Personally, I fail to see why many Marxist-Leninists support multipolarity. The primary goal of the Leninist movements has always been “workers of the world unite!” and not “non-US-aligned countries unite!”.
To be clear, in saying this, I am not endorsing US-led unipolarity. I am just saying that multipolarity is not inherently good as some MLs suggest. For example, the world in 1914 and 1939 were without a doubt multipolar, and those both resulted in brutal world wars which killed millions.
Could somebody explain why people support multipolarity so much?
Its just like how we cant go from liberal democracy or monarchy directly to a stateless classless society without going through the transition period of socialism.
As the empire of the usa degrades there are multiple contenders to try to take their place. None of them are strong enough to take on all the others alone. If the strongest nation tries to seize on the weakness of the usa to take its place directly the others will come together to defeat them. After usa falls everyone will attempt to consolidate their wins an try to form backroom alliances to become the next top power.
For the socialist nations its a trick to pit bourgeois dictatorships against each other. If you can convince them to compete against each other with their eye on the throne they will keep each other in check while the socialist block quietly shows the working class the path of their best interests.
Eventually the socialist block will become the incontestable geo-political power but it has to get there through popular revolution one nation at a time not through mass coercion.
Multipolarity is not the end goal but it is a pathway to socialism because it represents the dismantling of the West’s unipolar imperialist hegemony. I strongly recommend that you read this: https://internationalmanifesto.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/through-pluripolarity-to-socialism-a-manifesto-final.pdf
- Unipolar American hegemony has been and continues to be a catastrophe.
- Multipolarity seems like the only achievable state of things that is not American unipolarity.
Multipolar is so much more acceptable to the media than “Death to the Yankees” or “Frack the US”, but they are synonyms.
Because socialist movements how a far greater chance of succeeding in a world where major powers are divided rather then the US/NATO having absolute dominance and control. If the US has no major rivals they are free to use their resources on playing world police and smother socialist country or movement before it has the chance to get off the ground. Obviously, worldwide socialism is the ultimate goal, but multipolarity is the most feasible next step towards that.
But isn’t having major powers divided going to cause yet another world war which will kill millions or perhaps billions? Wouldn’t the end result be Russian unipolarity and thus the same issues you mentioned?
This premise is so disingenuous, the world has been at war for most of the period of US hegemony and it will never end as long as this unfair world system continues to exist, the world is not just Europe you know.
The primary goal of the Leninist movements has always been “workers of the world unite!”
You can’t get there from here; you have to start somewhere else.
I’ve sort-of, tangentially explained it by explaining ML critical support for Russia in the Ukraine war.
I feel like its happening anyway regardless of my (or my local party’s) opinion of it, so might as well make the most of it. :/
A multi-polar world would allow more unfettered development of the economies of the global south. Over time, this would allow more and more of the population to become proletarianized which should enable more opportunities for the Communist parties of these countries to organize.
A multi-polar world would also disrupt the flow of super-profits from imperial periphery to core which would necessitate a deterioration of the standard of living of the working class in order to maintain the rate of profitability. This would hopefully shake the American working class out of complacently and give more opportunities for mass work by Communists.
Yeah, good addendum to my point.
Multipolarity is the only option by which to transition away from unipolarity, US domination. Any alternative will look fairly multipolar, even one with two main rivals, as other countries position themselves relative to them (like when the USSR existed and there were aligned/“non-aligned”).
Multipolarity as advocated by e.g. BRICS envisions multiple counties holding to mutual win-win pacts to have non-US-based economic ties. The feasibility of this is a materialist question, it will be about economic and military outcomes over the next few years and arguably BRICS is not living up to its potential at the moment. But as a goal or organizing principle it is a good strategy when no other countries are ready to become an opposite pole to US imperialism. Instead of going it alone, it is better to foster mutial ties and interests and devise strategies by which they could, if necessary, decouple from the imperialist countries. US domination, and therefore imperialist domination, is not just wars or the IMF, it is also the many economic tendrils weighing on your country and people for attempting to have sovereignty. The imperialists will pull and pull and pull with thousands of strings. If a country achieves a greater degree of sovereignty, what allies can they depend on if they are also subject to those strings? Integration with many counties is a way to create an intertwined economic world order that can (I think, at least) resist imperialism from a single country or even a bloc.
I think it’s extremely premature and unfair to say that BRICS isn’t living up to it’s potential at the moment. But on further thought, I think you have a point. I read “multipolarity” when you said BRICS.
BRICS started as an actual organization in 2009, but the organization arguably didn’t truly start until just around a decade-ish ago.
Institutions typically take years, if not decades, before they become recognized names and begin to truly change things on a large enough scale.
I wish that BRICS was more firmly anti-capitalist, but I could see how that could alienate millions of people.
I think it’s extremely premature and unfair to say that BRICS isn’t living up to it’s potential at the moment.
Why? They have slow-walked (and to am extent, reversed) dedollarization and excluded countries like Cuba, indicating a lack of commitment to multipolar ties (it indicates the opposite trend - pro-imperialist concerns). It is a truly barebones “this is purely for our own trade interests” show at this point and has done very little compared to its founding statements and theory. What positive progress has it made in the last 4-5 years?
It’s important to compare the material base to the theory and see how it is measuring up. One can’t build expectations too much from the theory, only the concrete actions can provide hope and analysis.
Are you seriously expecting BRICS to come out and say “fuck America, we’re de-dollarizing!” That would be fucking ridiculous, as much as I wish sometimes that would happen.
BRICS was also first theorized as primarily a trade/development bloc, but China is steering it into a vehicle for a new vision of the world, which is fervently anti-imperialist, and BRICS has allowed dozens of countries to dodge sanctions and get resources they would otherwise be locked out of.
BRICS collectively increases the GDP of all participating countries by multiple billions of dollars, and allows trade and exchange to occur faster and more effectively than anything the imperialists would allow.
To question if it’s progressing at all, is fucking nuts.
Your comment doesn’t really address most things I said and appears agitated. Please consider whether that comment is fair and comradely.
Are you seriously expecting BRICS to come out and say “fuck America, we’re de-dollarizing!” That would be fucking ridiculous, as much as I wish sometimes that would happen.
No and I didn’t say or imply that. You are exaggerating, really straw manning, what I sais. Though in BRICS’ founding statements, they absolutely did prioritize holding each others’ reserve currencies, which is of course the beginning of dedollarization. And most of their founding statements are a direct response to US / OECD domination of finance, trade, and international relations in general, calling for instead following international law and using the UN democratically.
BRICS was also first theorized as primarily a trade/development bloc
By some crackers that didn’t actually found BRICS, sure. As actually envisioned via summits and documents it is not only economic, it also extends to cooperation on law enforcement, climate change, multipolar diplomacy, respect for sovereignty, etc etc. The economic is of course the driving force behind any of those things.
but China is steering it into a vehicle for a new vision of the world
How so? What has BRICS done in the last 4-5 years, as I asked and received no answer?
which is fervently anti-imperialist
BRICS is not fervently anti-imperialist by a long shot. It could become functionally anti-imperialist by way of forwarding multipolarity, but only with discipline.
and BRICS has allowed dozens of countries to dodge sanctions and get resources they would otherwise be locked out of.
BRICS itself, as an organization or strategy, can’t take much credit for that. Causation here is reversed. BRICS and multipolarity and fueled by imperialist sanctions regimes and dollar hegemony. Direct trade in each others’ currencies, for example, is a consequence of their own previous economic development and the sanctions regime itself, not the institution of BRICS.
BRICS collectively increases the GDP of all participating countries by multiple billions of dollars
GDP is a magical quantity that tends to mean different things for different countries. China’s real estate bubble drove up GDP but was actually an economic drag, for example. Actual mutual development would be something to look for, and one would need to tie it to BRICS. I am not sure what you are referring to when you say BRICS itself increases GDP, anyways.
BRICS operates more like a parallel G20. It is a diplomatic vehicle and pulls on the same types of levers as international capitalism, but from the perspective of global majority states. Think tanks, lending bodies, friendly vision statement versions of cooperation agreements. The language is like you’ll find from World Bank ghouls but from the (correct) perspective that it is unfair to the global south.
allows trade and exchange to occur faster and more effectively than anything the imperialists would allow.
I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you using BRICS as a stand-in for all direct trade agreements made between its members / other global south countries? That is of course a good development but again I think causation here is reversed.
To question if it’s progressing at all, is fucking nuts.
I didn’t do that. And please do your best to avoid ableist language.
It doesn’t contradict my point though. Of course BRICS was theorized by crackers, but it was the Global South that truly morphed it into something better.
How is dodging sanctions and getting financial aid and trade to impoverished countries literally not helping them stand on their own feet? BRICS is more than an economic partnership, of course it is. I don’t see how that contradicts my point. Of course BRICS could be more fervently anti-imperialist, but shit like this takes time, and it’s a very useful counter-weight to Amerikkkan hegemonical imperialist fascism that has a stranglehold on the world.
I don’t subscribe to GDP being the be all, end all thing either. But in this case, it’s an excellent indicator of real economic growth, not imaginary Amerikkkan stocks. Even bourgeois economists admit that every country that participates in BRICS (though I may be thinking more of the Belt and Road, but I’m sure they are very intertwined) increases their economic value/size by billions of dollars, and fights poverty, and limits the reach of the IMF/World Bank cartel.
I deliberately avoided using ableist language. I’m neurodivergent myself, and I thought that “nuts” would be fine. I sincerely apologize if I hurt or offended you with me saying that.
I see your point about trade with each other’s currencies being a consequence of the imperialist stranglehold’s conditions, but I think you are being really unfair for saying BRICS shouldn’t take credit for that, when BRICS is heavily leaning into, propping up, and standardizing agreements, trade and diplomacy that is directly part of non-USD backed trade or aid.
I didn’t think I was strawmanning you, I thought I was taking your claims to a natural conclusion. I wouldn’t strawman your arguments, and I apologize if it sounded like I was. I just found some of your language to sound like you were bending over backwards to not give BRICS any credit.
As with everything, I think the greater point is that BRICS is a big step in the right direction. As imperialism/capitalism intensifies capitalism’s crises, BRICS seems to be naturally filling in the path of destruction.
I find this reply hard to follow. It is definitely not in the same order of what I wrote and it is seemingly responding to and it does not provide enough context to be certain about what is meant about half the time. It reads like you read parts of my comment and then started responding, but I don’t always know which parts you’re responding to. I was going to try and organize it into something I could respond to, but it ended up being similar to the last one: seemingly disagreeing with things I didn’t say (straw men), basic factual errors about BRICS and equivocation between the organization, its members, and some nerds that predicted an eventual BRICS-like entity, and enough incompleteness that I had to constantly revisit ky previous comment to see what main points had not been addressed. I wrote maybe 1/3 of a reply before my browser crashed. So, this would be a lot of effort on my part and seems silly given the content of your comments so far.
So I don’t think this is a particularly serious discussion or that you even really care. If you do, then I would need you to rewrite your comment so that it makes sense.
I never once strawmanned you. And now you’re just being a douche.
Cuba is in the “partner state” category, not a full member state, for which it has been applying. The category was created about 2 months before this. The partner state category furnishes very few benefits. It is basically being a “candidate” allegedly in the running, like being in a later stage of an interview.
Edit: I should note that Brazil fairly publicly blocked Venezuela from becoming a member of any kind in just the last year, citing their elections, i.e. the most lib PR possible.
I think Brazil is currently an anchor pulling BRICS down. While most BRICS countries seek sovereignty by getting as far from US dependency as possible, even though not necessarily harboring anti-imperialist takes, Brazil is selling even more of its industry to other global powers, even defunding is military industry (Avibras and Embraer) and depending more on US and Israeli tech.
Ah, you’re right, unfortunately. They are only a Partner State. Hopefully they do get added as a full member soon, along with Vietnam.
That was super fucked of Brazil though, I remember.
Yes, I’m still optimistic for BRICS and want to see it succeed with more members! It would be great to establish stronger lines of trade, hopefully leading to US embargo-proof shipping routes.
For example, the world in 1914 and 1939 were without a doubt multipolar, and those both resulted in brutal world wars which killed millions.
Yes, and both those wars resulted in massive gain for socialism.
The two European civil wars are better since they stopped the one-sided massacres against people of color by the European empires. It also allow me to describe the full horror of Indian Residential fake schools in the British diaspora by simply saying that it inspired the Nazi death camps.
The shift from Unipolar to Multipolar is a clear indication that the Western focused world order is ending. As that becomes a reality it means the contradictions in the west are the sharpest they’ve ever been. These conditions will only strengthen the movement. A multipolar world was the inevitable outcome after repeated recession.
The only way these countries could unite they way they have is directly a result of the failing empire strategy by the US. Having injected itself into nearly every international financial transaction via the ending of bretton woods and the beginning of globalization, the US bit the hand that fed it by weaponizing the SWIFT system to seize Russian assets at the start of the Ukraine/NATO war. Now that system is tainted and driving membership into BRICS.
All of this signals to me to be a death spiral for the imperial core. This is what creates the conditions for a rise in the demand for socialism. These events are also driving the fascist moment happening in the US and other imperial states.
This is a historically progressive moment. There was a long debate during the cold war between the Soviet and the Sino revolutions. The debate was between how to export revolution. Mao believed that the 3rd world states needed to develop capitalism before they could eventual transition to Socialism. The Soviet Union believed that with experienced technicians and loans you could skip capitalism and leap forward into socialism.
As the cold war marched on it became clear that Mao was right. The Soviet strategy yielded resistance from national bourgeois figures and compradors because their solution would result in removing them from power, so they stopped taking the loans.
I think we can see Mao’s vision in action from the Belt and Road initiative. Bolstering infrastructure for developing nations, regardless of mode of production, which hardens the nations against imperialism from the west. This is the results of combined and uneven development. Now we see African states building regional self determination, places like Burkina Faso building socialism.
As the empire weakens it allows for other nations to build themselves up. These nations are seizing production lines for national interests, while China is diversifying its economy globally. They support national development and supply chain development. We’re looking at decades of development ahead of us in some of the most resource rich portions of the globe.
This will naturally build conditions in the west to develop class consciousness. It also builds the productive forces in the global south that benefits those nations instead of western capital. This eventually allows for sharpening national contradictions that could lead to local development of socialist parties and demands.
As I understand it, Mao held that “3rd world states” (a term he never used), or bureaucrat-capitalist nations, must undergo a period of New Democracy.
Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital. —Mao Zedong, On New Democracy
Where did Mao Zedong state that to build socialism, a country should mass-export private capital abroad?
Maybe I’m miss attributing this to Mao. However, the strategy employed by the Sinos is described by historian Jeremy Friedman. He described it as a Moa position if I recall. You can hear him talk at length about the Sino Soviet split here:
Part of the split according to Jeremy was due to this conflict in strategy regarding the third world and developing nations.
I have his book about the split, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, in my reading list, but haven’t gotten to it yet.
That said, the belt and road sounds very rooted in what you quoted from Mao.
I feel like this question can only come from someone in the imperial core. The global south wants multipolarity because we want to be the masters of our own destiny and not subjects of the US, we want to establish relations of mutual prosperity not of tribute.
I feel like this question can only come from someone in the imperial core.
I am trying to understand this question as a Marxist through a Marxist lens. Marxism has the same answers to questions regardless of where you are.
But Marxism is decolonial and multi-polarity is essentially decolonization by another name.
In a multipolar world without imperialism the different states will mostly naturally move towards socialism. In a multipolar world where there are some capitalist states living peacefully alongside socialist states, the capitalist states will eventually have to become socialist out of efficiency because they ironically won’t be able to compete with a developed socialist state. Since military intervention at the scale it exists now won’t exist, by definition of a multipolar world, then their only competition will be economic and capitalism is a very inefficient system in some ways compared to socialism. So, it will happen much more naturally with probably few exceptions.
different states will mostly naturally move towards socialism.
No offense, but this sounds very similar to the notion of “peaceful transition to socialism” advocated by Khrushchev. Socialism is done through revolutionary violence (a universal law), not peaceful growth.
Socialism as it stands is almost always done through violence, yes. But that’s primarily due to circumstances outside of anyone’s control, I.E. surrounded by imperialist/capitalist powers in a hypercapitalist world.
Theoretically, in a world with no imperialist superpowers, there would be less of a threat for countries to become socialist.
Well, I never said it would be peaceful. Haha
But imperialism wouldn’t exist to enforce its will militarily. I do believe that isolated capitalist states wouldn’t be able to prevent socialism, with few exceptions. They prevent socialism through a unipolar domination of power.
I don’t support multipolarity as a concept necessarily, but in the current material conditions, it is an absolutely necessary step for overthrowing capitalism.
The US and its system of vassals, world organizations, economic strangleholds, networks of operative and political/military/economic violence have been suppressing socialist projects all around the globe since WW2. That is the main priority of the world hegemon, as the aim is to prop up the US empire, and by extension its capitalist system, as long as possible and at any cost.
We should not forget that there’s been multiple attempts to dismantle capitalism at various degrees, in many different countries, in the last 80 years, but they’ve all been squashed by the US or its proxies. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that these attempts will continue occurring in the future, and if the reach of the US is diminished, then many of these attempts will survive and probably succeed.
Indeed, even in places where no attempts at socialism have been made, the local socialist groups and parties have all become extremely weak and diluted, to the point where some are even considered centrists nowadays. The reason for this is not just infiltration, or a “Western mindset”. A big motivator is the hopelessness they feel, as they consider that anything they do outside the permitted structure, will be doomed to fail due to US intervention.
Capitalism’s decline is inevitable. We are already experiencing it, and it is only kept alive by the exploitation of the imperial core population (which before largely enjoyed the fruits of imperialism) and the massive efforts at suppressing any form of dissent (which are becoming increasingly more and more direct and obvious). So if peoples are left alone to dictate their own future, it is very likely that much of the world will progressively abandon capitalism, particularly if PR China is around to help them.
As a recent example, look what happened in the Sahel in 2022-2023. With the US overstretched and its attention consumed by what was going on in Ukraine and Gaza, they couldn’t do anything, as Burkina Faso and others were throwing French and US soldiers out of their countries. They threatened, they sent some money to certain dubious groups and individuals, they tried couping the governments multiple times. But when all failed, the US could only just shrug and put a pin on it. Whereas before, you can be sure there would be deployments of fleets and possibly troops, bombing missions, drones visiting houses and weddings, operatives preparing assassinations, sabotage and coups, etc. And so, the Sahel countries kicked out the colonizers and are now on track on nationalizing the mines, eradicating imported western-sponsored jihadists and strengthening their independence.
On the other hand, if the US declines, but the world remains unipolar, i.e. another hegemon takes over, then that might not be ideal for Marxists around the world, especially considering all the top world powers, bar PRC, are capitalists. And also, most of them, bar PRC and Russia, are happy participants in the current US system. The ideal scenario would perhaps be PRC becoming the new unipolar hegemon, and they could certainly pull it off. But China itself does not seem interested in this future. They themselves promote multipolarity, which means they’ve probably come to a similar conclusion as what I describe above.
So, to summarize, multipolarity is good because: a) Socialism can take root more easily around the world, b) Nobody will oppose it, c) There’s no apparent scenario for a Marxist unipolar world right now, as the only nation capable of creating it does not seem to want it.
I think that China would be interested in being a unipolar power if the world/situation truly called for it, but I think that the PRC is rightfully hesitant, and would prefer not to. Due to a combination of historical memory/trauma.
The PRC has also said many times, that the time to strike against the U.S./global capitalist order will come eventually. And given the events of the past few years, I get a feeling that “eventually” will be coming sooner than any of us think.
There’s also the attached costs that come with the position of global hegemon. The US has been basically eating itself for the past 50 years to maintain power projection through military might. I think this is something China is acutely aware of. Even though they are spending a lot of treasure and manpower on building up their military force, they are doing it only as a deterrent to an ever-increasingly belligerent US (and this is obvious if one looks at what capabilities they are putting on their new hardware, that are primarily designed at defending and operating in Chinese space). They’ve stated many times that they’d rather be building commercial ships than aircraft carriers.
While multipolarity isn’t inherently socialist or anti-capitalist, the current/coming form of multipolarity seems to be anti-capitalist, and a pre-cursor to countries becoming socialist.
The primary problem in the world right now, is the Amerikkkan settler-colonialist, white supremacist, fascist global imperialist dictatorship. Every single capitalist country on Earth, knowingly or unknowingly (most of the time, knowingly) is a lapdog of the U.S. or followsd in it’s cultural, political, social, and economic footsteps and imperial order.
While capitalism will likely continue to exist even after the U.S. empire falls, the fall of the U.S. will likely be a major death knell or the first major domino of a very long chain of events.
With the largest/most powerful stronghold of capitalism/imperialism being dethroned, as countries across the world are rising up against their neocolonial overlords, and supporting each other, they are and will be increasingly turning towards/socialism, bit by bit.
Rather than being dominated by a single unipolar global dictatorship, multipolarity will mean that the countries/continents of the world will finally have a much larger say in their own affairs, and the institution/enhancement of democracy (actual democracy, not capitalist lies sold as democracy) will mean that socialism will be even more on the rise again.
Nobody (or almost nobody) is inherently/blindly supportive of multipolarity, or multipolarity as an end goal. It’s just a major step.
There will no doubt be all kinds of horrific suffering and oppression and death, as human civilization enters a new era. But that will likely, eventually, stabilize.
When two sides are equally strong they have more chance to be forced to discuss and each side to do some concessions. That’s the appeal of multipolarity
