bloc was necessary for the reproduction of the power of cap ital. By con trast, the new po liti cal management of the society of oligopo listic capitalism, establis hed by means of a syste matic depoliticisation, has g iven rise to a new political culture o f 'consensus' (mod elled on the ex ample of the United States) wh ich s ubs titutes the cons umer and the po litical spectator for the active citizen - who is a conditi on for an "ulhenti c democracy. This ' liberal virus' (the title of ano ther book o f mine, pub lished in 200S) abolis hes the opening onto possible alternative choices and replaces it with a co nsens us th"t is centred solely on respect for a procedural, electoral democracy. The demi se and co llapse of the three social models mentioned above is at the origin of this dra ma . The page of the fir st wave o f s truggles for emancipatio n hilS now bL>en turned, that of the second wave has not yet been opened. In the twilig ht which separates them one can di scern iJle ' mons ters', as G ramsci wrote. In the North, these developments have caused the loss of any real sense o f democratic practice . T his reg ression is masked by the p retensio ns of the so-called pos t- modern discou rse, accord ing to which natio ns and classes have <'l lready left the scene and ceded po litical s pace to the individual, w ho is now the active subject o f socialtransfOTmatio n. In the South, other illu sions dominate the political realm. The illu sion of a capitalist, national and autonomou s development that is part of g lobalisation is po werful among the dominant and the middles classes in emergent markets, fu elled by the immediate s uccess of the last few decad es. Nostalgic (para-ethni c or parareligio us) illusio ns about the past are co mmon in the cou ntries excluded from this process. 14 ngntea IT

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W hat is wo rse, these develo pments ha ve strengthened the general embrace of the ideology o f consumption and the idea that progress is measured by the quantitati ve growlh of consumption . Marx showed that it is the mode of production whi ch d etermines the mode of consumption and not vice versa, as is claimed by vulgar economics. W hat is lost sight o f in al l this is the perspective o f a humanist and superior rationality, the basis for the social ist project. T he g ig anli c potential which Ihe applicati on of science and technology offers to the who le of humanity and w hich would enable the real flourishing of individua ls and societi es in the North and the South is wasted by the requirements of its subordination to the logics of the unlimited purs uit of the accumulat ion of capital. What is even worse, the continuou s progress of the social productivity of labour is linked to a brea thtaking use of the mechanisms of pauperis., lion (visible at a g lobal sca le, for instance in the wholesale attack on peasant societies), as Marx had already understood. Embracing the ideological alie natio n whi ch is cau sed by capitalis m does not on ly ad versely affect the affluent societies of the imperiali st centres. The peoples o f the peripheries, who arc for the mos t part dep ri ved of access 10 acceplable levels o f consumption and blind ed by aspira tions to consume like the o pu lent No rth, are losing conscio usness of the fa ct that the logic of hi stori cal cap italis m makes the ex tensio n o f this model to the entire globe impossible. We can therefore wlders tand the reasons w hy the 2008 finan cial collapse was the exclus ive resu lt of a sharpening of the internal conl radictio ns pecu liar to the accumu latio n o f capital. As a res uit, only the inter vention of fo rces that embod y a posilive alterna tive can offer a way of imagining an exit from the chaos. (Ll thi s s pirit, I have contrasted the revo lutionary way w ith promo ting decadence to overcome the llistorically o bsolete sys tem). And in the current slate of affairs, soc ial pro test movements, despite their visible g row th, re main as a who le unable to question the social order linked to the capitalis m of o ligopolies in the absence o f a coherent political project Ihal can mat ch up to the chall enges. From this point o f view, the current situation is markedly d ifferent from that wru ch prevailed in the 1930s, when the forces of socialis m clashed w ith fascist parties, produ cing Nazis m, the New Deal and the Popular Fronts. 15

ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

T he deepening of the crisis wi ll not be avoid ed , even if rei ns tating the system o f domina tio n by the capital o f the oligopolies were to be eventually s uccessful. which is not impossible. In this situation, the possible radica lisation of the strugg les is no t an improbable hy po thesis, even if the obstacles rem ain formidab le. In the cou ntries of the Triad, s u ch a radi ca li sation woul d imply that the agenda would be to expropriate the ol igopolies, a possibility that seems to be ex clu ded for the foreseeable future. In consequence, the hypot hesis tha t - despite the turmoil ca used by the crisis - the stability of the societies of the Triad will not be questioned cannot be discarded. T here is a serious ris k o f a rc-run o f the 20th century wave o f emancipatory struggles, that is to say, a qu esti oning of the system exclusively by some of its peripheries. A second s tage o f ' the So uth's awakening' ('/'rvt'i/ rill Slid' the title of yet an other book of mine published in 2007, w hich o ffers a reading of the Bandung period as the fir st stage of this awakening) is now on the agenda. In the best possible scenario, the ad vances produced in these conditions could force imperi alism to retreat, to reno unce its demented and criminal project o f military control of the world . A nd if this were the case, then the democ ratic movement in the countries at the centre of the system co uld make a positi ve co ntributio n to the success of this neu tralisation strategy. Moreover, the d ec line of the imperi alist rent which benefits the societies at the centre, itself caused by the reorganisation of in ternationa l equil ibria to the advantage of the So uth (especia ll y C hin a), cou ld h elp t he awakening of a socialis t conscious ness. However, on the o ther hand, the societies o f the So uth could still be confronted by the same challe nges as in the past, producing the sam e limits on thei r progress. A new internationa lis m of the wo rkers and the peoples is necessary and possible. His torical capita lism is all things to everyone, except that it is no t durable. It is but a s hort pa renthesis in histo ry. The fun damen tal questioning of capitalism - whi ch o tlr conte mporary thinkers in their over whelming majority deem neither possible nor desirable - is no netheless the in(."Scapable condition for the emancipation of the dominated workers and the peop les (those o f the peri pheries, t hat is 80 per cent of mankind). And the two dimensio ns o f this chaJlenge are inex tri cably linked with one 16 ngntea IT

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another. T here wi ll be no exit from capitalism so le ly by way of the s truggle of the peo ple of the North, or solely by the s truggle of the dominated people of the South . There will only be an exit from capita lis m if and when these two dimensions of the challenge co mbine with o ne other. It is far from certain that lrus will occur, in w hi ch case capitalism w ill be overcome by the destru ction o f civilisation (beyond the malaise in civilisation, to usc Freud's terminology) and perhaps of life on the planet. The scenario o f a fe-run o f t he 20th century faUs s hort o f the require ment for a co mmitment by mankind to the long route of the tran sitio n towards world wide socialism. T he liberal catastro phe requires a renewal of the radi cal critique of capitalism. The challenge requires the permanent construction / recons tru ction of the internati onalism of the workers and the peo p les in the fa ce of the cos mopolitanism o f oligarchi c capital. Co nstructing this internationalism can o nly be envisaged by successful, new, revolutio nary ad vances (like those begun in Latin America and Nepal ) which offer the pers pec ti ve o f an o vercoming of capitalism . ln the co untri es of the So uth, the battle of the states a nd the nations fo r a nego tiated globalisation w ithou t hege monies - the contempo rary form of delinking - s upported by the orga nisati on of the demands o f the po pu lar classes can circumscribe and limit the powers of the o ligo polies of the imperialis t Triad . The democrati c forces in the countries of tIle North must s uppo rt t lus battle. Real eng"gemenl w ith the challenge is eschewed by the proposed democratic discourse. T hi s has been accepted as it stands, together with the humanitarian interve ntions in its name, by a majority of the left , just like the miserabl e pra cti ce of giving aid . In the countries o f the North, the oligopolies are already clear ly forms of the common good w hose management calUlOt be left to sectiona l pri vate interes ts alo ne (t he crisis has hig hlig hted the catastrophic res ults o f s uch an appro ach). An authentic left must d are to envisio n nationali sation as the first inescapabl e stage of the socialisation of the o ligop o lies by dee pening d emocratic practice . The current crisis makes it possible to conceive a commo n front of social and po litical for ces, bring ing together all the \'ictims of the exclu sive power o f the ruling oli garchies. The first wave o f struggles for socialism, that o f the 20th 17

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

centu ry, showed the limits of European social democracies, of the communis ms o f the Third International and of the popular nationalism o f the Bandung era, which brought the demi se and collapse of their socialist ambitio ns. The second Wil ve, thM o f the 21 s t cen tu ry, must draw lessons from this. In particular, one lesson is to associate the socia lisation of economic management and the deepening of the d emocratisat ion of society. There will be no sociillism witho ut democracy, but equally no democratic advance ou ts ide a soc ialist pers pective. These strategic goals in vite us to think about the constru ction o f convergences in diversity (referring here to the formula used by the World Forum o f A lterniltives) o f forms of o rganisiltion illld the st ruggles of the d ominated and exp loited classes. It is not my intention to condemn from the o utset the convergences of these forms, w hich in their own way would retr ieve the traditions o f social d emocracy, co mmunis m and popular nationa lis m, or would d iverge from them. According to this pers pective, it seems to me to be necessary to think the renewal of a creat ive Marxism . Marx has never been so useful and necessary in order to unders tand and trilnsform the wor ld, todilY even more so than yesterday. Being Marxis t in this s pi rit is 10 begin w ith Marx and Ilotto s to p wit h him, o r Lenin or Mao, as co nceived and practised by the his torical Marx ists o f the prev io us century. It is to render unto Marx thilt which is o wed to him : the intelUgence to have begun a modern cri tical thinking, a cri tique of ca pitalist reality and a crit iclue of its politi ca l, id eological and cultural representatio ns (sec Translator 's no te). A creat ive Marxism must purs ue the gOill of e nriching this critical thinking par excellence. It mu st not fear to integra te a ll th e input o f refl ection, in all areas, includ ing those which have wrongly been considered to be foreign by the dogmas of hi storical Marxis ms o f the pas t.

The structure of this book This boo k is composed of the arguments s ustcn briefly presented in this introducti on. C hapter 1 opens wi th a reminder, not of the unfolding finan ci al crisis (excellent presentations of which can be found elsewhere), 18 ngntea IT

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but of the or igin of the C
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

and accepted by most of the left , such as it is, is not up to meeting thi s challenge. The las t chapter, Chapter 7, concerns Marx and Marx ism, co mmunism and internationalism . Never befo re h as Ma rx been SO useful ilnd necessary to und erstilnding and changing the world situiltion as he is today.

Note '~Io nopol y ren t' was definl'
1,

References Amin, Sami r (1992) Tlir Eml'ire 0IC/laOS, New York, NY, 11 lonthl}' Rev iew Press Amin, Samir (2002) Beyond Senile Capitalism, Paris, Presses Univcrsitaires de Fruncc (PUF) Amin, Samir (2005) The Libt"lIlJ Virus: Permillll'lIt Will' lind till' AmeJTt"lI ni:atim'l of the WoJ/d, New York, NY, Mon thly Review Prl'Ss Amin, Samir (2007) J:Eveil .III Srld, Paris, Ie Temps des Cerises

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The financial collapse of liberal globalisation The finan cial collapse of Septem ber 2008 was foreseeable and predi cted by those rare ana lysIs w ho had no l succumbed to the disco urse of con vent ional econo mi cs, liberal a nd others (of the ' left') . T his colla pse certainly initiated a new pe riod of d e pression an d chaos. And the s hape of the system that will e merge is difficu lt to define precisely wit h any d egree of plausibility. Everything is possible, for belle r o r for wo rse. It is an ope n question . T hroug h their su ccesses o r failures, politica l and social strugg les w ill s hape the fu ture, w hich is mo re un certain than ever. However, the fin ancial coll
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ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

At the same time, this growth faci litated the ad ju stmen t o f capita.! to Ihe requi rements o f the workers and of peop les. Growth, which was strong, o ffered capital opportuniti es for the inves tment it required to feed itself. The ' moderate' rate of retu rns (in relative histo ri cal terms) on ca pi tal was compensated by solid and continu ed growth in t he volume of profits. This modera te rate represented one side of the reality of this period, the o thers being the g rowth in real wages (g row ing parallel with average social productivity) and the acceptance by the imperial powers o f co ncessio ns to the countries of the periphery t h,,1 had regained their independence. The viability of the system was s uppo rted, on the international political leveL by milit"ry bipo larity (U nited States / Soviet Union) and pe"cefu l coex is tence (a l Ihe time people even spoke o f the co nvergen ce o f the eastern " nd western systems, which Jan Tinbergen pred icted would increase). T he system was legitimised by a series of powerful ideological d iscou rses th"t com pl emented eflc h other: the socia l-d emocratic / Key nes i"n discourse in the West; t hat of actually existing socialism (see Translator 's note) in the East; ,md that of development in the South. They all s hared the same vision o f 'peace and social p rogress'. At the he" rl o f t he system in Ihe developed countries, it was felt that the management of ca pit al s hou ld be ent rusted to capitalist tec hnocrats rat her than to the for mal ow ners o f cap ital (the shareholders). John Kenneth Galbraith expressed this o ptimistic visio n of a cap italis m th"t had fi nal ly become socially res po nsib le, whose leaders werc more interested in innovation and in extend ing their enterprises than in the rate of their remuneration (w hi ch was, even so, a comfortab le one) '1I1 d in the useless d istribution of profits to shareholders (Key nes pred icted their euthanasia). This syste m has g iven what it has given, but it g radually ran o ut o f steam for reasons that I have analysed e lsewhere, so I s hall not repeat them here. This capi tal ist system entered illto crisis from 1%8 (a politi cal crisis and eros ion of the legit imacy o f its discourse) and 1971 (the abandoning of the convertibility of the dol lar to gold). The presen t cris is is no thing more than one sl"ge (whi ch is certainly new) in tllis lo ng, drawn-oul crisis dati.ng back to the 22 ngntea IT

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1970s. [t has been marked by a weakening in the rates of grow th and of in vestmen t, w hich 1"1ve never recovered - and I insist on Ihe 'llmer' - Ihe levels t hallhey a ttained in the posl-1945 period. Triumphant liberalis m from Ihe 1990s o nwards has changed no lhing in that respect. Only a few of us, in the 1970s, s poke o f the s tructural cri sis (w hich is described as systemic t hese days). How was do minanl capital going 10 meet the challenge? At thaI time Andre G under Frank and I had imagined that the logic of cap ita l wou ld o pt for a '1984' (it was in 1974), based on a massive delocalisalion of ord in ary industrial production activit ies towards Ihe cou ntries of the periphery and the recentralisation o f activiti es in the centres around the monopolies that gu aranteed them th e co nt rol of the delocalised production and enabled them 10 levy rent o n it. I will not dwell here on the develop ments t hat 1 pro posed concern ing these ne w ' mo nopolies' o f the imperialis t centres (control of tec hnologies, access to natural resources, glo bal finan ce). Delocal isation above all made it possible, we said at the lime, to break the relations hi p betwccn wages and prod ucti vity and to reduce real wages (or their g rowth), w hich were at the centre of the w ho le system . I do not believe that what has happened sin ce has in va lidated our precocio us theses whi ch were scornfull y dismissed as ranis by o ur ' left- wing' economists (not to speak o f the libe rals). With the exception of the Italian j\ lalllfl'Sto, they were hardly given seriou s atten tio n in Europe or in the United States, so far as I know, alas excep t perhaps by Margare t Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and a few senior o fficial s in count ries of the South (I was in vi ted to co rne and speak about ou r theses in China!). Bec ause i.n fa ct, from 1980, Thatcher and Reagan decided to do w hat we had feared t hey wo uld do. Th is s trategy of cap ital was set in motion in 1981 (at the G7 meeting at Candm) and it accele rated during the 1990s after the coll apse of the Soviet Union. It look on the name of ' neoliberalism' ; pri vatisation and liberalisfltion aimed at opening up new fro ntiers for the expansio n of capital; the glo balised o pening that would enable delocalisa tio n; the imposition of s tru ctural adjus tment prog rammes 0 11 the countr:ies o f the Sou th; and the Ii beralisation o f the rates o f interest and currency exchange. 23

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It is important to unders tand the tran sfo rmatio ns of the capital system itself that cond itioned the su ccess of this operation and even im posed it. There were two transformatio ns at the or igin o f this so-called ' neo liberal' o ptio n: the emergence o f a generalised cap italis m of oligopolies (I insist on the ad jective 'generalised' as ol igopolies are no novelty in t he hi story of capitalis m) and the emergence of the co llec ti ve imperialism of the Triad (the Uni ted States, Eu rope and Japan ). I will return to these later, but I emphasise their decisive role, because most of the analyses of the 'systemic crisis' do not. I believe, moreover, that if yo u neg lect to s pell out all the developments from 191.XJ as they impact o n these transformations, you inevitably view the vertiginous ex pansion of cred it that led to the 2008 crisis as th e result o f a ' d eviati on', as being without any cause. Or else the ca use origin ated in a ' theoret ical blunder ' (nco liberaLism). But tltis deviation was a IH.><:essary and perfect ly logical consequence from the vie w point of the management of the world by the oligo pol ies. The essential relatio ns hip between oligopoly rent and financialisalion w ill be dealt with in subsequ ent pages. Understanding how all the dimensions of what is today called the 'systemic cr isis' revolve around these two decisive transformations is the only way o f situating them (the energy cri sis, the food crisis and others) in a framework that assign s them their true place. O nly thus is it possible to identify, beyond the general nature of these challenges (the op tion in fa vour o f hi gh-level energy cons umption w hi ch has s u ch disastrous consequences, fo r example), the issues and the different co unterstrategies that arc possible and effective for the workers and for the peoples. If all this is not unde rstood, the ri s k is that people w il\ be sati sfied wi th p ious wishes or, worse s till, ad ju st to minor changes in the s.ame system (under so-called 'ecologicaJ' management). Capital will then continue to keep the initiative. T he neo Libe ral o pti on (1990-2008) has not extrica ted ca pitalis m from its long crisis (w hi ch started in 1971). It imprisoned capitalism still furth er, as can be seen from the weakness in grow th and in inves tments to expand and deepen the productive ~ys t e ms . Weakness o f g rowth ? How then to ex plain the accelerating g rowt h in the e merging countri es? It is important to realise that this is not ' the exception that pro ves the rule' but an essential 24 ngntea IT

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part of the rule, as this acceleration is linked to the so ug ht-after delocalisations . That thi s emergence can create problems in the lo nger term is beyond dis pute. But that constitutes another series o f questions, problems and concerns. T he real object ive of the liberal op tion has not been to reinstall growth - even if the liberal di sco urse claims t hat it is. The real object ive was to proceed to a redistribution of income in fa vour o f capital, and of the income appropriated by capital in fa vouT of the rent of oligopolies. These two objectives have been fulfiJl ed to a far grea ter ex tent than the ' left' co uld have imagined. The success o f this op tio n has ind eed weakened g rowth; it has no t happened ' in s pite' o f it. A nd, in tUTn, Ilus s uccess - and the weakening of growth that it requires - has imposed all the d e viations o f fin an ce capital . O n the basis o f this analysis it SL'Cmed to me ev ident that the IH,"01iberal op tio n would not be viable. I said in 2002 that I had ' no crystal ball ' but predicted that the coll ap se wo uld occur within 10 years. T he financial collsponses that wi ll be made by the dominant powers, the states and the governing classes, as well as the workers ilnd the dominated peo ples, it is necessary to move beyond analysing the unwi nding of the fin anciaJ crisis, in its narrowest sense. Bu l il is not eno ugh, eilhe r, to juxtapose this l
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

time ago, I believe that the qua ntitative change ha s beco me a qualitative lea p forward . The first of these tran sformalions concerns the degree o f the centralisation of capital in its dominant sectors. This is immeasurably greater than it was on ly som e 40 years ago. True, monopolies and oligopolies were no t new in the history of capi talism, from the mercantilist era until the emergence of trusts and cartels at the end of the 19th cen tury (analysed by Hilferding, Hobson and Lenin). But today we s hould caLi it a generalised ca pitalis m of o ligopolies that now dominates all the fie lds of econom ic li fe. I d educe two major conseq uences from this observatio n. First, that this transfo rmation has gi ven a new face to imper ialis m. In the p ast this term was alway s used in the plural, which was apparent from the permanent confli cts between the imperialis t powers. Now we sho uld refer to the collective imperialis m of the Triad in the sing ular. The second major, qualitative tran sformation concerns the natur<11 resources of the planet. These are no longer so abundant for unlimited access to their ex ploit ation to be considered possible. They have become relati vely much rarer (if not in the process of being ex haus ted ) and for this reason their access cannot be open to all. The list of ' w hat is new' in the organis., tion of modern societies is much g reater than the field s considered here. Many books emphasise, for example, the scientific and technological revolution o f o ur time (informatio n technology, s pace, nuclear energy, deep-sea exploitation, the productio n of new materials, etc). This is all very important and beyond dis pute. Nevertheless, I refu se to approach thi s dimension of reality throug h the ' tec hnologi st' discourses that dominate the subject, considering these innovations as the main dri ver of his tory and therefore calling o n society to ' adjust' to the cons traints that they impose. O n the contrary, in the analyses that I am proposing, techno logies are themselves shaped by the dominant social relations hips. In the field of international relatio ns, th e possibility of ' new powers' emerging cannol be excluded . In the fi eld o f soc ial relationships the lis t o f ' new deve lopmen ts' could indeed appear to be unlimited , for example. w ith the labour market and the organisation of producti ve systems, or the erosion of o ld form s of po lit:icaJ expression in favour of new

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affirmatio ns - or renewed or reinforced - of gender, ethn ic, religious and cultural identities. However, I think it is necessary to link the analysis of these realities to the logic of the reproduct ion o f the system, characterised by those o f the major transfo rmiltions that I have s peh o ut. The crisis is systemic in thilt the continuiltion of the model deployed by capi tillism over the last decades hils become impossible. The page will necessarily be turned in a ' transition' perio d (of crisis), for a s horter or longer Ii me, o rderly o r chao tic . 'A no t her world is possible' proclaimed the 'alternati ve world movement' at Porto Alegre, Brazil. I say, ' Another world is in the process o f emerging', which could be s tilJ more barbaric than the present, but which could also be better, to varyi ng degrees. The dominant social forces will try, in the conflicts that arc destined to become mo re acu te, to maintain their privileged positions. But they will not be ab le to do so unl ess they break wi th many of the princ iples and practices that until now have been associated with their do millation, parti cularly renouncing democril cy, interniltionallaw and res pe ct fo r the rights o f the peoples o f the South. U they succeed in doi ng so, tomorrow's world will be based on wha t I ha ve called 'apartheid at the world level'. Will it be a new phase of cap italism or a system that is qualitatively new and different? It is wo rth while discussing this question. The workers and the peop les who will be the victims of this barbaric evolution cou ld put to fli g ht the reactionary social and po litical forces (which arc not ' liberal' as they like to describe themselves) thilt me at work. They are cilpilble of taking the full measure of the issues of this systemi c cris is, of freeing themselves from the illusive res ponses that seem to prevai l at the present mo ment, to invent appropr iate form s o f organisation and act ion and to transce nd the frag mentation o f their s truggles and overcome the co ntradictions thilt result from it. Will they have then ' in vented ' or ' reinvented' the sociali s m of the 21st century? O r wi ll they ha ve only advanced ill that direction, along the long route of the secu lilr trilnsition o f cap itillis m to socialis m? I think it is more likely to be the liltter. Global isa tion - a phenomenon that is inherent to capi talis m as it deepens during the s uccessive phases of it s expansion - means 27

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

that the world of tomorrow wiU not be better unless the peop les of the So uth (who represent 80 per cent of humanity), strugg le to make themselves fell. If tllis doc s not happen the world cannot be belter. There are no g rounds for believing that, in a movement of humanist generos ity, the workers of the North - themse lves as much victims of the ex isting sys tem - could shape a belter world system fo r the peoples of the Sou th. The domination of the o ligopolies is the basis o f a financialisation in d isarray. The phenomenon of contemporary capitalism described as fina ncialisation consis ts of the ex pansion of investments o n the monetary and financia l markets. Tltis exponential ex pans ion, unprecedented in history, started a quarter of a century ago and has increased t he volume of operations conducted annually on these markets to mo re than $2,(J(X),0J0 billion, as o pposed to abo ut $50,(0) billio n fo r the world' s COP (g ross domesti c product) and $15,(0) billio n for international tr"de. Tllis financialisation has been made possible bot h by the generalisation of the flex ibl e exc hange system (the rates o f which are determined eac h day by what is caUed ' the market') and by the parallel deregulation o f the rates of interes t (also aband oned to s upply and demand). In these conditions, operations on the mo neta ry and financial markets no longer constitute the counterpart of trad e in goods and services, bu t are now stimulated almost exclusively by the concern of economic agents to protect themse lves from fluctuati ons in the rates of exchange and interest. C learly, the astronomical ex pansion of these operat ions to cover themse lves from risk in no way correspond s to the inunediate expectations of those who are mobiliSing the mea ns. Elementary common sense dictates that the more the means arc multiplied for red ucing the risks fo r a certai n operation, the greater the collective risk becomes. But the co nventional economis ts are not equipped to understand Ihis. They need 10 believe in the absurd dogma o f the self-regulation of the markets, without wltich the entire co ns tructio n of the so-called ' marke t econo my' would collapse. T he market economy, whic h I ha ve d escribed elsew here as the theory of an imaginary syslem t hat has no relationship to real ca pitalism, is the corners tone of the ideo logy (in the vulgar - sec Translator's 28 ngntea IT

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note - and negati ve sense of the te rm ) of capital is m, its way o f giving it an appearan ce of legiti m acy. It is therefore not s urprising Ihat co nventional econo mists, in s pite of thei r arrog ance, ha ve been incapabl e of foreseeing what, fo r others, was evi dent. And when the collapse actu ally happened, they co uld fin d no other excuse o ther than it was pu rely 'accidental', mistakes in calculati o ns concerning 'sub-primes' and o thers. For them it could only be caused by mino r accidents, witho ut dramatic consequences, w hich could be quickly corrected. The expansio n o f the monetary and fin anci al markets, whi ch inevitably led to catas trophe, was extremely well analysed, even before the collapse o f September 2008, by criti cal polit ical eco nomis ts, particularly by Fr an ~o i s Morin, Frederic Lo rdon, Elmar A ltvater, Peter Gowan, me and some others (al as, all too few). There is nothing here to add to these analyses o f how these events develo ped . But it is necessary to go furthe r, fo r limiting the finan cial crisis to a fin ancial analysis implies that the o nly causes were those direct ly responsible for it. In other words, it was the d og ma o f the liberalisation of the moneta ry and fin ancial markets and thei r ' d ereg ulation' that was at the origin of the disaster. But that is o nly tru e at a fir s t, immed iate, rea ding of the reali ty. Beyond that the ques tio n concerns the identificat ion of the social interests that are behind this adherence to dogm as concerning the dereg ulatio n o f these markets. Here "g" in, the b"nks and o ther fin anci al institutio ns (insu rance co mpanies, pension and hed ge fund s) seem to ha ve been the main beneficiaries of this ex pans ion, which makes it possible fo r the official discourses to make them exclusively respo nsible for the d isaster. But, in fact, fin ancialisatio n benefited the oligopolies as a who le, 40 per cent of their p rofit s deriving fro m their financial o perations alo ne. And these o ligo po lies co nt ro l both the dominan t secto rs of the real produ cti ve economy and the fin<1n cial institutions. W hy, t herefore, ha ve the oligopolies deliberately chosen the financi<1liS<1tio n path for the sys tem as <1 whole? T he reason is quite s imply that it enabl es them to take for themselves <1 growing proportion of all the profits fro m the real economy. The ap parent ly insignificant rates o f gain on e"ch financial operation produ ces, 29

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taking into <1ccoun t the giganti c scale o f these operati ons, considerable profits. These are the result of a redistribution of the mass o f surplus value generated in the real economy and they constitute the rents of the mono polies . It is e<1sy to unders tand, therefore, th<1t the hi gh rate of yields of fi ll<1ncial inves tments (aro und 15 per cent) has, as a corollary, mediocre rates of yiel ds for in ves tments in the productive economy (aro und 5 per cent). This levy on the g lobal mass of profi ts ope r<1ted by the fin<111 cial rent of the oligopolies makes it impossib le not to <1ssoc i<1te the ca use (the oligopolistic character of conte mporary cap itali sm) with its conscquence (fin ancialisatio n, that is, a preference for financial inves tment compared w ith investment in the real economy). The monetary and financial market thus has a dominant pos ition in the market system . It is the market w here the o ligopol ies (and not only the b<1nks) d educt their monopoly rent on the one h<111d and, on the other, compete among themselves for the sharing o f thi s ren!. Conventi onal econo mists ignore this hierarchy in the markets, replacing it with an abs tract discou rsc on the 'economy o f generalised markets' . The exp ansion of the monetary and financ ial market thus inhibit s investment in the rea l economy, limiting growth. In turn, this weakening in the general growt h of the economy affects jobs, wi th its well-know n consequences (unemployment, <1 growing precariou sness and the stagll<1tion - if 110t reduction - of re<11 wages, w hich are disconnected from progress in produ ctivity). The monetary and fin ancial markets in turn do minate the world o f wo rk. A ll these mec hanisms together fo rce the s ubmission o f the eco nomy as a whole (the ' markets') to the dominant monetary and fin" nci,,1 market, producing "n e ver-in creasing inequ"lity in income dis tribution (that no one denies ). The market for productive inves tment (and hence for work) s uffers both fro m the red uction of its apparent d irect profitability (the price of the levy for o ligopoly rent) and also from re du ced fin" l dem"nd (we"kened by the inequality in sharing the in co me). The domin<1tion of the finan cialised o ligopolies boxes up the economy in <1 crisis of cilpi ta! accu muliltio n, which is both <1 crisis in demand (, under-consumption ' ) "nd "crisis in profitability.

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We s hould now be 'lble to und e rst'lnd why the do min'lnt powers (governments o f th e Tri'ld ), t hem selves at the ser vices of the o ligo po lies, have no other project than to re-establi sh this s., me finan cialised system, for the o li go po lies need to ex pand financially in ord er to maintain their do min'ltion over the eco no my and society. Q uestioning the d ominati on of the monetary and fi n'lncial market o ver market s as a who le is to ques tion the monopo ly rent o f the oligopolies. Can the po licies being fo Uowed fo r this pur pose be effecti ve? I believe that it is no t impossible to restore the sys tem as it was before the crisis of the autumn o f 2008. But two conditions need to be m e l. T he first is that the state 'lnd the centTilI banks have to inject into the system the huge quantities of fin ance that erase all of the rollen debts and res tore credibility and profitabilit y to the re-establishment of finan cial ex pansio n. The s ums requi red are indeed astronorrucal, as so me (m yself includ ed ) foresaw sever'll years before the debacle o f the autumn of 2008, against the opini on o f con ventional eco nomis ts and the ' lMF expert s' (International Moneta ry Fund), who d id not join us in o ur estimations until three mo nths after the disaster. But now it is possible to believe thai the powers that be w ill bring thi s inje ct ion up to the level req uired . As for the second, the co nsequences of this injectio n ha ve to be accepted by society, fo r the worke rs in ge neral. and the pco pk'S of the South in particular, are necessarily the vi ctims. These poli cies are not aimed at fe-launching the real economy throug h re-Iaunching wage demand (as Keynesianism p ro posed in former times) but, o n the co ntrary, maintaining the levy composed of the rent of the oligo polies, and this, necesS
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

camp s of social force s confronted each other: the left, which called for socia li sm, composed of communists (the Soviet Union gave the impression of s uccess at that time) and of authentic social democrats, and the right, whi ch cou ld get s upport from powerful fa scist movements. This is w hy, i.n res ponse fo the 1930 crisis, in so me places there were develop ments like the New Deal and popular front s, whi.le in ot hers Nazism . T he current politi cal conjuncture is radica lly different. The failure of Sovietism and the raUy ing of sociali sts to soc ialliberaHsm has drastically weakened the politi cal vision of workers, who are deprived of prospects and the ca pac ity to ex press an authentic alternative sociaJism . The current crisis o f ol igopoly capitali sm was not the result of a rise in social struggles forcing the retreat of the oligopolies' ambitions. It is the exclu sive result of the internal contradicti ons peculiar to its accumulation system. In my o pinio n, the distinction is absolutely central betwL>en the crisis o f a system produced l>y the explosion of its interna l contradi ctio ns and that of a society t hat s uffers t he assau lt of progressi \'e soci al forces aiming at transforming the system . O n this difference will depend the different possil>le o utcomes. In a situati on of the first ty pe, chaos l>ecomes a major probabiUty and it is on.ly in a situation of the seco nd type that a progressive outcome is possil>le. The main pol iti ca l questio n today is thus to know whether the social victims o f the exis ting sys tem willl>ecome capal>le of cons tituting an independent, radi cal, consis tent and positive al tern ati ve. If not, the restoration of the financialised rent oligopolies to power is not impossible. But, in this case, the system will only wi thdraw to get a beller run-in and a new financial debacle, s till more serio us. willl>e inevitable, becau se the ' adjustments' envisaged for managing the finan cial markets are far from s ufficient as lo ng as the power of the oligopolies is not questioned . It remains to be seen how the states and the peoples of the Sou th are goi ng to res pond to the challenge. Here we s hould ana lyse this cha.llenge w hi ch has been ex acerbated by g lobalised finan cialisa tion. It is absolutely in d ispensable to take into account fhe question of natural resources and the North-South conflict . No effective s trategy in response to the challenge can ignore these issues. 32 ngntea IT

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T he re are key questi ons concerning bo th the use that an economi c
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

or the peoples) in tend to hilve excl usive access to these reso urces for their own use, whether these resources would be used as at present - that is, based on waste and endangering a future that is not fM off - o r whether they would be s ubject to co nsid erable corrective reg ulati ons, as certain greens propose. Theegoism of th e cou ntries of the North was brutally ex pressed by former US president GL'Orge W. Bus h when he declared: T he American way of life is not nego tiabl e' (a phrase that his s uccessors, w hoever they may be, w ill not discuss) . Milny in Europe ilnd Japilll fee l the sa me way, even if they refrain from declaring it. Tllis egois m simply means that access to these scarce natural reso urces will largely be denied to the countries of the South (SO per cent of humanity), whether the latter intend to use these resources in a similar way to that of the North, w hich is wasteful and dangerous, or whether they envisage more economical forms. H goes without saying that this prospect is unacceptable to the coun tries of the So uth, in theory and in practice. Besid es, the markets are not necessarily able to Illeet the requirements thai g uaran tee the exclu sive access of the I ich countries to these resources. Certain countries of the Sou th can mobilise large s ums in ord er to milke themselves recognised on these markets for access to reso urces. Atthe las t resort, the only gUMantee for the cou ntries of the North lies in their military superiority. The militaris.ltion o f g lobalisatio n is the expression of this egoisti c illtitude. It is not the result of a pilssing aberra tion of the Wilshington adminis tra tion . The plan for the military control o f the planet by the US ilrmed forces was establis hed by fo rmer president Bill C linton, pursued by Bus h and wi ll be continued by current President Barack O bamil. Of course, to illtain these o bjectives Wilshington always intends to u se this 'ad va ntage' for its own benefit, in particular to compensate for its own financi al d eficien cies and maintain its leadership, if not hegemo nic position, within the Cilmp of the No rth. The s uoordinilte allies of the Triild ille very much aligned along the Washing ton p lan to militaIiiy control the planet. Neither t he Atlantic ism of the Euro peans nor the submission of Tokyo to the views o f Was hing to n co ncerning Asia and the Pacific seem likely to disintegTilte, ill least for the moment. Of cou rse the ' missio ns' - preventive W ilI S, the fi ght again st ' terrorism' - in which the US armed forces and their s ubordinate allies 34 ngntea IT

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of NATO (N orth Atlanti c Treaty O rganisa tion) are engaged will always be presented in di sco urses abou t a ' defence of democracy' (if not its exportatio n), of the ' defence of the rights o f peoples to self-determination' (at least for some, but not fo r others). But these pac kages only deceive those w ho wan t to be deceived. For the peoples of the South they are ju st remi nd ed of the permanence of the old colonial traditi on of the 'civilis ing mission'. T he real exclusive o bjective of the North's military programme is the con trol of the wor ld 's reso urces. This was plain when Was hing to n recently decided to complete its system of military ' Regional Command s' and bases by creating an 'African Command'. The Uni ted States, and behind it Europe, thus aims at controlling oil (in the Gulf of Guinea, Sudan), uIanium (Niger, Sudan), rare metals (Congo, southern A fri ca), and nothing mo re. T he North / South confli ct has become the cen tre o f the major contradictions of contemporary capitalist / imperialist globalisation. And it is in this sense that the conflict cannot be separated fro m the o ne that opposes the domination of oligopolistic capi talism against the progressive and socialist ambitions that could put forward alternatives, here and there, in the So uth and in the North. 'A nother, better world' is not possibl e if the interes ts of the peoples w ho constitu te 80 pe r cen t of human ity are regarded with almost total con tem pt in the dominant op inion o f the rich cou ntries. Humanitarianis m is not an acceptable s ubs titute to international so lidarity in struggle. The co untries in the centre o f the world capitalist sys tem have always benefited from w hat I have described as 'i mperialist rent' and the capital accumu latio n in these centres has always involved ' acc umulation throu g h dispossession' of the peo ples of the periphery. Today's claim to reserve access to the world's ma in resources for the rich alo ne con stitutes it s new, contemporary form. Wha t then are the condi ti ons for a positive response to the challenge? It is not enough to say that the interventions o f s tates can modify the rules of the game and attenuate the aberrations. It is also necessary to define the logic and the social impact. Of cou rse, one mig ht imagine a return to the fo rmul a o f publi ci private partnerships or a mixed economy, as during the 30 'g lorious years' 35

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in Europe an d the Bandung era in Asia and Africa w hen s tate cap italis m was largely dominant and there were serious socia l po licies. Bu t this kind of inter vention by the state is no longer on the agenda. And are the prog ressive social forces st rong enough to impo se such a transfo rmatio n? In my humble opinion, they are not. T he real alternati ve involves overturning the excl usive power o f the oligopolies, w hi ch is inconceiyable without fina lly natio nalising them for a management t ha t is in line wi th a progressive democratic socia lisation. The end of ca pitalism? I don' t think so. I think, on the other hand, that new patterns in social power relatio ns hips can force capital to make adjus tments in res ponse to the claims of the popular classes (see Translator's note) and peoples, this o n the condi tio n that the social s truggles - still fr'lgme nted and o n the w hole defensive - s u cceed in dra wing up a coherent po litical alternative. If so, the beginn ing of the long transition from capital is m to sociali s m beco mes possible. Progress in tha t d irection is obviously uneq ua l from one country to anot her and from o ne phase of implementatio n to another. There are many dimensions of a possible, desirab le a lternative and they conce rn all aspects o f eco no mic, social and po litical life. In the countries of the Nort h the challenge mean s that the general op inio n must not be allowed to limit itself to the defence o f their pri vi leges vis-a.-vis the peo ples o f the South. The necessary internati onalism mu st take t he form of an ti-imperialism, not humanitari anis m. In the countries of the So uth, the crisis pro vides an o pportunity to renew a national, pop ular and democratically self-managed develop ment, subordinating its rei<1 tions hips wi th the North to its own needs, in other words, delinking. This involves n<1 tional control over the monetary and financial markets; recovering the usage of natural resources; overtu rning globalised management do rninated by the oligo polies (the Wo rld Tr<1d e O rganisation WTO) and t he military contro l of the pl anet by the United States and its associates; and freeing themsel ves from both the illusions o f a national, au tonomous capitalism and a backward-looking syste m w ith its own enduring my ths. The agrarian <]u estion is more tha.n ever at the core of the op tions to be taken in the countries of the Thi rd World . A devel36 ngntea IT

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oprnent wo rthy of the name cannot be based on growth - even s trong growth - thnt excl usively benefits a minority, even if il is 20 per cent of the pop ulation, leaving most of the population abnndoned to stag nation, if not pauperisa tio n. T his model o f development, associated wi th exclusion, is the o nly one that capitalis m can offer the countri es of the perip hery in its global system. Polit ical democracy (w hich is evidently the exception in these conditions ), when it is associated wi th social regressio n, remains frilgi le indeed . But a niltional and popu lilr illternative that ilssocintes the democ ratisation of socie ty w ith social progress, that is, with a perspec ti ve of development that integrates - and docs not exclude - the popular classes, requires a politi cal strategy o f rural development based on the gu arantee of ilccess to lilnd for all peasants. Moreover, the policies reco mmended by the dominant powers - accelerating the priviltisatio n o f ilgr icultural land, treated ilS a commodi ty - are provo king the massive rural exodus that we are witnessing tod ay. Modern indus trial develo pment cannot absorb this over-abundant labour force, which is piling up in urban slums. There is a direcllink between s uppressing the g UilranlL:.e of ilccess to land for the peasants and accentuating migriltory pressures. Does reg io nill integration thilt promotes the emergence of new centres of development constitute a form of resis tance and an alterniltive? There is no simple reply to this ques tio n. The dominant ol igopolies Me not hostile to regional integriltions that ilfe in line with the logic of cn pitalis t / im perialist globalisn lio n. The European Union (EU) and the regional co mmon markets of Latin America, Asia and Afr ica are ex amples of fo rms of regio nalisation that become obstacles to the eme rgence of progressive ilnd socialist alternatives. Can another form of regionali sntion be conceived that is capablc of s uppo rting the option of nati onal and popular development and opening the way towards the lo ng, sec ular transition to soci alism for the peopl es and nations of the planet? WIllie thi s 'lu estioll is not relevilllt fo r the g inn ts like C hinn and India, it canno t be di smissed from debates concerning Latin America, the Arab world, Africa, South Eas t Asia ilnd even Europe. As far as this last region is concerned, is it no t possible to envisage the destru ction of the EU in stitutions, the purpose of whi ch was to co nfine the peoples of this contin ent in so-call ed liberal (i.e. 37

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

reactionary) cap italis m and an A tlantic 'llig nment? This could be the preconditio n for its eventual recons tru ction (if it were to be considered useful ) with a socialis t pers pect ive. For the countries o f the So uth as a whole, is it possible to env isage a new politi cal Bandung th'lt wou ld reinforce the cap'lcity of the countries of the three con tinents to co mpel the co llective imperialis m of the Triad to back down? W hat would the conditions be? There wou ld need to be progress in both the North and Sou lh in the internationalism of workers and peop les, who are the sole g uarantee for the reco ns truction o f a better, multipo lar and democrat ic wo rld and the only alterna ti ve to the barbaris m of an ageing capitalis m. If capitalism has got 10 the point Ihat it considers half of humanity a ' superfluous popu lation', mig ht it not be that cap italis m itself has now beco me a mode o f social organisation that is s uperfluous? There is no feasib le 'liternative thai does not ha ve a socialis t pers pective. Quite apart fro m necessary agreements on the s trategy o f s tages, based on the construction of the con vergi ng o f struggles, res pecting diversity and the progress thai these s trugg les can contribu te to the long route to world socialis m, it is essential to reflect and debate o n th e socia li st / co mmuni st objecti ve: imagi ning eman cipation from market and ot her alienations, imagining the democratisation of social life in a ll ils dimensions and imagining modes of managi ng production, from the local to the world level, that corres pond to the needs of a genuine democracy assoc iated with social prog ress. Evidently, if the ca pitalist / imperialis t world system as it actually exis ts is based on the g rowing exclusion of the peoples w ho constitute the majority of hum,l nity, and if the manner of using natural resources resulting from the logic o f capitalist profitability is both wasleful and dangerous, the socialis t / communis t alternati ve canno t ig no re the challenges posed by these realities. There has to be another 'style of consump tion and living' than that whic h apparently g ives happiness to the peoples o f the rich cou ntries and which exists in the imagination o f ils victims. T he ex pression of a ' so lar soc ialism ', proposed by Elmar Altvater, mu st be taken seri ously. Socialis m cannot be capitalis m, corrected by equal access to its benefit s at the national and world levels. It 38 ngntea IT

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mus t be qualitati vely s uperi or or it will not happen.

Referen ces Altvater, Elmar (2008) 'The plagues of capitalism: energ y crisis, climate collapse, hunger and financial ins tabilities', p..'lpcr presented at Ule f orum Mond ial d es Alternatives (rMA), Caracas, Venezuela Amin, Samir ct al (forlhcoming) De J(l (.-i,,1' fi"(lllcie,-,' h J(l (~isc systhlliquc, book in preparatio n with contribu tions from l\'lorin, f ran<;ois; Gowan, Pcl~r; and Aitva tcr, Elmar Amin, Samir and Gunder Frank, Andre ( 1985) N'att" 'hlo"~ pas 1984, Paris, l\ laspero Gowan, Peler 'Causing the Cred it Crunch: the ri se and oonscq uellC('s of th e ne\\" \ Vall Street system' Lordon, l~ rederic (2008) lusqll'U qlll!nd? Pour en jiuir m>e,; lcs crises fiumlcins, Paris, Raisons d 'agir ~.,.j orin, fnll1 <;ois (2006) 'La crise fimncierc globali;;;::e ct les nou\"dks o rientalions du sys temc', paper presented'" th e forum l\ \ondi,,] d es Altern"ti v(.'s (FMA), CaraCils, Ve nezud"

39

,.,

The contrast between the European and the Chinese historical developments The general and the particular in the

trajectories of humanity's evolution The concrete, the immediate, is always particula.r - this is vir tually a truis m. To s lop there would make it impossible to unders l;md the his tory of huma ni ty. T his sccms- at the pheno mena l level - as if it were composed of a successio n o f particular traje ctories and evolutions, w ithout any COlll1c cl ions wi th each o ther, e xce pt by chance. Each o f these su ccession s can only be explained by particu lar cau salities and sequences of events. This method reinforces the tendency toward s ' culturalisms', tha i is, the idea thai each peop le is identified by the spec ifics of its culture, w hic h arc mos tly ' trans histo ri c', in the sell se tha i th ey persis t in s pite o f change. Marx is, for me, the key thinker on research in to the generaJ, as his research goes beyond Ihe particu lar. O f course, the gener
2 EURO PEAN AND CHIN ESE HISTO RICAL DEVELOPM ENTS

the tributary stage and Ihe capitalist stage (poten tially overlaken by comm unis m). And I have tried, within thi s fram ewo rk, to see in the d iversity of the societies at the tributary stage (as in the previous community s tage), the particular form s o f ex pression o f the general regu irements that define eac h of these s tages (see my book (Ami n 1981) Class 1111(1 N I/firm ). The proposition goes agai ns t the tradition o f a banal o pposition between the European path (that of the famous five s tages - primit ive communism, slavery, feudali s m, capi tal ism and socialis m, w hi ch was not an invention of Stalin but the domina.nt view in Europe before
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

This is not thilt of the opposition fi ve stilges/ Asiilll deild-end, but is based on anot her analytica.! principle that contras ts the full -blo wn forms of the tributary mod e in the Chinese world wi th the peripheral forms of this SillTIe mode in the Mediterraneiln / Europeilll region. The full -blown form in C hilM WilS visib ly strong and stable from its beginnings, while the peripheral form s have al ways been fr agile, resulting in the failure o f s uccessive attempts in Europe by the imperial centre to levy tribute, in contras t to its s uccess in the C lunese empire.

Opposition between t he European and Chinese de ve lopment paths: the peasant question The Mediterrmtcan / European pat h and the C hinese path di verged right from the beg inning . The stability of the fu ll-bl own tributary mod e involved 'l solid in tegmtio n of the peasmlt world into the overall construction o f the system and thu s it guamnteed access to land. T his choice has been a principle in China from the beginning. There were sometimes serio us infringements in its implementation, altho ug h they were always overcome . In contmst, ill the Mediterranean / Europe region access to land was mdi ca lly abolis hed when the principle of pri vate ow nerslup of land was ado pted. It bec'lme a fundament'll and absolute right with the instilliation of cilpitalist modernity in its Europeml form. Histo ri cal cap itali s m, which was th e result, then proceeded with the massive expu lsion of the rural population and, for many o f the m, their exclusion from the building of the new society. This involved lilrge-scale emigmtion, which WilS milde possible by the conquest o f the Americas, wit ho ut which its s uccess wo uld ha ve been impossib le. His torical capitali sm became a military and conquering imper ialis t capitalis m, involv ing unprecedented violence. The path followed by ca pitalis t develop ment in China (before it submitted to the conquer ing imperialism of the second half o f the 19th century) was quite different. It confi rmed, instead o f aboLis hillg, the ilccess to lilnd by the peilsa.l1try ilS a who le and opted for the intens ification of agricultural production and the scattering of indus trial manufa cturing in the rural regions. This gave China a d istinct advantage over Europe in all fi elds o f pro42 ngntea IT

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duclion. [t was lost only [il ler, after the Induslrial Revoluti on had s uccessfull y proceeded to s hape modern Eu rope. Modern China before Eu rope European thinkers were aware of the sllperiori ty of China, w hi ch became the ' mod el' par excellence, as Et iemb[e and ot hers recognised . It was a mod el o f adm inistrati ve rationality: C hina very early on in ven ted the pub lic ser vice, independent of the aristocracy and the religiou s clergy, recruiting a s tate burea ucracy, wit h com petiti ve ent rance examin ations. Hund reds of years had to pass before Europe discovered this form o f adm inis trative moderni ty (only in the 19th century), which w as g raduill1y imitated by the rest of the world . C hina was a model of rati onality in the way it im p[emented ad vanced techno logies fo r ah'Ticu ltural and artis.-l nal / manufacturing productio n. T his admi ratio n for the C hinese model only d isappeared when the Eu ropeiUls succeeded, throug h their military su periori ty (and by that alone), in breaking the Chinese mod el. C hina was therefo re engaged o n the path of inventing capitalism illong lines that wou ld ha ve been very d ifferent from those of the conquer ing globalised imperialis t ca pitalism . Why did the modern Chinese path, the beginnings of w hich p redated that of Euro pe by at le ast 500 years, not take off? A nd w hy did the Eu ropeiln pa th, which st
Premodern regionalisations and the

43

ENDING TH E CRISIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

centralisation of tributary surplus Nowa da ys the te rm g lobalisa lio n is u sed in vario u s ways, o ft e n vag ue a nd ambi g uo us . Mo n.'Over, the phe no me no n in itse lf is co ns id e red as a g iven and un avoid a ble, an ex p ression o f the evolu ti o n o f reali ty th a t is cla imed to be ine lu ct abl e. Pheno me na s imilar to mo dern g loba li sa tion - w hi ch fo r the fir s t time in his to ry co ncerns the e ntire wor ld - a rc to be fo und in more an cient times. However, these o nly conce rned the large reg ions o f the O ld Worl d, the so-caJl ed pre-Colo mbi a n Ameri c.1S lJeing isolated a nd u n known lJy the fo rme r (and the fo rme r u nknow n to the la lle r). I w ill call these g lobalisa ti o ns region a lis atio ns. I describe .111 these phe nomena w ith o ne common crite rion, that of organi sing co mman d over the su rplu s o f current prod uctio n at the level o f the w hole reg io n (o r of its wo rld ) lJy a central au tho rity and the extent of centrali sation over tha t su rplus u sed by that au th ority. This in turn regulated the sharing o f access to the s urplus tha t it comma nded . The regio nalisatio ns (or g lo baLisa lion) co ncerned co uld be inclined toward s ho mogene ity or polarisation, according to w het he r the red istri butio n o f the surp lus was subjected to laws and cu stoms th
The cent ralisati o n of tributary surpl us In a U the p remod e rn syste ms (the old regionaJisations) this su rp lus a ppears as a tribu te, and in the mod ern (cilp italis t) syste m as profit fo r ca pital or, more precisely, the re nt o f domin
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economic activities. Taxa tion of tribu tary s urplus is thu s insepamble from the exercise o f political power in the region (large or s mall) w here it o perates. In co ntras t, th at o f cap italist s urplus appears to be dissociated from the exercise of politi cal power, apparently being the p rod uct of the mec hanisms that control the markets (of labour, prod ucts and capital itself). T he (premodern) tri butary systems were not a pplied o ver vast terri tories and large numbers of peop le. The level of developmen t of the productive forces typica l o f these ancient times was still lim ited and the surp lu s consisted essent ially of w hat was produced by the peasant co mmunities. T he tributary soc ieties could be s plit up, sometimes to the ex treme, wi th eac h vilJage or seigneu ry (domain of a feu dal lord ) consti tuti ng an elementary society. T he fr agmentat ion o f tributary societies d id not exclude them from part ic ipating in broad er trade networks, commercial o r otherwise, or in systems of power ex tending over g reater areas. Elementary tributary systems were nol necessarily autarch ic, even if most of their productio n had to ens ure their own reproduction witho ut o utside su pport. T he emergence of tributary empires has always required a political power capab le of impos ing it self on the scattered tributary societies. Among those in this category were the Roman, C aliphal and O ttoman empires in the Euro pe / Mediterranean / Mid dle East region, the Chinese empire and the imperial states that India experienced on var ious occasions during its history. This emergence of tributary empi res in turn fac ilit ated the ex pansion o f commercial and monetary relationships within them and in their external relations. The tributary emp ires did not necessarily pursue the political aim o f the ho mogeni s., tion of co nditions in the regio n controlled by ce ntral power. But the la ws and their usages governing these syste ms, dominated by the po litical au thorities to w hich the funct ioning of the economy remained s ubord in ated, did 110t in themselves create a grow ing polarisation bet ween the subregions constitut ing the empi re . Hi story has largely proven the fragi lity of tributary empires w hose apogee was short - a few centuries - followed by long periods o f disintegration, us ual ly described as decadence. T he 45

,.,

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

reason for th is fragili ty is that the centralisatio n of the su rplus was not based on the internal requirement necessary for the reprodu ction o f elementary tri butary societies. They were very vulnerable to attack from outside and revolls from within by the dominated classes or provinces, suc h as they were. Evoluti ons in the different fie ld s of ecology, demography, military armamen ts ,1nd the trad e in goods over lo ng d istances pro ved to be s trong enoug h to turn this vulnerabi lity into a catastrophe. T he only exception - a vi tal one - was that of the C hinese empi re.

The Chinese itinerary: a long, calm river? The preceding refl ectio ns concentrated o n the Middle East / Medi terranean / Europe region. This region was the scene o f the formation of the firs t (tributary) civilisations - Egyp t and Mesopotamia - and, later, of its G reek market / sla very periphery. Then, as from the Hellenisti c period , it saw su ccessive attempts to constru ct tributary e mpires (Homan, Byzantine, Cali phaJ, O ttoman). These were l1ever ren lly able 10 become slnb le al1d they experienced long and chaotic d eclines. Perhaps for this reaso n conditions were more favourable to the early e mergence o f capitalism in its historical form, as a p relud e to the conquest of the wor ld by Europe. T he itinerary of C hina was ex tremely different. Almost from the start it became a tributary e mpire that was exceptionally stable, in spite of moments when it threatened to fall apart. Nevertheless these threats were al ways finall y overcome.

Phonetic writi ng , co nceptual writing There are variou s reasons for the success of the construction of tribu tary centrali sation th.rougho ut the Chinese world . Chinese authors, who are no t very well kno wn o utside their country (such as Wen Tieju n), have proposed diffe rent hypotheses, depending on the geography and ecology of their region. They emphasise the early inve ntion of intensive agricu lt ure, associil ted with il populiltion density that graduall y bec
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been barely stud ied up until now bec<1 use of the do minance o f Eurocen tri sm. Person ally, I wou ld insist o n the very long-term effects o f the Ch in ese adopt ion of conceptu<11 writing. Phonetic writing (alphabetica l or syllabic), invented in the Middle E<1st, g radu <1lly became the basis o f all the lang uages o f the Mediterran ean / Eu ropean region and the Indian subcon tinen t. It is only understandable by t hose who know the meaning o f the words as they are pronounced in the spoken lang uage, and it requires translatio n for others. The ex pansion o f this way o f writing rein forced the di fferen ces between the languages and consequently the forms of iden tity thai were based upon them. T his co nstituted all obs tacl e to t he expansion o f regional political powers and therefore to tribu tary cen tralisation. Then, w ith ca pita lis t mod ernity it created the mythology of a nation /stale that was linguisti cally homogen ous. This persists - and is even reinfo rced - in co ntemporary Europe and is thus an obstacle to its po liti cal un ifica tion. The o bstacle can only (partial ly) be overcome by adopting a co mmo n language, foreign for many, w hether it is the languages of the empires i.nhe ri ted by modern states (Eng lis h, French <1nd Por tug uese in Afric a, English in India and up to a point Spanis h and Portug uese for the A meri.ndians of La tin A merica), or Ihe ' busi.ness Engl is h' Ihal has become t he lang uage o f contemporary Europe. The Ch inese inve nted ano ther way o f w riting wh ich was co ncep tual and not phonetic. The same character described an object (like a door) o r an idea (such as fri endship) and can be re" d wi th a different p ronunciation, for example, ' d oor' or 'bab', ' fri ends hip' o r 'smtaka' by readers who are respectively Engl ish or Arab. This form of writing wa s an important factor in promoting the ex pansion of the im peria] power of Ihe Chinese world 'l Ithe continental level. It was a world whose popu lat ion was comparable to t hat o f all the A mericas from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina and of Europe from Po rtugal to Vlad ivosto k. The conceptual way o f C hinese writing enabled the readi ng of one tex t in all Ihe d ifferent lang uages of the s ubcontinent. And it is only recently that, thro ug h generalised ed ucation, the Mandarin lang uage of Beijing has star ted to beco me the (phonetic) language o f the w ho le C hinese worl d.

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China was five centuries ahead of Europe The image of Ihe C hinese Irajectory as be ing Ihe course of a ' long, calm rive r' is ce rtainly so mew hat forced. A ncie nt Chin
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The stability o f Ihe econo mi c and polHical organisation o f C hina constituted a model for the d evelopment of produ ctive forces bascd on the continu ed intensification of agricultural production, which was in striking contrast with the model o f historical European cilpitalis m bilsed on the private appropriatio n of ag rarian land, the expulsion of the rural populatio n, massive emig ration and the conqu es t of the world associated with it . This model of European capitalis m was that o f accumulatio n by dispossession, not only primiti ve but permanent (the other aspect of the polari sation inherent in capitali st g lobalisatio n). China was launched on a path that co uld have led to a capitalis m of a different kind, closed up o n itseH rather than conqu ering . The prodigious ex pansion of co mmercial relations associilted w ith the le vying of tribute and not se parated from it shows that this possibility did exisl. But this assoc iation made the evolutio nary process relati vely slow compa red with that of a Europe in transition towards fuU -blow n cilpitalis m. For this reaso n C hina kept its advantage - in terms of the average producti vity of social labo ur - over Europe until the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. As I said before, the Enlig htenment i.n Europe recog nised this advance of China, whi ch it saw ilS a mod el. Howe ver, nei ther the Europe of the Enlightenment of the mercantilist transitio n period, nor, later on, the Euro pe o f the full-bl own capita lism of the 19th centu ry managed to overcome th e fTilgmentatio n o f the kingdoms o f th e ancien regime, then of the mod ern nation s tales, to crea te a unified power capable of co nt rolling the centralisation o f the s urplus tribute, then capitalis t s urplus, as C hina had d one . Fo r their part, C hinese observers d early SilW the advantage o f their his toric development. A Chinese t«w eller, visiting Europe in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, compared the slate o f the co ntinent to that of the Warring States, 500 years before Jesus C hris!. The decline o f China, ca used by a combinatio n of the ex haustio n o f the model of U1e intensification / co mmercialisation of ag ricultural and rural production, together with European m ilitary aggressio n, was relatively sho rt. It did not cau se the break-up o f thi s continental state, althoug h the threa t was apparent during the decline. Some o f the essential characteristi cs of the C hinese 49

ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR END IN G CAPITALI SM?

Revo lutio n and of the path it too k afler its victory in the successive Maois t and pos t-Maois t moments sho uld be seen in this pers pective of an exceptionally long duratio n.

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Historical capitalism accumulation by dispossession Dominant bourgeois thoug ht h
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

• From this it follows that tllis capitali s m cannot become the unavoi dable st"ge for the peo ples of the peripheries of the historic" l capitalist system. Therefore, this stage is not necessary to create, here as e lsewhere (in the centres of the system ), the conditions for overtaking it by socialis m. Development and und erdevelo pme nt a re the two insepar"ble sides of the historical capitalis t coin . This historical capitalism is itself inseparable from the European conquest of the world. It is inseparable from the Eurocentric ideology which is, by definiti on, a no n-uniVers.l1 form of civilis ation . • Ot her form s of res po nse to the need for accelerated accumulatio n (compared with the rhy thms of the accumulation of the ancien t epoc hs of civilisation ) - a necessary pre mise for the soci"lism of Ihe future - wo uld haw been possible. This can be discussed. But Ihese form s, perhaps more visible in a n embryo nic w ay elsew here Ih.m in the Europe of the trans itio n to capitaJism (in C hini\, among o the rs), have nol been im plemente d because they h" ve been cru she d by the Europe,Ul conquest. Thus there is no alternative for human civilisation o lher Ihan 10 e ng age in a constructio n of socialism, this in lurn be ing based o n the strategic concepts that mus t command the o bjective results produced by Ihe g lob"lised and polarising expa nsion o f western ca pitalism ! imperialis m .

Accumulation by dispossession: a permanent historical feature of actually existing capitalism The v ulg ar (sec Translato r 's no le) ideology of conventional economics and the cu ltura l and social thinking thai goes wi th it c\,u m that "ccumulatio n is finan ced by the virtuo us savings of the rich (the wea lthy owners), like n a tions . Histo ry hardly confirms thi s in ventio n of Anglo-A meri can puritans . It is, on the co ntrary, an accumulatio n largely financed by the dis possession o f so me (the majo ri ty) for the p rofit of o the rs
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has not excl usive ly taken place in bygone and ou tda ted capi ta1ism. It con linues today. It is possible to measure the impo rtance of t his 'accumulation through dis possession', an expression [ prefer to that of p rimitive accumu lation. T he measure that I am proposing here is based o n the conse<]uences of this d ispossession, and can be expressed in demograp hic terms and in terms of the apparent value of the socia l res ults that accompany it. T he popu lation of the world tripled between 1500 (450-550 mill ion in habitants) and 1900 (1,600 million), reaching three and a <]uarler times the 1500 population during the 20th century (at over 6,(X)() millio n). But the proportion o f Eu ropeans (those of Europe an d of their con<]uered territories in America, Sou th Afri ca, A u stralia and New Zealand ) increased from 18 per cen t (at most) in 1500 to 37 per cent in 1900, befo re falli ng grad ually during the 20th century. T he fir st four centuries (1500 to 1900) correspond to the European co n<]ues t of the wor ld, and the 20th cen tury - w hich con tinues through to the 21s t century - to the awakening of the So uth and the renaissance of the con<]uered peop les. The Eu ropean con<] uest o f the world cons tituted the colossal dispossession of the Amerindiarls of the A mericas, who los t their land and n,l tural resources to the colonis ts. The Amerindians were almos t totally exterminated (through a genocide in North America) or reduced, by the effeels of th is dis possession and the ir over-explo itil tion by the Spanis h and Portu guese con<]uerors, to o ne-tenth of their for mer popu liltion . The slave tmde that followed represented a plunder of a large part of Africa, selling back the progress of the continent by ha lf a millennium. Such phenomena are vis ib le in So uth Afri ca, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Algeria, and still more in AustraJiil and New Zeilland . This ilccumu lation by dispossession characterises the state of Israel, which is a colon isat ion s ti ll in progress. No less visible are the co nse<]lwnces o f colorlial exploi tation a mong the peas
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

Dispossessio n not o llly affected the peilsilnt pop ulations, which were the grei1 t mi1jority of peoples in the pi1s t. It i1lso des troyed the ci1pacity for industrii11 prodllCtion (i1r lisan and manufacturing) of regions that fo r a lo ng time had bL>en more pros perous thilll Europe itself: C hini1, India and others (indispu tilble proof of wh.ich is described by Amjya Kumar Bagchi (2005) in his lates t work, Peri/OilS Passage). It is important here to unders tand that this destruction was not produced by the lilws o f the market, with European industry - claiming to be more effecti ve - having taken the place o f non-compclitive production. The ideological discourse docs not discuss the politi ca l and military vio lence utilised to achieve this destruction. It WilS not the canons of English industry, but the Cilnnons of the gunboa t period, which won ou t in s pite of the superiority - not inferi or ity - of the C llinese and h1dii1n indu stries. Indus tria lisation, whi ch was pro hibited by the colonial administTilti on, did the rest and ' developed the underdevelo pment' o f Asia and Africa during the 19th and 20t h centuries. The co lonial atrocities and the ext reme exp loitation of workers were the natural means and res ults o f acc umulation through dis possession. From 1500 to 1800, the material production of the European centres progressed at a rate thilt wa s hi1rd ly g reater than that o f it s d emographic growth (but this was strong in relati ve terms for that era). These rhythms accelerated during the 19th centu ry, with the deepening - and not the ilfte nuiltion - o f the expl oitation of peop les overseils, w hi ch is why I s peak of the pennil nent accumuliltion by dispossession and not primitive (i.e. fir st, preceding) accumulation. Th is does not ex clude the fael that the contrib ution of i1ccunntliltion financed by tec hnological progress during the 19th and 20th centuries - the s u ccessive industri al revoluti ons - then took o n an importance that it never had during the three mercantilis t centuries that preceded it. Finally, therefore, from 1500 to 1900 the ilpparent production of the new cen tres o f the cap italis t / imperialist world syste m (western and central Europe, the United States and, a late arri val, Japan) increased by seven to seven and a half times, in contrast with that of the peripheries, which barely doubled. The sa p wi dened as had never been possible in the his tory of illl humanity. During the course of the 20th century, it widened still furth er, bringing apparent per capita 54 "

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3 HI STORI CAL CAPITALI SM - A CC UMU LATI ON BY DISPOSSESSION

incomes in the centres to a level I S 1020 times grea ler than thai o f the peripheries as a who le. The accumulatio n by d ispossession o f centuries of mercantiJism had largely financed the lu xuries and s tandard of li vi ng of the governing classes of the period (the Ancien Regime), wi thou t benefiting the popu la r classes (see Translator's no te) w hose standard o f li vi ng o ften worsened as they were themselves victims of the accumulation by dis possessio n of large swathes of the peasantry. But,
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Capitalism: a parenthesis in history The development o f his torical capitalism was based on the private a pp ropriatio n of agrarian la_nd, the s ubo rdina tio n of agri cultu r al production to the re quire m ents of the market and, on this basis, the continuing and a ccelerating expu lsion of the pe asant pop ulatio n fo r the benefit o f a s mall number of capitalist farmers, w ho were no lo nger peasants a nd w ho ended up fo rming an insignificant perce ntage of the population (from 5 to 10 per ce nt). They were, however, capable of producing enough to feed (well) all the ir countries' popu latio n, alld even export much o f the su rplus p rod uctio n. This I'a th, started by England in the 18th century (with the enclos ures) and g radually ex tended to the res t of Europe in the 19th century, constituted the essence of the historical path of capit
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It can only fin d its social basis in the new middle classes th at have become the exclusive beneficia ries of this development. The social-democratic way is now therefore excluded . The inev itable alternati ve is one o f a peasant develop ment model, to whi ch we s hal l return in C hapter 5. The C'Ju estio n of natural resources con stitutes a second decisive issue in the confli ct o f civilisat ion that opposes ca pitalism to soc ialis m in the future. The ex plo itation of the no n-renewable reso urces of the So uth for the exclusive profit o f the wasteful co nsumption o f the No rth is also a form o f acc umulation by di spossession. The exchange of these resources against renewable goods and services jeo pa rd ises the future o f the peoples of the South, w ho are being sacrificed o n the altar of the s uper-p rofits of the imperi alist o ligo polies. T he d estructi ve dimension of capitalis m, at least for the peop les of the peripheries, makes it impossible to bel ieve that this syste m can be sustainable and imitated by those w ho see m to be backward. Its place in t he history o f humanity is that of a parenthesis, o ne w hich creates the conditions for overtaking it. If this does not ha ppen capitalis m can only lead to barbaris m and the end of all human civilisation . The co urse of ac tu ally existing ca pita lis m has been composed o f a long period of maturation lasting severa.! centuries and leading to a shorl apogee (the 19th ce ntury), followed by a probable long decline beginning in the 20th centu ry, which cou ld initiate a lo ng transiti on to g lobaJised socialism. Ca pitalism was not the result of a brutal, almost magical apparition, chosen by the London / Amsterdam / Paris triangle and established in the s hort period of the Reformation / Renaissance of the 16th century. Three cen turies earlier, it had ex perienced its first for mulation in the Italian cities. The first formu las were brilliant but limited in s pace and thus crushed by the surrounding feudal European wo rld. This is why, ha ving been set back by successive defeats, these firs t experiences coll apsed. It is also possible to d iscuss various anlccedents to these in the co mmercial towns along the silk route of C hina and India to the Arab and Pers ian Islamic Middle East (see my conunents o n the Chinese pa th described in Chapler 2). Later, in 1491.. with the conquest of the Ameri cas by the Spanis h and the Portuguesc, beg-rul the creation of the mercantile/

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slavery ! capi taJist system. But the monarchies of Madrid and Lisbon, for various reasons w hi ch I shall no t go into here, were unable to give a definiti ve form to mercantil ism whi ch, instead, the Eng lish, Dutch and French were to invent. This third wave of sociaJ, economic, politicaJ and cultural transfo rmations, which was to produce the tra nsition to ca pitalis m in its hi stori ca l form that we know (the Ancien Regime) would have been unthinkable wi thout the two preced ing waves . Why s hou ld it no t be the same for socialis m, a lo ng process, lasting centuries, for the inventi on o f a more ad va nced stage of human civili sation? The apogee of the system did no t last long. Hardly one century separated the Industrial and Frenc h Revolutions from 1917. This was the century when these two revolutions were accomplis hed , taking over Europe and its North A merican offspring - as well as the challenges to them, from tile Commune of Paris in 1871 to the 1917 revolution - and achieving the co nques t of the wo rld, wh ich seemed resigned to its fat e. Cou ld this historica l cap itali sm con ti.nue to develop, allowing the peripheries of the system to overcome their backwardness to beco me developed cap italist soc ie ties like those in the dominant cen tres? If this were possib le, if the laws of the system allowed it, then the catching-up by and through capitalism would have had an objective una voidable strength, a necessary precondition to an ultimate soc ialism. But thi s vision, obv ious and do minant as it seemed, was s imply fal se . Historical ca pitalis m is - and continues to be - polarising by nature, renderi ng cat ching-up impossible. His tori cal capitalism must be overtaken and this cannot be done unless the soc ie ties in the pe ripheri es (the great majority of humanity) se t to work ou t sy stematic strategies of d elinking from the g lo bal system and recons tru cting t hem selves on an autonomou s basis, thus creating the cond itions for an alternati ve g loba.lisation, engaged on the long road to world soci a.lis m. I will not take up this analysis here, as it can be read in my Obso/!'sct'Ilt Capitalism (A min 2003, Annex IV ). Purs uing the capitalis t path to development thus represents, for the peoples of the per iphery, a tragic impasse. This is becau se the d eveloped c
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of the wo rld's pop ul a tion ). The impasse can thu s be seen in all dime ns io ns of socia l, economic and po litical life. A nd it ma nifes ts it self most s trikingly in the agrarian ques tion .

The 20th century: the first wave of socialist revolutions and the awakening of the South Thus the a pogee o f the system las ted o nly a short while, hardly a century in facl. The 20th centu ry ex pe ri enced the first wa ve o f the g rea t revolutions conducted in the name of social ism (H ussia, C hina, Vie tnam, C uba) and the radicalisation of the liberation s trugg les of Asia, Afri ca and Latin A me ri ca (t he perip heries of the impe rialist / ca pitalist syste m) whose am bitions were ex pressed in the Bandung project (1955-80) . This coincidence was not by chance. The g lobalisation of capitalism / imper ialism had imposed the g reatest tragedy in huma n history on the peoples of the peripheries concerned, showing up the destruct ive character of capital
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

I therefo re proposed looking a t the 20th centu ry as one of the fir st wave of strugg les fo r the emancipation o f the workers and o f peoples (A min 2008, Chapter 1), of which I ment ion here only the main theses.

Bandung and the first globalisation of the struggles (1955-80) The governments and peoples of Asia and Afri ca proclaimed at Bandung, in 1955, their desire to recons truct the world system on a basis of recognising the rig hts o f nations that had up until then been d o mina ted. Tllis ' right to develop ment' was the foundation o f g lobalisatio n at th at time, implemented in a multipolar negotiated fram ework imposed on an im perialism that was forced to adjust to these new requirements. T he induslriali s.-, tion prog ress that s tarted during the Bandung era wa s no t the result o f imperia list logic but was imposed by the victories o f the peo ples of the South. Undoubted ly, t his progress cheris hed the ill usion of ' catching -up' , which seem(."!! on the way to becoming a reality, w hile imperialis m, forced to ildju st to the demands of the development o f the peripheries, recomposed it self around new forms of dominat ion. The old co ntras t of imperialis t countries/ dom inated countries, w hich was sy nonymo us wi lh the contrast of the industrialised countri es/ non-industrialised co untri es, gra duall y gave w ay to a new contrast based on the centralisat ion of the ad vantages associated with the five new mono polies of the imperialist centres (contro l over new techno log ies, natural resources, the g lobal finan cial system, communicatio ns and weapons o f mass des truction).

Th e long declin e of cap italism and the long transitio n to wo rl d socialis m Is the long decline of cap italism the same as the lo ng positive transit ion to soci alis m? If it is 10 be so, it is necessary thai the 21st century prolo ngs the 20th century and radi cilJises the objectives o f social transformation . This is comp letely possible, but the conditio ns mus t be s pe lt o ut, ot herwise the long d ecline of capitalism wi ll turn into the con tinual degrada tion of human civilisation. I s hall refer here to w hat I wrote OJ1 this subject more than 25 years

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ago, in ' Revo lution or d ecadence?', a chapter in my book Cla)i)i and Nation (Amjn 1981). The d ecline was not a continuous, linear process. There were moments of reviva l, o f the counteroffensive o f cap ital, like the coun teroffensive of the governing classes o f t he A ncien Regime on the eve o f the French Revolut:ion. The present time is of that kind . The 20th century was a first chap ter in the long apprenticeship of the people in going beyond cap italis m and in venti ng new socia list form s of living, to bo rrow the ex pressio n of Do meni co Losu rdo. Like him, [ d o not analyse it s develo pment in terms of a failure (of socia[jsm, of national independence), as reactiona ry propaganda - which has th e w ind in its sails today - tri es to make o ui. O n the contmry, it is the \'ery successes and not the fa ilures of this first wave o f socialis t and natio nal popular ex periences which arc at the origin of the problems o f the co ntemporary wo rld. I have analysed the projects of thi s first wave in terms of three families of social and po liti cal ad vances: the welfa re s tate in the imperiali st Wes t (the hi sto rical compromise between cap ital and labo ur of the period), the actually existing socia lisms (Soviet and Mao ist) a nd the national 1'01'war systems of the Bandung era . The analysis is made in terms of their comp le mentarity and confli ctua lity at the wo rl d leve l (a different perspecti ve from that of the cold war and the bipolarity proposed today by the defenders of the capita list end o f his tory sc hool. as [ stress the multipo lar character o f g lobalisat ion in the 20th century). The social contrad ictions of e,1ch of these systems and the tentati ve nature of these fir st ad van ces exp lain their loss of impetus and fina lly their defeat, and not their failure (Amin 2003, pp. 7- 21 ). It is thus this inertia that crealed fa vou rab le conditi ons for the current cap ita[js t counteroffensive, the new peri lo us passage o f the libe rations o f the 20th century to those of the 21 st century. It is therefore impor tant to now tackle the nature o f this troug h moment that separates the two centuries and to identi fy th e new challenges that confront the peo p les of the wor ld .

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The counteroffensive of cap ital ism in decline The contrast of cent res and pe ripJ1Cr ies is no lo ngcc similar to that of indus trialised co un tries and no n-indus triali sed countries. The polarisation of centres/ pe riphe ri es, whic h gave the ex pa nsio n of world capitalism its impe rialis t character, continues and e ven increascs thro ug h the ' fi ve ne w mono po lies' that th e imperialis t ce ntres e njoy. In these condi tions, the pursuit of accelerated developme nt by the e me rging pe riphe ries, imple me nted with unquestioned su ccess (in China, particular ly, but also in o ther coun tries of the Sout h) has not ccadi cated i mpccialist dominat io n. It has led to a ne w contrast between the centres and the pe ripheries, not to its overta king. Imperialism is no longer w ritten in the plural- as in the ea rlier phases of its devel opment - it is a collective imperialis m of the Triad (the United States, Europe, Japan ). In this sense, the co mmon inte res ts shared by the o li gopoli es based in the Triad are greater than the conflicts o f (mercanti le) interests t hat might cause them to o ppose eac h other. This collecti ve character of impe rialism is exp ressed through the U\iUlageme nt of a world syste m by the common ins truments o f the Triad : at the econo mi c level, by the Wo rld Trade O rganisation (the co lonial minis try of the Triad), the Inte rna tional Monetary Fund (the colonial collective monetary agency), the World Bank (the propaganda mini stry ), the O rganisatio n for Econo mi c Cooperation and Developmen t (O Ee D) and the European Union (constituted to prevent Europe from ex tri cat ing itself from libcr" lism ); and at the politi cal level, by the C7 / C 8, the armed focces o f the Uni ted Sta tes and their s ubordinate ins trument, N ATO (North Atl a ntic Treaty Organisatio n) (wit h the marginalisa tion / domes tication of the United Nations comple ting the picture). The US Ilegemoni c p roject, im plemented thro ug h a prog ramme of the military con tro l of the p liUlet (in vol ving, amo ng othe r things, the abrog ation of inte rn,l tional la w and the la w that Was hington has conferred upon itself to conduct the p re ve n tive wars of its choice), is arti culated th rough collective impe rialis m and makes it possible for the A me rican lead er to o\'e rcompensate for its econo mic defi cie ncies.

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What st rategy to construct convergence in diversity? The peoples o f the three contine nts (Asia, Africa and Latin A me ri ca) are co nfronted today wit h the ex pan sion of the impe rialist syste m caJled g lobaJised neolibe ralis m, w hich is nothing less than the constructi on of a parthe id at the world level. T he new imperial order will be challc nged, but by whom ? A nd w hat will res ult from this challenge? Here Lshall outline the main proposals that Lha ve de\'eloped elsew here (From Capitalism to Cim1i:atioll (2010), p. 127 onward s). The re is no dou bt that the image of the dominant re
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the grow ing social movements of the popular classes), o r evolve towards the left by building market socialis m as a stage alo ng the lo ng transiti on to socialism. The problems of Vietnam are similar. The apparently analogous choices made by the governing classes of the other so-called emerging countries are still more fra gile . Nei ther Brazil nor In dia -because they ha ve not had a radi cal revo lu tion like C hina - arc capab le of posing strong resistance to the do ubl e pressures of imperia lism and the reactionary local classes. A nd yet the societi es of the South - at least so me of them - are today equipped w ith the mea ns to enable them to co mplete ly rid themse lves of the monopolies of the imperialis t centres. These societies are c
The inseparable capitalism/socialism and North/South conflicts The North / South (centres/ peripheries) conflict is a m
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ity of peoples. Here again I refer the reader to the propo sal s that I develo ped in Fro m Clipitlilism to Civili:.u tiolZ. C apitalism is a wo rld system and not just the juxtaposing o f national capiti1lis t sys tems, and so political and social struggles, if they are to be effecti ve, mu st be conducted simultaneously in the national arena (w hich remains decisive becau se the conflicts, al liilIlces and social and political compromises arc to be wor ked out there) and at the world level. Thi s view poi nt, which is o bvious to me, see ms to have been that of Marx and the historical Marx isms (,Wor kers of the world, unite!') and, in its enriched Maois t version, ' Proletarians of aLi countries, oppressed peop les, unitc!' It is impossible to foresee the trajecto ry that will be tr.lced by the unequal ad va nces of the struggles in the South and in the North . My feeling is that at this mo ment the Sou th is going through a cri sis, bu t that it is a crisis of growth, in the sense that the purs uit of the liberation o bjecl ives o f its peoples is irreversible. The peop les of the North would do well to take their measure, or better still adopt the same perspec tive and associa te it with the constructi on of socialis m. T here was a moment of solidarity o f this kind at the time of Balldung: you ng Europeans proclaimed their soHdarity wi th the T hird Wor ld. It was doubt lessly nai ve, but how much beller than their current turning in on themse lves. Without going back to the analyses of actually ex is ting world capitalis m that I have deve loped elsew here, I wi ll jus t recall the ir conclu sions. In my op in ion, humanity cannot engage seriously in the constructio n o f a socialist alternati ve to capitalis m unless things change in the developed West. T hat d oes not mean at all that the peoples of the periphery have to wait for this change and, un lil it happens, co ntent themse lves with ildapting 10 the possibilities offered by capi talist globalisation. O n the contrary, it is more probable that, to the extent that things begin to change in the peripheries, the western societies, forced into it, could be led, in their turn, to evolve as required for the progress of humanity as a whole. If this does not ha ppen, the wo rst is most probab le : barbarism and the s uicide of human civilisation. O f course, I en vis., ge the desirable and possib le chang es in bo th the centres and in the peripheries of the g lo bal system in the framework of w hat I ha ve ca lled ' the long transition'. In the peripheries o f g lobalised cap italism - by definition 65

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the storm zones in the imperialist system - a form of revolution certainly remains on the agenda. But its aim is by nature ambiguou s and vague - natio nal liberation from imperialism (and the maintenance of much of, o r even all o f, the essence of the social relatio ns hip s that und erpin capitali st mod ernity) - or will it be more than that? Wh ether it was the radical revolutions of C hina, Vietnam and C uba or those which were not radical elsewhere in Asia, Afr ica and Latin America, the challenge remained to catch up and / or do someth ing else. This chaJlenge was in turn linked to another task generall y conside red of eq ual priori ty: to defend the Soviet Union, which was being encircled. The Soviet Union and later China found themselve s confronted by the strategies o f syste matic isolation used by dominant ca pitalism ilnd the wes tern powers. O ne ca n therefo re understand why, revo lution not being o n the immediate agenda elsewhere, priority was generaJly g iven to saving the post-revolutiollilry s tates. The Soviet Union and C hin'l ex pe rienced the vicissitudes o f the g rea t revolutions and also had to confro nt the co nsequences o f the unequal expansion of world cap it ali sm . Both these fa clors g raduillly sac rifi ced the o riginal communist objectives to the immediate requirements o f an eco nomi c c'ltching-up. This Sllift, 'lbandoning the 'lim of socia l ownership by whic h the commun ism of Marx defined itself, ins tead s ubstituted state management. This was accompa nied by the d ecline o f popular d emocra cy, which W'lS cru s hed by il brut'll (and sometimes bl oody) d ict'ltorship of the post-revolutionary power, "cceler"ting "n evo lution towards the restoratio n o f capitalis m . 1.11 both experie nces, prio rity was given to the defen ce o f the post-revo lutionilry s t"te and intenlil l mea ns were u sed (or tllis purpose, as well "s extern,,] strategies giving priority to su ch " defence. The co mmun ist parties were thus in vited to fall in line with this opt ion, no t o nly with respect to the global s trategic directio n but also in their tacti cal day-to-day "djustments. This inevitably cau sed a rapid weakening of cr iti c" l thinking alllong the revo lutionaries, whose abstract discourse on the 'revolu tio n' (always ' immin ent') was far removed from an analysis o f t he real contrad iction s of society, something supported by maintaining almost military fo rms o f o rga.nisation again st a U odd s. Those of the avant garde w ho refu sed to align themsel ves, and

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sometimes dared to fil ce the reality of pos t-revolutionary societies, nevertheless did not renounce th e o riginal Lenini st hypothesis (the ' imminent revolutio n'), without taking into ilccount thilt this WilS clearly refut ed by the fact s. Thus there was Trotsky ism ilnd the pil rti es of the Fourth Intemilliona!. Then there we re il good number of organisiltions of ilctl\' ist revolutionaries, ins pired by Maoism or by C uevarism . Examples o f this arc numerous, from the Phi lippines to lndiil (the Naxalites), from the Arab wor ld (w ith the nati onalist / communist A rabs - the Qawmiy in - and those em ulating them in South Yemen) to Latin A merica (Guevaris m). The grea t nati onililiberation movements in Asia and in Afri ca, in open conflict wi th the imperialist order, Cil me up against, as d id those who conducted revolution in the name of socialism, the co nflicting needs of catc hing -up (national constructio n) and the transfo rmation of soc ia l relationships in fa vour of the po pular classes. O n tlus latter concern, the pos t-revolu tionary regimes (or simply reconquered post-independence regi mes) were certai nly less radical than the communis t powers, which is w hy I wo uld describe these reg imes, in As iil and Africa, as national/popu lar. They were also somelimes inspired by forms of orgilnisation (sing le party, nOll-democratic dictatorship, state management o f the eco nomy ) that had been develo ped during the experiences o f actually ex is ting socialism. They us ually diluted their effi ciency by their vague ideo logical choices and the compromise with the past that they accep ted. It was under these co nditions that these regimes, like the cri tical avant-garde (historical communism in the countries concerned) were, in turn, invited to support the Soviet Union (and, more rarely, Chin a) and benefit fro m its support. The co ns titutio n of this commo n front agains t the imperi alist aggression o f the United States and its European ilnd Japanese partners was certainly benefi ci al for the peoples of Asia and Afri ca . It opened up a ma rg in of autonomy, bo th fo r the initiati ves of the governing classes of the co untries concerned and for the act ions of their popular classes. T his is proved by what happened fo llowing the Soviet collapse.

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The plutocratic oligarchies and the end of bourgeois civilisation The logic of accumulation is that of the g rowing concentration and centra lisatio n of capital Conte mpora ry ca pitali sm is a cap italism dominated by a p lutocra tic o ligarchy that is unprecedented in history, to w hi ch I have alread y drawn atte ntion (Amin 2010, C hapter 4 and A min 2008, p. 47 o nwilfds).

The whee ler-dea lers, the new dominant class in the peripheries The centre / periphery contrast is not new; it accompanied the g lobalised ca pitalis t ex pans io n from the beginning, 500 years ago. Thus the local governing classes in the countries of pe ripheral cap italis m, whether Ihey were ind e pende nt cou ntries or even colonies, ha ve always been subo rdinated governing cl asses, but nevertheless allied by the profil.s they obtained by being inserted into globali sed capitalis m. These classes, most of the m coming from those Ihat previo usly dominated their societies before s ubmitting to capitalism / imperialis m, a re very di verse. Their change, because of this integration / submission, is also considerab le: fo rmer po liti cal mentors beco ming large laJld owners, o ld aristoc racies becoming leaders o f tile mod ernised state, and so o n. The reconques t of inde pendence often in volved re placing these old subordinated classes (colJaborators) with new governing classes - bureaucracies, s tate bou rgeoisies, e tc. They had g rea te r legitima cy in the eyes of their peoples (at the beginning ) becau se of their associati on with the na tional liberatio n moveme nts. But he re again, in the periphe ries dominated by the o ld imperialis m (t he forms preceding 1950) o r by the new impe ri ali sm (that o f the Bandung e ra until about 1980), the local governing classes be nefited from a relative, visible stabi lity. Successive generations of aristocrats and the new bourgeois for a long time, and then the new generation co ming from the political forces thai d irected nalionalli bcration, s hared value systems, moral and natio nal. T he men (and more rarely the women) who represented the governing classes, e njoyed var ious degrees o f legitimacy.

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The upheavals brought about by the cap italis m of the oligopolies in the new collec tive imperialist centre (the United States, Europe, Japan) have co mpletely eradicated the po wer o f all thet;e o ld governing classes o f the peripher ies, replacing them w ith a new class that I call wheeler-dealers. This term has in fact spo ntaneously circulated in many countries of the Sout h. A wheeler-dealer is a businessperson, not a creati ve entrepreneur. Businesspeople ob tain th eir wealth from their relations hip s wi th ex is ting power and the fore ign masters of the system, w het her it is representatives of the imperialist cou ntries (the C IA (Central Intelligence Agency), in parti cular) or the oligopol ies. Businesspeop le operate as very well-paid intermediaries, who benefit from a veritable po litical rent, from whic h they drilw the wealth that they accumul ate. Th e wheeler-dealers do not belong to any system of moral or national val ues w hatsoever. They arc a caricature o f their alter egos in the d ominant centres, for they know no thi.ng el se but ' s uccess', money and the covetousness that li es be hind their alleged pra ise for the indi vidual. There, again, mafia-like and criminal beha viour is never very far away. It is true that phenomena of this kind are not completely new. The very nature of imperi al ist do mi nation and the s ubordination of the local governing classes to it used to encou rage the emergence o f this kind of person in power. But, whal is surely new is that this kind o f person now dominates the w hole scene of politics and wealth. The wheeler-d ealers are the friends, the only friend s o f the dominant plutocracy at the wo rld level. Their vu lnerability lies in the facl thai they have no legitimacy whatsoever in the eyes o f their pL"O ples, neither the leg itimacy conferred by tradition no r that g iven by participation in national liberation.

Senile cap ita li sm and the end of bourgeois civilisati on The chara cters of the new dominant classes descri bed here are 11 0 1 coincidental; they corres pond stricl ly to the requirements o f contemporary capi talism and its functio ning. Bourgeois civilisation - like all civilisat ion - is not only red uced to the logic of the reproduction of the economi c system. It integ rates ideo logy and morality : praise for individ ual initiati ve, of coursc, but also ho nesty and res pect fo r the law, if not solidarity

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wi th people, at least at the natio nal leve l. Tlus ens ured a certain s tability in social reproduction as a w hole and it pervaded the world o f the political representati ves at it s ser vice. This system of va lues is in the process o f d isappearing, making way for a system wh.ic h has no values. There are many clear signs of thi s transformation: criminal US presidents, buffoons at the head o f European s tates, ins:ignificant autocrats in a number o f countries in the South - who are not enlig htened despots but just despo ts - ambitious obscurilnti sts (the TaLiban, the Christian and other sects, the pro-sl" very Buddhists). They are "II "dmirers of the American model, wi thout any reser vations. Lack of culture and vulgarity M e characteristics of a grow ing majority of this wor ld of those who dominate. A dra matic evol ution of this kind proclaims the end of a civilisation. It reproduces w hat we llClve already Sl-'Cn in the decadent epochs of history. A new world is being born. But not the (better) one wllich many of the naive social movements are calling for. They do, of course, see the ex tent of the destruction, bu t they do not unders tand the reasons. A world that is much worse than that o f the bo urgeois civ ilisation is being imposed. For all these reasons, I conside r that the conte mporary capi talis m of the oligopolies mu st be now described as seni le - w hatever it s apparent immediate s uccess - because it is a success that is sinking into a new barbarism. (I refer here to the concluding chapter, ' Revo lution or dec adence, thoug hts on the transition from o ne mode of production to another', of my book Class ([/1(/ Nllti01T (Amin 1981) written almos t 30 years ago.)

The fragility of capitalist globalisation Ca pitalis m can be defin ed as the reversal of the relati onship o f dominance between the politi cal bod y and the economic one. This reversal g{)('s along with the new market alienation and the o bscuring of social production, with the levying o f the surplus that accompanies it (as Marx described), This in vention has produced positi ve effects, which in my view arc ind is putable and, the refore, irreversib le. These are, among ot hers, the liberation of Ihe spirit of econo mi c enterprise and overwhelnung accelera tio n, thro ug h the rapid development 70 ngntea IT

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of productive (orces; the combination of condi tions enabling the emergence o f the social sciences (including economics), the formulations of w hich have been fr<.-'C d from morality and replaced by the .search fo r o bjed ive causalities; and the emergence o f modernity, formu lated in terms of the emancipati on of the human species, capab le of making its own history and, with that, bringing toget her the conditions for modern democracy. C apital ism is the fir st system that cou ld become genuinely g lobal . This was because of the power that it enabled to develop, far beyond that of the most advOl nced societies o f the past. Thus the conqu est of the en tire planet became its object ive. This power, which IVOIS al ready visible in t he centuries of the mercantilis t trans ition (1500-1800), appeared to be without limits from the Industrial Revo lution onwards. Contrary to the nai ve vision o f economists, ca pit alist g lobOllisOltion invo lved the political (and mi litary) in terventio n of the new imperi al powers. It was through these unequal po liti cal relations hips that markets were opened up a.nd co nquered, w hile the eco nom ic s tru ctures of the periphery, now dominated, adapted to the req uirements of this form o f ex pansion. T he new polar isation, to an ex tent unprecedented in the history of mankind , was established by politica l mea ns and not in any way by the vidorious competition of the indu stries o f the dominant centres. As a conseq uence, the countries of the periphe ry could reconquer their political independence witho ut it putting an automatic end to their domina ted statu s. Polarisatio n is inheren t in Ilisto rical cap italism . C ap italism and imperial ism arc inseparable. Im perialis t by nature, the world ex pansion o f thi s historical sys tem has shown that it was neither acceptable nor accepted by the majority of humanity - its victims - and that therefore it is considerab ly mo re fragi.le than beli eved by t he economis ts, among other s. T he develo pment of the crisis u nder way will certainly show this. The s tatus of a dominated country has never been accepted by the peoples concerned, apart fro m the new comp rador cla sses that benefit from capi talist / imperialis t g lobalisation . During the 20th ce ntury, this refusal turned into revolut ions co nduded under the fla g of socialis m or nati onal liberation s truggles, both vido riou s, which forced the imperiali st powers to adjus t to these unprecedented changes. 71

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The coun teroffensive of capitali sm / imperialism, whic h has been at work for some 30 years, has been made possible by the exhau stion of the alternati ve form s produced by the historic socia lisms and nationalis ms of the 20th century. Th is cou nteroffen sive w raps itself up in the flag of g lobalisatio n. But, in fac t, it ca nnot ,1 ttain its a.ims withou t undertaking a new permanent war o f reconquest. The project o f contemporary g lobalisation is inseparable from the permanent military engagement of the do minant powers, the new Triild of collec tive imperialis m. Extri cation from ca pitalist globalisiltion (whilt I Cill! delinking) is a fi rst conditio n for extrication from peripheral ca pitalist stat us (i n vu lgar terms, gett ing o ut o f ullderd evelo pment o r of poverty) . Extriciltion from cilpitalist / impe riillist g lobalisation ilnd ex tri ciltio n fro m capi talism cmmot be dissociated. This equation creates problems and it is therefore cru cial to kno w how it has or has not been taken into account. The dominilnt thin king, whic h is essentially Eurocentric, is imperviou s to the rtrguments developed here. Fo r these thinkers, there is no alternati ve to the western model. It has to be - and can be - imitated by o thers. T hat capitalis m / imperialism has rendered impossible tllis development by imitil tion is beyo nd their ca paci ty to understand . Marxist thought is not Eurocentric by nature. Marx inaugurated the only way of modern thinking that was capab le o f ridding itself of the prejudi ces and the s traitjacket of Eurocentrism. Bu t the schools o f historical Marx ism were vict ims o f its limitations. The drift from Marx took the form of the alig nment of the European wo rker and sociillist movement with a linear vision of history, which was nol that of MilTX Ilimself. In this perspective, the socialist revolution cou ld only occur when countries had become full y capitalis t, as in the developed indus trial wo rld . Everyw here else the obligiltory passage of a capitalis t d evelopment th rough il bo urgeois revolu tion was declared tlI1
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the constru ction of new niltional cilpitaJis ms like those of the dominilnt centres, and hen ce it closed off the way to the bourgeois revolution. This creilted a double challenge fo r the alternati ve o f populilr revolution, tl1
Is lucidity possible in the transformative activities of soc ietie s? The modernity of the Enlightenment, by declaring ' man' the iluthor of his history, inilugurilted a new chilpter of history in volving the possibility o f lu cidity. Lu cidi ty and alienation arc the two o pposite poles of the s.,me dialectical contrildiction. Lucidity is defin ed by the knowledge o f need, and the power, based 011 tllis knowledge, to act free ly and trilnsform reality. lucidity involves the emergence of a social science that makes it possible to know these objecti ve necessities. In contrast, alienation is defined by the s ubmission of human beings to forces seen ilS being ex terio r - s upernatural - even if they are i.n fa ct the res ult of the human thinking and action that shape social reality. Lu cidity, which was absent from all premodern societies, European and others, thus unders tands that the passing from one stage of social evo lution to another was not conceived and implemented by a social force that develops on its own (w hich o ne might describe as revolutionary). Rather, it develops by itself, through chilotic evo lutions and is, therefore, ilssociated with what o ne could describe as mo ments of d ecadence (from the old regime in decline). The passing from Ihe slave society of the Roman Empire to the feudali sm of the Middle Ages is a good example of thi s mode of Iransform iltiol1 in whic h lu cidi ty is lacking. Lack o f lu cidi ty is not the sa me as 1,1Ck o f intelligence. O ur ancesto rs were no less intelligent than us; they were simply less equipped to control the necessary transformation, even when this control was 73

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

only re lati ve. Actors use tactics of intelligen t actions. But they d o not know w here their choices will lead the m; they do not pose the question of the results they will rcaJly be produ cing. With modernity and the eme rgence of lucidity, the ways o f transforming society underwent a Copernican revolution. The sages of the Enlightenmen t formul ated, for the fi rst time, a ho listic and coherent project of transformation . Tlus was to establis h capitalis m on the r ubble of the Ancien Regime, a new society based on reason, itself a condition of emancipation. The project, which described w hat essentially became the bourgeois ideo logy, was in turn based on the separation of the reg ulations proposed for manag ing economi c life (to be ordered on the princip le of the new private ow ners hip, the freedom of en terpri se and to draw up co ntracts) and that o f t he model for managi ng politica l life (ordered by what was g radually to beco me democracy - respect for the diversity of opinio ns, removing the sacred from power and the formulati on of human and ci li zens' rig hts) . The two sides of the project were legitimate in terms of reason. The lu cid project of capitalis t mod ernity to be constructed defin ed itself as establis hing a transhistoric a nd definitive reason - the end of history, follow in g non-reasonable prehistory. A ug us te Co mte, in his time, had a definitive visio n w hi ch encaps ulated the essent ial ideology of bourgeois modenuty. But the victims o f the new sys tem of triumphant capitalism - the working classes - saw their p roject of transfornung rea Lity in a comp letely different pers pective, that of overtaking capitalism and building soci aJis m. By so d oing they showed the relati ve character of bourgeois lu cidity. From the idealisti c fo rmulations of utopian social isms up to the one ini tiated by Marx - histo ri cal materiali sm - there is clear ly visible progress in recognising the need to found the transforma tion project on the overtaking of capitalism and the building o f socialism. Assoc iating the democratis<1tio n of society in all the dimensions of its economic and politi ca l management- and associating therefore this with social and human progress - definiti vely rejects the dissociation in the bourgeois formula of the En lightenment and unmas ks the mi'ITket alienation that is peculiar to this fo rmulation, in so doing g iving the reason / e mancipatio n associatio n a new meaning, representing the advances in the communism project 74

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ini tiil led by Marx. That this pe rs pective, which in turn consigned cilp italis m to prehistory, had sometimes imagi ned the co mmunis t future as the authentic end o f his tory is another s tory. The fact remains that lu cidity, however rela tive it may be, made it possib le to in vent the revolu tio nary Pillh as il Wily of transform ing society, replacing the decadence of the Ancien Regime and the crystallisation o f the new t hroug h controlled chaos. The revolutio nary path was indeed the one that ca pitalism imposed, first i.n its early revolut ions in the Netherlands and in Eng land, then pMtly throug h the ind ependence war of the Eng lis h co lon.ies of North America and finally, and above all, in the French Revolution. In its turn, the revolutiona ry path was imposed as a lu cid way of tra nsformation, as it pro posed 10 o pen the way to socialist /conununist cons truction. The revol utio n in questio n has often been seen as the great moment t hat makes it possible, o nce and for . that of revolutionary advances (in t he plural) whi ch ta ke on different forms accord ing to the conjunctures, but arc always dri ven by an expressio n o f objectives and meilns that as pi re to lucidity. At the present time we are being in vited urgen tly to ilbandon w hat is described as the ' illu sion of lUcid ity' . No do ubt the reason is that the firs t wave of im p lementi ng project s for socialist construction wore out its capacities to s uccessfull y t ransform the societies concerned . Luc idity, w hich is always relati ve (so metimes the head iness of early s uccess tends to make peo ple forget this), is even bro ug ht into ques tion as a very princ iple. However, U1C reaso ns for the co llapse of the firs t w ave of socialist projects s hould - w ith the benefit of h.indsight - be very clear: histor ical Marxism, which inspired these projects, had und erestimated - w hi ch is the least one can s.' y - the polarising character o f historical g lobal ised capitalis m. The second wave - to be created in the fu ture - mus t draw the necessary lesso ns. The history of the fOTlll
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

of the Italian towns, whic h abor ted, preceded by three cen turies the wave of Allantic mercantili s m w hic h prepared the success o f the definiti ve form of European cap it alism / imperialism and ens ured ils conques t of the world. To renounce the princip le of the wil l for lu cidity means not open ing up new avenues for the future, but closing them by a return to the obscurantism of the premodern epoc hs. This obscurantis m is at the forefront o f th e scene at the present moment, in the trough between the collapse o f the fir st wave of socialist ad va nces and the emergence of the second wave, w hich is necessary and possible. This obscurantism takes on different forms, hard and soft. The hard versions t.l ke the form of a return to the apocaly ptic hope. whose ex treme and carica tu red expression is found in the d iscou rses of the sects, but its ravages are no less visible when it comes disg uised behind the masks of so-called religio us o r ethnic fundamentalis ms. It is not a C<1se of returning 10 the spirituality denied by the g ross m<1 terialism of the cons umeri sm of cap italist modernity but, in a more commonp lace sense, it is the ex pression of peopl e's powerlessness confronted by the challenges o f ageing capitalism. The soft version contents itself wi th renouncing the id ea of a co herent globaJ project whi ch necessarily poses the qu estion of power. replacing it with the wonderful belief that indi viduals can change the world jus t by the miracle of their own behavio ur. From the socal led autonomis t movements to the philosop llies - a 1'1 Negri - of the 'bobos' (see Translato r's note) of our time, this soft mode o f obsCluantisl renunciation of lu cidity, by thus obliterating the reality of ex isting power (oligopolies, military interventions, etc), is now fa shionable because its discourse is trumpeted by the media. There is always a need fo r lucidity, even if it is, as always, relati ve. Abandoning it is like withdraw ing into obscurantis m and it can only lead to the horror of an uncontrolled transition towa rds another world which is still more barbaric than that of our senile g lobalised c.l pilali sm. Lu cidity invo lves supporli.ng uni versal ism, whi ch is different from actual ly existing g lobalis.-l.tion. The religiou s universalisms of ancient times (C hri stianity, Islam, Buddllis m and others) which accompanied the fo rmalion of tributary empires s hould be cons idered as quite distinct from the necessary universalism, both 76 ngntea IT

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mode rn (' man makes rus own his tory') and sociil List ('the progress o f humilnity m ust be based o n cooperation and solidarity, ilnd not on compel ition'). The renunciation of lu cidity ope ns the way to the possibility o f returning to the model of transforma tion thro ug h chilos and decade nce. Senile cilp italis m can, in this way, inaugurate a new e m o f immense massacres, with the means a vaila ble today. Nearly a century ago Rosa Lu xe mbu rg des cribed the a lte rnative: 'socialism o r barbilfis m'. TodilY one could sa y: 'capi talism o r civilisiltion ?' Dec,ld e nce a nd cri minal chaos o r lu cidity ,1 nd the re naissance o f the socialist project?

References Amin, Samir ( 1981) Class and Nati oll, New York, NYU Press Amin, Samir (2003) Obsobcwt Capitalism: COlltempOlU1Y Politics and Global Disorder, Lond on, Zed Books Amin, Sami r (2008) TIi" World H',. Wis!. 117 5.'<': R<'l,oIuli rm ary Objrd i1'<'s in the TI,wnty·Fi, ,~t C"" I",y, ]l.lonthly Rel'iew Press Amin, Samir (2010) FrQm C"pil"/i~,,, tv Cipi/i:;;;tiQn: Re(vnstr"dins tI", SOt'i"li~t Perspectil'f, New Delhi, Tulika Books Arrighi, Giovanni (2007) Adam Smith ill BeiJillg: LilleaS"s vJ tile 21st C~lIlury, London, Verso Bagch.i, Amira Kumar (2005) Pnilvus P",;sasr, Ala/lki/ld and flU' Globrl/ Ascendalley 'fC/lpilal, Oxford, Oxford University Press Losurd o, Domerlico (2007) F"" I'Histai>t', Paris, Editions Delgil

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Revolutionary advances and catastrophic retreats This chapter deals wit h the conjunction of imperialist external aggression and local re
The s ocialist advances of the 20th ce ntury: Sovietism and Maoism The Marx is m o f t he Second Inter national, whic h was worker-o rien ted an d Eu rocentr ic, s hared wi th the dominan t ideo logy o f the pe riod a linear vision of hi story, according: to which all societies mu st pass throug h a cap ita list stage of devclopme nt (thus sowing the seed s of the idea t hat colonisatio n was hi sto ricall y positive) before be ing able to asp ire to s ocialis m. T he idea was utterly fore ign to them that the 'develo pme nt' of some (the dominan t centres) and the ' under-develo pmen t' of others (the domina ted peri pheries) we re inseparab le, Ij ke two sides o f t he same coin, both inhere ntly produced by the world e xpans io n of capi talis m.

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At fir st, Lenin s tood some dis tance fro m the dominant theory o f the Second lnternational and s uccessfull y condu cted the revolution in the 'weak li nk' (Russia), but always with the con vict ion that this would be fo llowed by a wave of social ist revolutions in Europe. Tlu s hope was not fu lfilled and Lenin then gave more importan ce to the transformation of rebellions into revolutions in the East. Bu t it was Icftto the C hinese Co nununist Par ty and Mao to systematise this new perspective. T he I{ussian Revolutio n was conducted by a party thai was well rooted in the working class and the radica l in tell igentsia . Its alliance with the peasantry (w hich the Soc ialis t Revolutio nary Party represented ) - in military uniforms - Cil me abo ut naturally. The radical agrarian reform that resulted finall y sati sfied the old dream of the I~u ss i an peasants - to become owners. But Ihis historical compro mise carried within it the seed s of its limitations: the ' markef , as a lways, created a g rowing d ifferentiation within the peasan try (the phenomenon known as kulaki sation ). Rig ht from the start (o r at leas t as from the 1930s) the C hinese revolut ion d evelo ped along different lines, guaranteeing a solid alliance w ith the poor and middle peilsilllts.Furiher more, the national dimension - the war of resistance against the Japanese - Ollso enabled the front directed by the communis ts to rec ruit a considerable number o f people from the bo urgeois classes who were dis.l ppointed by the weaknesses and betrilyals o f the Kuo minlang . The C hinese revo lution thus produced a new situatio n, different from thOl I o f post-revolutio nary Ru ssia . The rad ical peasant revolutio n go t rid of the very idea of pri vate ow nership o f Olgrarian land and replilced it by the g uarantee for illl peasants to have equal access to agrariiln Jand . Up until now, this decisive adva ntilge, w hi ch is not s hared by any other country other th an Viclnam, cons titutes the major o bstacle to a de vastating ex pansion o f agrarian cilpitillis m. The question is now very freq uently debated in C hina. The reil der is referred to the cha pter on C hina in my book Beyulld US HegwlO1/y (A min 2(06), and my arti cle 'C hina, market socialis m and US hegemony' (Amin 2005). But on the other hand, the ril llying of many Ililtionalist oourgeois to communi st parties obviously exercised an ideological influ ence thai encou raged the deviOltions of those described by MOIO OlS partisans o f the capitalis t way ('capitalist roaders'). 79

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The pos t-revo lutionary regime in C hina not o nly had a number of s ubs tantia] political, cultural, material and economic achievements to its credit (indus triruisation of the country, rad icalisation o f its modern politi cal culture, etc). M aoist C hina resolved the ' peasant problem' that had been at the heart of the drama of the empi re's decline for two decisive centuries (1750-1950). For more on tlus s ubject, SL'C my boo k The. Fllture. of Ma oism (Amin 1983). Moreo ver, Maoist C hina achieved these res ults avoiding the mos t dramatic devia tions of the Sov ie t Union: coUectivisation was not imposed by murd erous vio lence as was the case w ith Stalinism; opposition witlun the Chinese party did not end up ill a reign o f terro r (Deng was put aside, then he returned ). The objective was purs ued te naciou sly of an unprecedented relative e<] uality in the distribution of income between the peasan ts and the workers as well as bet ween these classes and the governi ng circles - although o f course with ups and dow ns. This was forma lised by options of developmen t s trategy that contrasted with those of the Soviet Union (these choices were formu lated in the 'ten great balances' at the beginning of the 1960s). lt was these s uccesses wh ich later facilitated the successes of the development of pos t-Maois t C luna from 1980. T here was ,,]so a contrast w ith ]ndi a, which had not car ried out a revolution; thi s is significant for understanding no t only the different courses taken during the period 1950-80, but also the pros pects for their probable (and / or possible) different futures. These successes explain why pos tMaois t China, while now situating its develop ments w ithin the new capitalist g lobalisalion (through the po licy o f 'opening'), has not undergone d estructi ve shocks s uch as those that fo llowed the collapse of the USSR. However, the s uccess of Maoism did not 'defini tively' (i.e. irreversibly) decide the <]uest ion o f the longer-term perspect ive fo r socialism. This was, fir st, because the d evelo pment s trategies o f the 1950-80 period had ex hau sted its potentia l and the 'opening' (al thoug h controlled) became necessary (see Till! Flltlll'/' of A II/(Iis /ll, Part ll, Chapter 2), which later involved the ris k of reinforcing the tendencies to evolve towards cap italis m. But it was also because the sys tem of Maoist China combined contrad ictory tendencies on the reinforcement of socia]ist o ptions o r their weakening. M ao, conscious of Ihis contradiction, tried to bend things in fa vour o f 80 ngntea IT

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socialism throug h the Cultural Revo lution (from 1966 to 1974) and ' Fire o n headquarters' (a reference to headquarters o f the Central Committee of the Party, w hich rep resented the bourgeois aspiratio ns of the po liti ca l class to positions of power). Mao thought that if he succeeded in this co rrec tion of the COUTse of the revo lution, he could get the suppo rt of the you th (which, among ot hers, largely i.nspired the European upr isings o f 1968 - sec the Godard film, 1..11 Cllil1oisl'). The outcome of these events s howed whal .m error of judgement tlus w as. O nce the page of the C ultural Revo lution was turned, the partis,ills o f the capitalist p"th became confiden t enough to move o n to the offensi ve. The conflict between the socialist path, which is long and difficu lt, and the cap italist option, w hich is bei.ng imp lemented, is certainly no t ' definitively resolved '. As elsew here in the world, thi s combat, wlti ch o pposes the pursu it of cap italis t ex pansion to the social ist perspec tive, constilu tes the real confli ct o f the civil isation of our time. But in tllis comb" t, the Cllinese people have so me g rea t adv"ntages, w hich are the inheritance of the revoluti on and o f Mao ism . These ad vantages functio n in vari ous fields of social li fe: they are forcefully s hown, fo r ex amp le, in the defence by the peasant ry of the s tate ownership of agrarian land and the g uarantee th at everyone has "ccess to it. M"ois m contributed decisively in taking the exact measure of the issues and the challenge posed by the ex pans ion of glo balised cap italis m / impe rialism. Mao ism m"kes it possible, in analysi ng t his ch"l lenge, to foc us on the co ntms t between the centres and pe ripheries that is inherent in the expansion of actually existing (sec Tmnslator 's note) capitalism, imperialist and polarising by nature, and to draw all the lessons involved for the s trugg le for sociali sm, both in the do minant centres and in the do min"ted peri pheries. These conclusions were s ummed up in the beautifu l, very C hinese formu la: ' the states want ind ependence, the nations, liberation and the peoples, revolutio n' . The s tates - that is, the governing classes (in a1l countri es, when they "re not lackeys and trans mission belts for foreig n inte rests) - arc engaged in broadening the s pace that enables them to manoeuvre in the (ca pitalist) wor ld system. T hey are also con cerned to raise the positio n o f the ' passive' "ctors (ob liged to s ubm.it to unilateral adju stment to the requ irements o f dominant imperialism ) to becoming 'acti ve' 81

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actors (who participate in s haping the world order). The nati ons - tha t is, the historical blocs of cl asses that are pote ntially prog ress ive - desire liberation, that is, ' development' and ' modernisatio n' . The pL>oples - that is, the dominated a nd ex ploited popular classes (see Translato r's note) - a spire to socia.lis m. This formula makes it possib le to unde rstand the real world in all its complexity and, on this bas is, to formula te strateg ies of effeel ive aelion. It has the pe rs peelive of a long - a very long - trans ition o f capi lillism to world socia.lism and th us breaks w ith the concept of the ' s hor t trans ition' of the Third Inte rna tional.

Flood tide and ebb fl ow of the Bandung project (1955-80) The second half o f the 20th century sa w unprecedented trans formiltio ns in all the societ ies of the world . Bu t it WilS in Asiil ilnd Afri ca, as they came out of the co lonial night, tha t these transformations we re the deepest, fo rced as these societies we re to question the differen t degrees of capi laJ is t logic. The page of 1492 was turned over, and the globalisilt io n of the futu re was not the o ne that had been inaugurated fi ve hundred years previou s ly, dominil ted by wes te rn impe riaJis m. Nevertheless, afte r the fl ood tid e of the Bandung era came the ebb flow. 1 have put fo rward some anaJyscs o f the progress acco mplished and the reasons fo r late r re treat, particu larly o f the mos t radi cill ex pe riences in the two contine nts, in my recent book L'Evdl rlu Sud (A min 2008), w hi c h I reco mmend to t he re.lder. I would s uggest four rece nt cases fo r debilte: Afg hilni sliln, Iraq, Sudan and So uth Ye me n. T hese are litt le and badly unde rs tood beyo nd the reil de rs of A rabi c and Farsi. He .. de rs could comp le te the ou tl ines g iven he re w ith som e s uppleme ntary w ritings .. bout Afg hanistan and Irilq. T hese fo ur socie ties are co mparatively less ho mogenou s than o thers fro m the religious or e thni c viewpoint. Bu t that happe ns frequ ently in his tory, homogenis .. tion oft e n being a result o f mod e rn isatio n. T his docs nol s ig nify - far fro m it - tha t there is a ' natural animosity' between the differe nt ele me nts of a co untry, whethe r it is a qu estion o f Shiite s o r Sunnis, A ra bs o r Kurds ( in Imq), of peo ple speaking Farsi or Turki sh (in Afg hanistan ), o f 82 ngntea IT

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Muslim s or no n-Muslims (in Sudan) or of s ubjects of a feud al fra g mentation (in South Ye men). Nevertheless, tltis heterogeneity has, it seems, benefited the revolut ionary response, because it acco unts fo r the relative wea kness of 10caJ powers, bo th the o ld ' independent' powe rs ilnd those subo rdinated, thro ug h moderni sation, to the p rotectio n of the imperial powers. It is the weakn ess o f this power that it changes - in mo ments of crisis - into a break-up according to the lines that define t ltis heterogeneity, w hile the revolutionary forces are able to take ad vantage of the genera l aspiratio n for unity of the people fig hting against the exis ting powers. These fo ur countries are impo rtant from the viewpo int of the g lobaJ interests of imperiali sm, w ru ch has difficulty in renouncing cont rol over them: Afghanis tan, once the fronti er s tate with the Soviet Union and now with the central Asia that the imperialists are trying to build up aga inst Ru ssia; Iraq, whose s ub-soil hoa rds so me o f the best oi l reserves in the world; So uth Yemen, w hich comm,Uld s the ent ran ce to the Hed Sea (the oil rou te); Sudan, control of w ltich involves the co ntro l of Egy pt (for the Britis h o f yesterday), rich in o il and uranium (today). In these four countri es, the mino rity ' mod ern' society, co nfro nled by an apparently ' traditional' mass, has thus been particu larly attracted by radi cal solutions, thro ug h a project o f ' modernisatio n from above, s upported fro m below', that had a socialist perspective .

Remarkable success of communist parties among the modernised minority In Afghanistan, a monarc hy w hich coul d be called fe udal governed (barely) a collect ion o f regions with vague borders, which we re ru led over by their local maste rs. Its long attempt to resis t the aggression of Britain, concerned to cut off the route o f the Russian s to the Ind ian Ocean and then o f the Soviets in Tu rkista n, did not al low the country to acquire the ho mogeneity and strength to meet the challenge of social transformation. It is hardly s urprising tha t the social and in tellectual elites, w ho understood th is failure, were naturally convinced , aJmost unmtimously, th
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

In Iril'l, the 'Sunni' monarchy imported by the Bri tis h couJd not milintain itself except by renouncing its real in dependence. The lrilqi co mmunist party was t herefore ab le to win the hearts o f the masses among the Kurds and the Shiite Arabs, winning minds ilmong all the educated class, particularly amo ng the s tudents, of cou rse, but "l so in large sectors of the new urban midd le classes ( professio nals, army officers, etc). O n the order o f a monarchy that served the Britis h, the communists opposed the H!illity of the millennia! wuty o f Mesopotam ia - the land between the Tigris ilnd the Euphrates - in spite o f it s diversity. In South Yemen, the Britis h had reinforced a s ubordinated pseudo-feudal frilg mentation, creil ting everything it nL>eded. It divided the appilfent local powers into a multitude of mtlshiakll!l!i (the domains of the sheikhs o r those that claimed to be s uch), o f s ultanates and emirates (reduced to a small town and three viJlages), reserving the port o f Ad en to direct co lonial adminis tration. The communist movement (unified under the name of the sociali st party) had no diffi culty in rallying all sectors of mod ern society (dockers, s tudents, the urban middle classes) und er the banner of ' abolishing the structures created by the Britis h: unity, liberation, socialism' . In Suda n, th e com muni st party s ucceeded in win ning over all the sectors o f modern socicly in the country: the workers' unions (starling wit h the rail w ay workers) w hich, althoug h clearly a minority in the society, neverth eless represe nted an impo rtant force, no t so mu ch for itself but for the ro le it played for the peopl e as a w hol e by its d efence of the social rig ht s o f workers and the democratic righ ts o f the po p ular classes in their ow n organisation s; the peasants in the regions moderni sed by irriga tion, which had been incorporated into ca pitalis m in a more direct way; the women' s organi sation s s trugg ling aga inst patriarchal o ppression; the edu cated yo uths and students; the pro fessio ns organised in uni ons by the party; and even a good numbe r o f officers in the army. The communist parties of these four co untries succeeded in making remarkable revolutionary advances: in Afghanis tan and Yemen they conquered state pow er, in lraq and Sudan they were 110t far fro m do ing so The communist party of A fg hanistan (in fact two part ies in 84 ngntea IT

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one: Parcham - the Flag; KhaJq - the People) did not come to power through a military ('o ur d'ftllt fabri cated by Moscow (on the model of the CIA CO lipS d'etat ), as unfortunately is widely believed in the West. It took over the declining power of the monarchy; the few co mmunist officers w ho 'invaded' the palace did not set up a d ictatorship, but opened the way for power to be exercised by the party. Moscow did not have mu ch to do with it at the beginning; it had been quite hap py with the monarchy's neutralis t position in internatio nal politics. But o ne part o f the co mmunist party, confronted by the (military) aggression of the United States, whi ch was foreseeab le and inevitable (and indisputably this was a correct judgement), felt that Soviet s upport was necessary. The o ther part felt that tlus support would not s trengthen the cil pacity of the country to successfull y resis t imperialis m, but, on the co ntfil ry, risked complicating the task. A fghanis tan ex perienced the best moment of its contemporary history during the epoch of the so-called commurlist republic. It was il regime of modernising e nlightened despotism, open ing up education to both boys and g irls and hostil e to obscurant ism, fo r which it had decis ive s upport within society. The agraria n reform that it undertook was mai nly a colJection of measures ilimed ilt reducing the tyrannical powers o f the tribal chi efs. The s upportat least tac it - of tile peasant majorities g uaranteed the probable s uccess o f thi s evolutio n, w hi ch stil rted we ll. The p ro pag anda trilns mitted by both the western media and political Islam presented this experience as one o f ' co mmunist and atheist totalitarianis m', which was rejected by the Afghan people. In reality the reg ime, like thai of Ataturk in his time, was far from unpo pular. T he fact th at its promoters, in their two major sections (KhaJq and Pilrcham), described themse lves as co mmunists WilS not ilt ilJl s urprising. The model of the progress accomplis hed by the neig hbouring peoples o f Soviet Centr
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to he lp them get rid of the others certainl y weig hed nega tive ly i.n that it impeded the national -popular-mod ernist projec t. In South Yemen, the party (o(ficially 'socialis t') consisted of fiv e communist groups of different orig ins w ho realised that they had to merge (while keeping their own identities). The British had decided to hand over a fal se independ ence to some of their colonies (Aden and t he Trucial States) and had developed a plan g uaranteeing the ' pacific' transfer of power to feudal bodies (emirates and others) whose powers had been reinforced during the colonial period. London's plan function ed wit hout a hitch for the G ulf coast, prod ucing the United Arab Emirates. The Socialist Party of South Yemen refu sed to play the game and s ucceed ed in mobilising all the most active e lements of society around its wa tchword s: real independence, abolition of the systems of po litical opp ression claiming to be traditional and social justice. Its radicalis m paid off: the for ces that it mobilised entered Ad en and then all the tow ns that functioned as the administrati ve centres of the country. They even short-circu ited a rival curre nt supported by Nasser and the regi me of North Yemen. The advances that followed arc equally incontestable, in particular the liberatio n of women, the rolling ba ck of obscurantislll and the opening up of the way to a modern and democrat ic interpretation of religion and a secular state. Its popularity was no less undis puted . In Iraq, too, the fall of the monarchy in 1958 was not the result of a rnilitary (0111' d'/;tat. The intervention of a group o f o ffi cers (including communis ts, but also progressive nationalists) only crowned the struggles of imposing masses o f people, in w hich the communist party played a d ec isive role (in cooperatio n with other Arab and Kurd organisations, whic h were progressive to different degrees). The Ba'ath party and the Muslim Brotherhood were remarkably absent in t hese s trugg les. Abdel Karim Kassem, who presided over the reg ime, was therefore s upported by a poli ti cal allian ce that broug ht together the conunun.is t party, the progressive Kurds and the nationalis ts (ind ependent of the Ba'ath party). The rivalry between the laller and the co mmunis t party was cons tant and li vely, so mu ch SO that at a certa in mo ment, suppor ted by so me officers who were communi sts or sy mpathisers, the co mmunjs t party thought it could tilt th e balance in its favour. Its fa ilure to do so was due to a combination of interventions from 86 ngntea IT

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the local reactionary (orces (supported from outside), N asserites and al lied Ba' alhists. In Sudan, the strength of the communis t party in mod ern civil society (workers, peasants fro m the Gezira, s tudents, women, professionals and the army) was the reason w hy the dictators hip o f General A boud (suppo rted by the Brit ish ) was overturned, not by a military co unter-cou p, but by an eno rmous mass movement (the o fficers, in their turn, having refused to repress it). A lo ng s trugg le fo llowed, in w hich the traditional parties devoted to the colonia l power (A nsar and AshiC]qa) were mobilised, supported almost uncond itionally by the Muslim Brotherhood and the diplomats of N asser' s Egypt and Libya'S Ga ddafi. T his reactionary, obscu rantist and nati onalis t bloc (co nsidered uncritically as antiimperi alist) was suppo rted by western op inion agai nst the mos t democratic forces of the country! The victories o f this reactio na ry bloc were always limited and ffilgi le, and the communist party each time succeeded in getting back on its fee t and making its op ponents wit hd raw. The commun ist party did not try to instigate a mi li tary co up (whi ch wo uld have been fala l for it), as has been claimed. Genera l Nimeiry was put in power by a military co up su pported by a react ionary alli ance: the Egyptian and Libyan d iplo mats, the Muslim Brotherhood, the United States and G reat Br itain. But not all the army officers were partisans of the cou p. It was they (communis t officers and sym pathisers, progressive na tionalis ts) who, wi thou t d ifficulty, isolated (and arrested) Nimeiry. Aft er this success there was the possibility of a retu rn to democrat ic civilian power, the place o f the communis t par ty having been reinforced. But a third reactionary military counter-coup (wi th, thi s time, the d irect inter vention of foreign powers, as well as Gaddafi ) des troyed this democratic perspective. And ever since ... There were various causes for the fa ilu re of these fou r revol utionary advances. Some, of course, were s pecific to each case, but o thers were more or less common to a ll . T he first cause was t he deliberate intention of the United States, Great Bri ta in and their subaltern Eu ropean all ies to d estroy these advances wi th the most ex tre me violence, including military intervention, imp lemented (in Afg hanistan and later in Iraq ) o r seriously threatened. 87

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As part of their str
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the impe ria I powers, thus rallyi ng the moderate natio nalists of the Middle East. Withou t this intervention, it is possibl e that the progressive Afg han forces mig ht have been able to hold in check the forces of Pakistan, the Taliban and all the obscurantists d escribed in the western med ia as 'freedom fig hters' . In South Yemen, the communist power in effect committed s ui cide in 1991 by accepting unity with North Yemen. How to ex plain this incredible decision? Of course, Yemen cons titutes o ne nation and there w as a real desire among its people to get rid o f the sep"r"lio n cre" ted by the Brilish colonis"lio n of it s southern coast. But the re lations hip between North " nd South Yemen was not similar to that o f Wes t and East Germany, rather ex actly the reverse. T he (' ba ckward' ) society and the po liti cal power of the North held no att ractio n for the South, even "fter the revolutio n had chased away the imam and replaced him with a po pulism that was ins pired by the confused discourse o f Gaddafi (w hose power, in fac t, does not ha ve many prog ressive achievements to its credi t). This is p roved by the fa ct that, just aft er ' uni ty' lwd been proclaimed , the peo ple of the So uth revolted in rejec tio n o f it, considering themselves betrayed by the leaders of the party. Savage military repression was necessary to impose unity. T llis is o nly a part ial ex pl anation : some of the pMty leaders (but no t " II), desperate after the collapse o f the Soviet Unio n, wanted to rally to the camp of those they tho ug ht would ultimately be victo rio us. So me of them were afraid (corre ctly so) o f a ferocio us econo mic block"de by the West, perhap s a military intervention o n so me pretex t or other. In Iraq, the power relations co uld not be reversed exce pt by the bloody dictatorships of A bd els.llem Are£, and then of the Ba' ath, with the unconditio nal suppor t of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the autocratic, pro-imperialis t regimes o f the G ulf and even of N asserite Egy pt. Was not Nasser the ' father' of Ku wait's independence, fabri cated by the Britis h in 1%1 and then supported by Egypt? The way was then o pen to the regime of Saddmn Hussein. In Sudan, the defeat of the attempts to s to p the counter-revolution of Nimeiry opened the Wily to a regime that combined the dictators hip of the military with that o f the Islamists. But in spite o f the brutali ty of this type of power, the modern sectors of the society constituted a resis tance front (but henceforUl more passive

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than active), ig nored by the West's 'fri ends o f democracy'. The interminable war in the Sou lh, the breaking up of the country (provi nces in the eas t, Darfu r in the wes t) arc the price that the Sudanese people pay for this undoing: of its revolutionary advan ces. The inte rventio n, ' humanitarian' amo ng others, of the wes tern powers does not redeem them fr om their close [lssoci[llion with the assassination o f Sudan ese democracy - nolto s peak o f th e direct economi c in terests that motiv[lt e these interventio ns (particularly in o il and uranium).

Conclusions should focus on 'democracy ' Democratisation is a process tha t canno t be reduced to a stalic and definiti ve formu la as in the contempo rary 'representati ve democracy' that is generally proposed (multi-party, elections, human rig hts) . Democracy is abo ut all aspects of social life and not excl usively the management of the politi cal life of a coun try. It concerns all the rel[ltionships between individu[lls, wi thin the famil y, in the wo rkpl ace, as well as the relat ionships betwL'Cn these and the economic, adm inistrative and po lit ical dec isio n makers. These relations hip s are at the sa me time individual and collective (the class relations are mainly the res ult o f the unequal power relations in co ntempo rary societ ies). Democracy means associating rather than dissociating po litical democracy and social p rogress. It al so in volves Ihe recogni tion and the definition o f the rig his of the indi vidual, formuJ<1led in terms of leg[ll rig hts, and the instituti onal guaran!L'C of their being genuinely res pected . Indi vidual freedo m and the liberatio n of human beings from all form s of oppression are inseparable from the exercise of power by the peop le. A society is no t <1dvanced if it does not integr<1te the rig hts of the individual w ith those of the wo rkers' and peoples' col lective organisations. The dominant ideo logy associates ' democracy' with 'freedo m of the markets' (l h<11 is, ca pitalism) and claims Ih<11 Ihey M e inseparable: there is no democracy without markets, therefore democratic socialis m is inconce ivable. It is o nly an ideo logical formu lation - in Ih e vul gar (see Translator' s note) and negative sense of the term - whi ch is tautoJogic<1I, inferring tlMt the concep t of democracy is reduced to that of the trunc<1ted US mod el.

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Hi story does not bear ou t this viewpoi nt. Advances in democracy h,we al ready comes about as a result of popular s truggles and have always been in conflict, to different degrccs, with the fundamental log ic o f cap italis m. In fact, the his tory of actually ex isting capi talis m as a world system shows that even that truncated form o f democracy has been the exception rather th an the rule. b1 the very centres of cap italism, the progress o f representative democracy has always been the res ult of popu lar st ruggles, resis ted as long as possible by the holders of power (the owners). At the wor ld level of the capitalist system - the real un it of operations for capitalis m - the associatio n of (truncated) democracy with ca pitalism even more visibly has no rea l gro unds. In the peripheries that are integrated into ac tu al world capi talis m, democracy has never - o r hardly ever - been on the agenda of the possible, o r even desirable, for the funct ioning of cap italist accumulation. In these conditions, I wou ld go as far as saying that the d emocrati c advances in the cen tres, wh ile they have indeed been the res ult of the s truggles by the pop ular classes, have at least been g reatly fa cil itated by the advantages their societies ha ve in the world system. Marx ex pected positive effects from universal s uffrage: the possib ility of a peaceful transit ion to socialism. His tory has not confirmed his hopes, as universal suffrage has fu nctioned in societies that have become gangrenous through nationalist / im perialist ideology and the real advantages associated with it (see Canfora 2006). The po pular movements and the peop les struggling for socialism and liberation from the imperial ist yoke were at the orig in o f genuinely d emocratic breakthroug hs, in iti ating a thL>ory and a p ractice that associa ted democracy wit h social progress. This evolution - beyo nd cap italism, its id eology and its limited p racti ce o f representat ive and procedural d emocracy - began very earl y, fro m the French Revolution. It was ex pressed in a more mature and radi cal way in the later revo lutions, in the Paris Co mmune, the Ru ssian Revolution, the C hi nese revo lution and a few others (those of Mexico, Cuba and Vietnam). The Russian Revolut ion proceeded to make the great reforms that condi tioned a possible socialist and de mocratic evo lution: agrarian reform, expropriflt ioll of the capitalists. The state deviations came later. Bu t it was wi tho ut do ubt the Chinese revol ution 91

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that posed the principl es of a popu lar democracy (w hich has nothing to do with the 'po pular democracies' of Eastern Europe), making real social and democratic ad vances that define a s tage in the long tr.lIlsition to d emocratic socialism. The abolition of the private property of liUld and the g uarantee of equal access to it fo r everyone cons tit ute a major advance. The implementation o f communes, o f the collecti ye management o f agricultural prod uction, of s mall, associated indus tries ,md o f pub li c services (sc hools, clinics, etc) could serve as an effective institutional fr.unewor k for a gr.l duaJ democrati sati on of the management o f aJlthese aspects of social life. The limits, inconsis tencies and retreats fro m po pular democra cy in C hina have many causes, which have been wel l analysed by Lin C hun (2006). They include the objecti ve contradicti ons that o ppose the three necessary thrusts toward s a transit ion project over a lo ng period (natio nal independence, the develo pment o f the productive forces, progress towards the values of equality and socia lis m), bu t also - and no less important - the absence o f formal legal guaran tees for the indi vidual and the imprecise institutionalisatio n of powers. The Maois ts' ' mass line' that invited the popular classes to pu t forward their ow n demands, gave them the mea ns of doing it, and did not raise the party as a self-proclaimed avant-garde, which ' taught' the people the truth o f which it had the mono poly, witho ut having to ' learn' from the people: all this s tems from the fundamental logic of a democratic projec t. This p rincip le is the very op posite of the thesis that theory comes from o utside the mo vement. The ' mass Line' is not, however, a substitute for the institutionalis.'ltion of rig hts and of organ isatio ns. The ca pitalis m of the o ligopolies is the enemy of democracy. The market decides everything, the parlia ment (where it exists), nothing: People thus risk being attracted to the illusions o f identity (para-ethnic and / or para-religio us ), which are in thei r very essence anti-democratic, and so they are imprisoned in an impasse. Ln the countries that we ha ve mentioned here, the communist parties, far from having been anti-democratic by nature ('totalitarian' as western propaganda always repeats), have on the contrary constituted the most democratic fo rces in their societies, despite the limitations of their practi ces (so-called democratic centralism, etc).

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Sudan is a tragic example of the con tradi ction between the practice of representati ve, mulliparty, electoral democracy on the one hand and, o n the other, the urgent need for an authentic d emocra cy that serves sociaJ progress. Several times in the con temporary hi story of Sudan (before the setting up of the military / Is lamic dictato rs hip) - a country th"t w"s committed to free electio ns - the revo lution in progress (supported by the people) was challenged by a (co rrectly) elected parliament, which was dornin"ted by the traditio n,,1 parties, who were enemies o f both democracy (w hen necess
Actors of the new advances A re these useful refl ecti ons for the actors of the new advances (especiaJly in Latin America)? I think so. Beca use while in Latin AmC'Tica electoral democracy has, in fa vou rable circumstances, made unde niab le victo ries possible as wel l as the formation of goverrunents decid ed to engage in a progressive social transfor mation, the past his tory J have discussed here shows Ihatlhese very quickly end up in an impasse. The analyses and the strategies for pursuing strugg les that I propose here go beyond those that were formu lated in the Bandung era, fro m 1955 onwards. At that time, the regimes emerged fTOm the national JibC'Talion strugg les of Asia and Afri ca.

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They were legitimate and popular because of thi s and were generally of a ' populist' nature, which was recognised in the praclices o f the s tate (oft en confused with it s charismatic hero) and the party (manufactured at the top in certain ca~, never very d emocratic in its practice, even when it was the heir of the popular mobilisations associa ted with the liberatio n s trugg les) in thei r relations wi th ' the people' (a vag ue substitute for the aJliance o f the identified po pular classes ). The ideology on which the legitima cy of power was based d id not make reference to Ma rxism. It was cobbled together, assoc iating a past largely reinvented and presented as essentially ' progressive' (because o f the so-call ed democratic ways in wh ich power was exercised in the o ld communities and bec ause of relig io us interpretations of the same kind ) w ith foundin g natio nalis t myths. This amalgamation was done with a prag matism that was hardly concerned about the requirements of tec hnological and admini strative moderni sation . The self-proclaimed socialis m of the 8andung regimes was vague in the extreme and diffi cult to d istinguish from the populis t s tatism that redistributes and g uarantees soc ial justice . Should o ne not point o ut the ex is tence of many of these character istics in the recent advances of Latin A merica, w hich has not had the opportunity of knowing the Bandung experience and so risks reproducing its limitations? I have develo ped quite another vision of the question of socialism and am careful nol to reduce the ' construction of socialis m' to achieving e\'en the w ho le of a current, maximally possible prog ramme. I describe such a programme as ' natio nal, popular and democrat ic' , one which open s the way (but not more) to the lo ng, secular transiti on to sociali sm. I il void the simple phrilse o f ' sociali sm of the 21 st century' and fa vour, instead, ' progress alo ng the long route o f the transition to socialis m' .

From Nepal to India: a contagion? At the very moment when impe riaH st globalisation seemed to be triwnphing, a small country in the heart of Asia s tarted a genuine revolutionary process. A liberation army that supp orted the ge nerali sed revolt o f the peasantry reached the gates of the ca pital where, in turn, 94 ngntea IT

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the popu lation rose to chase away th e roy al governm ent and welcomed as a li berator the Co mmuni st Party o f Nepa l (Maois!), which had proved t he effectiveness o f its revol utionary s trategy. 11 is th e most radica l, victorious, revolutionary advance of o ur epoch and thus the most promising. For comp arison, it wou ld be as if t he FA RC of Co lombia m anaged to mobilise all the peas,mtry of the country (actuaJly impossible to imagine) and link their victory to a po pular urban uprisin g, chasing U ribe from Bogo ta (equ ally illlPossible to imagin e), thus enablin g FARC to d irect the new revo lut io nary government! Tllis victory in Nepal has created the condit ions for a first s uccess, that of a national, populm and democrat ic revo lution, described by the party itself as anti -feuda l and anti-imperi al ist. In fac t, the generalised urban revolt, w hich involved bot h popu lar and middle classes, forced all the po litical part ies to proclaim themselves, in their turn, as 'revolutionary republicans' . They had never thought of doing so a few weeks before the victory o f the Maoists, having opted for pe.1cefu l stru gg le and the reformis t path, and in vested their hopes in ciections. T he other communist pmty, the Unifi ed Marxi s t-~ nini s t Communis ts (U MLC), had joined the Cil mp of the reformists, denouncing the ' ildven turis m' o f the Miloists. T he Communis t Party of N ep aJ (Maois t) had del iberately decided to make a compromise agreement with the ot her parties (the Nepal Cong ress, the UMLC and o thers) in the belief that they had acC[uired il minimum of legitimacy by ra llying to the revolutio n, w hic h cou ld not therefore be easily contes ted after wards. T he co mpromise agreement did no t solve fut ure problems - on the contrary, it s howed how enormous they were. The firs t chillienge WilS Ihe ilgrar iiln C[ueslio n. The peasil nl uprising was t he result of the correct analysis o f the agrari an C[uestio n made by the Maoists and the s trategic conclusions, eC[ ually correct, that they had drawn : the g re'l t majority of the peasan ts, those w ho had no lruld (often Dalits in certilin reg ions of the coun try), or were over-ex plo ited tenan t / sharecroppers or ow ners o f tiny plots, were able to organise themselves into a united front and moved on to Milled strugg le, the occupation of Ia.nd (including giving access to Dalits, which was denied them by the caste system in Indi a) and reducing the rents paid to landow ners, etc. 95

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The upris i.n g had, for these reaso ns, gradually spread throughou t the country and the po pular anny, o rganised by the Maoists, inflicted defeats o n the state army. But it is also true that when the revolt in the ca pital opened its gates to the (Maoist) C ommunis t Party, the popular army had no t yet managed fo overcome IIlat o f the state, w hich was strong ly supported and equipped by the government in Delhi and the im peri alis t powers. The line defended by the Maoists is one of a radical revolutionary ag rarian reform, guaranteeing access to land (and the necessary means fo r li ving on it) to all the poor peasantry (the g reat majority), witho ut, however, touching the property o f the rich peasants. T he second challenge was the qu estion of de mocracy : was jt to be bo urgeois or popular democnlcy? In Nepalese soc iety there arc the defenders of the conventio nal fo rmula of democracy, which is reduced to multipartyism, electio ns, the for mal separatio n of powers (among o thers, the independence of the ju diciary) and the p rocla mation of human and fund amental po liti cal rig hts . The Maoists saw that the fun damental rights on which this democrilcy was based put respect for private property at th e top of the hierarchy of so-called human ri g hts. Instead, the Maois ts defended the prio ri ty of social rig hts without w hich no social prog ress was possible: the rig ht to Ide, to food, to lod ging, to work, to e ducation and to health. Private property is not sacred; it is Iirnited by the requirements of implementing soci al rig hts. Ll other words, so me in Nepal defend ed the concept of democracy dissociate d from questions o f social prog ress (the bourgeo is and d ominant co ncept of ' d emocracy'), while o thers s upported democ fil cy associated with social prog ress. The debate - in Nepal - was not confused . The Maois ts said that they did not o bjecl to private property, be it peasant, artisanal o r even capitalis t, nationa l o r foreign. They were not, however, against na tionalisa tion jf the nationa l interes t demanded it (prohibiting foreign banks from imposing the integra tion of the country into g lobalised financial markets). They only challenged the fe udill land ow nership, whose benef iciaries had been the clients o f s uccessive kings, w ho were authorised to dispossess the peasan t communities. Nor did they challenge personal rig hts and the independence o f a judiciary responsible for guafilntccing them .

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They i'ldded to tllis prog ramme an inviti'ltion to the Cons tituent Assembly to formul ,1 te not only the main principles of social right s, but also the institutional fo rms necessmy to imp lement them. Popular democracy, as they defin ed it, was to be invented g mdually, thro ugh the actions bo th of the popular cli'lsses organising themselves and by the state. Evidently, there is no guaranlee that protects the future from the ris k of things getting o ut of control. This co uld be the power of the s tate beco ming i'lutocratic. O r it could, just i'l S likely, be i'ln opportunist alignment about Wh,1t is immed iate ly ' possibl e', in w hich the Maoists might rally to the moderate line of their rivals. Bu t w hy condemn the Nepalese in adva nce when all these questions are the object of serious debates w ithin the party and w hen the plurality of o pinions is accepted ? These analyses and s trategies for purs uing the s trugg les go beyo nd those that were formulated in the Bandu ng era. The Mi'loists of Ne pal have deve loped a completely diffe rent vision o f sociali sm. They do not redu ce the construction of socialism to the carry ing o ut of their current max imum programme (radical agrarian refor m, a peop le's army, popu lar democra cy) . They describe it as a ' national, popular, democrati c' programme, o pening the way (but not more than thatl to the long, secu lar transition to socialis m. They do not usc the expression 'sociaJi sm o f the 21st century'. The ..,uestion of the econo mi c ind epend en ce o f the country is also a serious challenge. Nepal is classed by the United Nations as o ne of the ' least developed countries' . The modern adminis tration of the state and of social services and infrastructure works depend, for this reason, on fo reign aid. The present government is aware, it seems, of the need to li berate itself from this extreme depend ency. But it realises that t his can only be done g radually. Food sovereignty in Nepal does not constitute a major problem, even tho ugh self-sufficiency in thi s fi eld means food rations th"t are often d eplorab le. The organis..,tion of mo re efficient and less costly marketing networks for the producer peasants and urban consumers is, however, i'I proble m beca use the in terests of the intermediaries are "t stake. To organise s ma ll-scale production that is half artis.,nal and half industrial and w hich is capable o f 97

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reducing depend ency o n impo rts requires considerab le time and effort to produ ce app ropriate results. The Mao ist disco urse is abou t a model of inclu sive d evelopment, o ne wh ich benefit s the popu lar classes d irectly and at each s tage of its imple men tation, as opposed to the Indian model of growth that is associated wi th soci al ex clu sivity, whic h benefit s only 20 per cent of the popu lation and condemns the ot her 00 per cent to stagnatio n, if not to pauperisation. It s hows an option based o n principles Wllic h one can only suppor t. However, how it is to be translated in to an effec tive prog ramme for imp lementation remains to be formulated . Revolut ionary Nepal comes up against the ferocio us hosti lity of its main neig hbour, Indi a, whose governing classes fear its contagious effec ts. The ende mic revol t of the Indian Nax alites cou ld, by gelling inspiration from the lessons of the victories in Nepal, seriously affect the stabi l ity of the mod es of exploitation and oppression in the Indiiln subcontinen t. The hostil ity o f India sho uld no! be underestimated . It is o ne o f the reasons for the military coo peration between IJ1dia and the United Stntes . T he lndinn government is mo bi lising considerable poli tica l means and it also finances, among o thers, the co nstitu ti on in Nepal o f an' alternati ve' Hindu po licy, a long the li nes of th e Indian BW and similar to the po litical Islam o f Pakistnn and elsew here, as well as the politiC
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g looalisation. No do ubt the governing classes of the country will try to <1d vallce su ccessfully wilhill the sys tem o f c<1p italist gloo<1 lisation . A large majority of wes tern observers s hare tltis illu sion, as they are incapable of realising the gro wing ex tent of the social con tradictions that these effo rts will en tail. It is thus possible thilt Indi<1 wiU beco me Ihe arenil for the 'gTeill revolutio n' of the 21s t century, mther like Chill<1 was in the last century, and that the o bjective realities will force India, in turn, to initiilte the necessary ilnd possible passilge beyond capi talism. In these circumslilnces the cont<1gion of the Nepalese mod el would h<1ve positive imp licat ions at the g lobal level.

References It is d ifficult to prov ide refere nces as they ar e almost all in th e Arabic

langua ge, or I' arsi fo r Afghanistan (and per haps in RU.5sia n ). As far a s th e Arab world is concerned I should li ke to ri te two im portant co llecti ons : The collectio n of studies on th e commwlist parti ~:s, over I, BOO pages, put togeth er by Fay.;al Darra}, for the Ar ab Cenlre of Social is t Studies (Damascus). These s tudies arc scru pulou sly honest concernin g Ihe facts and d ocum ents cited (the interpretation is, as al\\'ays, a ques ti on o f d ebilte). The collection of s tu dies on the Egyp tian commlUlis t party (some 15 volumes of memoirs, d ocuments and analyses), put together and published in Cairo by the Arab and African Research CenlTe. ~ I ore

accessible to English -speaking read ers are the following :

Am in, Sami r (1 983) The Flltllle of llIaoism, Part II, Chapter 2, New York, Mon Ull y Review Press Amin, Samir (2005) 'China, market socialism and US hegem ony', R e!';e"W (Bing hamton ), vol. XX VIII, no . 3, pp. 259--79 Amin, Samir (2006) Br.volld US Hrgemorty, London, Zed Books Am in, Samir (2008) l.'Et'dl .III Srld, panorama de I";P"'I"" de Bandllng (19551980), Paris, I.e Temps d es Cerises, p articula rl y for th e ad van ces in NaS6Cr 's Egy pt, ~ Ial i and some o thers Am in, Sami r (2009) ' Nepal, a promising JC\'olubonary ad vance', Alon/My Ra';(,,!', New York, February Amin , Sami r (2010) From Capitalism to Ci/,iilzation, Delhi, Tulika Books, in particular for thc d cvelopmcn ts of lhc drama of tllC grcat rcvolutions and thc co ntribu ti on of !-.!aoism (p p. 29-.-36)

99

ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM? C anlora, Luciano (2006) La Demacmfie, I,istairc d'une idea/agie, Paris, Seuil Lin, Chun (2006) 'flu: 'liansfarmatiall afCilinese Socialism, Durham, NC, Duke Unin.:'rsily Press

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Peasant agriculture and modern family agriculture This c hapte r tackles capi tali st agriculture and agri culture practi sed w he re capitalism pred omina tes. It loo ks parti cularly al the land tenure reform that is necessary in Asia and Africa .

The North: family agriculture integrated into dominant capitalism Modern family agriculture, dominant in Western Europe and in the United Stales, has clearly s hown its supe riority co mpared with ot he r form s of agricultural produ ction. Annual produ ction per worker (Ihe eq ui valent of 1,(0) to 2,000 tonncs of ccreal) has no equal and it has e nabled a minimum proportion of the active popu lation (abou t 5 pe r cen t) to supply the whole cou ntry abundant ly and even produce expo rtabl e su rp luses. Modern famil y agri cu lture has also s how n an excep tion
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

In this famil y agric ultura1 business, its sell-consumpti on no longer co unts. It depends entirely for its econo mic legitimacy on it s production for the market. Thus the logic that commands the produelion opt ions is no longer the S<1.me as that of the agri cultural peasants of yes terday (anaJysed by C hayanov) or of today in Third World countri es. The efficiency of the agricultural famil y business is the consequence of its modern equipment. T hese businesses possess 90 per cent of the tractors and othe r agricultural equipment in use in the wo rld. These machines are bought (often a ll credit) by the farmer s and arc therefore their property. In the logic of capitalism, the farmer is both a worker and a capitalis t and thei r income s hould correspond to the sum of the wages for their work and the profit from thei r owners hip of the capi tal being used. But it is not so. The net income of farmer s is comparable to the average wage ea rned in indus try in the same co untry. State in ter vention and regulatory policies in Europe and the United States, where thi s form of agriculture do minates, have as their declared objecti ve ensuring (through subsidies) the equality of ' peasant' and worker incomes. The profits from the capital used by farmers are therefore co lleeled by seg ments of indus trial and financial capital further up the food chain . In the family agr icultu re of Europe and the United States, the land rent compo nent, w hi ch in conventional economics is meant to cons titute remuneration for the productivity of the land, does not fi gure in the remuneration of th e farmer l owner, or the owner (w hen they arc not the farmer ). The French model of Illl estlll's ie du propriall i,.e (pulling the ow ner to sleep ) is very tell ing: in law the rig hts o f the farmer are given priority over those of the owner. In the United States, w here res pect for property always has absolute p rior ity, the same result is obtained by forcing, de facto, almost all family businesses to own the land that they farm. The rent from ownership thus disappears from the remuneration calculation o f the farm ers. The efficien cy o f this family agricu lture is also due to the fael that it farm s (as owner or not) enoug h good land: neither too s mall, nor poi ntlessly large. The s urface farmed corresponds, for each stage of the dewlopment of mechani sed equipment, to what a farmer alone (or a s mall famil y unit) can work. It has gradually 102

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ex tend ed, as Marcel Mazoyer (Mazoyer and Roudard 1997) has demons tr,l ted ex tremely well (by the fac ts) and illus trated (as an efficiency requirement). Con trol o ver agricultural production is also exercised down the food chain by modern commerce (particulilrly the s upe rmarkets). In actual fact , therefore, the agricultural family unit, effi cient as it is (and it is), is only a sub-contractor, caug ht in the pincers between, ups tream, agro-business (which imposes selected seeds today, CMOs to mo rrow), indus try (which supplies the eq uipment and che mical produ cts) ,Uld finan ce (wh ich provides the necessary credits), and, dow ns tream, the co mmercialisatio n of the s upermarkets. T he status of the fa rmer is more like that o f the artisan (individual produ cer) who llsed to work in the ' putting out' system (the weaver do minated by the merchant who s upplied h im with the thread and so ld the material produ ced). It is true that this is not the o nly form o f agriculture in the modern capitalist world . There are also large agribusiness enterprises, sometimes big owners who employ many waged labourers (when these estates arc not leased o ut to tenant family farmers). This was generally the case w ith land in the colonies and still is the case in South Africa (this form of latifwldia having been abolished by Zimbabwe's agrari,Ul reform). TIlere are various forms in Latin A merica, sometimes not very modernised and sometimes very modernised (that is, mec hanised), as in the Southern Cone. But family agriculture remains dominant in Europe and Ihe United Stales. Actua lly ex isting (see Tra nslator 's note) socialis m experimented with various forms of industrial agric ultural production . The 'M arxism ' underly ing this o ptio n was that o f Karl Kauts ky who, at the end o f the 19th cent ury, had predicted no t the mode rnisation of the agricultural family bu siness (its eq uipment and its s pec ial isation) but its d isappearance altogether in favour o f large productio n units, like facto ries, believed to benefi t from the advan tages o f a tllOro ug hgoing internal division of labour. Thi s predictio n did not materialise in Europe and the United Slates. But the myth was belie ved in the Soviet Union, in Eas tern Europe (wit h some nUilnces), in C hina, in Vietnam (in the modalities s pecific to tha i co untry) a nd, at one time, in C uba. Ind ependent ly o f t he o ther rea sons that led to the failure of these experiment s (bureaucratic managemen t, bad macroeconomic 103

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p lanning, reductio n of res ponsibilities due to lack of democ racy, etc), e rrors of judgem ent were m ad e about the advantages of the division of labour and specialis ation, w hich were extrapo latedw ithout justificatio n - from certai n forms of industry and applied to o the r field s of produ ction and social activity. If the reasons fo r this fOlilure
The South: peasant cultivators in peripheral capitalism Peasan t culti va tors in the So uth constitute almost half of humanity - three billio n human beings. The types of agriculture they pmctice vary: those who have 'be nefited ' from the G reen Revol utio n (fe rtili sers, pes ti cides and selected seeds), altho ug h no t very mechanised, have seen the ir p rod uctio n rise to be tween 10,COOkg and 50,OOOkS per labourer, w hile for those w hose practices are the sa m e as before this revolutio n, prod uctio n is o nly around 10 quintals per labo urer. The ratio be tween the average producti on of a farmer in the North and thOlt of peasa nt agriculture, w hi ch was 10 to 1 before 1940, is now 100 to 1. In ot her words, the rale of prog ress in ag ricultural productivity ha s IOlrgcly ou ts tripped that of other Ol cti vi tie s, bring ing abou t a fiv efo ld lowering o f the real price. Peasant agriculture in the countries o f the South is a lso well and truly integrated into local and world capitalis m. However, closer s tudy immediately reveal s bo th the conve rgences in and differences between the two types of ' famil y' eco nomy. There are huge differences, w hi ch are visible and unde niable: the impo rtan ce of subs istence food in the peas ant economies, the o nly means of survival for those rural popu latio ns; the low efficiency of this agriculture, not eq uipped w ith tractors or o the r m aterials and oft en divided into tiny plot s; the po verty of the 104 ngntea IT

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rural wo rld (three-quarters of the victims of wld er-nourislunen t are rura !); the growing incapacity of these sys tems to ensure food s upplies for their towns; the s heer immensity of the problems because the peasant economy affects nearly half of humanity. In spi te of these differences, pe asant agricu Iture is already integrated into the dorninant g lobal capi talist sy stem. To the ex tent o f its contribution to the market, peasant agriculture depends on bought inputs (at least of chemical products and selected seeds) and is the victim of the o HgopoLies that control the marketing o f these products. For the regions that have ' benefited' from the G reen Revo lution (half of the peasantry of the South), the drain o n the value o f products by d ominant capi tal is very great, both upstream and downstream. Bu t, relatively speaking, the drain is also heavy for the other half of the peasantry of the So uth, g iven the weakness o f its production.

Modernisation of agriculture by capitalism Is the mod erni sation of the agricu lture of the Sou th by capitalis m possible and d esir.,ble? Lei us usc the hy pot hesis of a strategy for the development o f agriculture that tries to rep roduce syste matically in the Sou th the course of modern family agriculture in the North. O ne cou ld easily imilgine thilt if some 50 million more modern (ilnns were g iven access to the large areas of land which would be necessary (taking it from the peasant economy and of course choosing the best soils) and if they had access to the capital markets, enabling them to equip thelnselves, they could produce the essential o f what the creditworthy urban consumers still currently o btain from peasant agriculture. Bu t w hat wou ld happen to the billions of no n-competi tive peasant produ cers? They wouJd be inexorably elimi nated in a s hort period of time, a few decades. W hat wou ld happen to these billions o f human beings, most o f them already the poorest o f the poor, but who feed themse lves, for better and for worse (and for a third of them, it is for worse)? Within 50 years, no indu strial d evelo pment, more o r less competitive, even in a far -fetched hypothesis o f a continual yearly growt h of 7 per cent for three-quarters of humanity, cou ld absorb even a thi rd o f thi s labour reserve. Ca pitalism, by its nature, calUlOt resolve the 105

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pe<1 sant ques tion: the only prospects it can offer are a planet full of slums and biUions of ' too many' human beings. We ha ve therefore reac hed the point w hen, to open up a new fi eld for the ex pansion of ca pital (t he modernisation of ag ricultural produ ction), it is necessary to des troy - in human termsen tire societies. Fifty million new effi cient produ cers (200 million human bei ngs wi th th eir families) o n the o ne hand, three billion excl uded peopl e o n the o ther. T he creative aspect o f the o peration wou ld be only a drop of water in the ocean o f destruction it requires. I thu s concl ude that capitalis m has entered into its ph ase of declining senility: the log ic of the sy stem is no longer able to ens ure the simple s urvival of huma nity. C apitalism is beco ming barbaric and leads directly to genoc ide. It is more th'1I1 ever necessary to repla ce it w ith ano ther d evelopment logic which is more rational. So, whafs to be do ne? It is necessary to accept the need to maintain peas.--lIlt agriculture for the foreseeable future in the 21 s t century. Not out o f romantic nostalgia for the past, but simply because the solution to the problem is to overtake the logic that drives ca pitalism and to participate in the long, secu lar transition to world socia1is m. It is therefo re necessary to work o ut po licies to regu late the relatio ns hips between the ' market' and peasant agri culture. At the national and regional levels, these regulatio ns, spec ific and adapted to local conditions, mu st protect natio nal production, thus ensuring the indispensable food sovereignty o f nations - in o ther words, the regulations mus t dcLink the internaJ pri ces from those of the so-called world market. A gradual increase in the productivity of peasant agricu lture, which will doubtless be slow but continuous, wou ld make it possibl e to control the exodus o f rural populations to the tow ns. A t the level o f what is called the world market, the desirable regulations can probably be appl ied thro ug h interregional agreements thilt meet the requirements o f a development that integrates people rather than excludes them.

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There is no alternative to food sovereignty Allhe world level, food consumpli on is assured, Ihrough competilion for 85 per cenl of ii, by loc
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

pOpuli'l lion beller (or less bi'ldly). And it is precisely those w ho have not done so (A fri ca) that ".re sunk in chronic malnutrition and famine . This would not appear to embarrass the defenders o f the so-called principle o f ' food security' (more acc urately, ' food insecurity'). There is lillie d oubt thi'l t, undernei'l th this obstinacy over A frica co mmHting itself to paths that the su ccesses of Asia have ins pired, there lies more t han a touch o f contempt (if not ra cism) towards the peoples concerned. It is regrettable that s uch nonsense is to be fo und in mi'lny wes tern circles and organisi'lti ons wi th good intentions (NGOs and even research centres) . Bruno Parmentier (2007) has clearly demons trated the total failure of the ' food sec urity' option. Governments who thought they could cover the need s of thei r poor urbiUl populi'lti ons throug h their exports (oil among others ) have fou nd themselves trapped by the food deficit that i.s growing at an alarming rate as a res ult o f these policies. Fo r the other countries - particularly the Afri can ones - the situi'ltion is even more di si'ls trous. On to p of this, the econo mic crisis ini tiated by the financ ial collapse of 2008 is further aggravating the situati on - and will continu e to do so. I! is sadly amusing to note how,
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land tenure reform vital for peasant societies The main issue in the debate on the future of peasant agricultures is the rules governing the access to land. The necessary reform s of the land te nure sys te ms in Africa and Asia mu st be made from the perspecti ve of a develo pment that benefits the whole society, in particular the working and popular classes (sec Trans lator 's note), including, of course, the peasants. [t mu st be orie n ted towards reducing ine£[uali ties and radically eliminating poverty. This development paradig m combines a mixed macro-economy (associa ting private enterprise and public plalllling) based on the double democ ratisation of the management o f the market and of the s tate and its interven tions, and the optio n to d evelop an agricu lture based on peasant famil y cultivation . Imple menting this sci of fundam e ntal principles - the special ways and means of each country and phase of d evelopment will have to be worked o ut - constitutes in itself the construction of the alte rna ti ve in its national dimens ions. This mu st, of course, be acco mpanied by evolutions that call s uppo rt it, at both regional and world levels, throug h the con struction o f an alternative g lobalisation, negotiated a nd no longer imposed uni laterally by dominant transnational capital, the co ll ective impe rialis m of the Triad and the hege mony of the U nited States. The regu lations governing access to the u se of agricu ltural land mu st be conceived through a perspective tha t integr"tes a nd does not excl ude, which enables culti va tors as a w hole to have access to the land, a prio r condition for the re production of a peasant society. Thi s fundam ental righ t is certain ly not enough. [t also has to be accompanied by policies tha' assis t pea sant family units to produce in conditions that help maintain the grow th of national production (guara nteeing, in tu TIl, the food sovereignty of the coun try) and a parallel improveme nt in the real income of all the peasants invol ved. A collection of ma croeconomic proposals and appropriate policies for managing the m has to be imple mented, a.nd negot iations concerning the organisation o f international trade must be subordinated to the m. Access to la.nd mu st be regul ated by the statu s of its ownership. The terminology utilised in this fi eld is often imprecise, because 109

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o f a lack o f conceptualisatio n. In Eng lis h the wo rd s ' land tenu re' and ' land system' a.re oft en used interchange
Land te nu re syst em s based on pri vate ownershi p of land In this case the owner disposes ai, to use the terms of Ro man law, the USliS (rig ht to develop ), t he j i"r/(.'l ll s (ownership of the prod u cts of this exploitation) and the ab uslI s (the rig ht to transfe r o wnership ). This rig ht is absol u te in that the o w ner can cu lti vate their I
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the feudal lord and those of the king. The assault o n these rig hts took the form of the enclosures in England, imitated in various ways i.n all European countries during the 19th centu ry. Marx very soo n denounced this radi cal transfo rmation that excl uded most o f the peasan ts from access to the use of land - and who were destined to become emigrant proletarians in the town or remain where they were as agricultural labourers (or s harecroppers) - and he classified these meas ures as primitive accumulation, dis possessi ng the producers of the land and the use of the mea ns of production. Using the terms of Roman law to d esc ribe the statute of modern bourgeois ow nership implies that it dates fro m time immemorial, that is, that it dates back to the owners hip of the land in the Ro man Emp ire and, more precisely, to slave- labour land owners hip . In actual fact because these parti cular forms of ow nership disappeared in fe udal Europe, it is im possible to talk of the co ntinuity of a western concep t of owners hip (itself associated wi th individualism and the values that it represents). The rheto ric o f the cap italis t discourse - the liberal ideo logy - has no t on ly produced this myth of western conti nuity. It has produced another myth that is s till more dangerous: that of an abso lu te and superior rationa lity of the management o f an eco nomy based on the pri vate and exclusive owners hip of the means o f productio n, whic h include a.gricultural land. Conventional economics does in fact claim that the market, that is, the alienability of the ownership of ca pital and land, ensures the optimal (the mos t effi cient) usage of these faclors of production. According to this logic, therefore, land must be turned into a commodity like the ot hers, w hich ca n be alienated ilt the price of the market to gua rantee that the best use is made of it for the owner co ncerned and for the whole society. Tlus isonly a mi serable piece of tauto logy, lmt it is what the whole discourse of the bourgeois economy is based a ll . This same rhetoric thinks it can legitimise the principle of ow nership of land by the filct that it il lo ne g ives the culti vator who invests to im prove the yield s per hectare and the producti vity of their wor k (and of those that they employ, if this is the case) the guarilntee that they wiU not s uddenly be dispossessed of the fruit of their lilbours and their savings. Tlus is not true at all, for other forms of reg ulations on the 111 ngntea IT

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rig ht of land use can produce the same results. Fi.nally. th is dorrunant discourse extends the conclusions that it believes to draw from the cons truction of western modernity. to propose them as the on ly rul es necessary fo r the progress of all other peoples. Giving over the land everywhere to pri va te owners h.ip in the current sense o f the term, such as that practised in the centres o f capitalism, is to apply to the w ho le world the policy of the enclos u res - in other words, dis possessing the peasants. T his is no t a new process: it was ini tiated and continued dur i.n g the cen turies p receding the world ex pan sion of capitalis m, parti cularly in the colonial sys tems. Today, the World Trade Organisation actually proposes to accelerate this process, altho ugh the ens uing d estruction that th is capi tal ist op tion invo lves is in creasing ly foreseeable and calculab le. For this reaSO ll, the resistan ce of the peasants and the peoples in volved can make it possible to build a real alternative that is genuinely human-oriented .

Land tenure systems not based on private owne rship of land This definition, being nega ti ve, cannot apply to a homogenous group. For in all human soc ieties, access to land is regulated. But this is done either through cllstomary commun ities, mod ern local authorities or the s tate o r. more precisely and more often, by a collec ti on of institutions and pract ices that involve indi vid uals, loca l authorities and the slale. The cus tomary management (ex pressed in terms o f customary law or so-called custo mary law) has almost always excluded p rivate ownership (in the modern sense) and alw ays g uaranteed access to the land to aU the families (rather than indi vidual s) concerned - that is, those who cons titute a dis tinct village community and identify themselves as s uch. But it hardly g ave equal access to the land . First, it usually excluded foreigners (very often what remained of the co nq uered peop Ie) and slaves (of various status); it also unequally d istributed land according to members hip o f clans, lineage and castes, or status (c hiefs, freedmen, etc). So it is inappropriate to indiscriminately praise these cu stomary rig hts as - alas - is done by numero u s ideo logues of anti-imperialist nationalism. Progress wi ll certainly require them to be questio ned. 112 ngntea IT

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C usto mary management has almost never been carried out by independent villages, which were in fact nearly always integ rated into some sort of s tate, s tabl e or s hifting, so lid or precarious, but seldom absen!. The usage rights of communiti es and o f the families thilt composed the m hilYe illwilYs been limited by those of the state th
ENDING TH E CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

most agricu ltu ral land - particularly the most fe rtile o nes - in all Asia, except for C hina, Viet nam and the former Soviet rep ublics o f Central Asia. There remai n only the vestiges of para-cus tomary systems, particu larly in the poores t areas and those less attractive to prevailing capitali st agricul ture. This s tru cture is highly d ifferentiated, jux taposing large lan downers (rural capi talists in my termino logy), rich peasants, middle peasants and poor peasants wi thout land. There is no peasant organisation or movement that transcends these acu te class confl icts. In Arab Africa (but not in Egypt), in Sout h Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya the co lonial authorities granted their co lon isers ' modern' private property, gene rally o f a latifundia type. T his inheritance has certainly been e li.minated in Algeria, bu t there the peasan try had practica lly di sappeared and been proletarianised o r reduced to vagrancy by the extension of the co lonial properties, while in Morocco and Tunisia the local bourgeoisie took over (w hich also par tiall y happened in Kenya). In Zi mbabwe the revolution und er way has challenged the co lonial heritage on behalf partly of new owners, w ho arc more urban than rural, and partly o n behalf o f the 'communities of poor peasa nts' . So uth Afri ca, for the time being has not taken part in tllis movemen t. The stri ps of degenerated para-cu stom ary sys tems whi ch remain in the ' poor' regions of Morocco and Berber Algeria, as in the Bantustans o f So uth Afr ica, are s uffering from the threat of private appropriation, encouraged by e lemen ts inside and ou tside the communi ties concerned . In all these situations, the peasant struggles (and so metimes the organisations that support them ) s hou ld be identified more p rec isely: do they constit ute movements and represen t claims by ri ch peasants w ho are in confli ct w ith some s tate policies (and the influence of the dominant world system on them)? O r arc they movements of poor and landless peasants? Co uld they both form an alliance agains t the dominant (so-ca lled neoliberall system, and on wha t conditions and to wha t exten t? Can the claims whet her they arc exp ressed or not - of the poor, landless peasants be fo rgotten? In tro pi cal Africa, the apparent persis tence of these cus tomary systems are certainly more visible. Beca use here the co lonisation model too k off in a different direction known as the e("(Jnomil' de 114 ngntea IT

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traitl'. Tllis concept, which has no Eng lis h translation, means that the management of nccess to Innd was left to the so-called custo mary nuthorities, who were nevertheless controlled by the co loninl s tate (either throug h genuine traditiollill chi efs or fal se ones fabricated by the ildministriltion. ). T he objec tive of tllis con tro l was to for ce the peasa nts to produce, beyond their own s ubsis tence, a quota o f s pecific ex po rt products (groundnuts, colton, coHee, Cil CilO). The maintenilnce of il land tenure system thilt did not recognise pri vate property was convenient for the colonisers as land rent did not have to be tOlke n into account in caJculnting the price of the products. This rcsuJted in the degradation of soils, destroyed by expilnd ing crops, sometimes definitively (as, fo r example the desertification of Senegal where g roundnu ts hOld been cultivOlted ). Here, once again, capitalism demonstmtes tllnt the s hort-term ratio nality inherent in it s dominan t logic is largely res po nsib le fo r ecologicill d isas ters. T he juxtaposition o f subsis tence food crop s and ex port crops also made it possible to pily peasan ts for their wor k nt levels close to zero. For these rensons, to tnlk nbout the ' cus tomary land tenure system' is grossly mislending: it is a new regime thnt conserves on ly the appea rance o f tradi tion, o ften its leas l interes ting aspects. C hinOl nnd Vi etnnlll provid e a unique example of n system for mnnaging nccess to the Innd which is neither based on p rivate ownership, nor o n cus to m, but o n a ne w revolutiolln ry rig ht, unknown elsewhere, which is thilt of all the peilsants (d escribed as the inhabitants o f a village) having equal access to land (Olnd I stress the equal). T lus is the most beautifu l acq uisition of the C hinese and Vietnamese revolutions. In C luna, and stiU more in Vietnam, w hi ch hnd il deeper colonisation ex perience, the old land tenure systems (those I hOlve described as tributary) were already fairl y erod ed by do minant cilpitalis m. The old governing classes of the imperial power syste m had taken over ownersl1ip of ilgricultural land almost as pri va te property, and the new classes of rich peas,lnts were created in the ens uing ca pitalist development. Mao Zedong was the fir st to descri be an agrar iiln revolut ionary strategy based on the mobiJisOltion of mos t of the poor peasants, who were without land or other assets. The victory of thi s revolutio n mOld e it possible to abolish the private ownersllip o f land right from the 11 5

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begituung - replacing it w ith ownership by the state - as well as the organisation of new forms of e(jual access to land for all peasan ts. True, this procedure has pflssed throug h several s uccessive s tages, including the Sov iet-inspired model based on production cooperatives. The limits of their achievements led both coun tries to return to the ide" of famil y peasant units. Are they viable? Can they produce a continual imp rovemen t in production wi thout freeing up too much rural labour? O n what conditions? What kinds of s upport are required from the state? W hat fonns of politica l management « 111 meetthj s challenge? Ideally, the model invo lves the double alfirmation of the rig hts o f the s tate (the only ow ner) and of the usufructuaries (the peasant famil y). The state guarantees the equal di vision of the village lands among all the families and it prohibi ts all other usage o ther than family culti vation, for example the renting o f land. It g uarantees that the result of investments made by the us ufructuaries are g iven back to them immediate ly throug h their ri ght of ow nership of all the produce of their land, w hich is marketed free ly, althoug h the s tate guarantees purchase at a minimum price. In the lo nger term the children who remain o n the land can inherit from the usufructuaries (those who definiti vely leave lose thei r righ t to the land , w hich reverts to land available for future redis tribution). This is the casc, of coursc, for fertile land, but also for small, even dwarf-sized plots, so that the sy stem is only viable if there is vertical investment (the Green Revolution but wi th minim'll mecllilnis'l tio n), whi ch proves as effective in incre'lsing prod uction through rural acti vities as horizontal in vestment (extension o f the holdings, supported by intensified mechanisation). Has this ideal mod el ever been imple mented ? The pe riod of Deng Xi'loping in China, for eX'l mple, was s urely dose to it . Nevertheless, even if it has created a g reater degree of e(juaJity wi thin a village, it has never been ab le to avoid the ine(jualities between one communi ty and another, which are created by the differences in the (juality of the soils, the po pulation density, p roximity to urban markets. No o ther system of redistr ibutio n (even during the Soviet-e ra s tructures o f cooperati ves and state marketing monopo lies) has managed to resolve tlus challenge. What is certainly more serio us is th'ltthe system itself is subject to internal and external pressures that undermine its aims and 116 ngntea IT

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social impact. Access to cred it and fa vourable conditions for the s upp ly of inputs are the object of lJargaining and interventions o f all kinds, legal and illegal: equal access to the land is not the same as equal access to the lJest conditions for productio n. T he increasing popu lari ty of the ma rket ideology promotes this erosion: the system tolerates tenan t farming (if not re-Iegit imising it) and the hiring of wage lalJour. T he discourse of the rig ht - enCOlIfaged from t he glolJal Nort h - repeats that it is necessa ry to give the peasan ts 'ownership' of the land and open up Ihe market in agricu lturaJ lan d. It is very clear thaI those s upporting litis are the rich peasants (if not agro-lJusinc ss), who want to increase their ho ld ings. The management o f this syslem of access to land for the peasan ts has been ens u red until no w by Ihe state and the party together.1t may welllJe that tltis is on account of the vi Uage cou ncil s that have lJeen genuinely re-e1ected and lJecause there is no other way to mobilise the op inion of the majority and reduce the intrigues o f the minorities of pro fiteers who wo uld eventual ly benefit from a more marked ly capi talist development. The dictators hip o f the party has s hown that this issue has been la rgely solved through careerism and opportu nis m, if not corrup tion. The soc ial s trugg les under way in the C hjnese and Vietnamese countryside make their voices heard in these countries ju st as they do elsewhere in the world. But they remain very much o n the defensive, that is attached 10 defending the heritage of the revolution: the equal right of everyone to land. Defence is necessary lJecause this heritage is mo re threatened than it wo uld appear, in spite o f repeated affirmations by the two governmen ts that the owners hip of land by the sta te will never be abolished for the benefit o f private ownership . But now this defence requ ires the recogni tion that the peasan ts, w ho are those concern ed, have t he right to organise to carry out this defence.

Not only one formula for peasant alternatives Agrarian reform should be understood as the redistribution o f p rivate ow nershil' when it is con sidered to be unequally distribu ted . It is a la nd tenure system tha t is based on the princip le o f ownership . Thi s reform becomes necessary bo th to satisfy the 11 7

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

demand (perfectly legiti mate) from poo r and landless peasants and to reduce the political and so cial power of the large landowners. But where it has been imp le mented, in Asia and Africa after the liberation from o ld form s o f imperialis t and colonial do mination, it has been carried ou t by hegemonic, non-revolutio nary social blocs that were not governed by the dominated and poo r majority classes. The exceptions were in China and Vietnam where there had not been an agrarian reform in the stricl sense o f the term but, as I have silid, private owners hip of land was supp ressed, the principle of sta te ownership was affirm ed ,1 nd eq ual access to the use of land by all peasan ts was put into operation . Elsewhere, reill refor ms only dis possessed the large landowners to the profit, finall y, of the middle and even ri ch (long-term) peasan ts, ig noring the interests of the poor and landless. Thilt was the case in Egypt and in o ther Arab co untries. The refo rm underway in Zimbabwe risks end ing up in the same way. In other situations, reform is always on the ilgenda of wha t should be done: in India, in Sou th East Asia, in South Africa and in Kenya. The progress generated by agrarian reform, even where the reform is an immediilte illld essentiill requirement, is nevertheless ambig uous in its more long-term implications. For it reinforces attachment to ' small property', w hich becomes an obstacle to the questioning of a land tenure system based on pri vate ownership. Russia's his tory illus triltes th is drama. The d evelo pments that followed the abo lition of serfd o m in 1861 were accelerated by the revolution of 15()S because Sto ly pin' s policies had already produ ced a ' claim for owners hip' . This was (finally ) fulfill ed in the rildi ca l agrariilIl refo rm ilfter the 1917 re volut ion. And, as we know, the new smalJ owners did not enthusias tically renou nce their rights for the benefit of the unfortunate cooperatives, whi ch were dreamt up in the 1930s. Another path to develo pment, based o n the peasant fami ly eco nomy of the generalised slllilll owners, would have been possib le, but it was not attempted. And what abou t the regions (other than C hina and Vietnam) where, in fact, the land tenure sys tem had not (yet ) ix>cn based on private prope rty? This was of course the case with tropical Afri ca. Here we find the o ld debate. Towards the end of the 19th century Marx, in his correspondence with the Russian Narodniks (Vera Zasulich, among others), dared to say that tile absence o f liB ngntea IT

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p rivate owners hip could cons titu te an ad vantage fo r the sociaJis t revolution . It wou ld enable a leap forward toward s a regime for managing access to land other than the one governed by pri vate ow nership. But he d id not specify w hat forms this new regi me s hou ld take, the adjec tive ' collective', correct as it was, being insuffi cient Twenty years later, Lenin believed this possibility no longer existed, havi ng been eliminated by the penetra tion o f cap italis m and the s p irit o f private owners hip that accompanied it. Was this a correct assessment? I cannot say, as I do not know enough abo ut Russia. However, Len in was hardly "b le to g ive decisive impo rtance to this ques tion, having accepted t he viewpoin t ex pressed by Kau tsky (1 899) in Oil tlu' Agmriall Q W$ ticlII. Kauts ky made generalisati ons abou t the extent of the mode l i.n modern European capitalism and believed that the peasantry was desti ned to disappear because o f the cap italist expansion itself. In other words, capitalism would be able to reso lve the agrarian question . W hile t[u s was true (for 80 per cent ) of the ot her capi talist count ries (the Tri ad: 20 per ce nt of the world popu lation), it is not tile case fo r the rest o f the world (SO per cent of its pop ul at ion). H is tory has s hown t hat not only has cap italis m no t solved this question for the SO per cent of the world popu lation, bu t that, as it pursues cap itali st expansion, it cannot reso lve it (other than by genoc ide - w hat a marvellous solu tion! ). It was necessary to await Mao Zedong and the communist parties of C hina and Viet nam for an 'ld equa te response to thi s challenge. The questio n came up aga in in the 1960s, w hen Africa attained it s independence. The natio n'll liberat ion movements of the co ntinent, the states and the sta te part ies which it had produced, received, to different degrees, t he support of the peasan t majorities of their peop les. Their natural tendency to po puli sm was to imagi ne a s pecific (Afri can) path to socialis m. This co uld be described as very moderately radical in its relationships both with donunant cap italis m and wi th th e local classes associated w ith its expans ion. Nevertheless it posed the question of reconstruction o f peasan t society in a hu manist and universalis t sp irit This spirit was often very crit ica l o f trad it ions that the fo re ign masters had in fact been trying to mobilise fOJ their own profit. A ll the African countries - or almos t all - adopted the same p rinci ple, formulated as the pre-emi nent owners hi p right of the 11 9

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s ta te over a ll the land. I <1m not among those w ho cons ide r this decl
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However, it cilnnot be said th a t African stiltes llilve never tried to tilke the path recomme nd ed he re. In Mali, ju st after inde pendence in Septembe r 1% 1, the Sudanese Union s tarted on w hat was very inaccurately called ' co Uectivisiltion' . In fil cl, the coopemt ives that were es lilblished were not production cooperiltives; production remained the exclusive respons ibility of the fa mily farmers. The cooperatives constituted a form of mode rnised collective power, replacing the so-called custom which the colonial powe r used to support. The party tlhlt took over this new modern power was also clea rly a ware of the c hallenge and aimed to elimin ate the customary form s of power - which were judged to be reactionary, if not feu dal. It is true thil t this new peilS
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

are ri chly e ndowed - means by land re form is Ihe acceleration of the priva tisa tio ll of land, and nothing more. The a im is d ear: to create the co nditions that would enable som e modern islands o f ag ribus iness (foreign a nd local) to take over the land they require to ex pand. Bu t the s uppl e mentary produce Ih<1t these island s cou ld supply (for expor t o r for local effective demand ) could never meet the needs fo r bu ilding a prosperous society fo r all, w hich wou ld involve the developmen t o f the pe as<1nl family economy a s a who le .

Defining the role of the state in land reform I do no l ex clude comp lex and mixed formulas for managing the <1ccess to use o f land, w hich can be s pecific fo r e<1ch cou ntry. Private ownership of land can be accepted - at least w he re il is es ta blis hed and considered legitim ate. Land dis tributio n can - o r mus t - be rev iewed where this is necess<1ry, by ag rari an refo rms (for sub-Saharan A frica, South A frica, Zi mb<1b we and Keny a). I do no t even necessa rily ex clude the openi.ng up of op po rtwuties-

und er conlro l- for selling up
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can exp ress itself that the advances towards what is call ed ' participato ry democracy' (in contras t to reducing it 10 Ihe problem o f ' re presentati ve democracy') can have a clear path. The relationship be tween men and women is no less important in the challe nge of democracy. Those who speak of family cultivatio n (peasa nt) evide ntly refer to Ihe famil y, whic h up until now and almost everyw here has struciures tha t impose the submission o f wome n and the over-exp loi ta tio n of the ir labo ur. The democratic transformation will not take place if the re are no organised moveme nts of the women concerned. Attent io n s hould be given to the ques tion of migratio ns . C usto mary rig hts gene rally ex clude fore ig ne rs (that is, all those who d o not be long to the clans, line ages and famili es of which the original village co mmunity is constituted ) from a rig ht to the land, or the re are conditio ns a ttac he d to their access. The migrations caused by colonial and pos t-colon ial develo pme nt have sometimes take n on dimensions that upset the ethni c ' homogeneity' of Ihe regions concerne d . The emig rants who come from outside the country (like the Burkinabe in Cote d'lvoire), or w ho a ltho ugh forma lly cit izens o f the same country are o f an 'e thnic' origin that is foreign to the regions where they settle (like the HilU Si'! in the Plateilu s late of N igeriil), have had Ihe ir rights to the land they have cult ivated questi o ned by narrow-minded a nd chauvin istic political move me nts, w ho also bene fi t from fore ig n s upport. O ne of the most unilvoidab le condi tions fo r re al d emocratic advance is to d ismiss ideo logical and po liti cal communitilrianis ms and firml y de noun ce the para-cultural discourse that underlies them. A ll these analyses and pro pos."ds, w hich come fro m past d evelopmen ts, only concern the statu s of ow ners hip and the rules o f ilccess 10 lilnd. These questio ns indeed relille to il miljor issue in the debates about the future of agricu ltu ral and food production o f peasant societies and of the ind ividuals who cons titute the m, but they do not cover illl dimensions o f the challe nge. Access to land canno t be a potential transformer of the society if the peasants who benefit aTe unable to get access to the indispensab le m eans of productio n on fa vourable te rms (cred it, seed s, inputs, access to the marke ts) . National poli cies, Like the inte rniltionalnegotiiltions that aim to define the framework in which the p rices a nd in comes Me determined, MC anothcr dimensio n of thc pcas..,nt qucstion, 123

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I refer the reilder to the wr iti ngs of Jilcques Berthelot on these questions. He is the best ilnd mo st critical an alys t of the projects to integrate agricultura1 and food pro ductio n into world markets. I s hilll just mention two of the conclusions and most important proposills thilt we hil ve reached. First: it is no t possible to accept that agricu ltural and food production, as well as land, s hould be treated as ordinary 'goods' and thus allow them to be integ rated into the project of g lobalised liberalisiltion promoted by the do minant powers and trilns nationillised capitill. The Wor ld Trade O rganisatio n agenda mus t just be rejected, pure and simple . O pinion in As ia and Africa mus t be convinced of this, and pilTticulariy of the need for food sovereignty, beginning with the peilsant organisations but ill so al l the other social and polit ical forces that defend the interests o f the popular classes and of the nation. All those who have not reno unced a project for deve lop ment that is worthy o f the name mu st reil lise that the negotiiltions underwilY in the framework of the WTO ilgenda w ill only be cat astro phi c for the peoples of Asia and Afri ca. Capitalism has reilched the stage where the purs uit o f profit requires 'enclos ure' policies ilt the world level, like the enclosures th "t took p]"ce in Engl<md in the fir st s tage of its (modern) d evelopment. Now, howevCT, the destruction of the peas., nt reser ves o f cheap labour at the world level wi ll res ult in no th ing less than the genoc ide o f half o f hum"nity. Second : it is impossibl e to ilccept the behilviour of the milin imperiali st powers (the United States and Europe) thai arc associated with the assa ults agains t the peoples of the So uth within the WTO. These powers, which try to unilaterally impose liberal isation proposals on the cou ntries of the South, have freed themse lves from the same restri ctions by ways that can only be described as systematic trickery. The Farm Bill of the United Stales and the ilgricllltural po licies of the European Union violilte the very principles thilt the WTO in tends to im pose o n o ther s tales. T he ' partnership' projects proposed l>y the EU, follow ing the Cotono u Conven tion o f 2008, are nothing less than criminal to use the strong, but appropriate, expression of Jacques Berthelot. These imperialist po wers can and must be accused in the very 12 4 ngntea IT

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cou rts of the WTO set up for this purpo se. A g roup of coun tries from the Sou th can do this - and they mus t. The alternati ve consis ts of national policies to construct ! recons truct nationil l fund s fo r the stabilisation and s uppo rt for production, completed by the estilblis hmen t of common interna tional fund s for basic products, en
A complex and multidimensional challenge Is the capitalist modernisatio n pa th as effect ive as the conventional economis ts claim? Le t us imagine tha t, Ihrough capi tali st modernisation, we can double production (from an index of 100 to o ne o f 200), but Iha l this is obtained by the expulsion o f 80 per cenl of the s urplus rural popula tio n (the index of the number of ilctive cultivators faHing from 100 to 20). The apparen t gain, measured by the growth of 125

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p roduction per il cti ve prod ucer is con siderilbl e: it is multipl ied by ten. But, if it is seen in terms o f the ru ra l po pul ation as a who le, it is o nly multiplied by two. The refore it is necessilry to distribute freely a ll this growth in produ ct io n in order simply to keep alive the peasilnts who have been eliminated and CilJU10t find alternati ve work in the towns. It WilS in these terms that Marx wrote ilbo ut UlC pauperis'll ion associated wilh the accumulation o f ca pitill. T he challenge, w hich is to base development on renewing peasant societi es, has many dimens io ns. I will just call attention here to the pre-conditions for constru ct ing the necessary and possible pol iti cal alliances that will enable prog ress to be made towards so lutions (i n the interests of the worker peasants, of co urse) to all the p robl ems th at are posed. Th e pre-cond itions would inclu de access to the land and to the mean s to develop it properly, reaso nable wages (o r peasant work, imp rovement of wages parallel to the p rodu ctivi ty of this work, and app ro priate regulatio n o f the markets at the national, regional and world levels. New peasant o rganisations ex is t in Asia and Afri ca and are visibly in itiating and active in the s trugg les underway. Oft en, when po litical sys tems make it impossible fo r peasants to cons titute formal orga nis.l tions, the social struggles in the rural wo rld take the form of movements with no apparent di rection. These actions and prog rammes, w here they ex ist, should be analysed mo re carefull y. What peasant social forces do they represent and w hose interests are they defending? The ma jo rity mass of the peas.l nts? Or the minorities w ho aspire 10 par ticipate in the ex pansion of do minant g lobalised capitalism ? We s ho uld mistrust q uick answers to these questions, w hi ch are co mplex and difficult. We s hou ld be careful not to condemn a number of organisations and movements o n the pretex t Ihat they arc not mobilising the peas.l nl majorities on radica l programmes. This wo uld be to ig nore the need to formulil te broad alliances and s trategies by stages. But we s hould also be carefu l not to support the di scourse of the ' naive al ternati ve world people', who o ften scllhe lone in the forums and fuel the illusion that the wo rld is o n the rig ht path only because o f the ex istence o f the social movements . This is a d isco urse that belongs more to the many NGOs - with good intentio ns perhaps -than to the peasant and worker organisations. 126 ngntea IT

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I myse lf am not so naive as to think thilt all the inte res ts that these alliances re present can natura lly con verge. In all peilsan t societies there are the rich a nd the poor (who arc o ften landless) . The cond itions of access to la nd result from differe nt histori ca l experiences which, in so me cas es, ha ve rooted aspirations to owne rship in peoples' mjnd s, whi le in othe rs they ha ve ins tilled the desire to protect th e access to land of the greatest number. T he relations hips of the peasantries to state power are a lso the result o f different political paths, parti cula rly ilS conce rns the natio nal libe ration move me nts of Asia ilnd Africil: po puli sms, peasant democracies, s tate anti-peasant autocrac ies s how the dive rs ity of pL>oples' he ritages. The ways in w hi ch in ternatio nal marke ts are run favour so me ilnd penalise others . These dive rgences of inte res t are so me times echoed in Illany of the peils ilnt movements and often in the dive rgences of the pol it ical strateg ies adopted . Bib liography The anillyse8 ilnd proposills p ul fom'ilrd in lliis study d o not only concern As iil ilnd Afr im. The ilgrarian ques tions in Latin America and th e Caribbean ha ve Uleir o\\'n particularities and sp ecifics . Thus, in Ule Soutilern Cone of th e continent (southern Brazil, Argentina, Uru guay and Chile), modernised lutifimdismo, w hich is mechanist":! a.nd benefits from cheap labour, is a form of exploi ta tion well adapted to the K'<juiremenls of th e libera.l globalised capitalist system. It is more com petitive even than the agricultu re of the Uni ted States and Europe. Al/mJllti!'t:s Sud (2008) 'Etnt d es r&>istancL'S dans Ie Sud, facc ilia crise nlimen taire', \ '01. 15, no . 4 Amin, Samir (00) (2005) Lf's IrrUI'S I'aysmmes d om.jim'sju,'t' IIIrx .lJfts du Xxe

sii>dl', Pnris, Les Indes Savantcs. Includes references to peasant struggles in China, India, Phili ppinL'S, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Ethiopia, West Africa, South Africa and Zimbab we. Amin, Samir (2006) Beyond US Hegemony, London, Zed Books Am in, Sami r (2()()';) 'India, a great power?', in Be.Vmrd US Hesem ony, Lond on, Zed Books Ber th elot, Jacques (2006) 'L'agriculture, tal on d' Achille de l'O:-'1C', ht tp:// \\' \\'1 v.solidarite.nssoJ r Bertildot, Jacques (2006) 'Quels avenirs pour les societ('S pays annes de I ' Afrique de ['Ouest? ', hllp:/Iwww.solid arile.nsso.fr Boris, Jean-Pierre (2<Xl5) Commerrr' ;,rh,llilublr: k romu n noi, de mutiffes I'fflrrrhl's, Paris, Pl uriel

127

ENDING TH E CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR END IN G CAPI T ALI SM? Chap UlO\', Alexand e r (1924 [1 966]) On tlu: TheOl-y of Non -Capita/ist E~on"mi~ Systrm$ (English ed iti o n) Kautsky, Karl (1 899 [1987]) On the Agrarian Qlj e~ti"n, Lond o n, Zwan Pu blica tions /I [aki e, Archie (2003) The Agm, ian Qursti()l1, Acre"" to umd anll Pea",,,,t Responses in Sub-Sa/lUm" Aftic", Gen eva, UNR [SD /l lamdani, /l ialun ood (1 996) Citi::en /lnd Sljbjed: Cont~mr01a ry Aftica and the Lesucy of Late Colonialism, Prince to n, N J, P rinceto n Un iversity Press 1l'1 azoyer, I\ larcel a nd Roud a rd , La ure n ce ( 19cn) His!oi l"l' des agdcultljl"es du mom/e, Pa ris, Se uil /1 10)'0, Sam (in preparatio n) Llmd ill Ihe P,,/iliOi/ EmnolUlj "f AftiC/ln Devdopmenl Panncn tier, Bruno (2007) NOUlTil" 1'/lUmanit,;, Paris, La Decouvcc t, Shi\ii, Iss., (2008) interview by Marc \ Vuyts in Del1dOl'l1wnl and C/lIl11gf, Ins titut e for Sociitl Stud ies, \'01. 39, no. 3

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Humanitarianism or the internationalism of the peoples? The revolu tionary sociali st tradition ha s always proclaimed it se lf to be internationalist, at least in its intentio ns, its visions o f humanity and its SOCiillis t futu re. Tllis tradi tion \\filS started by Ihe French Revol utio n w ltich in its rad ical mo ments abolished s lavery, som e thing that the 50called A merican Revolution never even tho ug ht of doing. The s la ves (of Santo Do mingo) foug ht to w in their frL-"Cdom (it was not g iven to the m ): they lVeTe citi zens. The new tradition cou ld declare itself for the Enlig htenment and fo r humanism, even if the COJ1Cc pt of the lalter was stiU in fael limited to the cos mopo litanism of the e nlig hte ned classes. T he socialist moveme nt, uto p jan a nd Marx ist, drew an imaginary picture of fu ture wor ld sociali sm a nd thus identified the need s of the struggle to give it greater cons istency. W hen the Internatio nal Wor kers Associatio n w as founded Marx made fun of the proposal by certain peop le w ho ad voca ted the form ula ' all the world are brothers' (Marx sajd he was not the 'brother ' of all m en !). He accepted instead the watchword ' worke rs of the world unite!' and he went so far as to s ay ' the prole t.niat has no cou ntry', a phrase tha t has s ince been wro ng ly inte rpreted by many peop le. In practice, t he worker a nd socialist m ovement of the capitalist / im pe r i
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

analysed as 'imperiali st rent'. O n the contrary, considering the contrast between the centres and the peripheries, there should have been a call to ret urn the nat ions of the dominated peripheries to their pla ce in the fi g ht against ca pitalis m, wh ich is inseparable from imperialis m. Moreover, this drift to social imperialism accompanied rallying to the (imperiali st) country, to the point o f accepting the chauvinisti c calls for an inter-imperialist war. Is this no longer the case for Europe? (It is not for the United States and Japan. ) Has it been s uperseded by the new cosmopol itanism of the European Union? It is by no m ea ns evident. The historical Marxism of the Third International - Marx ismLeninism - wanted to break with this trend and it formu lated a famous distinction - also badly understood - between 'bourgeois cosmopolitanism' and ' proletarian internationalism'. This distinction is, however, based on an extremely important objective reality: the gradual formation of the plutocratic oligarchy of collective imperialis m. Thus tltis fonnulation was in so me ways before its time: cosmopolitmtis m, und erstood as the solidarity of national fragments of the g lobaliscd oligarchy, conscious of the need for their collective management of the world system, is now more visible than it could have been before (or even after) the Second World War. The abandonment of Marxis m (of historical Marxis m and, before it, of Marx himsclf), after the waning of the firs t wave o f s truggles fo r the emancipation of workers and of peoples in the 20th century, end ed not in an increased consc iousness of the need of the do minated and exp loited for internatio nalism, but a retrea t to positions of charity and humanitariani sm. The central plank o f this change was humani ta rianism and d evelo pment assistance, which helped to efface the real chall enge: how to di sengage from cap italis m and, for the peripheri es, how to start this off, by ge lting rid of dependence, aid, humanitarian charity, by d elinking from the im perialist world system.

The first essential question: what kind of development? It is no! difficult to ag ree that a discu ssion on aid makes no sense without the co untry benefiting: from the aid having: a clear vision and development strategy.

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Fro m the 1981 meeting of the G7 at Canclln, the wes tern powers proclai med through the voice of Ronald Reagan, supported by his European colleagues, thai the powers of the G7 countries knew betler than the co untries of the So uth themselves what was best for the South to d o. The Washington consens us and the policies o f stru ctural adjus tment pu t this positio n (return to colonialis m) into pract ice thro ug h po licies that have, effectively, been implemented ever since. ln s pite o f the current deep crisis w hi ch s hould certairlly challenge the global vision of libe ral globalisation, this challenge is not in fact happening. ' Development' cannot be reduced to its apparently majo r econo rnic dimension - the growth of GNP and the ex pansion of markets (both exports and internal markets) - even when it takes into consider,ltion its 'social' dimensions (degrees o f inequality in the d istribu tion of income, access to pub li c services like education and health). ' Development' is an overall process that in vo lves the definition of political obtecli ves and how t hey are articu lated: democratisation of society and emancipatio n of ind ividuals, affirm ation o f tile power and auto nomy of the nation in the world system. This observation is all the more important because t here is general agreement on the fai lu re of d evelopment, as a lso on the failure of aid, because the cou ntries co ncerned see thai their dependency only in creases rather than diminis hing as time goes by. The d ebate on aid is confined in a s traitjacket, whose design was defined in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effecliveness (2005), d raw n up by the DECD to be endo rsed by (OT, rather, imposed o n) the reci pient countries. Rig ht fro m t he start, the procedure was illeg itimate. If, as is claimed, there are two part ners in aid w hic h are in prin ciple equa1 - th e do nor coun try and Ihe recipien t cou ntry - the design o f the system sho uld have been negotiated by both part ies. This was absolutely not the case. T he init iat ive was unilateral: it was the DECD alone that was respo nsible fo r the drawing up o f the PMis DeciMation. Ju st like the United Nat ions Millennium Declaration, whi ch was drafted by the US State Department, to be read oul by the Secretary-General of the Uni ted Nations at t he General Assembly, the Paris Dec larat ion did nol conunit the inlern
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legi timiltely, to associa te them selves wi th the' donor club' proposed by the deciMation. If the international co mmunity WilS to commit itse lf seriously, a commission that had this res ponsibility s hould have been constituted in the United Na tions, ilssociating illl the 'pMtners' from the shut o n the basis of true equality. The p rocedure adopted WilS part of tJle political strategy of the cou ntries of the Triad (United States, Europe, Japan) to do wngrade the Uni ted Nations and s ubstitute il by the G7 and its instruments, claiming to be the international community, which is of course iln imposture. The field of responsibilities o f the rich countries is defined according to the omnipresent principl es o f liberal g loba lis.ltion. So metimes trus is ex plicitly stated: promoting liberalis.ltion, the opening of nlMkets, becoming attractive to fo reign private inves tment . Sometimes it is indirect : res pecting the regulations o f the WTO. From this viewpoint, the Paris DeciMation is a step back compMed w ith the pmcti ces of the firs t d evelopment decade (1 960-1970) when the principl e of the countries of the Soulh being free to choose their econo mic and social poli cies was more recognised. The unequal power relationship between dono rs and recipient s was further reinforced by insistence on the harmonisation of donor poli cies, which reduced the margins of manoeu vre that the countries of the Sou th bene fi ted from during the d evelopment dec ades. lnsteild of ' partnership', th is re lationship sho uld be described as 'reinforcement of control over the assisted cou ntries by the co llectivity of the Tri ad states' . ' PMtnership' is not progress but rilther a regression compared w ith what used to happen during the Bilndung e ra (1 955- 1980). U the word ' partners hip' was put fonvilTd, it W
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is ig no re d . It absolu te ly canno t be re placed by the sermo ns o f the he ralds o f good ca uses - na tio nal , le t a lo ne fo re ig n - and sti ll less by diplo m atic pressures . Bes ide s, in this field, rea lity - that is, the applicatio n of doub le standards - really hits o ne in the face. The d eclaratio n tries to atten uate the g ravity of the conseq uences o f the strategies it promo tes (structural adjustment, g lo balised liberalisa lio n) by a new discourse, that of poverty a nd p lans to redu ce it, to which a id must g ive priority.

The feeble rhetoric of the new humanitarian discourse The do minant discourse no w aims at redu cing: po ve rty (e liminating it fo r those w ho think radically ), w ith the su ppo rt of civi l socie ty and re placing by good governance w hat was conside red to be bad governan ce. The very term 'poverty' s te m s fro m a lang uage w hich is as old as the hills, that of charity (of re li gio us o r so me o ther o rig in). This lang uage be longs to the pas t, no t to the present - still le ss to the future . It pre dates the language develo ped by modern social tho ug: ht, which tries to be scientific by discovering the mechanis ms thai gene rate a phe no me no n that is observable an d o bser ved . Nor is ' social ju stice' a scien lifi c concept. It is vag ue, imprecise by nature, a nd the means fo r achieving it go no further than listing m e asures thai are no t inleg rated (and are in capable o f being integrated) into a cohere nt strategy. The co ntra st w ith the la ng uage of revo lutionary France and o f M arx, w ho ca lle d for equality and e mphas ised its co ntradictory compleme ntarity w ilh libe rty (itself associated with prope rty) sho w s ho w o ur thinking has reg resse d w ith thi s d iscourse on socia l justice. The no nsense of the North Ame rican juri st Jolm Raw ls, the sermo ns of A m
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

common good s (edu cation, health) but wha t it does in fact is to open up spaces for the expansion of c,'pi tal. II contrasts w ith the European conception of public So.:!r vices and a civil society that is und ers tood as all the po pular orgallis.1.tions (see Translator 's note) defending ri ghts. Civil society, in prac tice, rarely includ es organisations that are rooted in the tradit ion of popular struggle (such as trade unions, peasant organisations, and worker and sometimes peas.1.nt political parties). The fashionable discourse prefers the non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This option is part and pMcel o f another aspect of the dominant id eology that Sl-'CS in the state the natural ad versary of freedom. In the conditions o f the real world thi s ideology is used to legitimi se the 'jungle of bus iness', as is illu strated by the o ngo ing financial crisis. Ll the real conditi ons of the Third World, the pet NGOs arc o ft en called - ironically and rig htly - GONGs (governme ntal NGOs), o r MONGs (NGOs operating like the Mafia) or TONGs (NCOs transmitting donor policies), etc. Civil society is therefore the collection of neighbourhood assemblies, of communities (the concep t cannot be separated from the co mmunitarian ideo logy), of local interests (school, hospital, green spa ces) w hich are themselves inseparable from id eologies that are split up, separated from one another (gender understood in its narrow sense, respect fo r nature, which is also made into an o bject that is sep<1fable from the o thers) . Even if the defence of the demands of these assemblies that constitute the so-called civil society is often legitim ate, the absence - whet her deliberate or not - of any integratio n into a vision of the whole society implies s uppor t for the dogma of con sensus. In other word s, to the ex tent that these demand s su cceed, it will be seen that ' the more it changes, the more it is the same thing'! It is true that in these NGOs sectors of soc iety ex press thei r defence of interests or of parti cular causes that are frequ ently legi timate (democracy and hUlnan rights, the rights of women, res pect fo r the en vironment, etc), but so metimes they arc ambiguou s. Often they aim to make up for the s hortcomings of the s tale (in education and heal th, for example). They are i.nterclass organisations by nature, able to mobilise the middle classes, bulthey are much less s uccessful with the popular classes. In these conditions, 134 oc ngntea IT

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th is civil society does not offer an adequate fram ework for overall alte rna ti ve projec ts, by definition consiste nt and polit ica l, to tak e form. Ci vil society is t hus im pris oned into an an Ii-political, anlis ta te s ituation, some times a way of legitimis ing no n-act ion; the discourse o n the multitud e (in the sense used in Negri and Hardt (2000» serves this fun ct ion . It is also the objec t of ma nipulati ons and has ser ved , among ot he r things, as a batte ring ram against socia list or nati onal populist regimes. The deficie ncies of these regi mes a re thus denounced not by the left but by the rig ht, wi th the intention 'Illite simp ly of s upporting the re turn to cap italism . The unde rlying ideology, w hich is t hat o f Americrul liberalis m, is a n invitation to abandon the positive inheritance of left-wing po liti cal culture (the Enlig hte nmen t, e mancipation and eC]uality, alternative socialism) to the domination of capi tal over labo ur. T he te rm 'governa nce' was in ven ted as a subs ti tut e fo r ' power' . T he o pposing cha racter istics o f the two - good versus bad governance - hark back to Man..ichaeis m and moral is m, in place of a n analysis, as scien tific il S possible, of reality. O nce again, thi s mode co mes to us fro m the ot he r side o f the A tlant ic, w he re rel igio us sermo ns have o fte n dominated po litical disco urses. T he noti on of good governance assumes that the decide rs are fair, objective, impartia l a nd, obVio us ly, honest. For orienta l readers, the list of adjectives produ ced by the abundant literature o f the A merican propaganda services is an immediate reminder o f the grievances o f ancien t times, presented by the loyal su bjects to the despot, w ho was asked to be fair (no t e ve n e nlig hte ned! ). The proposals fo r es ta blis hing good governance institutions a re no be tte r: a n interminable list of cr iter ia, products of a bureaucratic imagin<1tion s uffe rin g from verbal d iarrhoea. The visible underlying ideology is just concerned with erasing the real C]ucstion: w hat social interests docs the ex isting power, w hatever it is, re present <1nd defend ? H ow can this power be transformed so tl1<1 t it g r<1dually becomes the instrumen t of the m<1prities, particu larly the victi ms of tIle system s uch as it is? The recipe o f decto ral multiparty ism has show n it s limits in this respect. A ll togethe r, civil socie ty, good governance, soc ia l jus tice and the war o n poverty constitute a perfectly fun ctional ideology; w hat is essential - the real power of the ca pitalist oligarchy - is eliminated from debate.

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Humanitarian interventions, development aid, geo-economy, geopolitics and geostrategy The choice of recipients and form s of inte rventio n as we ll as of the aid' s immedia te, apparent objectives cannot be sepM"ted from the re,,1 geo politi cal objec ti ves underlying them. Sub-Sa h"ran A frica is very we ll integrated into the g lo bal syste m and is iJ1 no way ' marg inalised ' as, unfo rtu n"tely, peop le often say without th inking: fo rei g n tr"de o ut o f the reg ion represe nts 45 per cent of its GNp, as against 30 per cent for As ia and Lat in A meri ca, a nd 15 pe r cent for each of the three regions that con stitute the Tr iad . Africa is the refore qU iUltitati vely ' more' and not ' less' 'integrated, bu t it is so i.n a d iffe re nt way. The geo-t.>conomy of tile region is bilSt.>d on two kinds o f production w hich dete rmine its struclures and the definitio n of its place in the g lobal syste m: tropical ag ricultural products fo r export such as coffee, cocoa, collon, g round nuts, fruit , palm oil; and hydrocarbons and mined materials, such as copper, go ld, rare metals, dia monds. The forme r category re presents the means of s urvival - apart fro m peasa nts' subsistence crops - w hi ch finan ce the grafting o f the state o nto the local economy and, throug h publi c expe nditure, the reprodu ction o f the middle classes. The te rm ' banana repub li c' corres pond s, apart from its negative impli cations, to the place that the do minant powers g ive to the goo-econo my of the region. These agricu ltural products are o f inte res t more to the local governi ng cl asses tha n they a rc to the do minant econo mics. O n the other hand, what interests the latter a bove all are the natural reso urces of the co ntinen t. Today t hese are the hydrocarbons and the ra re m.inerals. Tomorrow, Ihey w ill be the reserves for deve lop ing agrofu els, the s un (w he n t he trans port of electricity from solar e nergy becomes possible, w hich wi ll be w ithin decades), wa te r (w he n its ex port, d irec! o r i ndi recl, is feasible). N iger is a tex tbook example of all this. Tlus co unl ry receives ,1 id that covers 50 per cent o f its budget. This aid is ' indis pensab le' fo r its survival altho ugh it is pe rfectly ineHective: t he cou ntry re mains close to the bottom of the lis t of the poorest countries in the world. Bu t N iger is the third lrugest ex porte r of uranium in the world . Situ ated between Algeria, Libya and Nigeria, it could be tem pted, th rough nationalism, to recover control over this wea lth. A reva, 1 36 ngntea IT

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the French firm thi'lt exp loits the uranium mine, knows thi s very well. It is no t difficult to believe thi'lt aid to Niger has no other objec ti ve than to mainti'lin the cou ntry i'lS i'I client state. The race for rural terri tory to be converted to the ex pansion of i'l grofllels is we ll under wi'ly in Latin Ameri ci'l. Africi'l, too, offers enormou s possibilities in this fi eld . Madagascar led the way and has already concL>ded large areas in the wes tern part o f the country. The im plementa tion of the Co ngolese Rural Code (2008), inspired by Belgian ilid ilnd the Food and Agricu lture O rganisiltion, w il l no doubt enab le agribu siness to take over agricu ltural land on a huge scale in order to ' valorise' it, just as the Mining Code formerly facilitated the pi ll age of the mineral reso urces of this former Belgian colony. The peilsiUlts, who have been rend ered useless, are the victims: their in creasing destitution wi ll perhaps attract humanitarian aid in the future, as well as aid programmes ' to reduce poverty' ! I o nce learnt that an o ld co lonial dream for the Sahel in th e 1970s WilS to expe l illl the popu liltions (t he ' useless' Sahelians) in order to ins tall extensive Texa n-type ranches of livestock for expo rt. We are now in a new phase of his tory in w hi ch co nflicts abou t i'lccess to the ni'ltuml resources of the planet are beco ming more acute. The Triad means to reserve exclusive access to this ' useful' Africa (that of the reserves o f natural resources) for itse lf and to prohibit access to the emerging cou ntries whose needs in this fi eld are gre'l t and will no doubt increase. The gllMan tee of exclus ive access is obtained through political control and redU Cing African countries to client s tates. Foreign aid thus perfo rms impo rtant fun ctions in maintaining coun lries i'l S clien t slates. In a certain way, therefore, it cou ld be said that the objective of aid is to corrupt the governing classes. Apart from the financial mis'lpp ropr iations (which are well known but the impression is g iven tllilt the donors are in no W'ly res ponsible), tllis political funct ion is served by aid which, as it is now the major source for fin ancing budgets, has become indi spensab le. It is therefore imporl'lnt that this aid is not reserved exclusively for the classes in power in the government: it mus t also go to the oppositi ons that may succeed them. This is where the role of the so-called civil society and certain NGOs comes in . 137

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A id , if it is to be really po liti cally effecti ve, must il lso con tribute to main taining the integratio n of the peasants in the g loba l sys tem, which feeds the o ther source of in come for t he state. A id, therefore, also has to promote the moder niSiltion of cro ps for ex port. In add it ion, it mu st fa cilitate access to common services (ed ucat ion, health, housing ) by the middle classcs and by some of the popular clilSseS (mainly in the urbiln ilfeas). The pol itic.l l funct ioning of the client state depends on this to a consid erable ex tent. In t he Bandung er.l and du ring the development decades Asia and Afri ca, on t he who le, init iated countergeopo lit ical policies, d rawn up by the cou ntries o f the South, whi ch ilimed at counteracti.ng the geopol iti cal policies of the Triild. The conditions of the period - military bipol arity, glo bal overal l growt h and increasing demand faci litating the expo rts of the South - fa voured this cou nteroffensive, forci ng the Triad to make co ncessions, minor or major, accordi ng to the circumstan ces. 1.n particular, rni litmy bipolarity prevented the Uni ted States and its associa tes in the Triad from reinforcing the power of their geopo litics by a goostra tegy bilsed o n the threilt of permilnent military interventi on. T hese days, the geopolitics of the Triild, at the service of its goo-economy, are reinforced by its geostrategic arm. It is now understandable why the United Nations has to be marginalised and s ubstituted, cynically. by the militilry ilrm of the Triad 's geopo liti cs, NATO. It is also understandable w hy the discourse about the ex ternal security of the co untries of the Triad has become so insis tent. All this rhetoric about the war on terrorism and the rogue states, which is intended to legi timise the strategy of the Triad. thu s takes on dimensions that have become all too familiar.

The shape of an alternative international solidarity A sudden rup ture in ongo i.ng aid - bad as aid is - is not desirnb le. In fnel, it would be a declarat ion o f war ,limed nt destabili sing the ex is ting power o rde r and perhnps even at destroy i.ng the s tilte. T his is the strntegy that sanctio ns have implemented, nnd con tinue to imp lement, the econo mi c blockades of Cu ba and Z imbabwe being good examples. 1 38 ngntea IT

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T he choice is not between aid , s uch as it is, o r no aid. The battle must be to trans form radically the concep t of the funct ions o f aid, for whi ch the So uth Centre has developed the arguments (Tando n, 2008). Solid ari ty, and not humanitarianism, is a major intellectua l battle w hich s ho uld not recognise any red line that ca nno t be crossed. T lus is one of the battles to be had among those that propose the construction o f another, better, world, 'lIlo ther g lobali5
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and adrninis tered by the No rth (and inevitably manipulated by the dip lomats of the North). I would also give importance to the initiative taken by the UN Economic a nd Soc ia l Council in 2005 to create a Development Cooperation Forum (DC Fl. This would lead to the creation o f authentic partners hips based on the conception of a polycentri c world. As can be imagined, the in itiat ive was not well received by the diplomats o f the Triad. But it is necessary togo further and dare to cross the red line. It is not a questi on of refo rming the Wor ld Bank, the WTO, the IMF. It is not enough to limit o neself to denouncing the dramat ic consequences of their poli cies, those o f yes terday and those of today. What need s to be done is to propose alternati ve institutions, to define their tasks in a positi ve way and to shape the institutional arrangement s. The debate on alternative aid based on solidarity sho uld immed iately get rid of certain chapters in the OECD Developmen t Assistan ce Committee' s offici a l development assistan ce compilations which in reality arc not abo ut aid from the North to the South, but rather the reverse . Heading this lis t are the concession'll loans, given at rates that me claimed to be inferior to those of the market. These Me the means by w hich aggressive commercial policies imp lemented by the states of the Triad help the main beneficiaries, whi ch are in fact the exporters of the North (rather like the practice of dumping). Debt reduction, presented almost as a charitable act (as is clear from the diplomatic jargon in w hich the decision was couched ) certainly docs not merit being included as aid. The legitimate response to this ques tion, and not only fro m the moral viewpoint, sho uld lea d to an audi t of all the debts in question - private and public, on the side of the lender and on that o f the borrower. The debts recognised as immoral (among o thers, because of their associatio n with cor rupt operations on one side or the other), illegitimate (poorly disguised political support, as for the Sou th A fri can apartheid regime), us uri ous (ra tes fi xed unilaterally by the so-called markets, by the integral reimbursement of their capital - and well beyond it): all these debts mus t be il1mulled and the victims, the debtor countries, recompensed for ha ving overpaid . A commi ssion of the United N"tion s shouJd be created to dmw up an intern"tional law wort hy of t he name 140 ngntea IT

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w hic h, in thi s field, has hardly been started. N'lturally, the diplomacies of the Td
be placed a t the centre of a stra tegy for anot he r kind of d e velopment, based o n keeping large numbers of the rural popu lation in place (even if there w ill inevit'lbl y be a dec line in the num bers, the process shou ld not be accele rated ). As eq ual access as possible to land and the means for d e veloping it properly mus t be the orientatioll of this conception of peasant 'lgri cuhure. Its major fea tures s ho uld in clude priority for fo od sove reignty; indu stri
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that rejects LibeTil lis m, which is in essence abo ut creating a tlractive co ndilio ns for the transnationals as advocated by the WTO and the so-called aid agencies. Real partners hip in strategic decis ion-making and control over the re-exported profits must accompany indus trial.isation strategies. 3. Di versifi ca tion (in cl uding of indu strialisation), w hi ch is fundamental , certainly requires building infras tructures w he re they do not exis t in countries receiving aid that has beco me indispe nsable fo r thei.r s urvival . This includes social infrastru cture: there is no developme nt w ithout good educatio n, from boltom to top, and witho ut a pop ulatio n in good health. Such objectives for aid (finan ci al and tec hni cal ) could und eniably be positive and become solid aril)'. The e rad ication of e ndemic diseases s uch as A ids is a n obvious examp le. 4. In turn, di vers ificatio n and industrial isation require building up form s of adequate regio nal cooperation. Countries that are continen ts may well do w ithout the m. But those w Hh a n aveTilge population (around 50 million) can only start the process, know ing that they w ill soon reach thresholds that they cannot cross excep t th rou gh regio nal coope ration. It will be necessary to reinvent these forms of regional coo perati on so that they arc consistent with the developme nt objectives outlined here. The reg ional common marke ts, wluch domina te the instituti ons in place (where they ex ist a nd functi on) are not cons iste nt with s uch objectives as they havc been conceived as building bloc ks for liberal globalisatio n (see A min and Tchuigoua 2(05). 5. T he alte rnative developmen t sketched here requires control over foreign econo mic rela tio nships, including abandoning the free trade sys te m, w hich is claimed to be regulated by the markets, and instead, rep lacing it with national and regional syste ms of con trolled trade. Beyond th e impossible reform of the lnternational Monetary Fund, solutions to the challenge should en visage the setling up of regional mone tary fund s, linked to a new syste m of wo rld mo ne tary regulation, which the present cr isis makes more than eve r necessary. The reform (or mini-reform) o f the IMF does not meet these need s. 142 ngntea IT

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More generaiJy, control o ver fo reign relations, w hi ch d oes not mean autarchy, shouJd d efin e the outline of what I have described as ' delinking', essential if a negotiated g lobalisat ion is to emerge. Such develop ment also requires, obvio usly, nationa..l control over natural reso urces. This alternative develop ment is based on the principle of g iving priority to internal markets (natio nal and regional) and, in tlus framework, to the markets that meet the ex pansio n of the de m,md from the popu lar classes and not from the world markel. lt is w hat I call ' autocentric development'. 6. The principle of the internationa l solidarity of pL>oples, w hich I d efend , legitimises s upport for stru ggles for the democ ratisation o f society, associ ated w ith social progress and efforts to undertake reflec tion that is rad ical and criti cal. With this in mind, publi c aid, which is certai nly desirab le in itself, mus t s upport the reconstruction of the state and its capacity to ful fi.1 its functi ons (pub lic services in the fi elds of education, health, water and electricity s upply, publi c transport, soc ia l housing and social security), challenges whi ch can be met neither by the privilte sector, w hi ch reserves for itself o nly the p rofit able pa rts of these activities, nor by associations, even the well-intentioned . 7. There will always remain a case for interventio n in the name of wuvers.,] hunliln solidarity, w hich is perfectly legitilll
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

reftec tion on these problems is necessary and there s ho uld be a co mmitment to the social strugg le necessary to rectify d eteri orating situations that goes beyond the immediate humanitarian interventio n. 8. North- South coopera tion is no t exclu sive. There was SouthSouth coo peration during the Bandung era and it was effecti ve in the cond itions of that time. Support for the liberation movements in the Portug uese colo nies, Zimbabwe and South A fr ica, which wa s g iven by the Non-Alig ned Movement (the OA U of tha t period), C hina, the Soviet Union and Cuba, was important and somet imes d ecisive. Then, apart from Swed en and some o ther Scandinavian countries, there was no development cooperation from the cou ntries of the Triad, which were s ubord inated to the d iplomatic priorities of NATO (including Portugal) and support fo r apartheid. Today Ihere are ample opportunities for renewing this South-South coopera tion. The So uth now has
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6 HU MA NITARIANISM OR THE INTERNAT IO NALISM OF TH E PEOPLES)

o f thinking tha t in teriori ses de pendency and that they cease to believe that aid constitutes the conditi on fo r the development o f their societies.

Bib liograp hy In the order in which lhe), appear: Amin, Samir ( I <J73) .r\r~o-Colonii!lism in West Aftiw, London, Penguin Books (includes referenccs to Niger) Tandon, Yash (2008) Ending Aid Depo·",l~ n<'f, Oxford and Geneva, Pambazuka Press and South Centre Amin, Samir (2()();) 'The Idillel1l1ium IA:vclopmenl Goals', MontMy R~'t'i<:t", I'o\. 57, no. 10 O rwell, George (1949 12008]) [I.'inc/een Eighty FOlll", London, Penguin Books Amin, Sami r (2003 ) ' Africa in Ule world ', ill Lauer, I-Iden (ed.) History rmd PhiiO${)I'/ry ~fS("i~ n cr, Ibadall, Hope Publica tions B,xl.nik, Al1l1i1 Oul )' 2(08) 'Niger's mine war', Le Mondr Diplomufit,u~, (English edition) Am in, Samir and Tch uigoua, Bernard Founou (2005) ' Les rCgionalis.-.tions, que lles regionalisa tions?' http://www.forumtiersmonde.net. Partiall y reproduced in Amin S. et aI., Afriqu,·, fxdusim' prQsrw",,,,;,· 0" Rena;SSlmCl'?, Maisonnellve el Larose, p. 129 onwards N diilye, Abdourahmane (2008) 'Avellir des agricultures et des SOCi.1tL'S paysannes en Afrique de l'Ouest, Vne lecture critique des lravau x du Club du Sahel', October, http:// tiny.cc/ kbOlw, ilccCS$(:d 24 June 20 10 Ber thelot, Jacq ues 'o/>.rc ct Sud', http://wlI.w.solidilritc ...sso.fr Ber thelot, Jacq ues 'La question agriook', htlp: llw\\'lI".solid ilri tc.assoJr BerUlelot, J. lich ael (2000) Empi re, Harvard , Han'ard Unh'ersity Press N egri, Antonio and Hard t, />. lichael (2004) ."'lulh tud~': Gupne d dh'lOcrati~' ~ l'uge de l'Em/,ire, Puris, La O("':ouvcr tc

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Being Marxist, being communist, being internationalist ] am" Marx ist.And by that [mean that Marx is my point of d e parture. I am con vinced that the cri ticism thai Mar x put on the agend a of thoug ht and action - the critici.s m o f capitalis m, the criti cis m of its main re presentation (the politi cal econo my of cap ita l ), the criticism of politics and its discou rses - all these constitute a central and essential theme fo r the str uggles to achieve eman ci patio n for the worke rs and for the pL"O ples. I am no t a neo-Marxi st. To be olle is to confuse Milrx and historical Marxism, w hic h is 1101 my case. The neo-Marxists wall t to break w ith histor ical Marxism and Ihey think by doing so it is Il L><:essary ' to go beyon d Marx' . In fact they are o nly agains llhose I describe as ' pa leo-M
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in the se nse o f solid ilIity in s trugg le. This o nly contributes to the consolid" tio n of the world such ilS it is o r, worse s till, invo lves constructing a parUw id on a world scale. In the follo w ing tex t I try to fll<1ke more e x pli cit the conclusions ilt w hi ch I hilve now ilrrived co n cerning the criticis m of cilpitalism a nd thilt o f the str ugg les in w hi ch its vic tims Me e ngaged . They a re no t ' definiti ve conclusio ns' - a term that is a lie n to my w ay of thinking (which he re, I be lieve, joins that o f Marx). A good numbe r of the ce ntral theses tha t I present ha ve the ir histo ri es in the develo pme nt of my work. From o ne for m ula tio n to the next, I ha ve o bvio usly be nefited from new re adings - a nd re-re adings - but I have also tried to take into account the evo lut ions o f capitalis m and the stru gg les tha t have been tilking place in the mea ntime. To make the tex t easie r I hil ve no t made refe re nces to the develo pment of the concepts and proposaJs a s they evo lved .

Political and social confl icts and their representation J insist o n revers ing the rela tio nship of politi cs and eco no mi cs, by w hic h I de fin e capitali sm. This reversal - econo mi cs becoming dominilnt and substituting for po liti cs - indicates a qualitati ve c ha nge in histo ry. The soci
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

It is in this sense that my emphasis on the rupture that the invention of mod erni ty represents is ju stified.

The relationship beflwen the poli tical conflicts (the state) and the class s trugg le (in the sphe re of economic and social management) is pecu li ar to cap italis m, different from the way it was before capitalism . A t the heart of this transform
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general or parti cular ideas (id eologies) in a specifi c field of sociill and / or political stru gg le (or both at the same time). W hen treat ing this subjec t he used a vocab ulary w hi ch has a broad range o f terms. Garo cites 16 of them: appea rance, representati on, p resen tati on, abstraction, ex pressio n, signification, id eology, fi ctio n, refl ection, analogy, vision, fetishis m, illu sion, method, intellectual produ ction, imagination (Garo 2000, p. 268).

Marx, critic of social thought, and the centrality of 'representation' M arx was not a philoso pher, an economist, a sociolog ist, a historian. He WilS not even a scholar w ho possessed aU these fi elds of knowledge. He was more than that: the critic of philosophy, of polit ical economy, of sociology, of representations o f history. He was the crit ic of social thought tllilt based its fo rmulations o n the different segments of know ledge brought logether from these field s. A ll th ese specialised field s of knowledge (eco nomics, social history, politi cal hi story) or genera lised fields (phi losophy) share in commo n represcntiltio ns o f real ity o r what they claim it to be. Thus they are intellectual productions. Philosop hy itself, and all the p hilosophi es, are rep resentatio ns. Whether it is Greek p hilosop hy or that of the Enlig htenment an d of cl assical Europe, or o f modern plliloso phcrs (after Marx ), they are all intell ectual productions an d therefore canno t be unders tood outside the social reality (the hi storical economi c and sociill formation, to w hi ch I shaH retu rn later) wit hin w hi ch they were formulated . II is the same fo r the re ligio ns that have taken the pl ace o f p hilosophy (and still do). They a re representatio ns tllilt have found their place as representations o f t he universe, of society and of the human bei ng in the social format io ns in which they we re co nstituted. T hey have even been, I believe, till' major and fundam ental representa tio ns th at conform to the need s of the reproduction of social formations that I have descri bed as ' tributary', preced ing cap italis t modernity. But they h ave also proved their fl ex ibility. that is their capacity to reinte rpret themselves to s ur vive the transformiltiOll S of social formati ons. 1n that respect they share wit h many representations (if no t all of them) the capacity to 14 9

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evolve by themselves. These evo lutio ns are ordered both by their own internal logic and by th " t governing the social form"tion as a who le. Thi s coming together is fruitful, or no t, possible or not, ad vantageous "nd positive or n egative, d epending on the case (I s h
7 BEING MARX IST, BEIN G CO MMUNI ST, BEING INTERN AT IONALI ST

been and are, yesterday and today, con stitutes Ilis first permanen t concern, 111 o ther word s, Marx thoughtth<1t represent<1 tion cou ld become scientific, th at is, making it possible to discover the actual real ity. He proposed a formulil tio n (his own ' intellectual prod uction'), based on the abst ract co ncept of his tori cal social fo rmation. This formu lation is, in my humbl e opinion, gre<1t ly superio r wh atever its limitations - to all tile other ' theories' of society and history thilt hil ve been proposed up until now. To ilc hieve it, Marx made two cho ices. O ne was for materialis m: lllilt is, the exis tence of il reality o utsid e (and before) its representation, which may be correct (perhaps partially) or no t at all (i llus ionary). The other w as for dialectics: the reality itself is inseparable fro m its movement, ordered by the contrad icti on - A <1nd B in co nfli ct - and it s resolutio n by the invent ion of C, which is neither the triumph of A over B or vice versa, nor a ne w mixture of the two. This materialist dialec tic (a term I prefer to ' di alectic materia lis m') qualitati vely goes beyond forma l logic . I refer here to w hat I have wr itten on the subjec t in From C(lpifalism to C i1liii:::ll fion (2010). The result of Marx implementing th is method (th e wor k o f Marx) s houl d be given the serious considera tion it merits. In historica l MMxism it is all too often considered as the fin al resu lt: there was nothing to be added, no thing to be corrected. I disagree: my point of view is that to be Marxist is to start from Marx, not s top wi th him. Ma rx was not conte nt jus t with crit icising reality <1nd its represcnta tions. He o bserved that human be ings, indi vidually an d col lec ti vely, we re permane ntly e ngaged in acting, tran sforming an d wanting to transform re ality. They did so on the basis and by means of the represen tations th<1t they had of this rea lity. Even the ' conser vatives', who cl ai med not to want change, acted, e ven if only to try to hinde r the change . M arx SilW this as a pe rmanen t task an d chose his cam p, no t on ly, for co mple tely resp ect<1 bl e moral and human reasons, that of the oppressed and expl oi ted (who wo uld dare to say that they do not ex is t!); also he chose the camp of those who aim to change t he world by he lping the m to d eliver w hat his movemen t am bitio usly aimed at: the abo lition of o p pression and exp lo ita tion, as we U as o f classes, and the replacement o f cap ita lis m by com m unis m, wh ich was 151

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necessary (in th e sense that the movemen t went in that direction ) and therefore possible. This choice, whi ch I wholeheartedly agree with, does, however, pose three series of questi ons th at have to be faced. Firs t: emancipation, envisaged as the co mmunis t future, defines it self as the freedom from alienation, whi ch is at the orig in of the d is tance separating re presentations o f the world from its reality. Fo r my part, J ha ve proposed a classification listing these alienations in distinct, s upe rimposed ca tegories and I o pted for a mod est solution: communis m allows a socicly to gcl rid o f the eco nomis t / market alienation, which is itself the condition that enables the reproduction of the capitali st sys tem, but perhaps not also the alienations that I ha ve described as anthropological I refer the reader to these developments Wllich I proposed in Ullt'qlw l D!'vdopm1'lIt (1 976 ).

Second : as capi talism d evelops it produces its 'gravedigger' (t he proletariat) and the ti me becomes ripe for the possibility of it being overtaken by communism . But is this inescapable? I wo uld be careful in draw ing this conclusion, s ince in fael Marx does not d o so. The collapse, or even seU-destruction, of a society is also considered possible. In order to und erstand and th us define the necessary hypotheses for either the s uccess or the fai lu re o f the transfor matio n on the speelrum of the possible / necessa ry, I s uggest the concept of und er-determination. In transiti on periods like ours, there is a host of multip le determinations impacting on the system, pus hing it in a direction that can be revolutionary or chaoti c (revolutio n o r decadence, as I have put it). Third: what s hould be made of the rep resentation of society that Marx's own co nstruelion has produ ced (an intelleelual production like the others, that he himself critic ised )? Should not Marxism be s ubjeeled to critical Marx ism ? Marx never avoided this questi on. T he re presentatio n that he proposed is not a closed and definitive theory (Marxism) but an ensemble of o pen questions, with no closure being po ssible. I do not believe that the attempt made by Karl Mannheim (1 952) in Ideology ami Utopia help s us to progress on th is qu est ion because he is making a remarkable - criticism of hi storical Marxism, not of Marx.

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Marx: critic of capitalist reality and its bourgeois representation Marx never separated his tire less reseilfch into the actual reality o f capitalism - bo th its bas is in the ca pitalist economy as well as the way in w hi ch it functioned p o litically, in w hich were e ntang led class s truggles (in the plural as they were not limited to the central bo urgeois ie / proletariat strugg le) - and poli tical co nflicts. Marx gradually d iscovered this real ity, tha t of the his torical social forma tio n of capitalis m, through d issecting the representations that it gave itself. I wo uld add that the reaJity that Marx wanted to unde rstand (to make the struggle more effective for the positive overt hrow o f capitalism ) is both the economic la ws that generate its re production (I would prefer to say requi reme nts rather than laws, w hich imp ly a d eterminis m that is foreig n to Marx's thinking) and the way in which its politica l form is dep loyed . These two faces of reality arc inseparable. I also s hare the view point of Garo, w ho saw no contradiction between the concrete historical analyses of Frenc h politics be tween 1848 a nd 1871, and the theses of CaFital, as has been wrongly suggested by Ray mond A ron, w ho is not well equipped to understand the s pirit of Ma rx' s research in the way he a rtificially divides Marx into 'economi st', ' sociologist' and 'poLiti c,,1 ac tor' . Marx thus produced a critique of political economy, the essential s uutille of C«rital, w hich was a critique of t he economic d isco urse of cap itali sm. A nd it is in thi s sense that Ctlpital s ho uld ue read, no t as good economi c scie nce, as opposed to bad (or impe rfect) economic science o f ot he rs (classical o r popular). Rather Capital was the discovery of the ex istence of this rep resental io n used by the uourgeois political economy, in its origins a nd in its (active) function s in reproduci ng its system. But it was also a study o f capitalism's limits, its internal contradict io ns Ihal it can not overcome, and of its character that is, final ly, no t scientific uu t ideological. The te rm ' ideology' should ue u nderstood here in one of t he se n ses that Marx gave it: not sim ply as a syste m of ideas, a visio n, a 'Welt ansc ha uung' (cons truction o f the world), uut in its pejorative sense o f false co nsciousness, illu15 3

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sion, a ma sking of the alienation s that condition the formulations. The to-ing and fro -ing from the co ncrete to the abstract, from apparent phenomena to the hidden essence, cons titute the living body of materialist dialectics in operation . Wo rk, value, goods thus become forms of discovered abstrac tion which makes it possible to defin e capital as the social relationsh.ip, the surplus labo ur and the exploitation that originate in the mode o f productio n (and not in the circu lation a nd distributio n of income). T he s hift from the abs tract (the cap itali st mode of produ ction) to the concrete (sociOlI formatio n) thu s integrates the form s produ ced by the genesis of his torical capital ism (ow nership of land, rent ), those form s produced by the requirem ents o f its polit ical management (the state, political economies, the management of credi t and currency) and those prod uced by the enro lment o f eOlch of these social form ations of historical capitalism into the g lobalised capitalist system (fo reign trade). The result of th.is effort is remarkable but a lso unequalled. All the bou rgeOiS eco nomi c science subsequ ent to Ma.rx, even the mos t sophis ticated of modern times, even the most criti cal (like that o f Keynes) make, in my humbl e o pinio n, a poor showing comp<1Ted with the monumental Capital . ThOlt does not mea n that the result is final - it cannot be. This is not only becausc Marx did not have the lime to complete it, but because the very idea o f its completio n was alien to Marx's mind and method. Marx was, after ali, somew hat limited by his times. He did not take a miraculous medicine that vacc inated him agains t the errors and especially all the illusions and visions of his times. He d id not claim to be infallible, even iJ his i.nterpretation by hi storical Marxism sometimes im plies it. I myself ha ve dared to proposc conti nuing this crit ique o f the political econo my by restoring the whole ex tent of the challenge constituted by the world cap ital is t system. Thu s I propose ex tending the theory of value at the most abstract level o f its formulation (in the mode of cap italist production, itself an abstractio n) towards formulatin g the ' law o f g lobalised value' . This has been the cen tral object o f my research for half a century. I now realise, w ith t he advantage of h.ind sig hl, thOlI in order to do it I benefi ted from being outside the centre (d eveloped capitalism ) 154

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in the peripheries (the very resuJt of g lobilli sed cilpitalis rn ), w ith il viewpoint th ilt I thu s hope wa s free from Eu rocentrism. I also could not do it o ther than nowadays, after Marx, in o ur epoch o f the ca pitalism of the oligopolies. And in doing it] benefited from the lead of Lenin in this fi eld. The co ncl usio n th at Marx Cilllle to, an d to w hi ch I subscribe, is that the bo urgeois politi cal econo my, w hich had become vulgar (see Translato r's note) by necessity (as it co ntinues to be), is an ideo logy in the strictest sense o f the word : a functi onal rep resentation, as Ca ro says, that is di rectly of use to 'ownership', by legilimising its claimed necessity. Tllis impli es, rig ht fro m the beginning, that bourgeois politi cal economy analyses only the immediate realiti es throug h w hic h econo mic Life expresses itself. The ca pitalist takes pro fits in p roportion to the ca pital that he put s to work, therefore the capit a l is producti ve. W hen I recalled, in my book From Carita/ism to Ciuilizatio/l (2010), the pro ductivity of social labo ur, erased by tod ay's left -wing econo mists (even those who claim to be Marxists!), I was just pointing out that the representatio n of the eco nomy that they propose remains a vulgar rep resentatio n. It is not s urpri sing that a - positiv ist - Marxian po liticill economy has replaced Marx's criti<] ue of the po liti cal economy. That this trend has mainly been produ ced by Ang lo-Ameri can academics, befo re being ado pte d by others, is unders tand able given the attachment to empi ricism thil t characterises thei r cmture. The fa lse <]ues tio n of the transfo rm ati on o f value into price is an example. T he transformation implies a rate o f p rofit ex pressed in the syste m of production prices thil t is different from the rale of p rofit ex pressed in the syste m of va lu es. Marxians see an 'error ' here that abolis hes the validity o f the law of valu e. However, according to Marx's thinking, there is no contradictio n and still less an error: the rate of apparent profit (expressed in the p ricing system) mus t be different fro m its rea l rate, itself d irect ly associated to the ra te o f surplus value that meas ures the exploitati on o f work. Science al ways in vo lves going beyond appearances, as Marx said many times. Fo r o ur econo mis ts, w ho are bogged d own in emp iri cism, knowledge is red uced to w hat is immed ia tely apparent. I insist on this po int, Wl1i ch is never unders tood by o ur Marxians who ha ve,

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alas, es tablished a school of tho ug ht on the European continent. I ha ve also proposed reading the Marx o f his toricru Marxism o f the 20th century (the Marxism of Soviet planning) and the Keynes o f the so cial democracy of the welfare state as two representations (both of them defo rmed ) of reali ty: that of the Soviet society and that of the pos t-war western societies. A nd however mu ch Keynes was an authentic genius, his economics remains commonplace. O f course it was of a uanality that was different from that of the liberrus. But rus concep t of a preference for liquidity and the marginal efficiency o f ca pital stems di rectly fro m his read ing of the appearances by which the reproductio n of capital manilests itself. The sophistication of modern economics, origi nating from North Ameri can universities, d oes not su cceed in hiding the bana lity of the met hod that reveals the fundam ental em piricism o n which it is uased . It is a method that proposes to co llect together the ' fact s' (that is, the blcts as they are presented in the immed iate picture), then search the correla tion s among them to es tablis h the ' laws' . The way this vulgar economics functi ons is, to me, blindingly ouvious to the point of being ilb le to compare this function to the discourses of the sorcerers of ancient times (pure economics or the witchcraft of the co ntemporary world ). Listening to the speeches made at Davos in 2009, with the economists practising all kinds o f contortions as they talked about the crisis being 'u nex pected ', ' unexp lained', ' inexp li cable' , I fe lt vindicated in my views. The rep resentation of the econo mic discourse (from the political economy in the times of Marx to the pure economics of our days) is certainly an active discourse that shapes the reproduction of the system . It is not a useless bi t of decor. Not o nly do business lead ers believe in its scien tific reality, but genera l opinio n believes it just as mu ch. Both expect governments to be i.nspired uy the 'scientific' knowled ge that this representiltion produces for finding the so lution to the proulems - these days, the financial crisis, unemployment and so o n. Economic po licy thus cons titutes the active resuit of tltis representation .1 ilm not silyi ng thilt this economic po licy is necessmily and always ineffecti ve . The knowled ge on which it is based can, to a certain degree, be reliaul e. Proof is given from time to time by the eHecti veness of this or tlli"lt economic policy. But I wo uld 156 ngntea IT

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put a dampe r on Illis reputatio n (or effi cacy. The New Deal, (or ex am ple, only attenuated the exte nt of the crisis; it was the Second World War that ended it. It is now known that Hitler 's econo mic policy, whi ch was so praised, was not really effect ive. O ne could multi p ly the examples. Capitalism remains, in (act, a syste m that is not p roperly controlled by those who are its act ive agents (the businessmen) nor by those who, in po utics, try to impose some o rder on it. Marx also made a critic]u e of po litics, of th e state and democ racy, o f po litical co nflicts and of class s truggle. His o bjective was not to write an academic manual of po litical science, like the welJknown philosopher Raymond Awn. He developed a method (or the critic]u e of pouti cs w hi ch wa s the same as fo r his critiqu e o f capitalis m. Just as he had chosen Eng land (the beacon country for the develop ment of the capitalist economy in his time) to make a critique of political economy, he selected France fo r hi s critiqu e o f po litics. For it was France that had invented the state and the modern politi cs of capitalism. T he Eng lis h revolution of 1640, then the far from glorio us revolution of 1688 and the non-revoluti on cal led the America n War of Independ ence, were certai nly ilUlOvatory, but they went only half way. It was tile French Revolution that invented modern po litics and, w ith it, the modern state. It was a great revol ution and a genu ine o ne, because it envisaged the longterm ob jective need s of its times, as later the Russian and Chinese revolutions WC'Te to do. The drama of the g reat revo lutions ex pl ains also their later retreal.s and the un ti ring purs uit of political confli cts entang led with the class conflicts thai constitute mod ern po liti cs. The parti cul ar attention that Marx gave to France was thus deliberate. It was on the basis of his reading o f the political co nflict s and social s truggles in Fran ce that Marx was able to make his critique of the state and of politics and discover (or approach, to be modes t, as Marx was) the reali ty o f the s tate and modern po liti cs. The s ubjects chosen by Marx, the revolution o f 1848, the Eig hlL>enth Brumai re of Lo uis N apoleon (his clmp d'etat of 1851), the Paris Co nunune weTe no t selected by chan ce, as Raymo nd Aron would h,we it. They are no less fundamenta lth<111 Capital in unders tanding both the reality o f the capitalist social formation in 15 7

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its integraHty (that is, as an eco no mi c, political, and social entity) and the nature of the rep resentati ons that the actors in his tory made of t hem . Marx therefore set to disentang ling the muddle of the d iscourses (representations) of the actors in this historical period and in the class struggles. He forgo t none of these representations a.nd gave them their full force in exp laining the choices of action and the res ults that were producL>d. He gave their rightful place to the heirs of Jacobinis m and ' the Mou ntain ', to the BlIl/III"isll't', to the heralds o f t he business bourgeoisie (G ujzot and others), to the political adventurers (Louis Napo leon Bonaparte), to the spokesmen of the workers who were organising, to the peasa ntry who were apparently silent, and even to insignificant personalities (such as Lamartine). Later, with the creation of the International Working Men's Association, then tile Paris Commune, ' the ascent to attack the s ky', he crossed swords w ith the anarcho-commu nist representations of Bakunin, the hesitant ideas of Proudhon, the state theories of Lassale, the narrow-mindedness o f English trade unionism. The theo ry of the state outl i.ned by Marx and Engels and later by Lenin, and those of d emoc racy and mod ern pol iti cs, are the result of this cri tiq ue. O r, more exact ly, Marx, Engels and Lenin set down the bases of this theory Wll ic h, like that of capit"l, cannot be completed, either theoretically or in practice. For these analyses mus t "lways be up for question, retho ug ht and reformula ted. And the st"te and poH tics pursue their evolution and change wi th the permanent transformation of the ca pitalist reality. T he contras t between this analysis of the new reality made by Marx and the prodigiou s analysis made by Machiave ll i o f the ancient poli tical re"lity should imp ress the attenti ve re"der. M"chiavell i speaks abou t the re" lity of "nother lime, another kind o f power. The critique o f politics and o f the s tate proposed by Marx is both fu nd amental for the whole history of capital ism, including its l"test developmen ts, and lim ited by its pe riod . This cri tique s ho uld have been purs ued, as Lenin did, but he only started it. T his has no t been the case for histori cal Marxism which became bogged down, repeating w l1
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The liberal Virus W hat I tried to do in m y recent wo rk wi th this title (it had an impo rtant subtitle: PI'rmrl/1I'I1t IVaI" alld t} w A ml'l"icalli:;utiOll of tl1I' 1.I,'od d) wa s to update the d ominant di scourse (the representatio n) o f our g lobali sed neoliberaUs m, which is now in open crisis. The critique of this disco urse is bascd on a representation (mine) of the reality of capitalism today. It continues to be capitalism and the refore the essence o f what Marx s aid abou t it re mai ns perfectly valid: wo rk and exploit a tion, conune rcial alienation and expansion, the fetis hism of money, false re presentations of the (al ie nated ) ind ividual and of competitio n, the sta te at the service of capital, the alienated represe nta tio ns o f po liti ca l actors (illus ions of democracy), the e nta ng lement of social strugg les and po liti cal conflict s. [do not hesita te however in ' com pleting' these representa tio ns and their cr itique as Marx pro posed the m for his time, stressing w hat is new in co nte mporary ca pitalis m. TIll' Libnal lIirus the refo re combines two discou rses, two represe nta tions: that of the new pure economics (the modern form of vulg ar eco no mics) a nd that o f the model A me ri can democra cy. These are two discou rses that a.re very usefu l in serving, and giving the .. ppearance of leg itim .. cy to, the domin<1 tion o f the o ligopolies in the ce ntres tJlat have become the collect ive imperialis m of the Tr iad (U nited States, Euro pe, Ja pan) and .. t wor ld level (through the milita risa tion of g lobal isatio n .. nd the ' co mpr<1dorisation' of the go ve rning classes of the peripheries) . These discourses arc less scienti fic than ever, purely ideological, but neve rtheless aclive. They a rc the expressio n of the decline o f bourgeoi s thought, the end of the Enl ighte nme nt. The Libe ral virus e xpresses itself tluou gh the separiltion o f the management o f the economy alld the po liti cal management o f soc ie ty; the reduclio n o f economic ratio nali ty to the myth of generalised marke ts that te nd to produce a general equilib rium (eve n optim ..J because they respond to the p refe rences of individuals); the dissocia tion of po li tical management, reduced to electoral represe ntati ve and multiparty democracy, fro m qu est io ns of social prog ress; the lirnit .. tion of human rights w hi ch canno t cross the limi ts of the supre me valu e of pr iv<1 te prope rty; the descri ption o f g lobal is.1tion as positi vely g lobal. 159

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These ideas are developed fur ther in 1'111' Libf'ral Vims . [ s hall just emphasise thai libera1 ph ilosophy evades the essence o f historical capita1ism in general, and of the actually existing (sec Translator 's note) capitalism of to day, in particular. C apitalism has become a capitalism of o li gopo lies that dominate the whole productive and financial system. The domin
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In my books Obsoll'sal1 1 Cal'itlliism (2003) and S l'l'd fl'S of Cupitalism (1 998), I emphasised the tran sfor m,l ti ons in the economi c dimensions o f mod ern capitalism . In Till' L,balll Vim :>, I stressed the po litica l dime nsions . But the t wo critiques cannot be separated . In other words. the capitalis m of the oli go po lies. the dee pening g lobalisatio n, fin an ci ali sati on. the crisis of th e mode l of econo mi c management (co lla pse of the fin a ncial mar kets, the ongoing de pression), th e systemi c crisis (o f energy, o f foo d / ag ric ulture, climate change. de stru ction of the peasa ntry, the gro wi ng scarci ty of natural reso urces), the decline in the cred ibility o f democracy, the rise in nos talg ic illusions, the illusio ns of th e indi vidu al (the king that he is not), the 'single party o f the oligopol ies' , the co llective imperial is m of th e Triad, the relati ve an d abso lute paupe risatio n at the wo rld lew l, the militari satio n of g lo balisati on, the race to cont rol the natural reso urces o f the planet, apartheid at the world le vel: all these together cons titute the po rtrait of reality that th e eco nomist / liberal re presentatio n leaves out of its co nside ration s. Th e other d iscou rses, th e represent ations that the movemen ts in struggle ha ve o f realit y. arc on the whole frag mented - that is. they gene rally con cern o nly o ne of the dimensions o f the to tal re a lity, w hose e lements are s pe lt out above . The Americanisalio n of this renewed fun ctio nal represent ation mus t be emphasised. T he cont ra1jt I wanted to make between the European po liti cal culture(s) and that of the Uni ted States is. i.n my hu mble opinion, essent ial for understand ing the fat al dangers that the Americanis., ti on of Euro pe entails. It doses the door on a g radual transfo rmation along the road to soc ialis m and o pens the W
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of the poLiti cal representati on fhat s uits it. Co nsensus closes the door to a soci alist co nscio usness. Europe - s tarting with France - thus invented o ne modern political (and state) form, while the United States has quite another. The g rea t revolutions carried ou t in the name of soci alism, those of Russia and China, included in their programme the in vention of a new state and a new po litics, that of the transitio n to socialism. They were well on the way after their victories but later go t s tu ck. even retreating . The first effo rt to construct a politics for the future has thu s
7 BEING MARX IST, BEIN G CO MMUNI ST, BEING INTERN AT IONALI ST

cap ital (as I observed in my 2001 articl e 'Marx et la democratie' ), as it was associated with the emergence of social imperiali sm, to w hich I s hall return. Neither did muliiparty is m, w hich also developed later, largely in res ponse to the formation of workers' parties, serio usly challenge the power of capital. Nor did the recognition of many and expanded rights, even incl uding so me social rights, but all o f them forbidden from crossing the red line of the right to property. These democratic advances were not made from a perspective o f the transition to socialism but, on the co ntrary, reinfo rced bourgeois democracy in what was most essential, its association wi th the power of the bou rgeoisie. Nevertheless they shaped a political life that saw the muJtiplication of conflicts over the exercise of power. These confli cts ha ve always been dis persed and fragmented, producing and mo bilis ing endless disco urses (o f representatio n), wh ich a re themselves fragmented. The entanglement o f these conflicts wi th class s tr uggles in th is way weakened the revolutionary potenti al of the latler and blocked the way to a socialist transition. Today, with the s trengthening of the power of the ol igopolies in the economic fie ld, the state is mo re than eve r the s tate of the cap ital o f these oligopolies. O ne mu st not therefore be s urprised at the way it is managing political democracy towards less democracy and more co nsens us, as in the United States. Nevertheless t hi s state of ca pital can also be a social s tate. The social-democrati c historica l co lllpromise o f cap ita l and labour during the post- Second World Wilr period is an excellent examp le. But, as I observed above, this compromise, which was im posed by the defeat o f fascis m and the legitima cy gained from thi s by the wo rking-class parties, was possible only thanks to imperialist rent. There is so mething new in the peripheries of the sys tem because he re the fun ctional s tale for dominan t imperialis t c"pit,,] is the comprador s tate. There is no shortage of models from previo us cpochs: U1 C O tto man s ultan, the Egyptian khedi ve, thc shah of I r"n, the emperor of China, the lll tiftll1dista states of L" tin Ameri ca. This kind of s tale hils its loc'll soc ial base in the classes that benefi t from imperialist expansion: old feu dalists converted into agrari'ln semi-capitalism and the intermediary bourgeoisie (the compra163

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dores in the strict sense of the term). T hese models can hard ly accommoda te bourgeois democ racy. New form s o f the comprado r s tate have been in vented in mo re recent times in independent Africa (descri bed as neocolonial) and they too are in capable o f res pecting the minimal requireme nts of bourgeois democracy. For those very reasons, the comprador s tate has never been abl e to acq uire the s tability of the states o f cap ital in the imperialis t centres. It has been compl etely overturned by revolutions under the bi\.lUler of socialism i\.lld Marxism (t hil t became Marx ism-Leni nism) in Russia, C hina, Vietnam and Cuba. O r it has been seriollsly transformed, in var ious degrees, by nationalist, popular (see Translilto r's note) blocs fo r nil lionalliberatio n. In the per iphery the entang lement o f conflicts around power and class strugg les has been no less complex than in the contemporary centres. The subordination o f radical class strugg les to ot her objectives, said o r claimed to be d erived from the needs of developmen t, is al so visible. Bu t tlus e ntanglement takes on a different form from th at of the centres. For here, the conflicts to acqui re power - to make it possible to gaiJl access to t he owners hip of capital - have Imd to be presented in other lVilyS. Pmticular re presentations llilve given expressio n to these confli cts, g ivi ng credibility and leg itimacy to t hei r di scourses. I have tried to d isentang le the threads o f some of these entanglement s for the countries of Asia and Africa during the Bandu ng era in L'£"l!i~ 11 rill Slid. To s um up, w hat I think is wort h remembering fro m these co ntributions, which I believe absolutely to be Marxist and not nooMarx ist, is the emphilsis o n the world d imension of ilctuilily ex is ting historical cil pitalis m / imperialis m. This dimension may even hilve been underestimilted by Marx himself. In any Cilse it was abolis hed by the historicill Marxism of the Secon d lnterniltional and the social-i mperialists that built it. It was hal f reinstated by the Tili rd in teTll<1tional, to be sidelined subsequently by the cons trilints o f the need for coex istence ildvocated by the Soviet Union (not by the imperial ist powers). These ideas were taken much furt her by Maois m. Hi stori cal Marxism (or all these Marxisms, to differen t degrees) alwilys tends to reduce the world system to a juxtaposition o f cap italis t formations (or formati o ns on their way to becoming 164

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cap italisl), w hether or not they were wleq ually developed and thus eventua Uy overpowered, I have tak en a sys tematic opposition to thi s viewpoint and soug hl to unders tand the world system in a different way, as consisting of centres and peripheries that are inseparable fro m eac h other. In this pers pecti ve, the concep ts o f the globa lised law of va lue and its coro llary, the imper ialis t rent, enrich the d ecisive and determining advances by Marx. They do 110t negate them - o n the contrary. This is becau se what MMX ha d derived from hi s constru ction (capitalist reality) is, at the level of the wo rld system, s triking ly confirm ed by the facls. The centn.>-periphery polarisation is s imp ly another way of describing il gigan tic pauperi sation, relati ve and absolute, o n an e\'en greater sca le than Marx had enVisaged in his epoch. The accelerated growth of proletarianisation at o ne end (in the peripheries)' associated wi th its appMent decrease in the centres (I say apparent beca use wha t I c,.. lIthe genera l proletarianisation takes on ot her for ms) also confirms the views of Marx. Ta king into account the g lobalisation of capital, as mus t be done, enriches the range of representati ons that guid e the aclio n o f the social forces that are in strugg le. These s pecific d isco urses are important, and sometimes d ecisive because the co ntrast between centres and peripheries entails the in volvement of classes and nations (and peoples). In the centres trus entanglement is inseparable from the im periali st rent and its effects on the who le society (and not o nly on the vo lume of capital's profit s). In the periphe ries it g ives the o bjective o f national independence new scope. To g ive the imperiali st reality of ca pital ism all the importance it should ha ve means introducing geopoliticall geostrateg ic co nflict s into the analysis o f the req uirements of the reprod uction o f econo mic and po liti cal reality and translating them into acti ve representations, as it also requires d ividing capi talis t ex pansion into sig nifi cant p hases.

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The geopolitics of capitalism/imperialism in crisis The main the me that I have put forward o n this s ubject is that impe riali sm, w hi ch was once referred to in the plural, has now beco me the collect ive imperialis m of the Triad . T his qualitati ve trans formation co rres po nd s ex actly to the deg ree of capital co ncentration me ntioned earlier. Ne\'ertheless, its politi cal management remains mostly natio nal (even within the European Union, and all the more so in the Triad countries as a whole), he nce the re is a possible co ntradicti on between the econo mic managem e nt of th e g lobalised , financiaJ jsed system by collec tive impe r:ialism and its po litical management by the states of the Triad . Howe ver, I stress that it was possible to reconcile g lobalised economic management and natio nal po Jjtical management d uring the whole period of neohbe ral ascent (1980-2008). This reconci liation red uced the extent of possible intra-Atlantic conflict s be twL>en Europe and the United States and intra-European conflicts wi thin the European U nion. Beyond thi s, it attenuated the North-South conflicts in th a t the e me rging cou ntries of the So uth aligned themselves with tIle require ments o f globalisat ion and even, by accele rating their g row th, o btained some short-term profits from it, while other countries of the South were forced to submit passi\'ely to these requi re me nts. Tllis page of his tory has now been turned with the onset o f the g looalis atio n crisis, starting w ith its financial crisis. New qu estions thus arise: will the developme nt of the cris is lead to a weakening of At lanticism, to its re \'ision, o r to its breakup? O r, perha ps, to its reinforcem ent? The Europea n Union and, w ithin it, the e uro zo ne: are they des tined to explode? to stagnate? o r to be stre ng thened? Is the conflict be tween impe rialis m and the mai n e mergi ng co untries - in pmt icular Chin a, but also Ru ssia, and perhaps othe rs - likely to beco me more acute? O r will everyo ne acco mmodate the mselves to viab le compromises in the cris is? Will the o the r countri es of the Third World escape their lethargy, or sink d eeper into it? The replies to these ques tions, w hich arc necessarily diverse, will d e pe nd both on ongoing strugg les and those to come: social 166 ngntea IT

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s trugg les (local dominated classes ag ainst d ominating classes) in all the ir political d ime nsio ns, in lernatio naJ conflicl s be tween the leading blocs in comm and positio ns o f the states and natio ns , There are no evide nt prog noses a nd d ifferent ones a re possible. This does not exclu de but indeed requ ires the concre te analysis of all these contradictions and the confli cts that they create.

The division of capitalist expansion into significant phases The re
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iso late the new working class; tn the second, it made hi storical compromises with the waged classes. I don' t hide my conviction that the method that Gramsci proposes is sounder than the others. in the sense that he stressed the essential forces that shape the transfor mation: the class stru gg le. I have tried to use thi s method to characterise the s pecific po lit ical cultures of the main imperialist natio ns, emphasising the or iginal compromise, sometimes a serious one, between the bourgeoisie and the po liti cal forces of the !ll1dl'1ls ligilll l~l' . I have also tried to implement this mel hod in my ana lyses concerning the centre-periphery conflict, characterising the centres by their capacity to implement the capit
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and the colonial peop les ha ving gained a res pectability that they had never had befo re. This mad e possible, between 1945 and 1980, the establis hment of the we lfare state in the countries of the imperialist Triad (socia l imperialis m), the second g reat revolution (in C hina) and the victory of the national liberation stru ggles i.n Africa and Asia (the B,lIldung era). T hese post- war models were worn ou t by 1980, after the new systemic crisis w hi ch bega n as of 1%8-1971 , and this made it possible to dream o f a return to generalised liberal is m (associated thi s time with the co llective imp erialism of the Triad ). So then we entered into a second belle cpoque, introducing a possible and des irab le second wave of s trugg les for the ema ncipatio n o f humanity. Thu s it is that history repeats itself, C]uite obViously to me, and I ha ve analysed it in these terms from the end of the 1980s. The page is now turned o f this second belle epoq ue (1 9802008), w hich was based on the collective imperialis m of the Triad, the erosio n thell coll apse of the Soviet U nio ll, the passage to postMaois m in C hin a, the co llapse of the national popular models o f Bandung nnd the social-l ibera l d rift (see Translator' s note) o f social democracy. This does not mean tllat the o ligarc hies are not trying to res tore it. T he liberal ideo logues saw fin ancialised globalisat ion as the ' end of his tory' . Pe rsona lly I tho ught from the beginning that it was unstable and unviab le, as I said earlier. The event s urprised the libera ls, but not myself and some others - very few, alas, at that lime. T he deve lopment of struggles fro m 1995 o nwards shows the social and po litical d imens ion of th is ins tability: the financial collapse o f October 2008 ,md its incapacity to overcome the internal contradi ctions o f its mode of econo mi c management. I s hall co me back to the importnnce that shou ld be given to these two modes o f sys tem colla pse, that is, thro ugh internal con trad ictions or through the victo rio us strugg les o f the vic ti ms (see the conclusion to Class alld ,lVatioll 1980) . Fro m 2008 we have been confronted wi th C]uestions about the fu ture that can be resolved only by the develop ment and radicalisil tion o f the current stru gg les.

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The social struggles and political conflicts

of today Today, just as in the past, the strugg les to transform society an d politi cal co nfli ct a re most certainly not unconnected. A ll social demands, however modest, become the object of politi cal conflict and none of them can co ntinue indefinit ely w ithout hav ing a social impact. Nevertheless, it is useful to d istingui sh between these two aspects of real ity, even if they arc two s ides of tile sa me coin. We cou ld s lart with the di versity of aspirations that motivate mobi lis ations an d social struggles and perhaps di vid e these as pirati ons into fi ve grou ps: for political democracy and res pect for indi vi dual rig hts a nd freed om; for soci a l justice; for res pect for di verse groups and communities; for be tter ecological management; for obtaining a be tter pos iti on in the wo rld syste m. C learly the protagoni sts of movements tha t stan d for these aspiratio ns arc rarely the same. For example, the concern that o ne' s country s hould o btain a hig her position in the wor ld hierarchy, d efined in ter ms of wealth, power and autono my of action, is prima rily a co ncern of the gove rning classes, of those in power, rat her than of the pcople as a w hole even though it would have their backing . T he aspi rat ion for respect - in the fullest meaning of the word, that is fo r reall y equal treatme nt - can mobilise wome n round t heir posilio n as wome n, or a cultural, ling uistic o r religious g roup that is d iscri minated against. T hese movements can be trans-class. O n the other ha nd, the as piration fo r more social justi ce, defi ned variously, depend ing on the diffe re nt movemen ts - fo r greater ma terial well-being, for legislat ion that is more appropriate a nd effi cacio us, or for a sys te m o f social relations and production that is rad ically diffe ren t - aJl these almost necessarily invol ve the class struggle. It can be the de ma nd of the peasa ntry or o f one of its sectors for an agrarian reform, a redistribution of pro perty, a legislatio n that f.l.Vo urs, fo r exa mple, tenants o r bette r prices. It can be fo r muon rights, e mploy me nt legisla tion, o r even the need fo r s tale po liti cs tha t makes its intervention on be half o f workers more effective - to the point of nalionali s., tioll, co-manageme nt and wo rker manageme nt. But it can also be the 170 ngntea IT

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demand s of profession al or entrepreneurial groups claiming a reduction in taxes. It can be demands concerning the peop le as a who le, like the movements in lavour o f the right to education, hea lth or lodging and, IIIlItatis IIllltmldis, 10 appropriate enviro nmenial management. The democrati c aspiration can be limited and precise, particu larly when it is inspiring a movement fi g hting against a non-democrati c power. But it can also be inclusive and thus seen as the lever that makes it possibl e to bring together all the social demands an d claims. A chart of the actua l dis tributi on of th ese movements wo uld certainly s how how tremendously unequal they are on the ground. Bu t the chari wo uld, as we know, be per petually cha nging because where there is a problem there is almos t always a poten tial movement to fin d a sol ution to it. One need s to be really naive a nd ex traordinarily o ptimisti c to think that these forces act ing in very different fields could g ive the necessary coherence to a movement Ihat would help societies move towards g rea ter justice and democ racy. Chaos is part o f nature, just as order is. It wo uld req uire the same nai vety to neglect the reactions of the ex isting powers towa rds these movements. T he geography o f the d istribution of these powers and the s tmtegies they d evelo p to meet t he chall enges that f,1ce them, at both the local and the international levcis, fo llow d ifferent forms o f logic from those o n which th e~ as pi rations are based. T hat is to say that Ihere is a possibility of deviations among social movements, of theiT being instrumentalised and manipulated. These arc aJso realities that cou ld lead t hem into powerlessness, or to s ubscribe to a pers pective o ther than their own . It wou ld perhap s be usefu l, in the jung le of struggles and conflict s that make those in power o ppose the soci al movements, o r that make the powers op pose eac h other or even make the social movements themselves oppose e ach other, to create an inventory o f the major issues dominaling the contemporary scene. There is no doubt that priority should be g iven to a careful analysis of the stmtegies of the o li garchy in the co untries o f the Triad, the eco nomi c interests al st ake and the gL>opo lit ics and geos trategy of s tates that are systemati cally 011 the defensive. Bu t an inventory shou ld also be mad e of the strategies of the dominated powers in UlC exis ting world system, both in the co untri es o f the 171

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former sociali st East and those of the Sout h. O ne could then draw u p a chart of the conflicts w here the powers op pose each other. These strategies o f the dominated powers arc used to destroy certain movements or to subordinate them to object ives that are not their own. One o f the most effective ways of d oing this is to promote, s upport and encourage mOVemeJl ts ot her t han those listed above and to push them into directions that are conven ient for the powers in conflict. Ethnici ty and cornmunitari ani sm on a nati onal or religious bas is, a mong o thers, Me hig hly app ropria te fo r Ihis pu rpose because their demands (sha llow as they arc) take the place o f democratic and social as pirations - to the benefit of local powers and / or dominant powers at the world level. Pretences abou t being ' left wing' are also useful for this purpose. To work out aU these complex issues it is necessMY to unders ta nd the challenge that con temporary imperialis m poses. O n that basis, we migh l hope 10 take the debate furth er as well as to conceplualise the requiremen ts o f an effective and consistent alternati ve.

The language of the discourses To make a cri tique o f the var iou s representations, it is necessary to unders tand the voc abulary, that used by Marx as well as that used by the liberals. We know the curren t terms used in Ihe tradition of worker and socialist s trugg les, associated wi th diHerent concep ts it is true, but o ft en at least insp ired by the writings o f Marx - on the s tate, po lit ics, classes and class st ruggles, social change, reform and revolutio n, power and id(.>()]ogy. These terms h
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Proletariat With M arx the term ' prolclarian ' has a precise scientific meaning : peop le who ilJe forced to sell the ir labour (the o nly thing they ow n) to capital. Wo rkers do no t use the means of production, w hic h is done by capital, using labour, subordinati ng and exploiting it. In this se nse the continual e xpansio n of capital is sy nony mo us wi th tha t of the process of proletariani satio n. The end of the prole tariat, that is, the end o f 1,1bour subordinated to capital, is jus t nons ens e, Never theless, prolela ri ani sation has never bee n unifo rm, al ways multi fo rm at all s tages in th e capi ta list ex pan sion. The formal submissio n of artisans in the first period of ca pitalism (the pull ing ou l process), Ihal of modern fa rmers, Ihose of peas anlries in the peripheries o f the sys te m , Ihat today o f the free workers (w ho be lieve the mselves free) w hose numbe rs ha ve multiplie d because of new fo rms of capi t ali st organisatio n, t hose o f the info rm al wor kers: these s how the diversity of fo rms of the general prolclarianisa tio n. Moreover thLs di vers ity is, at le ast partiall y, the result of po licies im pleme nte d by capital ilJ\d the sta.te a.t its se rvice to break the front of la bo ur, The se policies also al lowed the developme nt of re presentations s pecific to each of these situations, thus making it more complex to pass from the conscio usness of se lf to the consciou sne ss for self o f the general prole tariat. The theo ry / pr,lctice of the struggles (always 'spontaneously' sectoral) - and not that of the Ulcory introdu ced fro m outside, o r so-called ' creat ive spo ntaneity' - is the cent ra l plank of the cla ss s trugg le and of its indis pe nsable politi cisatio n, for its ow n succe ss, bo th immediate and mo re long term. ' Farewell to the proletariat', comes from a simplification by historical Marxis m, red ucing thi s cl ass to a fragm e nt. This is the Eurocentric, econo mi cist a nd worker-idealism (workeri st) view point o f large-scale iJldu slry of the 19th century and the n of the Fordis t factor y o f the 20th . Thi s w as the objective fo unda tion o f the wo rke r-o ri e nte d viewpoint, jts o rga nis atio n be ing facili tated by its conce ntra tio n iJl the workpla ce and, o n this ba sis, of the co nstitutio n of worke r parties and unions , T he politi cal offe nsive of capi tal, w hic h develo ped in the seco nd be lle e poq ue and w hich still continue s, a ims at fragment ing

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the labo ur fron t into new and supplemen tary fro nts. T he con tras t between the conditions of Ihe workers that I h
Class a nd strugg le The divers ity o f the forms of the gener"l prolelMi"nls"tio n m"ke it necessary to analyse the classes and strategies o f the struggles. Shou ld one then replace the expression 'expansio n of the gener<1l proleto ries, whi ch are always confined with in s tri ctly em pirical methods, are in fa vour of this s hift. The World B
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categor ies of the French IN SEE (National ins titute fo r Statistics and Econo mic Studies) is less rudimentMY. It makes it possible to correlate th e divers ity of representatio ns with that of the electoral o ptions. But it still remains empiri cal in spirit. It is not evident th at, in the long period of the ex pansion o f historical ca pitalis m, the proportion of the middle classes has constantly increased (the fashionable belief) or decreased (as suggested by a definitio n of proletarian is
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

s uch as the new classes benefiting from imperialis t ex pansion (the Illtifill/dis/ll of Latin America, As:ia and the Arab world, the new ' rich' peasan ts, the o ld cllieftain cies now con verted ) as well as the victims (landless peasants and peasants with minuscu le plots) . New or renewed urbanisatio n has also seen the emergence of new classes: the compradors profiting from the system, the popular classes that are victims o f it, and various middle strata. Faced by the diversity of situations, amplified by the d isco urses and representations, is it possib le to imag ine the emergence o f a front of the popular classes (whi ch are the general proletariat with it s di verse constituent parts )? In the centres, o ne might think that imperia list rent, wh ich aligned social democracy with soc ial imperialis m almos t from the beginning of the setting up of the modern left, wou ld make it impossible for a credible soc ialist perspective to emerge. The shift towards the ideology of Amer ican-sty le consens us reinforces this possible disastrous evolution, which would impose apartheid at the world level. While the danger of this possibility should not be underestimated, there is one reason why it is not inevitable. T he o ligarchic centralisation o f capital and its mo de of managi ng the cris is of senile capitali sm is commi tting itself to a general evo lutio n toward s the des truct ion of the who le future of humanity and perhaps life o n the planet. An awareness o f this perspecti ve is growing . Will it enable the co ns titution of an alternative antioligarchy bloc? Would the emergence of such a bloc be facilitated by the degradation of the li\Iing conditions of the popu lar classes and large sections o f the midd le classes that this crisis will almost certainly produce? Here we see the imparlance o f representations. Will these succeed in giv ing cred.ibili ty to fascis t-leanin g responses (' it's the fault of the immigrants', o f ' international terroris m' )? Or will they fail to do so? In the peripheries, the emergence of alternative national blocs (anti-imperialist), popu lar (anti-fe udal, anti-comprador) and democratic, are coming up against visib le difficulties. The nostalgic drifts- manipulated by imperialis m and the local IlL'O -compradors - are far from losing their strength. There, too, battles on ideological fron ts, the dissection of discourse, are most necesg..·uy. Beyond the analysis of the realities concerning bo th the pop ular and middl e classes, can a concept of 'people' help us to 176 1\00 IT

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develop s trategies for the construction of a soc ialist convergence? I would say that it is important to do politi cs (i ll the good sense o f the term). The people in ques tion is not defined in advance; this can o nly be done in its relation to both the immediate and more distinct o bjectives of the strategy to fi g ht for the opening up o f the socia list path, A n anti-oligarchy peop le in the North ? An an ti-imperialis t peop le in the South? This reali ty has previously ex is ted, in moments o f radicalisa tion of the s truggle for national liberation and socialis m. In Vietnam it became the ac tive s ubject o f hi story. This was ind eed the case o f a peop le who came together, but excl uded the feudal and comp rador classes.

The poli t ica l classes A concrete analysis of the conditio ns for strugg ling fo r the alternative with a socialist pers pective s hould give s pecial attentio n to the social g ro ups that are particu larly active. These are w hat are (ina pp ropria tely) called the ' political classes'. Here we get into a jung le o f e ntang lements which can o nly be disentangled one by one. I have tried to do it only for a few cou ntries in the Ban dung era. The temptation has always bee n very great to replace the anaJysis o f representations and the real choices of action by a general discourse on the petty bourgeois ie. It tends to be fo rgotten that this term does not us ually cons tilu te a very defin ite class, defined by objective cri teria of stat us in Ihe produ ction system. The term was introduced by popu lar revolu tionary talk of the 19th century and by Marx to identify more an attitu de th an a class. Its U5
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The language of capitali st reproduct ion The fas hion from .1CroSS the A !Ian tic has rep laced these co ncepts s haped by social strugg les, w hich Mar xism tried to systematise, with a new languag:e of civil society, good governance, fig ht against poverty, social justi ce. I s uggested in C ha pter 6 a radica l crit ique of this ' newspeak' w hic h expresses an ideo logy that has a very defini te function that aims at restri cting: thinking to w hat is requ ired by cap italis t reproduction.

Towards a second wave of victorious anti-capitalist struggles? I shall just reca pitulate the most recent d evelopme nts that I have put for ward on these ques tions, e mp hasising the most essentia l o f wh at I feel to be new ones. The transition from worl d cap italism to world socialism cannot be envisaged other than in t he for m of successive waves o f ad va nces (fo llowed by possible retreats, alas!) in the s truggles for hu man emancipation, ju st as cap it"li sm itself h"s been the prod uct, not of a European miracle sh"ped in " br ief period in the A msterdam / Lo ndo n / Paris triangle, but of a s uccessio n of waves that took place in different geographical reg ions fro m the Ancient World and from C hina to the Europe of the Italian ci ties, not forgetting the Muslim Orient. His to ri cal ca pitalis m, w hi ch was the product o f the las t European wave, imposed itself, thus destroying the possible s hap ing of ot her form s of capitalism based on hi storical cultures other th an that o f Atlantic Europe, in parlicul <1T o n th at o f Confucian C hina. Bourgeois thoug ht, w hich is by nature linear and Eurocentri c, d id not have the necessary intellectual lool s to think beyond capitalis m. Its only thinkable future for humanity was oriented to the ca tching up of the under-deve lo ped countr ies that were backward. It co ul d not imagine fl future except as an imitation o f the ca pit alist model such as it exis ted in the developed centres. From Rostow to the emerging cou ntries this bourgeois thesis remains unchanged. My critici s m of this thesis was in "dvance of the times, written even before Roslow's book (pub lis hed in 1960). 17 8

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Historical Marxisms which are, in spite of everything, imp regnilted by the sam e reductionist and linear vision of history, only partially understood the size of the challenge, whatever the nuances , [therefore regard the 20t h century as that o f a fi rst wave. G reat ild vances ha ve been made in the centres, in the form o f socialdemocm tic management (not to be confused with socia l liberalism), together with a broadening of the d emocratisatio n of society (particula rly the emergence o f women o nto the scene) . Reactiona ry attempts to halt these ad vances (fascis ms) were finally put to fli g ht. Hevolutions in the nam e of socialis m, fir st in the Hu ssian semi-periphery, then in the Chinese periphery (and in some other places) beyond doubt constituh..>ci the most radical adv'lIlces of the centu ry. T he global isatio n o f the stru ggle fo r regain ing independence by the peo ples of Asia and A frica fo rced imperialism to ad just to a new multipolar system in the post-war period . These ad vances veritably transfo rmed the societies of the North and the So uth, of the West and the East at unp recedented ril tes and no tnecessMily for the wo rse, as liberal propagand il has it. But they were s hot thro ug h with cont rad ictions and reilched limits that pre pared the way fo r later retreats from their firs t victories. I will not return to desc rib ing these ebbs and flows but just outline w hat seems to me to be their main ori gin il nd what the second wave o f strugg les s ho uld therefore put at the centre o f their concerns. First of all is the fascination with the state, not only of Leninism but also of sociil l d emoc racy iUld the niltional populisms o f Bandung. The practice o f democracy (when it existed) remained limited by the concept o f progress from above, a fatal handicap fo r the sociali satio n of economic management. Then there is also the und eres timati on - whi ch is the least o ne can say - o f the ex tent of the challenge created by the depth of the centre-periphery split. T here are of co urse nuances o n this issue too. From Baku, in 1920, Lenin fo resaw that the revolutionary an ti-cilp italis t movement was Inoving eilstwards. But above all, the decisive co ntribution o f Mao ism find s its place here. Mao's agenda was to conceive the revo lutio n as natio na l (anti-imperialisl), popular and democ rati c (anti-feudal. anti-co mprador), opening the way to a very long, possi ble transitio n to socialis m.

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So, w hat are the conditions (or tJle e mergence of a second wave, ' the sod alisms o f t he 21 st century? At the heart of t he challenge lies the question o f d emocracy and o f the reconstructi on o f the world system.

The question of democracy I start from the crit ique that Marx add ressed to the bou rgeois system as a w hole. Marx' s instrument for analysi.ng it is hi s theo ry of representatio n. Human beings no t o nJy li ve in a system (a histor ical social form atio n) but also in the way it is rep resen ted (by their ideology ), w hic h itself is o rdered by the objecti ve fo rmatio n in w hich they li ve. It was religious (l call it ' metaphysical') in the ancient systems and economic (J call it ' econo mi cist') under ca pitalis m. 1 will not repeat all that J ha ve already written about the contrast between the two. ' Re presentatio n' disting uis hes human sociclies fro m animal societies: it governs the actio n strategies of the subjects of his tory, classes and natio ns. In cnpi tillism, religion, Inw n.nd money cons titute the three faces of the alienated representa tio n of the ca pitalist reality, as Gaw points ou t. As I ha ve written, these three are inseparable: ' mo ney theis m' substitutes (or acco mp anies) mo notheis m. But law, too, whi ch becomes the foundation of the new state, perhaps democratic, is itself actively in volved in the economic alienation. It transforms itself, fro m having been at the service of power (in the IllJ dt:'lls Ifginlt:'s), to that of p roperty. The democratic conquests have re,lched the limit that they CiUlnot cross without getting o ut of capitalism . The bourgeois democracy is itself an alienated democracy. It forbids the crossing o f the red line of sacrosanct p roperty ownershi p. Law and money are thus inseparable. A nd this association accompanies the separation between the politica l management of socicly by electo ral and multiparty representative democracy (w here it exists) and t he management of the econo my which is abandoned to reason, il ttributed to the market. In politics ci tizens are equal before the law. In social reali ty, dominant and dominated, explo iters and exploited, arc no lo nger equal in their capacity to make use of their rig hts. Social progress is ex teriorised, it is not a constitutive part of the founda tion of law and democracy. 18 0 ngntea IT

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The strugg le for bourgeois de mocracy is perfectly ju stified in situalions where it does not exisl. One can understand the legitimacy of its claim to implement fundam ental cig hts (of freedom o f opinio n, organisation, s truggle, e tc). Progress in this d emocratic fie ld fa vours the develop ment of struggles and a correct representation of the challenges. But this strugg le in no way reso lves the problem. The real challenge demands the in vention o f a law and a democ racy that associates the freedo m of indi viduals wi th social progress. Tltis cannot be d one w ithout dethronjng money, that is, extrica ting ourselves from capitalis m. Rather than discuss democracy (which always impli es bo urgeois democracy) o ne must disc uss democratisation (co nsidered as an endl ess process), sy nonym of the emancipa tion of individuals and peoples. The second wave will not con stitute progress compared with the first wave, if it d oes no t make real progress in this directio n. To make progress in democratisation is impossible wi thou t bringing together what I call the ' social base' (soc ial cons titu ency) as opposed to the 'electoral base' (electoral constituency) in s trugg les that are co nvergent in divers ity. T he social base ex ists objectively ilnd brings together the immense m
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behaviour of human beings that ilttributes to fo rces outside themselves the obli gation to ac t as tlleY do. The most obvious case is the economis tic alienat ion produced by the domination of capital (beyond the market) which imposes its need s like a force o f nature ou ts ide the society, while the economy in ques tion ollly exists throug h the social relationships that define its framework. My reading of Marx's Capital: C,itilflll' of tIJI' Political Economy is based o n the central position of a lienation. But what are the o ther for ms of alienation? Such as those tllat define religio us beliefs? In genera l, is alienation not a condition that defines a human being? It is clear that if the reply to this question is that alienation is inherent in the human being, then the possibiliti es of freedom through the democratic management of the economy and of power are, by d efiniti on, limited. But what arc those limits? I therefore pro pose to disting uis h the forms o f alienation that I describe as social and which can therefore be situated in time and spa ce, parti cular to a concrete society at a concrete mo ment o f its history, like the economis1i c ali enation that is peculiar to capitalis m, or the religious alieniltions as they are experienced by the soc ieti es concerned, from those that would be anthropo logical (or, in my voca bulary, s upra-hi storica l). And on that basis I would be sat isfied with d efinin g the emancipatio n offered by the co mmunist pers pective as liberatio n from the social alienations alone. O ne can then give a more precise defini tion of the instit utional forms o f the management of the economy and of politics that facilitate prog ress in that direction. The critical uto pia comes w ithin this framework and its limitatio ns. I und ers tand, by cri ti cal utopia, a vi sion o f the future that is, in the end, mu ch more reali sti c than its adversa ries imagine. Even modest ad vance in that directio n wou ld produce a strong mobilisatio n of forces prepared to go s till furth er. To renounce the cri tical utopia, when all is said and d one, is to accept the barbarou s dr ift of capitali s m. I refu se this call for socalled realis m, w hich is, in fact , submission to a reality that is itself on ly ephemeral. Emancipation, a synony m for democratisation wi thou t limits: mu st it therefore e liminate the te rms of al ienation (reli gion, law and democracy, money) as they figure in the ideolog ies of anar182 ngntea IT

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dust iln d conununist iltheism? O r work o ut WilyS to control them: r
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the ideology of the sys tem u sed to designate those w ho are its ser vants ). The Hussian word ' inte lligentsia' is no doubt the mos t approp riate. Theory and practice are inseparable. There will be no movemen t towards democratic and sodal progress wi thou t fo rmulating a programme that constructs con vergence in diversity. Its definitio n ca nnot be avoid ed. I s um it up in one phrase: 'socia lising economic manage ment'. In the centres, t he o pera tio n c,l nno t be ini tiated wi thout firs t exprop riat ing the o ligarchy. It is not only in Russia that the o liga rchy dom inates the system, as I ha ve s.lid, it do minates jus t as much in the Uni ted States, in Euro pe and in Japan. Nationalisation (per haps throug h the s tate) constitutes a first, essential measure. It is a long ro ute, built up along the way, that has to be invented. In the perip heries the national, popu lar and democrat ic prog ramme contai ns its internal con trad ictions. Not only becilu se its sodal base is composed o f social sectors w hose interests do not always con verge. But also and as mu ch because t he hi stor ical task here is double and conflictua l. It is necessary to catch up in the sense of deve loping productive forces (and there is il great temptation to t,lke the formulas for doing so from cap italis m), as this is necessary to leave poverty behind. And it is also necess., ry to do so mething else, to initiate social relationships based o n so lidarity instead of competition. The J{USS;iln and C hinese revolutions did this very vigorou sly in their ear ly, victorio us phases but then they g radually regressed and got bogged dow n in ju st catching up . It is a d ecisive lesson to draw fro m the fi rs t wave: to avoid getting mired in tlus co ntradiction mus t be a cen tral aim of the concerns o f the second wave. It goes witho ut saying that the s uccessive phases o f t he long nationa l, popu lar and democ ratic transition are based on co nflictua l comp romises that op pose aspirations to social is m against forces that have a capi talist orienta tion. I refer again here to the experience of Mao ism and the powerful analysis made o f it by Lin C hun. O n the positive side there was the invention of the ' mass line' , W hat even tual ly dest royed it was the lack of institutions guara nteeing right s (i nclu di ng of the individual) and justice. We could also refer to the propo sals and experiences of wo rker 184 ngntea IT

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self-management, of participatory democracy and others. They s hould be read and re-read wi th a critical mind. Recourse to the instrument of an enlightened des potis m is nevertheless sometimes inevitable. Forcing: recalcitrant fathers to send their dau g hters to school : is tllis ,111 antidemocratic procedure or the only way to o pen the path to democratisation? I analysed, in C hapter 4, some of these advances during our era (i n Afghani stan and so-called communist Yemen). The new economics cannot be red uced to the socia lisation o f its management. It mu st integrate the society I nature relationship and redefi ne the development of the productive forces, taking into account this relations hip. The destructive dimension of ilCCUmul"tion is now very much gren ter than its co ns tructive dimension. Pursued in the form s that cap italis m g ives it means destroying the ind ividual, nature and whole peop les. Socialism is not 'cnpitali s m wi thou t capitalists' . The 'solar sociali sm' of Altvater is relevant here and is con vinci ng iJ1 my opinion .

The question of globalisation I shall be brief here because I have written much on the subjec t. I s hall just retrace the essential of the co nclusions. Liberal g lobaJisation wants to build another world whi ch is in the process of emerging, based on an apartheid at the world level, s tiU more barbaric than what we ha ve ex perienced since the en d of the Second World War. The policies being implemen ted by the powers, who are in desperate s traits, in response to the financi"l crisis are exclusively aimed at restori ng the liberal wo rld order. As in 1920, it is an effort to return to the belle epoque. And it is certain that there will be the same threat of new coUapses of the system, still more serious. This pu rs uit, against all odds, by the oligarchy of the imperialist Triad to con tin ue their do minati on over the world syste m involves the recourse to perma.ne nt, ilrmed violence through the military control of the planet. As long as this project is not comp letely defeated, all ad vances anyw here will be ex tremely vulnerabl e. Constructing convergence in the di versity of struggles mus t give iI central pla ce in its s trategies to the objective of rou ting: the 185

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mili t<1Ti siltion of the wo rld. I hilve been insis ting on thi s po in t since 1990, even before the emergence of the Social Forums. A Bandu ng 2, the Bandung of the peop les (but also wit h the 1H.><:essary and possible pers pective of the Ba ndung of the states) would be an excellent Wily of terminilting bo th the militilry in terventions o f the collec ti ve imperialis m of the Triad and the implementation of a resto red liberal globaJ isat ion.

From Marx to historica l Marxism As we know, Marx used to say he was not a Milrxist as soon as he saw the dangers of the his torical Ma.rxis ms of the par ties that claimed his thinking. It is not the p lace to develop a critique of historical Marxism here, even a rapid one. Lshould just like to mention the five fi elds o f questions th at, I bel ieve, canno t be avoided w hen one declares o neself Marxist. Not in the sense o f adhering to the his tori cal Marx isms of the past, but in the s pirit o f starting fro m Marx.

The question of the articul
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the previous sys tems it w as the co ntrary. The d ominant po liti cal power needed an ideology that s uited its reproduction - the state religion; that o f capital was econo micis m - commodity alienation . But in a ll cases it is neceSSi1ry to ma ke ex plicit how these articulations functi on. Mar x d id no t propose a generaJ theory (inevitably trans his toric), because his method forbad e him to do so. He therefore co ntented himse lf with analysing concrclely how these arti cu latio ns wo rked in va riou s places and times. W hether these analyses were later confirmed o r invalidated does not concern me. In contrast, histo ri cal Marx ism s proposed tltis general theory, decla ring th at the different ins tan ces were al ways and necessarily constituted in the same way. T ltis general theory w as taken to an ex treme by Althusser wi th his con cept o f 'over-d etermination'. My criticis m o f this s hift of his tori cal Marxis m towards a kind o f his to rical d eterminis m led me to propose ins tead a concept of under-d etermination. I mean that the different instances are o rdered, not exclu sively by the reCl uirements of a global consistency but eCluaJly by internal log ics of their own . The case o f relig io us log ics cou ld, I tho ught, g ive us some striking examp les in this fi eld. Mo re im portant is w hat [ deri ved from my concept o f under-determinati on: that the co nflict of the instances can e nd up in a positi ve revolutionary chang e, but it can also lead the socicly into an impasse, if not regression. Revo lution and chaos are both different and possible outcomes from these confli cts. T herefore importance must be given, in ana lysing these represent"tions, to these Clu eslions of internal logics specifi c to the different fr agme nts o f the social reality. Over-determin"tio n proved to be an encouragement of a simplifying drift w hich was perhaps dominant in popu larised Marx ism . Th is consisted o f the false theory of the ideology as a refl ection, that is, it d irec tly ex pressed the requ irements of the rep rod uction o f the economic base. Marx used the term reflectio n here and there but, it seems to me, in order to characterise these ex treme cases when the ideology becomes purely functi onal. This is what, in my o pinio n, tr<1ns mitted the liberal vi ru s. But it is far fro m being the ru le th"t governs the rel"li ons hip between the inst"nces. Perha ps the authorities o f historical Marxism were aware that 187

ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

th is simplification did not always help to prog ress in ilnalysing reality and they reso rted to a rather vague phrase 't he autonomy of the instances' . ls this an escape when confronted by a real difficulty? Whal is the exact meaning and content of this autono my? Is it o nly passing resis tan ce, submitting to the requirements of the base and ending by withering away? This is probably the meaning that it has been g iven . I suggest going mu ch furth er. The modern state, which is capitalist, wou ld not ex ist if it were not s trong ly linked to the req uirements of capitalist domination and reproduct ion. This was said by Marx and I agree. But from there to conclude thai the state, because it has never been o ther than a class state and cannot be otherwise and therefore it should disappear in the cla ssless society, seems to me to be a problem. Marx and Engels sometimes imp lied this quick conclusion, sometimes something else: that the proletariilt could not take over the bourgeois stil te to pu t it at thei r own ser vice, so it was necessary to destroy it. And replace it by another s tate, ' the admini stration of things and no lo nger the government o f men', as the utopiilll socialists defined it, and Milrx took up the fornndil. I hil ve reached a so mewhat different proposaJ: of the s tate as o rganiser and soci aliser of the management of advanced and complex sys tems o f producti on . A nd with this in mind I place culture (communist culture, much more than illl ideology ) in the command position, culture so defined becoming the new dominant instance. But the sim pl ifying drift was grea tly to obscure an analysis o f the requirements of the stilte in a trilnsition period . A nd while o ne admits that it will be a long transition (a secu lar one) the question acquires a central importance. It does no t only concern the national, popular, democrati c state of the lo ng transition based o n the revolutio nary advances in the peripheries o f the system. It concerns every state in their no shorter transition in the developed centres. It requires the articulation between the need s for the socialisat ion of economic management and those for the prog ress in the democratisatio n o f society. It requires the
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7 BEI NG MARX IST, BEI NG CO MMUNI ST, BEI NG INTERN AT IONA LI ST

im periaHst an d po lari sing g lobalisation that und erlies its ex pansion, has been - and it is the least one cou ld say - underestimated by histo ri cal Marxisms bot h as to its reality and in the consequences that it brought about. I won' t come back to tllis question, quite simply becau se it is arowld this that all my refi ectioJlS and pro posals (or al most all) have revolved for the past fifty years. Marx did not produce a general theory of society. It was not even a genera l theory of hi story - he w as careful to avoid this. Docs this mean that refl ect ion, not ' beyond' Marx (w hich would im ply a fundam enta l revis ion of Marx's propositions), but 'o utside' Marx, in the fi eld of i'lnlhro pology, are forbidden ? I think it wo uld be po intless to say so. For my pi'lrtl have di'lrcd (w itho ut having any qualificat ion for arrogating to myself the rig ht to d o so) to propose some thoug hts concerning the pyramid o f alienations that do in fac t s tand out in Marx's views in thi s field . I think that a refl ection of the same ki nd on the question o f power wo uld no t be w itho ut interest, a mong o ther things in o rder to be able to unders tand its representi'lt io ns better, bo th the scienti fic and the d isto rtions, Mili tants know the prob lem th roug h their pract ice. They know how to d isting uis h the log ic of organisatio n fro m the logic o f strugg les. Ant hropolog is ts, ph ilosop hers and, in p
ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

the thinkers), one cannot, in my humble opinio n, avoid findin g the representations of the Viennese bourgeois in crisis. I also tried to read Keynes in the same way, which was that o f Ma rx. Key nes is not jus t an economist. He is an econo mis t, o f course, and even a great one . But he was great because he was not only an eco nomist, he was a thinker. Gill es Dostru er and Bernard Maris in Capitali.'''I1lt' t'f Pulsion df' Mort understood tltis and their boo k was recently presented in this spirit. Keynes's vision of the fu ture of humanity was o ptimistic. He saw that the level of developme nt of the producti ve forces that had been acqu ired enabled humanity 10 eman cipate it self from the economic question (in his beauliful s peeches 10 our greal g rand children). A society that was freed fro m the chains of ob ligatory work was therefore possible: a society that passed its time culti vating human relat ionships, a society that was Iruly emanci pated and cu lti vated. This objeelive, in its way, is no ne ot her than that o f Marx's communis m . [t is the reason w hy capitalis m is a system that is now obsolescent, w hose time is now over. The thinking of Keynes constitutes, I believe, o ne of the ex amples that prove the rig htness o f Ma rx's visio n: humanity aspires to communism. Not only its popular classes (w hom Keynes d istrus ted ), but even its grea tes t thinkers. Keynes was certai nly not the fir st o ne to ha ve conceived th is radiant future. Before him, the utopians had done so. However the equally necessa.ry reading of Keynes the economis t is, in my view, disappointing. Of course Keynes was far above the con ventional vulgar economists of his day (and their descendants, the pure eco nomis ts of today). And his proposals con stitute an approach to reality in fini tely more powerful than those of our mi serable liberals . But the concepts that he advoca ted to g ras p the economic reality in a different way (the preference fo r liquidity in parti cula r) a re no t fr<.>e from the empirical and direel observation of the phenomena_ Marx goes mu ch fu rther: the preference for liquid ity that Keynes rightly associated w ith the worship of mo ney expressed the commodi ty alienation, w hich is fundamental for the reproduelion of the system. Keynes thu s too k no notice of the tendency to pauperisation that is necessarily produ ced by the logic o f accumulatio n. The effeel of this tendency was no t in fael very visibl e in the England 190 "

co

7 BEING MARX IST, BEIN G CO MMUNI ST, BEING INTERN AT IONALI ST

of hi s ti me. Nevertheless it was very much present in the Britis h empi re, as the Sou th A fri can communist party wrote allhe lime . But Keynes was no t concerned about it. As a thinker, a utopian communist, Key nes was certainly a very sensitive person. But he remained a prisoner of the prejud ices of his class. Hi s scorn for the populM classes, incapab le, according to him, of fi ghting for this rad iant future to whi ch he and his Blooms bury fr iends as pired, betrayed the edu cation that he had received . Ra ther like the 'bobos' (see Translato r's note) o f Paris today, he thoug ht that the task o f changing the world was the exclusive do main o f the clites. There is no d oubt that the ob servatio ns o f Keynes about the British workers of his period (and our own ) are quite pe rceptive. But to lUlderstand this, it is necessMY to leave behind the view point of the pop uJar classes in the ri ch centres alo ne, to sec the reali ty of the globalised capital ist I'>) ,s tem . Im perialist rent exp lains thi s ki nd of behaviour in Britain. Looking at the wor ld system as a whole thus meiUlS d epa rting from Marx and posing the questioning o f capi talism in o ther terms. It means giving all due imporlance to the strugg les for eman cipation of the peoples in the peripheri es, of w hi ch Keynes had no idea.

Can social movements measure up to the challenge? Here, too, I shall be brief and jus1 refer to my conclu sions. The progressive social movements, because they are s till very fragmen ted a nd in defensive po sitio ns, arc in danger of being dragged down, even retrea ting, to the benefit of the reactionary move ments based on para-religious, para-ethnic, para-popuJis t and ot her illusions. There is no lack of eX
ENDING TH E CRI SIS O F CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

revolutioniUY p'lth which is char<1cte rised by the transitions to historica l capit'lli sm and sod'l lis m: ' revolution or decadence' (my vers ion) ' socialis m or barbarism ' (Ros a Luxemburg's), or again, ' lucid transitio n or chaos' (my recent ex pression in response to the ongoing crisis) - these Me aU sy nonymous. Up until now the wor ld is more e ngaged on the road to c haos because the movements in struggle have not measured up to the challenge. For this reason, e nor mous import'lnce must be give n to the ideological battle. I s hould mention he re the critiques that I have made of the pos t- modern discourse of Neg ri in particular. The re arc idi oc ies li ke 'cognitive cap it alism', or U1C ' dea th o f Marx' , the fetre'l t to the bo urgeois ideology of the frL>edom of the individual, which has already become ' the s ubjec t of Ilisto ry' (as Habermas puts it), tec hnologism (the essence of the chaJle nges a nd trans formations under way being attributed to the technolog ical revo lution), the elimination of the essential reality o f conte mporary cap italis m (the domination of the oligarchy), if not naive fo rmulas (horizo ntal communica tion repJadng vertical hie rarchies ). All these delay the develo pment of a lu cid awareness of the real ch'llie nges, in the sho rt 'l11d the long te rm, of the cas ualisation of labour and the increased subordination of the peoples of the So uth to work and wars.

References It "(IS not my in tention to retrace th e p lmscs of the form"tion of concepts and cond w;ions that ru-e pn::sent<:.-d hen:. I shall just briefly indic(ltc th e texts of mine Lh (l t co uld help th e read er to discover th <:.u d el-e1opment, p resen ted ch ro nologically. A",-"IIl"la/iOll all a "'-'mid 5eal,- (2 \'ols) (l 972) New Yo rk, 1\ [onthly Review

Press Law of Value alld Histodc'al.I\Iateriulism (1978) N ew York, l\lonUll y Rev iew Press. A nel\' edition is in preparatio n. Class alld J\"at;oll, Histori,·all.v and ill tlw CU1'1mt Crisis (1980) Nell' York, l\ [onlhl y Rcview Press • Comml.Ulal fo rm
EUfocf .lIri611l (2010) 2nd edition, Ox(ord and New York, Pambaw.ka Prcss

and l'I lonUlly Review Press

192 ngntea IT

na

7 BEING MARXIST, BEI NG CO MM UNIST , BEI NG INTERN ATIONA LI ST 5pedres ,if Capitalism, a Critique ofCUlwn t lu tellntuall'aslli,ms (1998) New York, ~ Ionthly Rel'iew Press • Unily and changes in the ideo logy of political economy, Ch apler 2 • O l'crdctcrmined backwards, Anne" 2, p. 151 onwards . 1\0 ;\Uthenticdemocracy without social progress, Anne" 3, p . 157 on wards L'Elld/ dll S ud (200g) Paris, Le Temps d es Ceris.:.'S

Other refe rence s A]t\'
19 3

ENDING TH E CRISIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

York, ~ l onthly Review Press Dos t."\l er, Gilles an d ~ laris, Bernard (2009) Capi ta/islllc et Plj/sion de A1art, Pari s, Albin Michel Etiemble, Rene (1988) L 'E1,rop" <.'iliumSf', P<1 ris, Gallim lariner

19 4 oc ngntea IT

~nal

Index accu m ul atio n, by di Sp066C6sion 1-3,

15.. 52-5 Afghanistan, cOmffiwusm 82- 'Xl, .93 Afri ca agrari,m reform !!..& 11 9-20 d evelopment aid 136--7 disposseSSion 53 food security 107- 8 land ten ure 114-1 5 African Command 35 agr,uian reform 117- 25 agriculture capitalist modernisa tio n 105-6, 125-7 fam il y agriculture 101-4 pcas.1 nt
m

A 1Lva tcr, Elm (lf

22. alL 185

A m e rindians, di s possessio n 53 A ncien Regim e 55... 58. 74.-:Q..

m

167-8 apartheid al world [C\·cl !ilL 2Z..!il. HZ.. l..hl..1& i l l

Bra zi l M Brown , Gord on 11 Brwlcl, Sylvic 1.Ol Burkina l' a5O i l l Bus h, Georg c \ V. 11..:H. Cabral, Amikar i l l capitalis m agricultural modernisation 105-6, 125-7 d ecline 60--2 endi ng 7-8, 16- 17 glob..-.lis.'ltion 7Ch.'l his torica l developmen t 40-50, 51-77, lZB. histo ry of crisis 3-7,21-38 neoliberal phase 9- 10, 1.59-62 phases 167-9 pobrisaLion Q2. 71-3 post-war growth 21-2 reality 153--8 senile 69-70 77 socialism lnlllsition 2...8.. 27-8, ~ 60-- 1 , 64- 7, 178--80 centre-periphery oonflict 64- 7,

mill

Aron, Raymond Arrighi, Giovanni Ii

13agchi, Ami)'a Kumar 5;1 Bandung per iod lQ..!§., 6Q..Ji5. 82-3,

21.. .u&lB6. belle cpoquc firs t (1890-19]4) <1.. 168-9 s(.'COnd (l 9<JO-200S) 5 169 Berthelot, j
1QQ..lZ2 SC~

a/so North -So uth confl ict

China Confucianism l5!l global strateg y 12- 13 historical developmen t 40-50 land tenure 11 5- 17 rCI'olulion f!f!.. 79-82, 91-2, 1M civil SOciety, concepl 133-5 ciass, and struggl e 174-7 climate change i l l Clin ton, Bill :Y Colombia .25 colonialism 4. 53-5

195

ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

commulusm me"lling of 146-7 modern societi es 83-94 Nep,,1 94-9 revolutiolls 66-7 compmdor st"lc 163--4 CornIe, Auguste 4l1.:M Confucianism 15Q conscns us, political lA Cuba 52.!!f!.. Zll.2.L!ill.. U& ll4.. 1M

customary mmlagement, land tenure 11 2-1 5 debts, development
Nepal 96-7 social is t 90-3 democratisa tion 181-5 development, principles 141 -5 del'elopmcnt aid L3IJ-45 Development Coo]Xra tion Forum (DCF) lM1 DostaJcr, Gilles l.9Q ecological mm'ement ill Egy pt E. B.S cm
m

family agriculture JOI-4 fcud"lism, Europe 110--11

financi,,1 crisis (2008) 3--7,2 1- 38, ill fin"ncialis.'ltion 28-32 food crisis 25. food sovereignty 107-8 Fourth In ternational 6Z France agricultu re 102 tvlarx's cri tique of 157-8 Frank, Andre GWlder 6,. Z. bll.Z5. French Re\'olulion 5a. Z5. 21. 157--8 Freud, Sigmund 139-90

ss..

m

G7 /G8 92.. 131- 2 G20summit(2009) 11- 13 Gaddafi, ~Iuammar E. 8'l Galbraith, John KenneUl 22 Gam,Is.1 Ixlle liZ.. [48-9, L8ll geo-economy, Africa 136-7 geopolitics, mpi talism crisis 166-7 glohaJisation capitaJism 70--3 histo rical 44--6 o ligarchies 8-[3,68-70, 185-6 struggle against 27-8 gOI'emance, concept .L35. Gowan, Peter 2'1 Gramsci, Antonio l4..5'1.. 167-8 Gn.>en Revolution .uH..lQ5 Guinc
illm

Haiti i l l h is torical develop ment, BOCieties 41)..5()

I-Iu Jin t.lo 12 humanitarianism 129-45 imperial is m, Triad (United States, Europe, Japan) 6-7, 13-14, 26. g 1M. 185--6 im]Xrialist rent 1- 3, ~

m

mill

196 oc ngntea IT

~nal

[NDEX

India ~~ 9S--9, ll3 Industrial Revolution 54-5, 58. internationalism, meaning of 146-7 Intem
3.L!2b 142 ln tcm
m

,9<>-,

Kondratieff cycles i l l bnd reform pea;;.-mtry role 117-22 stale Tole 122-5 land tenure 109-17 cllstom
a

l\·f
l\larx, Karl Capital 153-4 capit.1.1ist re.I uslim Brotherhood ftZ.. m!.. 89. Nilsscr, Gumal Abdd .8Z..89. natural resources access to ~,I113Z cxploit;,tion 5Z N illism 15.. 32 Neg ri, Antonio 1'12 neoliberalism 23-5, [59-62 neo-/>. larxism l46. Nepal, ~laoism 94-9 N en" Dcal 15... 32.. i l l N iger 136-7 Nimeiry,Gener
197

,.,

ENDING THE CRI SIS OF CAPITALI SM OR ENDING CAPITALI SM?

O bama, Sarack lL l.3..24 obscurantism ill oligarchies S-13, 6S-70, [email protected]&l SI'~ al so Triad oligopolies capi talism cri sis 5--7, lZ. 2!i. 32 fin
religions, as representa tions 149--50 representation, I\ larxist th eory [49-52, 180 revol uti ons 66-7, Z2, 7S-99, 119. Rostow, \ V. \ \'. i l l Russi(l, agmri M rdorm 1IS--19 Russi(ln Revolution Z2.. as.. 2..L.1&l Sru-kozy, Nico](ls ll.1.3 Second lnl.::mationru 7S-9, .1ful Sen, Amartya 2. i l l Senegal i l l Sh anghai Coopemtion Organi:wtion (SeO) 1.3 sl,lI'c trade 51 social imperialism 129-30, l63. socialism e;.,; sting 22 first W;lI'C 1& 2L 32.- 59-64, i l l revolu tions 7S-99, i l l second \\'(lve [7S-SO transition from capi talism b &. 27-K 3f!.. 60--1,64-7, 17S-80 socia]l u stice, concep t 133 social mOI'ements 19 [-2 social struggk-s 170-2 societies, histo rical develop ment 4<J-&)

solar socialism 3&l.85 South agriculture 104- 5 awakening 1fi. 59--64, 162 devclopment aid 130-45 SC~ a/so North-So uth confl ict southern Africa, agriculture 1Q;1.l.Q,1 South-Sou th COOp('Tation 144-5 South Yemen, comm unism 82-90 Sovieti sm 7S-9, 88. Soviet Union Jb 66. state imperialist 163--4 land reform role 122- 5 Stiglitz Conunission 11- 12

19B ngntea IT

~nal

INDEX

Sti glitz, Joseph 2.l33. Sud
Un ited Nations Framework Conventio n on Cli m ate C h
152.. l!22. 185--6 milit.uisati o n 34-5 tributru,), societies 41--6 Trotskyism 6.1

rn

under-d clermin
ill Wallerstein, Immanuel .6 Wen Tiejlm % wheeler-dealers 68-9 World 6
writi ng, development of 46- 7

199

,.,

Global History: a View from the South Sam ir Amin

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Responding to the need to take a fresh look at world history, hitherto domin
I always learn important things when I read Samir Amin. This book is no exception. It is full of original interpretations and is required reading for all who are seriously interested in global history. Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University

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Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism? With his usual verve and sharpness Samir Amin examines the factors that brought about the 2008 financia 1collapse and explores the systemic

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Samir Am in is a rei/OWl/cd radical economist, the director of tile fOfllm du Tiers Mallde (Third World FOrl/m) ill Dakar, Smegal, alld chair af the World Farum for Altematives. He is one (if the best-klww/I thinkers ofliis generatioll, both ill political science alld ill the analysis of global capitalism.

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