Sunday, September 22, 2024

 

From Ukraine to Palestine: The challenges of consistent internationalism


By Blanca Missé
Published 
End occupations everywhere placard

First published at Spectre.

In the last two years, the world has been shaken by the intersection of several struggles. These include the heroic Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, the uprising for women’s freedom in Iran, the renewed struggle for the liberation of Palestine, the popular resistance against the war in Sudan, and the new protests against the Assad regime in Syria.1 These movements each have their own dynamics and rhythm. Approaching these distinct movements from a common perspective and on an international scale poses serious questions for the left: Is it possible to support all these struggles simultaneously despite their distinct characteristics and contradictions? Can these struggles find solidarity with each other?

Many activists recognize in theory that these movements face the same decadent global capitalism and its imperialist state system. However, international and regional politics shape these resistance struggles, making it hard for them to unite against their common enemy. To accomplish that would require grasping that the cause of their oppression is not “bad governments,” but capitalism — a social and economic system ruled by the need to constantly accumulate capital and increase profits everywhere at any cost. That system generates economic crisis, austerity, geopolitical competition, wars, neocolonial dispossession, debt, and environmental destruction.

We are faced with the challenge of forging a politics capable of explaining the systematic opponent uniting these struggles from within them and their accompanying campaigns of solidarity. As Ashley Smith argues, building “international solidarity from below between oppressed nations like Palestine, Ukraine and Taiwan, as well as exploited workers in both the U.S. and China and throughout the world” is more urgent than ever.2 We live in a period of intensifying war and genocide (Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan). But forging this kind of solidarity is also an increasingly complex task in a state system beset by imperial rivalry between the United States, China, and Russia as well as growing interstate conflict.

These rivalries and conflicts impact working people’s democratic struggles, sometimes leading them to oppose one another. For example, supporting the democratic movements in Syria and Iran is often seen as a challenge to those supposedly “anti-imperialist” governments that make up the so-called “axis of resistance” opposing the genocidal Zionist project. Similarly, support for the Ukrainian people’s right of self-defense against Putin’s imperialist invasion seems to come at the cost of strengthening the United States, the European Union, and NATO, the main supporters of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.

To avoid becoming selective anti-imperial internationalists — whose support to all liberation movements is unconditional “in theory,” but depends on one’s national position in practice, or who establish an ontological or historical hierarchy among the movements — the left must develop a class analysis independent of the interests of governments that embraces the totality of struggles, states, and wars at the global level. Such analysis must show the connections between disparate movements for liberation, and the opportunities to establish direct links of solidarity between the different sectors of the exploited and the oppressed — that is, the possibilities of uniting these movements from below.

Against selective solidarity

A consistent internationalism must abandon the self-defeating vision of liberation by stages, which argues that some anti-imperialist struggles must “wait,” or worse, are an obstacle to others. This leads parts of the left, for example, to contend that the immediate needs of the Iranian youth or the Ukrainian resistance must be indefinitely “set aside” in order to “first” defeat the Israeli genocide against Palestinians or the NATO project. Others downplay opposition to the Israeli genocide to curry favor with the United States and ensure its support for Ukraine against Russia. This logic subordinates some democratic struggles to the interests of other, supposedly “more important” ones; in the process it destroys the basis for any coherent international solidarity.

In fact, this “stage-ist” view of liberation treats some imperialisms as “lesser evils” that should not be actively combated. In some cases, it opens the door to implicit support of these “lesser evils.” This approach compromises any principled anti-imperialism. Even worse, it undermines the true mechanism for collective liberation, which must challenge the imperialist logic (which ranks these struggles and places them in competition) to replace it with the proletarian logic (which seeks an alliance between all the exploited and oppressed against the forces that divide them). A consistent internationalism must embrace all genuine struggles from below and channel them into a process of permanent revolution — that is, a process of uninterrupted struggle against economic, social, and political inequality until complete liberation is achieved throughout the world.

As Trotsky put it, the aim is “a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against reaction from without: that is, a revolution whose every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only in the complete liquidation of class society.”3 In short, the permanent revolution must bring a working-class internationalist outlook from the outset to all struggles.

Lessons from the Second Italo-Ethiopian War

The method of Marxist analysis developed by Trotsky (and others) is particularly useful for understanding the complex dynamics of wars in the imperialist epoch and offers a valuable framework for interpreting current conflicts. The present world situation, which is marked, on the one hand, by rivalries between imperialist powers with two loose blocs led by the United States and China, and, on the other hand, by intense struggles for democracy and self-determination, bears similarities to the crisis of the world order leading to the Second World War.4 4

Trotsky’s internationalist analyses of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936), the Spanish Revolution (1936–1939), and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), provide us with a useful methodology to guide the left in opposing all imperialisms and supporting all national liberation struggles today.5  For Trotsky, it was crucial to analyze the multiple imperial and class dynamics active in each of these struggles. Consequently, he analyzed the Second Italo-Ethiopian War as part of the totality of imperialist conflicts, national struggles, and class contradictions on a world scale. In October 1935, Mussolini launched an invasion of Ethiopia in the context of the rise of fascism and Italy’s growing economic competition with France and Britain for access to new markers and resources. Italy had lost its previous colonial war with Ethiopia in 1896, and was looking to both secure a fourth colony in Africa and fuel its racist and nationalist project to divert growing class unrest.

This invasion resulted in a seven-month war that revolutionary socialists analyzed as driven by two contradictions: the first contradiction, or conflict, was Ethiopia’s struggle to secure its national sovereignty as an independent country against fascist Italy’s imperialist aggression. Ethiopia had been one of the few uncolonized territories in Africa; at the same time, the emergent interimperialist rivalries that would lead to the Second World War were developing. This second conflict between France and Britain (joined eventually by the USSR and the United States) and Italy and Germany (with the later addition of Japan) would become the global conflagration between the Axis and the Allied powers.

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was taking place in an international epoch that Trotsky characterized as one of “catastrophic commercial, industrial, agrarian and financial crisis, the break in international economic ties, the decline of the productive forces of humanity, the unbearable sharpening of class and international contradictions.” To understand each national development, it was necessary to consider “the multitude of factors and the intertwining of conflicting forces.”6 

This led Trotsky to argue that “the prospective war between Ethiopia and Italy stands in the same relation to a new world war as the Balkan War in 1912 did to the World War of 1914–18. Before there can be any new big war, the powers will have to declare themselves, and in this regard the Ethiopian-Italian war will define positions and indicate the coalitions.” In fact, both of the twentieth century’s world wars were preceded by smaller national conflicts, in which rival imperialist powers measured their forces and tested potential alliances before directly confronting each other.7 

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was primarily characterized by anticolonial struggle. Thus, Trotsky called on the revolutionaries to take a determined military stand with Ethiopia: “we are for the defeat of Italy and the victory of Ethiopia, and therefore we must do everything possible to hinder by all available means support to Italian imperialism by the other imperialist powers, and at the same time facilitate the delivery of armaments, etc., to Ethiopia as best we can.”8 At stake for the revolutionary internationalists was the obligation to materially and militarily support the oppressed nation’s right to self-determination. Trotsky rejected the liberal framing of the contest as one between “bourgeois democracies” and “fascism.” At the time, Ethiopia was ruled by a feudal state and many of the Allies ruled over colonies like tyrants.

In the context of the imperialist powers’ rearmament and growing economic conflict, it was imperative to oppose the sanctions that the Allies imposed on Italy and hypocritically justified in the name of support for the Ethiopian people.9 These sanctions were merely one imperialist bloc’s attempt to weaken the other and escalate their economic war.

Opposing all the powers’ military budgets and vigorously denouncing rearmament was also crucial.10 As Trotsky argued, “it is necessary painstakingly to expose not only the open military budget but also all the masked forms of militarism, not leaving without a protest war manoeuvers, military furnishings, orders, etc.” Any socialist policy had to address the double nature of the war, simultaneously and dialectically harboring these two contradictory dynamics, instead of either formally isolating them or tackling them in “stages.” That is, while supporting the dominant struggle of national liberation, revolutionaries had an obligation to oppose the interimperialist conflict from advancing towards its catastrophic end in the Second World War.

During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, this kind of internationalist solidarity was concretized by united demonstrations of workers, youth, and the Black diaspora, which were independent of the capitalist governments. These forces sent direct material aid to the Ethiopian people and launched labor initiatives to impose workers sanctions against Italy through direct action such as, for example, disrupting shipping. In 1935, members of the Black diaspora in London organized the International African Friends of Ethiopia (IAFE), headed by Amy Ashwood Garvey, C. L. R. James, and George Padmore.11 The IAFE held mass solidarity meetings and demonstrations. Similarly, in the United States, the Black diaspora organized solidarity demonstrations with the Ethiopian cause in Harlem.12 A. Philip Randolph, the leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which became the first Black-led workers union in the American Federation of Labor, collected material aid to send directly to support the Ethiopian resistance.

Worker sanctions against Italy were counterposed to the government sanctions, as they gave workers the political agency to express their independent position, which rejected both Italy’s aggression and their own government’s military escalation. For example, in Britain, the Independent Labor Party (ILP) issued leaflets urging unions to form “All-Inclusive Workers Committee of Action” in solidarity with the Ethiopian people. C. L. R. James, while leading solidarity efforts in the ILP, addressed the workers who were “anxious to help the Ethiopian people” and incited them to “organise yourselves independently, and by your own sanctions, the use of your own power, assist the Ethiopian people.…Let us fight against not only Italian imperialism, but the other robbers and oppressors, French and British imperialism.” In the United States, the Workers’ Party also supported “the independent sanctions of the working class, its own boycotts, strikes, defense funds, mass demonstrations that can aid the battles of Ethiopian peoples, not the sanctions of finance capital and its puppet-states.13 

National liberation struggles amidst imperialist rivalry today

This methodology is profoundly useful for building solidarity with national liberation struggles in today’s imperialist order. To begin with Ukraine, Putin’s regime followed up his seizure of Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014 with an attempt at a full-scale invasion and occupation of Ukraine in February 2022. He claimed it was a “defensive” war to stop NATO expansion. Putin’s justification was, of course, a lie. Russian imperialism’s main motivation is reasserting to reassert its control over Ukraine, its natural resources, and the investments within both that country and others in its near abroad, such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. As Hannah Perekhoda has explained, Putin aims to build Russia’s empire, whip up Russian nationalism (in particular its old obsession of “turning Ukrainians into Russians”), and repress domestic movements struggling for democratic rights and improved living conditions.14 

Of course, like the Italo-Ethiopian War, the war in Ukraine has both a primary conflict (that is, Ukraine’s war for liberation from Putin’s imperialist aggression) and a secondary one (that is, the imperialist rivalry between Russia and Washington’s NATO bloc for economic, political, and military dominance over Ukraine and Eastern Europe). This secondary conflict, while remaining in the background, actively fuels the conflict.

Only developments in the war will determine whether this secondary rivalry will become the dominant one. For now, the primary feature of the war is national liberation. While NATO and Russia are not directly at war, this could change. For example, if NATO took direct control of Ukraine’s military or deployed its own forces in direct conflict with the Russian military, the character of the war would change qualitatively into a more directly interimperialist one.

The current struggle for the liberation of Palestine also contains two contradictions set in a hierarchical relationship to each other. It is primarily the Palestinian people’s fight against Israeli settler-colonialism and its supporters in the Western imperialist bloc (most importantly the United States and the European Union). At the same time, this conflict also involves, albeit indirectly, an interimperial conflict between the United States and Russia, as well as China, over hegemony in the Middle East.

Russian imperialism is for the moment playing both sides in the region. It supports Iran as a strategic military and political ally, while maintaining relations with Israel (despite criticism of its genocidal project), selling oil to Tel Aviv, and supporting the Abraham Accords and Israel’s normalization.15 

For its part, China also plays both sides. It has turned to diplomacy to broker the unity of the Palestinian resistance and support the so-called two-state solution, while it pressures Iran (with whom it signed an economic cooperation agreement in 2021) against entering into direct war with Israel.16 During the latest escalation between Iran and Israel in April, China called on “relevant parties to exercise calm and restraint to prevent further escalation.” At the same time, China dramatically expanded trade with Netanyahu’s Israel.17 It increased investment to become the second largest investor in Israel after the United States.18 Most of this investment is in Israel’s ports, telecommunications, energy, and technology—particularly its surveillance systems, which Beijing has deployed against its whole population, especially the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.19 As a result of this trade and investment, China is now the second largest importer of Israeli goods and the largest exporter to the Zionist state.20 China also has enormous investments in the surrounding states, including Saudi Arabia, which joined into its $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Chinese imperialism’s objective in the region is not Palestinian liberation, but preserving its economic interests, its access to fossil fuels, and its enormous BRI investment. That is, China’s objective is protecting key resources that help it compete with its imperial rival, the United States.

Confronting “imperialist combinations”

The main task for revolutionaries in such conflicts is to take a principled position of material solidarity with struggles of the oppressed without lending any support to imperialist powers trying to highjack them for their own purposes. In the 1930s, Britain and France sold their policy of sanctions against Italy through “support” for the Ethiopian cause, while the United States sent selective material aid to China to weaken Japan. The “friendly” imperialisms quickly tried to co-opt the leaderships of these wars of liberation, posing as “allies” when in reality they were only trying to undermine their respective rivals and win legitimacy for their own depredations.

Trotksy called these deceitful imperialist maneuvers from above “imperialist combinations,” which sought to manipulate national liberation movements for their capitalist interests and confuse and divide the working-class movement, thereby preventing independent and effective international solidarity. Similarly, today, the United States and the European Union pretend to defend Ukraine’s right to self-determination against Russian invasion with sanctions against Moscow and by sending arms in dribs and drabs to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia and China pose as allies of the Palestinian people by arming Iran, all while hypocritically maintaining their capitalist ties with Israel.

Such imperialist combinations are a major challenge to developing international solidarity from a working-class perspective. To defeat them, a principled anti-imperialist and internationalist policy must express and mobilize unconditional concrete and material support for all movements for democracy and liberation, while at the same time opposing all imperialist states — including those pretending to play “progressive” roles — and warning against the influence such states try to develop in these movements.

Today, the United States is the most flagrant example of imperialist combination. There is no doubt that a victory of the Ukrainian resistance will give confidence to other peoples oppressed by the Putin regime in Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and throughout Russia’s former empire. They, alongside the oppressed nationalities within Russia and the Russian working people as a whole, would be encouraged to stand up for their democratic rights and demands for social equality.

However, the Biden-NATO-EU-Zelensky combination sows an illusory hope that the Ukrainian working class can rely on Western imperialism to defeat Russian imperialism. This maneuver is both deceptive and dangerous: it confuses class consciousness and obscures the real path to real self-determination and independence for the Ukrainian people.

The Biden administration has once again shown the callous cynicism behind its “democratic” colors. The latest supplemental military aid package approved in May 2024 perfectly illustrates this sibylline manipulation.21 Of the additional $95 billion approved, $61 billion is for “aid to Ukraine.” In reality 37 percent of that portion is for US arms production to restock its arsenal, 18 percent is to bolster NATO’s presence in Europe, and only 22 percent ($14 billion) for direct arms shipment to Ukraine.22 $26 billion of the total aid package will fund the genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel, while the remaining $8 billion is devoted to countering China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The message to the United States and to the world population is that supporting national liberation efforts in Ukraine comes with the threefold price of: first, massively resupplying the United States’ and NATO’s military, while accelerating the militarization of the European Union; second, increasing the funding for the genocide of the Palestinian people; and third, helping the United States prepare for a coming third World War with China.23 

This Western “aid” has had the effect of putting the Ukrainian people on the ropes. Under pressure from Western creditors and their debt system, Zelensky’s government has passed neoliberal privatization reforms since coming to power, and is currently selling the country to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in successive peace and reconstruction summits.24 Moreover, the government is imposing antiworker measures and cuts to social rights amidst the current war.25 To get rid of the bloody Russian occupation, Zelensky is telling the Ukrainian people to surrender their wealth to predatory Western capitalism, mortgaging the future of their national sovereignty.

In the face of this filthy blackmail, socialists must reject any military budget that serves US and EU imperialist interests and entraps Ukraine in neocolonial debt. We should instead propose independent alternatives of working class solidarity, as well as articulate and highlight the links of reciprocal solidarity between the distinct progressive struggles that rival imperialisms seek to divide and confront.

That is why it has been key, for example, that supporters of Ukraine have shown solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.26 The formation of the Ukraine-Palestine Solidarity Group, which differentiated itself from Zelensky’s neoliberal and pro-imperialist government, was particularly important. In their “Letter of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” they “reject the Ukrainian government statements that express unconditional support for Israel’s military actions [insofar as] this position is a retreat from the support of Palestinian rights and condemnation of the Israeli occupation, which Ukraine has followed for decades.”27

Similarly the independent platform for “A People’s Peace, Not an Imperialist Peace” dismantled the false equation between aid to Ukraine and support for NATO’s growth. The platform declares that:

An effective military support of Ukraine does not require a new wave of armaments. We oppose NATO’s rearmament programmes and weapon exports to third countries. Instead, the countries of Europe and North America must provide the weapons from their existing, huge arsenals that will help Ukraine to defend itself effectively. In this sense, we demand that the arms industry should not serve the profit interests of capital—to the contrary, we want to work towards the social appropriation of the arms industry. This industry should serve the immediate interests of Ukraine. At the same time, for social and urgent ecological reasons, we underline the imperative of democratically converting the arms industry into socially useful production on a global scale.28 

Against the maneuvers and distortions of rival imperialisms, all national liberation movements and democratic struggles must maintain their political independence from capitalist states and their imperialist allies. We must unconditionally defend the right of self-defense of all oppressed peoples, which includes their right to request and accept all the material and military aid from any source necessary to achieve their liberation.

But this does not exempt internationalists from warning that all imperialist aid comes with strings and conditions, and from highlighting its dangerous effects. In navigating all these contradictions, the left must advocate the only effective political strategy: building an independent and class-based path to forging solidarity among the exploited and oppressed both within and without each country.

The task of revolutionaries in this imperialist epoch is precisely to decipher the innumerable conflicts within each struggle and its internal class dynamics, and to push forward initiatives and platforms of joint struggle that can challenge and defeat the imperialist combinations. Only with such a consistent internationalist approach can class solidarity on a world scale be built in practice and win our collective liberation.

Blanca Missé is an Associate Professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at San Francisco State University. Their specialties are the Enlightenment Francophone literature and culture, as well as Marxism, feminist theory, and film studies. They are an active member of their union (CFA-SFSU) and their local Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter, as well as the Ukraine Solidarity Network and Bay Area Labor for Palestine. They are affiliated with Workers’ Voice. A version of this article will appear in the journal Catàrsi in Catalan.

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Reinvigorating Marx: A critical exploration of value theory in 21st-century capitalism (plus: Re-reading Giovanni Arrighi on the struggle for global hegemony)



By Dmitry Pozhidaev
Published 
Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century Through the Prism of Value

Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century Through the Prism of Value 
By Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts
London: Pluto Press 2023.

Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century Through the Prism of Value, by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, aims to explain 21st-century capitalism through Karl Marx’s value theory. It aligns with similar efforts, such as Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything (2018), to reintroduce value theory into mainstream discourse. Unlike works that dismiss the labour theory of value, Carchedi and Roberts ground their analysis in Marx’s theory of value in capitalism.

They delve into critical aspects of modern capitalism, including the value of nature, the relationship between value and money, and the primary divisions within capitalism, such as crises and imperialism. The book’s strength lies in its original research, particularly the chapters on the value-based theory of inflation and economic imperialism. Additionally, it engages with contemporary issues such as COVID-19, examining how the law of value manifests during crises.

The authors investigate surplus value extraction, both domestically and internationally, and the strategies capitalists use to counter the declining rate of profit. They expose how misconceptions and distortions in modern capitalism are often exploited to protect capital's interests, particularly at the expense of labour.

Value, price and the ecological costs of capital accumulation

The book begins by addressing how capitalism disrupts the relationship between humans and nature. Using Marxist value theory, the authors critique methods such as natural capital accounts (NCA), arguing that they fail to accurately measure natural wealth due to a fundamental confusion between value and price. As long as natural goods are not market transactions, their value cannot be accurately estimated, much like how GDP requires imputations for up to 30% of goods and services.

Capitalism seeks to reduce the share of circulating capital relative to fixed capital by driving down input value while expanding commodity production. The book’s first chapter demonstrates how energy revolutions have facilitated new accumulation waves through reducing fixed capital costs and the organic composition of capital.

Their original research shows a strong correlation between carbon emissions and profits, suggesting that faster profit growth leads to increased emissions. The chapter also critiques market-based climate solutions, arguing that they fail because mitigation is not profitable for companies. The degrowth movement is also criticised for lacking a class perspective and an ecological theory of capitalist accumulation.

The authors conclude that controlled and planned growth under socialism, with producers controlling production, is necessary to reduce ecologically destructive production while enhancing sectors focused on human well-being and ecological regeneration.

Challenging conventional wisdom: MMT, cryptocurrencies and inflation

Chapter two critically examines the relationship between value and money, beginning with a critique of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The authors argue that MMT overlooks the foundational role of value in money's existence and fails to account for capitalism's nature, creating a fictitious economic world. While Marx sees money as a representation of abstract labour and value, MMT views it as a state product, confusing money with credit/debt.

MMT’s assumption that the state can create money without limits is critiqued, as it ignores the necessity of production to increase money value. The chapter argues profits drive investment, not vice versa, and that private savings enable government deficits. The authors contend that MMT benefits rich countries through currency seigniorage, while smaller economies risk hyperinflation if money is printed excessively.

The chapter also questions whether cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin can challenge capitalism, pointing to their speculative nature and limited functionality as money. Bitcoin fails as a reliable currency because it lacks stability as a store of value, a means of exchange and a unit of account.

The authors introduce the value rate of inflation (VRI) as an alternative measure of inflation, finding that changes in the VRI explain over a third of CPI variations in the US between 1960–2018. They suggest using this indicator to protect labour’s purchasing power in wage negotiations. This Marxist perspective on inflation is gaining traction beyond traditional circles, as seen in the work of economists such as Isabella Weber, who explores the concept of "greedflation" (Weber and Wasner, 2023).

Marx’s theory of crises and economic imperialism

Carchedi and Roberts discuss Marx's theory of crises, attributing capitalist crises to the tendential fall in the profit rate, with its tendencies and counter-tendencies. Using US corporate profit and investment statistics, they demonstrate that every post-WWII crisis followed a peak in profit rates that led to investment collapse. The authors reject underconsumption as a crisis cause, noting that 11 of 12 post-WWII crises were preceded by rising wages.

Economic crises stem from the shrinking ability to valorise capital due to falling profitability. But imperialist exploitation of the capitalist periphery can expand this space. The authors define imperialist exploitation as the long-term net appropriation of surplus value by high-tech countries from low-tech ones, through channels such as currency seigniorage, investment income flows, unequal trade exchange, and exchange rate changes.

Building on previous research (Carchedi and Roberts, 2021), they present a theory of unequal exchange, finding that between 1950–2019, the annual surplus value transfer from dominated to imperialist countries averaged 1% of GDP. Measured against annual export profits, this transfer accounted for more than 40% of imperialist countries' profits. The authors criticise Brazilian economist Ruy Mauro Marini's super-exploitation thesis and oppose using categories like North/South, arguing that they shift focus from exploitation to poverty and undermine global worker solidarity.

Regarding China, the authors conclude it is not an imperialist country, as surplus value transfers from China to the imperialist bloc have averaged 5-10% of its GDP since the 1990s. Although some Marxists characterise China as "an empire in formation" (Katz, 2022), Carchedi and Roberts see it as part of the dominated bloc. They note that emerging economies can only develop by raising productivity with efficient technologies, which imperialist countries will always oppose, as seen in efforts to throttle China’s chip industry (Umbach, 2024).

The path to democratic socialism (not a robot society)

In the final chapters, Carchedi and Roberts discuss how progressive mechanisation and robotisation may affect the future and why socialism is the only alternative to capitalism. They argue robots and AI, while reducing labour costs, do not eliminate capitalist contradictions but rather intensify crises and inequality.

The authors emphasise the materiality and class nature of knowledge production under capitalism, arguing that even in an information society, capitalism's old features would re-emerge. They insist that a society with minimal human toil and no poverty requires a shift to common ownership and advocate for a democratic socialism. Carchedi and Roberts outline an analytical framework for a transitional economy, applying it to the Soviet Union and China.

They briefly treat the topic of state capitalism, which is often used to describe the socio-economic systems in the former Soviet Union and China. This point of view was popular among Yugoslav economists who described the Soviet economy as “etatism” (Horvat, 1982), and more aligned with state capitalism than true socialism. However, Carchedi and Roberts argue the concept of “state capitalism” cannot be applied to the Soviet Union because there was no capitalist competition and the allocation of resources was not left to the decision of individual capitals.

But what about China? While acknowledging the significant capitalist elements in China’s economy, they argue China’s state-owned sector and economic planning represent socialist elements crucial to its industrial policies. They disagree with the view that China is a capitalist country (Milanović, 2019) but describe China as a “trapped transition,” where capitalist and socialist accumulations compete, leading to inconsistent development.

The authors argue that social planning can be rational, efficient and democratic, examining models such as negotiated coordination and participatory economics, which resemble Yugoslav self-management socialism. Despite its failure in Yugoslavia, the viability of this model under different circumstances remains debated. Some radicals claim it was merely capitalism disguised as socialism (Katalenac, 2013), but a more accepted view suggests that Yugoslavia failed due to inadequate reliance on the market and poor balance between self-management and governance (Estrin, 1991). Horvat (2001) blames the 1976 reform for reducing self-management to a façade two decades before Yugoslavia collapsed. The concept of cooperative self-management has re-emerged in mainstream economics, even within capitalist frameworks (Piketty, 2020), suggesting it may still have potential and that it is too early to bury this concept for good.

Carchedi and Roberts' book can be read as either addressing major contemporary capitalism issues individually, or transversally as a collection of value analysis techniques applied to modern capitalism. For example, an analysis of profitability is applied to understand the capitalist drive to intensive use of natural resources to lower the cost of raw materials. The same approach, but in its cyclical form, is used to explain the periodic crises of capitalist production as the average rate of profit falls. Surplus value appropriation as a mechanism to counteract the tendency of the falling rate of profit also plays a major role in explaining economic imperialism and relations of dependency in the capitalist world-system. The book effectively demonstrates the versatility, continued relevance and value of Marxist value theory (pun intended), contributing significantly to the Marxist renaissance in economics.

References

Carchedi, G., & Roberts, M. (2021). “The economics of modern imperialism”. Historical Materialism, 29(4), 23-69.

Estrin, S. (1991). “Yugoslavia: The case of self-managing market socialism”. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(4), 187-194.

Horvat, B. (1982). The Political Economy of Socialism. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

Horvat, B. (2001). Ekonomika brzog razvoja. Sarajevo: Forum Bosna.

Katalenac, J. (2013). “Yugoslav Self-Management: Capitalism Under the Red Banner”. Insurgent Notes: Journal of Communist Theory and Practice.

Katz, C. (2022). Dependency Theory After Fifty Years: The Continuing Relevance of Latin American Critical Thought. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Li, M. (2021). “China: Imperialism or Semi-Periphery?”. Monthly Review, 73(3), 47-74.

Mazzucato, M. (2018). The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. London: Allen Lane.

Milanović, B. (2019). Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Umbach, F. (2024, April 29). “The escalating chip war between China and the West”. GIS. 

Weber, I. M., & Wasner, E. (2023). “Sellers’ inflation, profits and conflict: why can large firms hike prices in an emergency?”. Review of Keynesian Economics, 11(2), 183-213.

Re-reading Giovanni Arrighi on the struggle for global hegemony

First published at Elusive Development.

As Branko Milanovic has recently remarked, there are some famous books whose ideas have been so absorbed into social sciences that the books themselves are no longer read. He was speaking about Karl Polyani’s Great Transformation. But the same can be said about other books, such as Giovanni Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (1994).

In this book, Arrighi examines the historical development of global capitalism and the cyclical rise and decline of hegemonic powers. He introduces the “two logics” framework as a way to understand the dual but intertwined forces that drive the behavior of states and capitalists within the world-system. This two-logic framework has become a standard reference point for the analysis of modern hegemonic relations (see, for example, Claudio Katz’s recent La crisis del sistema imperial). But what does Arrighi mean by this?

Arrighi argues that global hegemonies operate according to:

  1. The logic of capital: This logic is primarily economic and focuses on the pursuit of profit and capital accumulation. It reflects the interests of capitalists and corporations who aim to maximize returns through trade, investment, and market expansion.
  2. The logic of power: This logic is primarily geopolitical and concerns the state’s pursuit of power, security, and influence. It reflects the interests of state actors who prioritize political control, military strength, and strategic dominance.

These logics are not always aligned and can sometimes come into conflict, as states pursue power and security in ways that may disrupt global economic activities, while capitalists seek open markets and stable conditions for profit-making. Thus, the US economic interests in maintaining open markets sometimes clash with its geopolitical interests, leading to conflicts that may disrupt global trade (as seen in sanctions or military interventions). At the same time, China’s geopolitical ambitions, including securing regional dominance, often require state-driven strategies, such as building alliances or military capabilities, that may not align directly with the interests of global capital.

This conceptualization helps to explain the cyclical nature of hegemonic transitions in global capitalism, where economic and political dynamics are interrelated but distinct. It is particularly relevant to understanding imperialism, as hegemonic states navigate both economic and geopolitical pressures in maintaining their global dominance.

The “two logics” framework becomes especially useful in analyzing contemporary geopolitical tensions, such as the conflict between the West on one side, and China and Russia on the other. It explains, for example, why the current US-China rivalry has escalated beyond trade and investment disputes into broader strategic and military tensions, underscoring the complexity of imperial competition in the 21st century.

This framework allows for a more nuanced understanding of how geopolitical and economic interests converge, collide, and shape global developments. When applied to the current tensions involving the West, China, and Russia, this concept illustrates the intricate interplay between state power, economic forces, and imperial dynamics.

Logic of power: Geopolitical tensions

At the heart of the geopolitical conflict is the struggle for global dominance. Russia and China both seek to challenge Western hegemony, while the U.S. and its allies aim to maintain their influence. This struggle can be seen as the manifestation of the logic of power, where state actors prioritize geopolitical control over economic concerns.

Claudio Katz (2023) offers valuable insights into Russia’s evolving role. Katz describes Russia as a “non-hegemonic empire in gestation,” asserting that while Russia does not fit neatly into the imperialist structure dominated by the US, it also harbors imperial ambitions, particularly in its post-Soviet sphere of influence. Katz argues that Russia is attempting to carve out an independent geopolitical path, which explains its confrontational stance toward NATO expansion and its assertive role in Ukraine and other neighboring states.

Boris Kagarlitsky further expands on this in Empire of the Periphery and From Empires to Imperialism, where he characterizes Russia as a “peripheral empire.” According to Kagarlitsky, Russia is caught between the imperial core and the periphery, combining elements of peripheral dependency with imperial ambitions. The annexation of Crimea and support for separatist movements in Ukraine highlight Russia’s efforts to maintain control over its regional sphere, driven by its geopolitical need to buffer against NATO encroachment.

The geopolitical rise of China can be viewed through Katz’s (2023), where he argues that China is not simply a semi-peripheral state, as often suggested, but a potential global center of capitalism. Katz highlights China’s ability to forge new geopolitical alliances, particularly in Latin America and Africa, and its attempt to present itself as an alternative to U.S. imperialism. By promoting regional cooperation through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is asserting itself not just as an economic power but as a geopolitical force capable of challenging Western dominance.

Both Russia and China are working to redefine the global order, particularly as U.S. hegemony wanes. From the logic of power, the alliance between these two nations can be seen as a counter-hegemonic bloc, resisting the Western imperial system.

Logic of capital: Economic rivalry and dependency

While the logic of power focuses on geopolitical dominance, the logic of capital emphasizes the economic motivations and structures underlying the conflict. Here, economic competition between the West and the Sino-Russian bloc becomes crucial to understanding the conflict.

From the perspective of the logic of capital, China’s global economic expansion represents a major challenge to Western capitalism. In Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, Carchedi and Roberts argue that China’s economic rise, driven by state-directed capital accumulation and its massive surplus extraction from both domestic and foreign investments, presents a serious threat to the Western capitalist system. China’s global investments, particularly in infrastructure and strategic industries through the BRI, are shifting the centers of capital accumulation away from traditional imperialist powers toward China.

While Carchedi and Roberts stop short of labeling China an imperialist power, they point to the economic asymmetries China creates in its trade relationships, particularly with peripheral economies. China’s ability to extract surplus value from its trading partners, much like Western imperialist powers, suggests a reorientation of global capital flows that is undermining Western dominance. Katz (2023) also notes that China’s unequal trade relations with Latin American countries allow it to extract surplus value, although he argues that associational relations could potentially mitigate this dynamic.

For Russia, its economic realignment with China can be understood through Kagarlitsky’s notion of the “peripheral empire.” Isolated by Western sanctions, Russia has increasingly turned to China for trade and investment, signaling an economic reorientation. However, as Kagarlitsky suggests, this relationship is not one of equals. Russia, while geopolitically strong, finds itself economically dependent on China, aligning itself within a new hierarchical structure dominated by China’s superior economic power. Russia’s pivot eastward thus exemplifies the logic of capital, where economic necessity drives geopolitical alliances.

Ukraine: The battleground of capital and power

The situation in Ukraine epitomizes the intersection of both logics. From an economic perspective, Ukraine has long been a site of interest for both Western capital and Russian economic strategy. Its strategic importance as a transit hub for Russian gas to Europe highlights the economic dimension of the conflict. The West’s efforts to integrate Ukraine into neoliberal economic structures through IMF reforms and EU association agreements represent the logic of capital — the desire to open up new markets for Western investment and capital accumulation. Volodymyr Ishchenko’s (2024) analysis in Towards the Abyss describes how the capitalist elites in Ukraine have used the country’s strategic position to play both sides, aligning with the West while maintaining ties with Russia when it suits their interests. The West’s imposition of economic sanctions against Russia after its annexation of Crimea and its involvement in Ukraine reflects an attempt to apply the logic of capital to weaken Russia economically. These sanctions aim to disrupt Russian financial networks, limit capital access, and deter Western corporations from engaging with Russian markets.

However, Ukraine is also a geopolitical battleground, where the logic of power plays out as NATO and the US seek to weaken Russian influence. Geopolitically, Ukraine serves as a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. For Russia, maintaining political control or significant influence over Ukraine is essential for its security, especially given NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War. The post-Soviet vicious circle Ishchenko (2024) describes is reflective of how internal capitalist elites manipulate the two logics — using economic opportunities to secure their own power, while navigating the geopolitical landscape to their advantage.

From a power logic perspective, Ukraine becomes a battleground where the struggle between Western powers and Russia over influence and control plays out. This underscores that the conflict is not just about Ukraine’s sovereignty but also a larger confrontation over the structure of the post-Cold War world order.

Long-term implications for global order

Arrighi’s concept of the two logics helps us understand the broader global implications of this conflict. The ongoing rivalry between the West and the Sino-Russian bloc is not simply a matter of economic competition or geopolitical positioning but a complex interplay of both.

The Ukraine conflict highlights a potential shift in global power relations, particularly as Russia turns toward China for economic partnerships and political support. This reorientation toward the East signals that Russia may be looking to escape Western hegemony and realign its geopolitical and economic interests within a different global order, possibly led by China. This reflects how the two logics interact on a global scale — Russia, squeezed out of the Western economic system, seeks an alternative through geopolitical alignment with other rising powers.

The conflict between the U.S.-led West and the Russia-China alliance may suggest a shift toward global multipolarity (despite some claims that a multipolar world is a myth and today’s world is anywhere close to multipolar). As the U.S. struggles to maintain its hegemonic position in both economic and geopolitical terms, China and Russia are emerging as significant challengers. This vision of a multipolar world resonates with Giovanni Arrighi’s ideas, who, in The Long Twentieth Century, discussed the cyclical nature of hegemonic transitions in the world system.

However, this confrontation could also deepen geopolitical fragmentation, leading to the formation of rigid blocs, reminiscent of the Cold War division between the capitalist and socialist worlds, but now framed as the Global North (Western economies) and Global South (emerging economies, including China and Russia). Arrighi’s framework provides a way to see this not just as a geopolitical struggle for power but also as an economic contest for capital accumulation and resource control. Further fragmentation could lead to minimal contact between these blocs, intensifying geopolitical competition and reducing the space for cooperation on global challenges like climate change, pandemic response, or nuclear non-proliferation. This view is reinforced by the writings of Marxist scholars such as Claudio Katz who warns that the West’s aggressive policies towards Russia and China could lead to new forms of economic dependence in the Global South, where countries may have to choose sides, further deepening the global divide.

As Arrighi suggested, the future of the world-system may hinge on how the two logics of capital and power evolve. If China and Russia can effectively navigate the tensions between power and capital, they may create a new global order where Western hegemony is diminished. However, the contradictions between the two logics — particularly the tension between Russia’s geopolitical ambitions and its economic dependence on China — could also limit their ability to challenge the West effectively.

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