The Battlefields Chosen by Contemporary Imperialism: Conditions for an Effective Response from the South

by Samir Amin

Part 2

The Second Wave of Peoples’ Emancipation: Will It Be a Remake of the 20th Century or Something Better?

The contemporary world is governed by oligarchies.  There are financial oligarchies in the United States, Europe, and Japan who dominate not only economic life but politics and everyday life just as much.  There are Russian oligarchies who imitate them and whom the Russian State tries to control.  There is statocracy in China.  Then there are autocracies (sometimes masked by a certain façade of “low-intensity” electoral democracy) that form part of this world system elsewhere on the planet.

The management of contemporary globalization by these oligarchies is now in crisis.

The oligarchies of the North are counting on staying in power, once the period of crisis is over.  They do not feel threatened.  On the other hand, the fragility of the powers of autocracies in the South is very visible.  Thus the current globalization is vulnerable.  Will it be challenged by the revolt in the South, as happened in the last century?  Probably, but that is not enough.  Because, for humankind to embark on the path to socialism, the only human alternative to chaos, it will be necessary to defeat these oligarchies, their allies, and their servants, both in the North and in the South at the same time.

Capitalism is “liberal” by nature, that is, if by “liberalism” is meant not the pretty appellation that the term inspires but the full exercise of the domination of capital, not only over work and economy, but over all aspects of social life.  There is no “market economy” (the common way of saying capitalism) without “market society.”  Capital relentlessly pursues its sole objective — making money.  Accumulation for itself.  Marx, and other critical thinkers after him like Keynes, understood this perfectly.  But not our conventional economists, including those of the left.

This exclusive and total domination of capital had been inexorably imposed by the governing classes during the whole of the preceding long crisis up to 1945.  Only the triple victory — of democracy, socialism, and the national liberation of peoples — made it possible, from 1945 to 1980, to replace this permanent model of the capitalist ideal by the conflictual coexistence of three regulated social models, which were the Welfare State of social democracy of the West, actually existing socialisms of the East, and popular nationalisms of the South.  The loss of impetus and the consequent collapse of these three models made it possible to return to the exclusive domination of capital, called neoliberalism.

The social disasters that liberalism let loose — “the permanent utopia of capital” as I put it — inevitably inspired much nostalgia for the past, both recent and more distant.  But these nostalgias did not facilitate an appropriate response to the challenge.  For they were a product of the impoverishment of critical theoretical thinking which gradually made it impossible to understand the internal contradictions and limits of the post-WW2 period, whose erosions, drifts, and collapses appeared like unforeseen cataclysms.

Nevertheless, in the vacuum created by the decline in critical theoretical thinking, a new awareness of the systemic crisis of civilization has been able to develop.  I am referring here to environmentalists.  But the Greens, who claimed to distinguish themselves radically from the Blues (conservatives and liberals) and the Reds (socialists), have become trapped in an impasse because they have not integrated the ecological dimension into a radical criticism of capitalism.

Thus everything was set to ensure the triumph — temporary, in fact, but believed to be definitive — of the alternative of so-called “liberal democracy.”  It is a miserable way of thinking — veritable non-thought — that takes no notice of Marx’s decisive remarks about this bourgeois democracy and that ignores the fact that those who decide are not those who are affected by the decisions.  Those who decide, enjoying the freedom reinforced by the control of property, are today the plutocrats of the capitalism of oligopolies and the States that are their debtors.  Obviously the workers and peoples concerned are hardly more than victims.  But such nonsense may have seemed credible, at least for a short while, because of the drift of the post-war systems, whose origins the poverty of dogmatics could no longer comprehend.  Liberal democracy could then seem the “best of all possible systems.”

These days, the powers that be, who had not foreseen anything themselves, are doing their best to restore the same system.  Their eventual success — like that of the conservatives of the 1920s, whom Keynes denounced without finding any echo in that epoch — can only exacerbate all the conditions that are the cause of the financial collapse of 2008.

The recent meeting of the G20 (London, April 2009) in no way begins any “reconstruction of the world.”  And it is perhaps no accidnet that it was followed by that of the NATO, the militarized arm of contemporary imperialism, and by the reinforcement of its military occupation in Afghanistan.  The permanent war of the “North” against the “South” must go on.

We have already seen that the governments of the Triad — the United States, Europe, and Japan — are pursuing their sole objective of restoring the system as it was before September 2008.  More interestingly, the leaders of the invited “emerging countries” kept silent.  Only one intelligent sentence was uttered during this Grand Circus, by Chinese President Hu Jintao, who observed, “in passing,” without insistence and with a (mocking?) smile, that we will eventually have to envisage the creation of a world financial system that is not based on the dollar.  A few rare observers immediately — and correctly — made the connection with Keynes’ 1945 proposals.

This “remark” reminds us of the reality: that the crisis of the system of oligopoly capitalism is inseparably linked to that of the hegemony of the United States, which is running out of steam.  But what will take its place?  Certainly not “Europe,” which does not exist apart from Atlanticism and has no ambition to become independent, as the NATO meeting once again demonstrated.  China?  This “threat,” which the media endlessly conjure up (a new “yellow peril”), is baseless.  The Chinese authorities know that their country does not have the means and they have no will.  The strategy of China is content with working towards a new globalization without hegemonies.  This is not considered acceptable either by the United States or by Europe.

Thus the chances of a possible development in that direction lie entirely with the countries of the South.

A New Internationalism of Workers and Peoples Is Necessary and Possible

Whatever you like to call it, historical capitalism is anything but sustainable.  It is only a brief parenthesis in history.  Challenging it fundamentally — which our contemporary thinkers cannot imagine is “possible” or even “desirable” — is however the essential condition for the emancipation of dominated workers and peoples (those of the periphery, 80 percent of humanity).  And the two dimensions of the challenge are indissoluble.  It is not possible to put an end to capitalism unless and until these two dimensions of the same challenge are taken up together.  It is not “certain” that this will happen, in which case capitalism will be “overtaken” by the destruction of civilization (beyond the discontents of civilization, to use Freud’s phrase) and perhaps of all life on this earth.  The scenario of a possible “remake” of the 20th century thus remains but falls far short of the need of humanity embarking on the long transition towards world socialism.  The liberal disaster makes it necessary to renew a radical critique of capitalism.  The challenge is how to construct, or reconstruct, the internationalism of workers and peoples confronted by the cosmopolitism of oligarchic capital.

The construction of this internationalism can only be envisaged by the success of new revolutionary advances (like those initiated in Latin America and Nepal) which open up the prospect of surpassing capitalism.

In the countries of the South, the struggle of States and nations for a negotiated globalization without hegemonies — the contemporary form of delinking — supported by the organization of demands of the popular classes — can circumscribe and limit the powers of the oligopolies of the imperialist Triad.  The democratic forces in the countries of the North must support this struggle.  The “democratic” discourse proposed by the dominant ideology and accepted by the majority of left wings (such as they are), “humanitarian” interventions, and pathetic practices of “aid” do not genuinely confront this challenge.

In the countries of the North the oligopolies are already clearly “common goods” whose management cannot be entrusted to private interests alone (the crisis having shown the catastrophic results).  An authentic left must have the courage to envisage nationalization as a first essential step towards their socialization through the deepening of democratic practice.  The current crisis makes it possible to conceive a potential crystallization of social and political forces rallying all the victims of the exclusive power of the reigning oligarchies.

The first wave of struggles for socialism, that of the 20th century, showed up the limitations of European social democracies, of communisms of the Third International, and of popular nationalisms of the Bandung era: the loss of momentum and finally the collapse of their socialist ambitions.  The second wave, that of the 21st century, must draw the lessons.  In particular it must associate the socialization of economic management with the deepening of democracy in society.  There will be no socialism without democracy, but equally no democratic progress outside a socialist perspective.

These strategic aims make it necessary to think about the construction of “convergences in diversity” (to take up the expression of the World Forum for Alternatives), of forms of organization and of struggles by the dominated and exploited classes.  And I do not intend to condemn in advance those forms which, in their own way, get back to the traditions of social democracies, communisms, and popular nationalisms or move away from them.

It seems to me necessary to be thinking about the renewal of a creative Marxism.  Marx has never been so useful and necessary to understand and transform the world as he is today, perhaps more so than in the past.  To be Marxist in this spirit is to begin with Marx, not to end with him, or a Lenin, or a Mao, as the historical Marxisms of the last century conceived and practiced it.  It’s to render unto Marx what is his: the intelligence of having begun modern critical thought, critical of the capitalist reality and critical of its political, ideological, and cultural representations.  Creative Marxism must unhesitatingly pursue the aim of enriching such critical thinking par excellence.  It must not fear integrating all contributions resulting from reflection in all fields, including those contributions that were wrongly considered as “foreign” by the dogmatists of historical Marxisms of the past.

In Conclusion: The Impotence of Vulgar Economics

At moments of “crisis” like ours, the impotence of vulgar economics is all too evident.

Thus Le Monde posed a mischievous question: “How is it that the pundits of Harvard had not foreseen the ‘crash’ . . . ?”  Are they just imbeciles then?   Certainly not.  But their intelligence is completely focused on the only paths acceptable to vulgar economics and the false theory of an “imaginary capitalism of generalized markets.”  Just as the brilliant minds of another epoch believed that the debate on the sex of angels could contribute to a better understanding of the world!

Vulgar economics, focusing on analyzing the markets operating on the basis of “imperfect information,” is thus forced to replace an analysis of the capitalist reality by an endless game (for which mathematics becomes indispensable) of hypotheses concerning “expectations.”  These hypotheses make it possible to foresee all and nothing, as the subtle and realistic intelligence of Keynes had realized so well.

What are these “expectations”?  They are but a series of tricks.  The expectations of those who sell their labor?  These unfortunate workers know that they have hardly any choice.  They also know that they cannot improve the conditions of selling their labor power except by organization and collective class struggle.  The expectations of consumers who “choose” (their “supermarket”?) and “choose” potential financial investments?  These unfortunates are forced to take the advice of their bankers, the real deciders.  The expectations of entrepreneurs who decide whether or not to invest?  History shows, as Marx and Keynes understood, that cycles of overinvestment and depreciation of capital impose their reality.  The expectations of owners of capital who choose between risky investment and preference for liquidity?  Repeatedly there have been financial bubbles, and their reasons and mechanisms — which were perfectly analyzed, once again, by Marx, together with his discovery of the supreme alienation of vulgar economists (“money makes more money,” M makes M’, without passing through production) — will always remain outside the thinking of our conventional economists.  The expectations of speculators on the stock exchange?  We know that the best position is what is taken by the sheep who follow the general movement and that this necessarily accentuates fluctuations.

The shipwreck in the ocean of expectations is the inevitable product of reducing society to a collection of individuals and to deliberate ignorance of the major realities by which real capitalism is defined (classes, private property, the State, nations, etc.).  This is only an ideological formulation in the negative sense of the term; it is extremely functional in giving legitimacy to the real practices of dominant capital.  The vulgar economists who claim that their work is scientific are not even conscious of what they are doing.  They cannot understand that, to do scientific work, to approach an understanding of the objective reality, one must begin with radical critique of the starting point of their reasoning.

Conventional economists are not critical thinkers.  They are, at best, “technocrats.”  I like to use the Anglo-Saxon word “executive” for them: they are agents of execution, once at the orders of capital, now at the orders of the oligopolies.

That is why the “critiques” that they may make of the system are always marginal and their proposals for reform that they believe are “realistic” are in reality perfectly unrealistic for the most part.  And when, for some moral reason or another, the reality upsets them (“too much poverty” — in fact, “too much inequality”), the drift towards pious wishes and sermons in the guise of policy becomes inevitable.  The bestseller of a Nobel Prize winner for Economics (strictly reserved for vulgar economists) is therefore at best a mediocre work.  That of Joseph Stiglitz, which bears the pompous title Another World, is a good example.⁸

Stiglitz “discovers,” in 2002, that the Washington Consensus was not good; he discovers the reality of the behavior of the IMF, the WTO, etc.  More than half of the 550 pages of this overblown work are dedicated to “revelations” which others have known about for 30 or 40 years!  Stiglitz believes he is the first one to say them, never having read the work of critical thinkers (and probably he never will).  And it is not even arrogance, but quite simply ignorance.  An amusing example: Stiglitz “discovers” that in 1990 there was an agreement on prices by some oligopolies!  Extraordinary!  And what does he propose in order to re-establish “competition”?  An anti-trust law and litigation, US-style!

In his book, Stiglitz disregards financialization, about which he says hardly anything and which he believes to be inoffensive, even useful.  The remarkable work of the late lamented Giovanni Arrighi concerning financialization being the last stage of hegemonies in decline is obviously totally ignored.⁹ Evidently Stiglitz was surprised by the financial collapse of 2008, about which there is not even one line indicating the seriousness of the threat.  And yet others (including myself), by the time of his “discovery,” had analyzed the globalized liberal system as being by nature unstable, condemned to collapse through financial crisis (the Achilles heel of the system, as I called it).  Stiglitz evidently ignored all that.

The idea he has of himself, “revealing to the world” the “defects” of the system, can thus only make one laugh.

It is therefore not surprising that what I have called “the Stiglitz report” does not break with the reactionary, conventional orthodoxy.  That report was issued by the commission designated by the then President of the United Nations General Assembly, Padre Miguel D’Escoto, which was unfortunately to be headed by Stiglitz, who probably imposed his superficial and limited perception of the problems in the final version of the document.¹⁰ The “failure” that resulted — the fact that the countries of the South decided not to be represented at the June General Assembly at the level required — was in fact, for me, a good sign.  It implies that the countries of the South had understood that this report — under the pretext of “global consensus” . . . and realism — would be in line with the North’s strategy to “respond to the crisis” and that its proposals were of the kind that would be “acceptable” to the oligopolies.  Change the world?  You must be joking!

5) The Militarization of Globalization, “Aid,” Post-Modernism

To maintain their monopoly rent, the oligopolies cannot content themselves with deducting their levies from their “national economies” only.  Their globalized dimension enables them to deduct still more from the economies of the dominated, emerging, and marginalized peripheries.  The pillage of the resources of the whole planet and the super-exploitation of workers supplies the substance of the imperialist rent.  In turn, this constitutes the conditions for the social consensus that then becomes possible in the opulent societies of the North.

The discourses on democracy and ecology serve as masks to hide the real objectives.

Vulgar economics is the keystone of capitalist ideology, as should have been understood since the appearance of “critique of political economy” (the subtitle of Marx’s Capital). Vulgar economics, because it concerns a “non reality” (generalized markets), does not deserve the name of science that it claims.  Its real social function is like that of sorcery in ancient times.  Like the latter it resorts to a language that is deliberately unintelligible to citizens, aiming to eliminate their power of decision by bombarding them with “truths” that are claimed to be “objective.”  In contrast, the language of authentic social thought always remains clear, like the writings of Marx, even at its most difficult: they educate people.

Defeating the Military Control of the Planet by the Imperialists

The real challenge that people face is first of all the militarization of globalization.  In fact, the military control of the planet by the United States and its subalterns (the NATO and Japan) has become the only way, at last resort, to make it possible to levy the imperialist rent without which the system cannot survive.  The Empire of Chaos, as I have been describing it since 1991, and the permanent war against the peoples of the South are one and the same thing.  This is why one of the first strategic objectives of the progressive and democratic forces in the North and in the South must be to defeat the armed forces of the Triad, to force the United States to abandon its bases spread over all the continents, and to dismantle the NATO.¹¹

This is probably the objective of the “Shanghai Group” which has begun to renew the spirit of “non-alignment,” in the sense of “non-alignment on imperialist globalization and the political and military project of the Triad.”

I believe there is a parallel here with the history of Bandung.  Even before the conference of this name (1955) and “non-alignment” (1960), radical groups of thinkers were mobilized to propose possible and effective counter-strategies for the peoples of Asian and African countries to force the rolling back of the imperialism of that epoch.  The author of this paper had the honor and pleasure of participating in one of these groups for the Middle East from 1950.  There is need for similar initiatives today.

“Aid,” a Complementary Instrument to Control Vulnerable Countries

“International aid,” presented as being indispensable for the survival of the “least developed countries” (UN terminology for many African countries and a few other ones), plays its role here.  Because its real objective, aimed at the most vulnerable countries of the periphery, is to create an extra obstacle to their participation in an alternative front of the South.¹²

Concepts of aid have been confined within a straitjacket.  Its structures were defined in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), which was drawn up by the OECD, then imposed on the beneficiaries.  The general conditionality, alignment with the principles of liberal globalization, is omnipresent.  Sometimes it is explicit: promoting liberalization, opening the markets, becoming “attractive” to private foreign investment.  Sometimes it is indirect: respecting the rules of the WTC.  A country that refuses to subscribe to this strategy — which has been unilaterally defined by the North (the Triad) — loses its right to be eligible for aid.  So that the Declaration of Paris is a step back — and not an advance — in comparison with the practices of the “development decades,” the 1960s and 1970s, when the principle of free choice by the countries of the South to follow their own system and economic and social policies was recognized.

In these conditions, aid policies and their apparent, immediate objectives cannot be separated from imperialism’s geopolitical strategies.  For the different regions in the world do not have the same functions in the globalized liberal system.  It is not enough to mention their common denominator (liberalization of trade, opening to financial markets, privatizations).

Sub-Saharan Africa is very well integrated into this global system, and in no way “marginalized” as it is claimed, unfortunately all too often without thinking.  Its foreign trade represents 45 percent of its Gross National Product, compared to 30 percent for Asia and Latin America and 15 percent for each of the regions constituting the Triad.  Africa is thus quantitatively “more” and not “less” integrated, but in a different way.¹³

The geo-economy of the region depends on two production systems that determine its structures and define its place in the global system:

1. the export of “tropical” agricultural products: coffee, cocoa, cotton, peanuts, fruits, oil palm, etc.; and
2. hydrocarbons and minerals: copper, gold, rare metals, diamonds, etc.

The former are the means of “survival” (apart from food for the auto-consumption of peasants), which finance the transplanting of the State onto the local economy and, through public expenditure, the reproduction of the “middle classes.”  This kind of production is of more interest to the local governing classes than to the dominant economies; in contrast, what interests the latter is the products of natural resources of the continent.  Today it is hydrocarbons and rare minerals.  Tomorrow it will be the reserves for developing agrofuels, the sun (when long-distance transport of solar electricity becomes feasible, within a few decades), water (when its direct or indirect “export” becomes possible).

The race to convert rural areas for the expansion of agrofuels is under way in Latin America.  In this field, Africa has tremendous possibilities.  Madagascar has started the movement and already conceded large areas in the west of the country.  The implementation of the Congolese Rural Code in 2008, inspired by Belgian aid and the FAO, will no doubt enable agribusiness to take over agricultural land on a massive scale to “exploit” it, just as the Mining Code has already enabled the pillage of the mineral resources of this former colony.  ”Useless” peasants will pay for it, and increasing destitution that awaits them will perhaps attract future humanitarian assistance and “aid” programs to reduce poverty!  In the 1970s I learnt about an old colonial dream for the Sahel, which was to expel the population (useless Sahelians) in favor of extensive, Texas-style ranches raising livestock for exportation.

The new phase of history that has opened is marked by the sharpening of conflicts for access to the natural resources of the planet.  The Triad intends to reserve for itself the exclusive access to this “useful” Africa (that of natural resource reserves) and to prevent such access by the “emerging countries” whose needs in this respect are already great and likely to increase.  Guaranteeing exclusive access means political control and reducing African countries to the status of “client states.”

It is not therefore wrong to consider that the aim of aid is to “corrupt” the governing classes.  Apart from the financial appropriations (which, alas, are well known and for which we are led to believe that the donors are in no way responsible), aid has become “indispensable” as it is an important source of financing budgets and fulfils a political function.  It thus becomes necessary to think of aid as being permanent and not prepare for its elimination through a serious development effort.  Hence it is important that it is not reserved exclusively and wholly for the classes in power, for the “government.”  It must also give stakes to “oppositions” that are capable of succeeding them.  The so-called civil society and certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have a role to play here.  The aid in question, if it is to be really effective politically, must also help to maintain the entry of peasants into this global system, this entry bringing another source of revenue for the State.  The aid must also be concerned with progress in “modernizing” export crops.

Right-wing criticism of aid is based on the notion that it is for the countries concerned to take action to liberate themselves from this dependence by opening up still more to foreign capital.  This was the substance of Sarkozy’s speech at Dakar and Obama’s at Accra.  This oratorical appeal avoids the real question.  For aid, an integral part of the imperialist strategy, in fact seeks to marginalize the peoples of Africa who are useless and troublesome, the better to continue their pillage of African resources!

The critique made by the “do-gooder” left, which is that of many NGOs, accepts that the “donors” will honor their pledges.  It limits itself to pointless talk about “absorption capacity,” “performance,” “good governance,” promoted by “civil society.”  It calls for “more” and “better” aid!  Radical critique, on the contrary, supports autonomous development.  One can imagine that aid in this context would derive from peoples’ international solidarity, confronting (and against) the cosmopolitanism of capitalism.

Poverty, Civil Society, Good Governance:                                                             The Feeble Rhetoric of the Dominant Discourse

This dominant discourse claims that its objective is to “reduce, if not to eradicate, poverty” by supporting “civil society,” in order to substitute “good governance” for “governance” that is judged “bad.”

The very term “poverty” stems from a language which is as old as the hills, that of charity (religious or otherwise).  This language belongs to the past, not to the present, much less to the future.  It predates the language created by modern social thought, which tries to be scientific — that is, to discover the mechanisms that give rise to a visible and observed phenomenon.

The overwhelming mass of literature about poverty focuses exclusively — or almost — on “locating” the problem and quantifying it.  It does not pose questions such as “what are the mechanisms that create the poverty under discussion?”  Do they have some connection with the fundamental rules (like competition) that govern our systems and in particular — as far as the countries of the South receiving aid are concerned — with the development strategies and policies conceived for them?

Has the concept of “civil society,” even if it is taken seriously (not to speak of its random use), been raised to the level at which a concept should be in order to take its chance and be worthy of inclusion in a serious debate that purports to be scientific?  As it is proposed, “civil society” is associated with an ideology of consensus.  It is a twofold consensus:

1. that there is no alternative to the “market economy” (itself an indiscriminate expression that serves to replace an analysis of “really existing capitalism”);
2. that there is no alternative to representative democracy based on multi-party elections (conceived as “the democracy”) that serves as a substitute for the conception of democratization of society, which is a process without end.

On the contrary, the history of struggles has seen the emergence of political cultures of conflict, based on the recognition of the conflict of social and national interests, which gives quite another meaning to the terms of “left” and “right.”  It attributes to creative democracy the right and power to imagine alternatives and not just “alternations” in the exercise of power (changing the names for doing the same thing).

“Governance” was invented as a substitute for “power.”  The opposition between these two qualifying adjectives — good or bad governance — calls to mind manichaeism and moralism, substitutes for an analysis of reality as scientific as possible.  Once again this fashion comes to us from the other side of the Atlantic where the sermon has often dominated political discourse.  “Good governance” requires the “decider” to be “just,” “objective” (choosing the “best solution”), “neutral” (accepting a balanced presentation of arguments), and above all else “honest” (including, of course, the blander, financial meaning of the word).  On reading the literature produced by the World Bank on the subject, one finds oneself — judging from the grievances presented, usually by men of religion or of law (and few women!) — back in the East of ancient times, of the “just despot” (not even enlightened!).

The underlying ideology is clearly being used to simply eliminate the real question: what social interests does the governing power, whatever it is, represent and defend?  How can the change of power progress so that it gradually becomes the instrument of the majorities, in particular of the victims of the system, such as it is?  It goes without saying that the multi-party electoral recipe has shown its limits in this respect.

“Post-Modernist” Discourse

Post-modernism caps the discourse called by some the “new spirit of capitalism,” but it would be better to call it the ideology of the late capitalism/imperialism of oligopolies.  A recent book by Nkolo Foe gives a powerful description of how this functions very well to serve the real interests of the dominating powers.¹⁴

Modernism originated in the discourse of the Enlightenment in the 18th century in Europe, together with the triumph of the historical form of European capitalism and imperialism that goes with it, which subsequently conquered the world.  It suffers from contradictions and limitations.  The ambition to be universal that it formulated is defined by the affirmation of the rights of man (but not necessarily of woman!), which are in fact the rights of bourgeois individualism.  Real capitalism, with which this form of modernity is associated, is moreover an imperialism that denies the rights of the non-European peoples who have been conquered and subordinated to the levying of the imperialist rent.

Criticism of this bourgeois and capitalist/imperialist modernity is certainly necessary.  And Marx effectively undertook this radical critique, which it is always necessary to update and study more deeply.

The new Reason considered itself emancipatory; and so it was, to the extent that it freed society from the alienations and oppressions of the Anciens Regimes. It was thus a guarantee of progress, but a form of progress that was limited and contradictory because it was capital which, in the final instance, was to manage society.

Post-modernism does not make this radical critique to promote the emancipation of individuals and of society through socialism.  Instead it proposes a return to pre-modern, pre-capitalist alienations.  The forms of sociability that it promotes are necessarily in line with adherence to a “tribalist” identity for communities (para-religious and para-ethnic), an antipode to what is required to deepen democracy, which has become a synonym for the “tyranny of the people” daring to question the wise management of the executives who serve the oligopolies.  Post-modernist critiques of “grand narratives” (the Enlightenment, democracy, progress, socialism, national liberation) do not look to the future but return to an imaginary and false past, which is extremely idealized.  In this way it facilitates the fragmentation of the majority of the population and makes them accept adjustment to the logic of the reproduction of domination by the imperialist oligopolies.  This fragmentation hardly disturbs that domination; on the contrary, it makes the task easier.  The individual does not become a conscious, lucid agent of social transformation, but the slave of triumphant commodification.  The citizen disappears, giving way to the consumer/spectator, no longer a citizen who seeks emancipation, but an insignificant creature who accepts submission.

References

1 Jacques Andreani, Le Piège, Helsinki et la chute du communisme, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005.

2 Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, Notre empreinte écologique, Montréal: Ecosociété, 1999.

3 Elmar Altvater, “The Plagues of Capitalism, Energy Crisis, Climate Collapse, Hunger, and Financial Instabilities,” paper presented at the FMA, Caracas, 2008.

4 François Houtart, L’agroénergie, solution pour le climat ou sortie de crise pour le capital? Charleroi: Couleur Livres, 2009

5 Aurélien Boutaud and Natacha Gondran, L’empreinte écologique, Paris: La Découverte, 2009.

6 Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century, London: Verso, 1994; Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing, London: Verso, 2007.  The concept of accumulation by dispossession, introduced by Arrighi, like that of “permanent primitive accumulation” which I proposed, characterizes historical capitalism, originated in Europe, through contrast with another path of development to capitalism, inaugurated by China during the Sung and Ming dynasties (Arrighi-Amin correspondence).  See, also, Samir Amin, Sur la crise, Pantin: Temps des cerises, 2009, Chapters 2 and 3.

7 Cf. the work of Samir Amin, Sam Moyo, Archie Mafeje, and others in
Samir Amin, Sur la crise, op cit, Chapter 5.

8 Joseph Stiglitz, Un autre monde, contre le fanatisme des marches, Paris: Livre de poche, 2009.

9 Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century, op cit.

10 The UN documents in question here are published on UN Web sites.

11 Samir Amin, L’Empire du Chaos, Paris: Harmattan, 1991; Samir Amin, L’hégémonisme des Etats-Unis et l’effacement du projet européen, Paris: Harmattan, 2000

12 Samir Amin, “Aid, for What Development?” (in a book published in English by Fahamu, forthcoming in 2009)

13 Samir Amin, “Is Africa Really Marginalized?” in, Helen Lauer (ed), History and Philosophy of Sciences for African Undergraduates, Ibadan: Hope Pub, 2003.

14 Nkolo Foe, Le post modernisme et le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Sur une philosophie globale d’ Empire, Dakar: Codesria, 2009; Samir Amin, Modernité, religion, démocratie, Critique  de l’eurocentrisme et critique des culturalismes, Paris: Parangon, 2008; Samir Amin, Sur la crise, op cit, Chapters 2 and 3; Jacques Rancière, La haine de la démocratie, Paris: La Fabrique, 2008.

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Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal.  His recent books include Obsolescent Capitalism (Zed Books), The original article in French, published in two parts by Pambazuka News (on 29 November 2009 and 6 December 2009), may be read at <pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/60658> and  <pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/60840>.  Translation by Victoria Bawtree and Yoshie Furuhashi.

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URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/amin070210.html

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