REGISTER FOR MR CONVERSATIONS: PANDEMIC POLARIZATIONS

PANDEMIC POLARIZATIONS

February 27th 10 A.M. NYC 17:00 JOBURG 22:00 MANILA Join Monthly Review Press and the Socialist Register together with their guests Walden Bello, Jayati Ghosh, and Vishwas Satgar as they share perspectives from the Philippines, India and South Africa and discuss their contributions to the final volume of the Socialist Register to have been shaped by the late Leo Panitch ACCOMMODATION, RIVALRY, OR CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE US AND CHINA? by WALDEN BELLO Even the Pentagon does not dispute Beijing’s strategic posture as ‘strategic defense’ which ‘is rooted in a commitment not to initiate armed conflict, but to respond robustly if an adversary challenges China’s national unity, territorial sovereignty or interests’. The US strategic posture, on the other hand, is offensive. US-China jockeying for power in the South China Sea is creating a very explosive situation, since there are no rules of the game except an informal balance of power, and resorting to balance of power as a regulator of conflict is quite unreliable, as was seen in the case of the European balance of power that resulted in the First World War. Right now, US and Chinese ships are engaged in provocative games of ‘chicken’ in which jet fighters buzz ‘enemy ships’ or warships head for their rivals and then swerve at the last minute..... Walden Bello is currently the International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South. PANDEMIC POLARIZATIONS AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF INDIAN CAPITALISM by JAYATI GHOSH For some time now India has been viewed by the western powers as an important ally in the fight against ‘the other’ – now perceived to be an authoritarian China....To that end, especially over the past decade, mainstream western observers ignored various flaws and inadequacies in the pattern of capitalist development in India, such as sharply increasing inequalities, the continuing poverty and insecurity of the vast majority of Indians, and poor improvement and even slippage in basic human development indicators; relatively high GDP rates were celebrated, irrespective of their lack of plausibility. The fascist tendencies of the ruling party and growing signs of intolerance and authoritarianism on the part of the central government were met with only mild admonishments by the self-appointed rulers of the world, such as the G7. This inconsistent stance would in any case have been hard to sustain over time. But the Covid-19 pandemic may turn out to be a watershed in revealing the extent to which the vision of India competing with China on even somewhat equal terms – a vision which academics have long shown to be a fantasy – will finally have to be abandoned. Jayati Ghosh is the Chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and is also teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. EPIDEMIOLOGICAL NEOLIBERALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA by VISHWAS SATGAR ...More pandemics can be expected, thanks to factory farming, giant feedlots, fish farms and the ecocidal logic central to global accumulation. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated an incredible power to bring much of the world economy to a standstill. It has grounded airlines, tied up shipping, and disrupted global economic flows.... In South Africa the response to the pandemic took place in a context of more than two-and-a-half decades of neoliberal restructuring. Managing a crisis-ridden, globalized, and carbon-based capitalist economy, South Africa’s deeply corrupt government continued to use a financialized market rationality as the basis for its response, including policies to mitigate the socio-economic impacts and challenges the pandemic presented. The ruling class is completely disconnected from the suffering in society, displaying a strong appetite for criminalized accumulation, while the crisis of legitimacy of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its allies intensifies. A failing class project has been rammed down the throat of a fear-ridden and vulnerable society. Vishwas Satgar is an Associate Professor of International Relations and principal investigator for Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Watch to understand: Why new polarizations, but old contradictions? “Polarization” is a word commonly used by everyone from mainstream journalists to the person in the street, whatever their political stripe. But this widely recognized phenomenon deserves scrutiny. The 58th volume of the Socialist Register takes up the challenge, asking such questions as: Are the current tendencies towards polarization new, and if so, what is their significance? What underlying contradictions—between race, class, income, gender, and geopolitics—do the latest polarization trends expose? And to what extent can “centrist” politics continue to hold and contain these internal contradictions?   This volume’s original essays examine the escalating polarization of national, racial, generational, and other identities — all in the context of growing economic inequality, new forms of regional and urban antagonism, “vaccine nationalism,” and the shifting parameters of rivalry between the “Great Powers.” Watch to preview the contents of the 2022 Volume With further contributions from: Bill Fletcher Jr., Samir Gandesha, Sam Gindin, David Harvey, Ilya Matveev, Simon Mohun, Adolph Reed Jr. and Touré F. Reed, James Schneider, Ingar Solty, Samir Sonti, Hilary Wainwright, and Oleg Zhuravlev. GET YOUR ADVANCE COPY HERE Why "The Crisis of Centrism"? Greg Albo explains. REGISTER TO SEE BELLO, GHOSH, AND SATGAR ALSO! March 13th NEW! MR CLASSICS SERIES: Consciencism Dr. Layla Brown & Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly on Kwame Nkrumah's seminal work and worldview