The Long Decline of Capitalism and the Long Transition to World Socialism

Is the long decline of capitalism the same as the long positive transition to socialism? If it is to be so, it is necessary that the twenty first century prolongs the twentieth century and radicalises the objectives of social transformation.

The decline was not a continuous, linear process. There were moments of revival, of the counter-offensive of capital, like the counter-offensive of the gov­erning classes of the Ancien Regime on the eve of the French Revolution.

The present time is of that kind. The twentieth century was a first chapter in the long apprenticeship of the people in going beyond capitalism and inventing new socialist forms of living, to borrow the expression of Dominico Losurdo (Fuir l'Histoire, Delga, 2007). Like him, I do not analyse its development in terms of ‘failure’ (of socialism, of national independence) as reactionary propaganda, which has the wind in its sails today, tries to make out. On the contrary it is the very successes and not the failures of this first wave of socialist and national popular experiences which are at the origin of the problems of the contemporary world. I have analysed the projects of this first wave in terms of three families of social and political advances: the Welfare State in the imperialist West (the his­torical compromise between capital and labour of the period), the really existing socialisms (Soviet and Maoist), and the national popular systems of the Bandung era. The analysis is made in terms of their complementarity and conflictuality at the world level (a different perspective from that of the ‘‘cold war’’ and the bipolarity proposed today by the defenders of the ‘‘capitalism-End of History’’ school, as I stress the multipolar character of globalisation in the twentieth cen­tury).

It is thus this inertia that created favourable conditions for the current capital counter-offensive: the new ‘‘perilous passage” of the liberations of the twentieth century to those of the twenty first century. It is therefore important now to tackle the nature of this ‘trough’ moment that separates the two centuries and to identify the new challenges that confront the peoples of the world.

5.2.1 The Counter-offensive of Capitalism in Decline

The contrast of centres with the peripheries is no longer similar to that of indus­trialised countries and non-industrialised countries. The polarisation of centres/ peripheries, which gave the expansion of world capitalism its imperialist character, continues and even increases through the ‘‘five new monopolies” that the impe­rialist centres enjoy (as previously explained). In these conditions, the pursuit of accelerated development by the emerging peripheries, implemented with unquestioned success (in China, particularly, but also in other countries of the South) has not got rid of imperialist domination. It has led to a new contrast between the centres and the peripheries, not to its overtaking.

Imperialism is no longer written in the plural as in the earlier phases of its development: it is a ‘‘collective imperialism” of the Triad (United States, Europe, Japan). In this sense, the common interests shared by the oligopolies based in the Triad are greater than the conflicts of (‘mercantile’) interests that could oppose them to each other. This collective character of imperialism is expressed through the management of a world system by the common instruments of the Triad: at the economic level, by the World Trade Organization (the colonial ministry of the Triad), the International Monetary Fund (the colonial collective monetary agency), the World Bank (the propaganda ministry), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (constituted to prevent Europe from extricating itself from liberalism); at the political level, by the G7/G8, the armed forces of the United States and their subordinate instrument, NATO (the marginalization/domestication of the United Nations completing the picture).

5.2.2 In Counterpoint: The Aims and Means of a Strategy of Constructing Convergence in Diversity

The peoples of the three continents (Asia, Africa and Latin America) are con­fronted today with the expansion of the imperialist system called globalised neoliberalism, which is nothing less than the construction of apartheid at the world level. The new imperial order will be challenged. By whom? And what will result from this challenge?

Here I shall just outline the main proposals that I have developed elsewhere (From Capitalism to Civilization, p. 127 et seq.).

There is no doubt that the image of the dominant reality makes it difficult to imagine an immediate challenge to this order. The governing classes of the countries of the South, defeated as they are, have largely accepted to play their role of subordinate comprador classes while the peoples, confused and caught up in the daily struggle for survival, often seem to accept their lot or even, worse still, to harbour new illusions that their own governing classes hold out before them.

The governing classes of certain countries of the South have obviously chosen a strategy that is neither that of a passive submission to the dominant forces in the world system, nor of declared opposition to them: a strategy of active interventions upon which they base their hopes to accelerate the development of their country. China, through the solidity of its national construction given to it by its revolution and Maoism, by its option to conserve control of its currency and capital move­ments, by its refusal to question the collective ownership of the land (the main revolutionary conquest of the peasants), is better equipped than the others to make this choice and to achieve incontestably brilliant results.

Can this experience continue? And what are its limits? After analysing the contradictions inherent in this option I have concluded that the idea of a national capitalism capable of imposing itself on equal terms with the main powers of the world system is based largely on illusions.

And yet the societies of the South—at least some of them—are today equipped with the means enabling them to completely rid themselves of the ‘monopolies’ of the imperialist centres. These societies are capable of developing by themselves without falling into dependency. They have the potential of a technological mastery that would enable them to use it for themselves. They can constrain the North, recover the use of their natural resources and force the North to adjust to a consumption pattern that is less scandalous. They can extricate themselves from financial globalisation. Already they are questioning the monopoly of weapons of mass destruction that the United States wants to reserve for itself. They can develop South-South trade—of goods, services, capital, technologies—which was unthinkable in 1955, when none of these countries possessed industries and the mastery of technology. More than ever before, the possibility of delinking is on the agenda.

Will these societies do it? And who will undertake it? The existing governing bourgeois classes? I very much doubt it. The popular classes in power? Probably, it will first be national/popular transitional regimes.

5.2.3 For a Socialist Renewal of the Twenty First Century: The Capitalism/Socialism Conflict and the North/South Conflict are Inseparable

The North/South (centres/peripheries) conflict is a major issue in the whole history of capitalist development.

As capitalism is a world system and not just the juxtaposing of national capi­talist systems, political and social struggles, if they are to be effective, must be conducted simultaneously in the national arena (which remains decisive because the conflicts, alliances and social and political compromises are to be worked out there) and at the world level. This viewpoint, which is obvious to me, seems to have been that of Marx and the historical Marxisms (‘‘Workers of the world, unite!”) and, in its enriched Maoist version, ‘‘Proletarians of all countries, oppressed peoples, unite!”

It is impossible to foresee the trajectory that will be traced by the unequal advances of the struggles in the South and in the North. My feeling is that at this moment the South is going through a crisis, but that it is a crisis of growth, in the sense that the pursuit of the liberation objectives of its peoples is irreversible. The peoples of the North would do well to take their measure, all the more so if they maintain this perspective and associate it with the construction of socialism. There was a moment of solidarity of this kind at the time of Bandung: young Europeans proclaimed their solidairty with the Third World. It was doubtlessly naive, but how much better than their current turning in on themselves!

Without going back to the analyses of actually existing world capitalism that I have developed elsewhere, I will just recall their conclusions. In my opinion, humanity cannot engage seriously in the construction of a socialist alternative to capitalism unless things change in the developed West.

In the peripheries of globalised capitalism—by definition the ‘‘storm zones’’ in the imperialist system—a form of revolution certainly remains on the agenda. But its aim is by nature ambiguous and vague: national liberation from imperialism (and the maintenance of much, or even of the essential of the social relationships that belong to capitalist modernity)—or will it be more than that? Whether it is the radical revolutions of China, Vietnam and Cuba or those which were not radical elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the challenge remains: ‘‘catching up’’ and/or ‘‘doing something else’’. This challenge is in turn linked to another task generally considered of equal priority: to defend the Soviet Union which is being encircled. The Soviet Union and later China find themselves confronted by the strategies of systematic isolation used by dominant capitalism and the Western powers. One can therefore understand why, revolution not being on the immediate agenda elsewhere, the priority is generally given to saving the post-revolutionary states.

The Soviet Union and China have experienced the vicissitudes of the great revolutions and have also had to confront the consequences of the unequal expansion of world capitalism. Both these factors gradually sacrificed the original communist objectives to the immediate requirements of economic catching up. This shift, abandoning the aim of social ownership by which the communism of Marx defined itself, substituted State management. This was accompanied by the decline of popular democracy, which was crushed by a brutal (and sometimes bloody) dictatorship of the post-revolutionary power and it accelerated the evolution towards the restoration of capitalism. In both experiences priority was given to the ‘‘defence of the post-revolutionary State’’ and internal means were used for this purpose, as well as external strategies giving priority to such defence. The com­munist parties were thus invited to fall in line with this option, not only as concerns the global strategic direction but also in their tactical day-to-day adjustments. This inevitably caused a rapid weakening of critical thinking among the revolutionaries whose abstract discourse on the ‘revolution’ (always ‘imminent’) was far removed from an analysis of the real contradictions of society and this was supported by maintaining almost military forms of organisation against all odds.

The avant-gardes who refused to align themselves, and sometimes dared to face the reality of post-revolutionary societies, nevertheless did not renounce the ori­ginal Leninist hypothesis (the ‘‘imminent revolution”), without taking into account that this was clearly refuted by the facts. Thus there was Trotskyism and the parties of the Fourth International. Then there were a good number of organizations of activist revolutionaries, inspired by Maoism or by Guevarism. Examples of this are numerous, from the Philippines to India (the Naxalites), from the Arab world (with the nationalist/communist Arabs—les qawmiyin—and those emulating them in South Yemen) to Latin America (Guevarism).

The great national liberation movements in Asia and in Africa, in open conflict with the imperialist order, came up against, as did those who conducted revolution in the name of socialism, the conflicting needs of ‘‘catching up” (‘‘national con­struction”) and the transformation of social relationships in favour of the popular classes. On this latter concern, the ‘‘post-revolutionary regimes” (or simply re-conquered post-independence regimes) were certainly less radical than the communist powers, which is why I would describe these regimes, in Asia and Africa, as ‘‘national/popular”. They were also sometimes inspired by forms of organisation (single party, non-democratic dictatorship, State management of the economy) that had been developed during the experiences of ‘‘really existing socialism^,,.They usually diluted their efficiency by their vague ideological choices and the compromise with the past that they accepted.

It is in these conditions that these regimes, like the critical avant-garde (his­torical communism in the countries concerned) were, in turn, invited to support the Soviet Union (and, more rarely, China) and benefit from its support. This consti­tution of this common front against the imperialist aggression of the United States and their European and Japanese partners was certainly beneficial for the peoples of Asia and Africa. It opened up a margin of autonomy both for the initiatives of the governing classes of the countries concerned and for the actions of their popular classes. This is proved by what happened following the Soviet collapse.

5.3