Despite everything going on, I feel generally optimistic about the future of the world and I want to share some of this optimism. I understand that overwhelming nihilism and dystopian nightmares flood every inch of our culture. Our social media spaces are chaotic and tense. The mainstream so-called left can’t even imagine a liberated future—they don’t see past minor reforms and petty squabbles.
Maybe it’s the current positive state of my personal life, or maybe it’s simply naivety, but I have a gut-feeling that the contradictions of our current broader historical moment will be resolved, and a future society will look back at our time to see this stage of history as a short moment of human decline.
After all, capitalism is roughly 500 years old, the United States is 245 years old, and Lenin would have argued that imperialism is 148 years old. These lengths of time are merely blips in the history of man. The history of society has had longer periods of decline and even longer periods of positive growth. The only difference is that, now, the fate of the world moves in relative unison, thanks to the processes of globalization, neoliberalism, and empire. An action of one part of the world will guarantee an effect to the rest.
In the past, one society could have been in its Dark Ages, while another was flourishing. One society could have been completely classless while another, not too far, could have already been introduced to the contradictions of accumulation. Though, it seems that we may see this kind of situation again, especially as the imperialists lose their grip on the world to a truly multilateral world.
It’s ironic that I, a Marxist, who so vehemently clings to “scientific rationalism” and dialectical materialism, is reflecting on a gut-feeling. Maybe gut-feeling is the wrong word because this feeling, if you can call it one, has gotten stronger the more I study Marxism and history, especially when I study it in relation to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The history of nature more broadly, too, is a chaotic mess with its ups and its downs.
Despite the depressing spectacles that mainstream and social medias constantly pummel us with, many things have shifted out of favor of the imperialists over the past decade. Though, it may be hard to see. Even many Marxists do not understand imperialism as the primary contradiction of human society right now. For example, David Harvey continues to be insistent about being “anti-capitalist before anti-imperialist.”
But, for those who do understand the world through the framework of dialectical materialism, the many forces which struggle against each other have all been caught in the webs of imperialism. Indian peasants have to now wage war against international agribusiness, while landlords continue to exploit them. Chavistas have to struggle against US military and intelligence, while their own national bourgeoisie continue to hold a line against total revolution. A teacher’s union has to struggle against 5 layers of corporate subsidiaries and a complex network of finance capital, when they go on strike against their local governments for undercutting their salaries.
The very direct, local, enemies of the proletariat are overshadowed by an international monopoly capitalist class—class struggle is imbued with imperialism. Anti-imperialism is the highest stage of class struggle. Lenin observed this imperialist class take form in the early 20th century. Since then, they have fully cemented themselves across the entire planet. However, it seems that this class’s power is finally in decline. Their time will come to an end, no question—the very basis of Darwin or Marx’s ideas is that nothing is eternal and everything is in motion.
The end of imperialism is the greatest possible victory for the global proletariat because it lays the conditions for their final confrontation with class society in general. Socialism can only be established and won over against the forces of class society once imperialism is defeated.
How is imperialism under threat?
Latin America and the Caribbean
“Its less of a pink tide and more of a red wave” said one of the speakers in a report-back on the recent democratic victories in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Workers and peasants have been seizing major ground in the democratic systems of their respective countries.
I understand that most of you who may be reading this have lost faith in democratic systems but the democratic system you are most familiar with is in the United States. Not only are the democratic systems in Latin America fundamentally different (especially because these countries have already had movements for political independence from imperialism), but more importantly, socialist or socialist-oriented parties have mass organic bases. Bolivia’s Evo Morales or Honduras’s leader, Xiomara Castro, are not like AOC—disconnected from the masses and working within ruling class parties in the imperialist core.
When socialists or even minor reformists are in power in these states, they are a threat because they can better fight to break the economic dependencies of their countries on US imperialism. Further, the more socialist or generally anti-imperialist parties take power in Latin America, the stronger a united front amongst them can be.
Breaking economic dependency is not an instantaneous or magical process, however. Even the most promising democratic leaders can bend to the violent pressures of international finance capital. For this reason, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) was formed.
ALBA-TCP which is made up of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, St Vincent & Grenadines, Grenada, St Lucia, and Antigua & Barbuda, has the following principle as their primary tenant: prioritize the unified development of ALBA-TCP over the individual development of each of its members. The leaders of ALBA-TCP understand that a strong unified anti-imperialist bloc is necessary for the future of the Americas. You can read ALBA-TCP’s groundbreaking manifesto “A Plan to Save the Planet” here.
American handling of COVID, as well as American sanctions, have driven countries in the Global South to seek more political and economic unification. They understand that their survival relies on each other, just as the survival of the worker relies on other workers, especially in the face of a powerful capitalist. China, which I will talk about later, is laying down the necessary material framework to make this unity happen: the Belt and Road Initiative.
Axis of Resistance
The Axis of Resistance (AoR) is one of the most overlooked successful challenges to imperialism. Loosely comprising of political and military ally-ship between Iran, Syria, Popular Mobilization Forces (Iraq), Ansar Allah (Yemen), Hezbollah (Lebanon), and segments of the Palestinian Liberation Movement, the Axis of Resistance is organized against Zionism, NATO, Arab Monarchy, and ISIS. In fact, AoR has been instrumental in the fight against Islamic extremism and US-funded Islamic militias who are trained and deployed to destabilize the region.
Iranian military leader, Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by Americans on Iraqi soil, was heralded across the region for leading countless victories against Islamic fascists. It’s no wonder that he was an important target for US imperialism.
The US is yet to set foot in Iran because Iran’s deterrence program is powerful. The development of their missile program was helped in major part by the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (who are also yet to be overtly challenged by the US for the same reasons). The US can only sanction Iran. They understand that invading Iran would be devastating to them and their Zionist allies. For this reason, Iran is central to AoR. Further, Iran continues to push ground against the American proxy army, ISIS. Syria is a similar story in this regard, though their underdeveloped missile program was supplemented by Russia more recently.
AoR has been holding steady against the long and protracted struggle against imperialism for a while now but most recently, it seems that they are gaining ground. There too many stories of small, yet striking and important victories to name. In one example, Hezbollah was recently able to accept Iranian oil, much needed aid in a country with a nearly depleted supply. Iran had to break US sanctions and military blockades for the oil to reach. In the end it reached and here are people celebrating in Lebanon, holding up Hezbollah flags to boot:
Last summer, the Zionists led another large-scale assault on Gaza but they were not able to walk away unscathed. When Palestinian resistance responded with their own barrage of missiles, new rules of engagement were set. In this moment, the Zionists were again unable to walk over Palestinians without significant consequence.
Where did the Palestinian resistance get the means to build these missiles? This is the importance of the greater AoR relationship. It is a wide-held belief that the Zionists under-reported casualties and compromised targets. Admitting that the Palestinian resistance, backed by AoR, left a scar would only further embolden the resistance and demoralize enemy settlers. All across Palestine, resistance was inspired and new mobilizations had sprung up.
Interestingly, China is criticized for their investments in Israeli ports. However, it is Chinese cooperation with Iran, and thus the wider resistance, which materially plays a role for nations devastated by sanctions to maintain arms.
Israel and ISIS were not the only victims of the AoR. Late 2019 saw a major blow to Saudi Arabia and thus a turning point in the US-Saudi driven Yemeni Civil War. The Houthi Movement claimed responsibility for drone strikes against Saudi Arabia’s national oil corporation in response to the US-backed Saudi Arabian invasion of Yemen. The weapons were of Iranian manufacture (again, think about which forces help sustain Iran) and resulted in resistance boldly declaring that they can no longer be trampled on without consequence.
China’s Long Game
Picture this. You are a wealthy capitalist who has used Chinese labor, manufacturing, and financial capital for decades. This relationship was integral to your wealth generation. You receive cheap production, they invest profits to develop their country, both sides are happy—win-win. Suddenly, China is making its own competing products, many better than yours! More consumers are rejecting your goods for Chinese goods. Normally, you would fight back by cutting off your rival. But wait. Your own industry has come to significantly rely on Chinese capital so pulling out would hurt you. Worse, while you are reliant on China, it seems that China is increasingly either self-reliant or have found new avenues of capital in the emergent sectors of the Global South. They don’t need you and you need them.
This is what US imperialism is facing but on a grander scale. Supply chain issues are growing as the US tries to delink its manufacturing without having immediate or obvious alternatives. Inflation is on the rise, as counter-hegemonic currencies, specifically Chinese, is threatening to soon take over the US dollar. Worse, aside from developing itself, China is building infrastructure all over the world for one purpose: laying the conditions necessary for other nations delink from US imperialism by building viable alternatives for trade and development. The monopoly held by imperialist fronts, the IMF and World Bank, is fracturing.
One example I like to turn to is the case of railways in Africa. Until now, nearly all railways built in Africa were built by imperialists. These railways were designed to move extracted resources from inland to the shore for export. Most recent railway infrastructure, aided by Chinese investment and management (and in some cases labor), has been transcontinental and transnational. Think about that for a second. Railway systems across the continent are shifting from land-to-sea, to land-to-land. While many ports are owned and controlled by Western firms, these new transcontinental rails can be used for inter-African trade without relying on Western trade infrastructure. This is a material necessity for a successful economic and political unification of Africa.
The Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is building this kind of infrastructure on an even wider scale. New rails and port systems are popping up across continental Europe-Asia-Africa in hopes to completely restructure international trade. The Communist Party of China is working hard to tie Latin America in too through mutual coordination and trade agreements.
The imperialists are extremely frightened of these developments.
Furthermore, the US’s typical tactic of fomenting insurgency in tribes/nations/regions who may have contradictions with their respective state/government has completely failed in the case of China. The imperialists are hanging on by strings when it comes to Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and even Taiwan. Moreover, national unity in the country is at an alltime high. Jokingly, many Chinese netizens poke fun at Trump for being responsible for increased national unity in China.
The truth is, its difficult to summarize the extent of Chinese effects on US imperialism in a short section. Because the primary antagonize to US imperialism (right now) is China, the effects and fronts are quite broad. Still, BRI stands out the most.
Ya Fei La
亚非拉 (Ya Fei La) means Africa, Asia, and Latin America in mandarin. You can find these symbols in the background of the banner of this blog, Shattering Hegemony.
The various sites of struggle I listed above are not isolated phenomenon, but rather, an interlocking and increasingly unified international front against imperialism. Nations are allying with this front over time as they realize that dependency on the US is death. As this happens, US imperialism weakens, and opportunities for revolution are created around the world.
In May 2020, Iranian tankers defied US threats and delivered oil (and later food) to Venezuela. China and Iran inked a 25-year cooperation plan. China is donating 10 millions vaccines to Zimbabwe alone this year, on top of the donations they have already sent across the Global South. These examples are the tip of an anti-imperialist iceberg.
Just this week, Iran proposed the creation of a union of anti-imperialist countries to resist the US empire's illegal sanctions and aggression in a meeting with Nicaraguan leadership. This is on top of an already existing anti-imperialist diplomatic alliance, the Group of Friends in Defense of UN Charter—uniting Algeria, Angola, Belarus, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Nicaragua, DPRK, Russia, St Vincent, Syria, Venezuela, and Palestine.
Feminist Lines of Demarcation
Before concluding, there is one more positive development to note. This one lies in the heart of the empire.
The fight against imperialism must happen on the level of culture too. Fidel Castro called it “the battle of ideas.” While the historical feminist movement was ideologically spearheaded in the West, particularly in the United States, vast movements of mobilized women have been the fabric of proletarian revolutions. Mao wrote “women hold up half the sky.” This is not merely a poetic phrase, it is a scientific statement. The revolutions of China, Russia, Cuba, and others would be impossible without the mass mobilization of women. Samir Amin makes clear that the uniqueness of these revolutions had been in the basis of peasantry, resulting in their successes. I argue that more specifically, these movements had the invaluable and necessary power of mass women’s mobilization. Without them, they would be unsuccessful.
In the West, particularly recently, the women’s question in socialist struggle been nearly erased. The long-time communist war against prostitution (necessarily backed by mass women’s mobilizations) has been replaced with the promotion of the sex industry, by the left no less! While most of women of the world still suffer toxic patriarchal traditions, leftover from feudal society, socialists in the advanced capitalist countries cannot see past capitalism’s reforms to patriarchy and the particular forms of patriarchal oppression by capitalism. Worst, they take capitalism’s new commodification of the women’s body (versus the slavery of the women’s body under feudalism) as revolutionary progress.
However, Sankara said “hear the roar of women’s silence […] the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.” This is just as true today. The dominance of postmodernist-liberal feminism is once again under threat to a reemergence of radical feminist thought, amended by the scientific prowess of Marxism, under the banner of proletarian feminism. Could Americans finally be catching up to analyses long held by proletarian women in the Global South? Communist organizations in the West are increasingly confronted to debate these positions and hold a solid line. Af3irm, a transnational women’s organization has seen its highest recruitment numbers ever. Proletarian feminist thinkers are gaining wider influence, resulting in more women finding home in socialist thinking. This is good news but it cannot stop there. Communist parties need to be conscious of Engels notes to be the driving force of history.
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.
Engels
Takeaway
Something I hear often is “capitalism is in crisis” or “neoliberalism is at a dead end.” What does this functionally mean? It literally means imperialism is on its last legs. This is reality. It wont’ survive as it is. Either the counter-forces of decolonization and anti-imperialism will take control over the contradiction, for once, or imperialism will maintain hegemony by transforming into new forms that are difficult to predict.
The examples I have laid out all relate directly to us in the West. Iranian oil tankers reaching Lebanon affect us. Why? Because this is a blow to US imperialism. It changes the dynamics of global politics and makes new things possible. China helping fund transnational rails in Africa affects us. Why? The global south will be less reliant on the US economy. How will this effect our consumer economy? How will this shape the future of the US economy and thus the nature of class struggle in America? The defeat of US imperialism is a win for all of us because we are part of the global proletariat, despite this short moment when our are interests are divested from them. We must seek to reunite these interests and the defeat of US imperialism will make that happen!