Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.12
IMPERIALISM OF THE ANTI-IMPERIALISTS
The BRICS summit
With the participation of 60 heads of state, the summit held in South Africa has decided on the expansion of the BRICS. With this expansion, large oil-producing countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran), food-producing countries (Argentina) and countries with geostrategic resources such as water, the possibility of electrification of an entire area or control of the Suez Canal (Ethiopia, Egypt) have joined the group.
The material basis for the formation of this group is the DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES in Asia, Africa and South America, which Western imperialism in general (and U.S. imperialism in particular) have not been able to stop. Before the expansion, the joint GDP by purchasing power parity already exceeded that of the G-7 countries (Germany, Canada, United States, France, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom) and "The new members will increase the BRICS’ share of global gross domestic product from 32 per cent to 37 per cent on a purchasing power parity basis.” (Financial Times, 24-08-2023).
The following graph shows the general trend, which is infinitely more important than the comparative static data.
The war on means of payment
Despite the announcement of the intention to launch a common currency, the focus of the BRICS members is to reduce the use of the dollar and make payments in their currencies in their commercial relations. The Russian president, who participated telematically so as not to be arrested by his own South African partner, declared: "(...) the percentage of the dollar in export and import transactions within the BRICS framework decreased. Last year it amounted to only 28.7%." (Expansión, 23-08-23).
"The Argentine Government will pay this Friday to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) US$ 2.7 billion (...) 1.7 billion SDRs [Special Drawing Rights, the currency used by the IMF] will be used and, the rest, will be paid in freely available yuan from the currency swap with the People's Bank of China. The IMF would receive the yuan, which it could exchange for SDRs to the Bank of China, or to another member country that needed yuan for transactions." (América Economia, 20-06-2023).
"The African Export-Import Bank expects 15 to 20 countries to have joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System by the end of the year. (...) The system, known as PAPSS, is using dollar exchange rates for now, (...) "But we are working with central banks to develop an exchange-rate mechanism that would allow Africa’s 42 currencies to be convertible among themselves. (...) The vast majority of Africa’s intra-regional trade is done through conversions to the dollar. Initiatives like PAPSS and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which would create the world's largest free trade zone by area, seek to boost internal trade by reducing barriers, including the need for intermediaries such as the US dollar." (Bloomberg, 18-06-2023).
The dollar's dominance in trade provides the United States with significant economic and political advantages. Among other things it means that a huge proportion of cross-border financial flows must pass through US-chartered banks that are subject to the US regulations, sanctions regime and tax system.
" Settlement typically happens during US working hours and can be held up by a holiday in any of the involved countries, providing an opening for a platform like mBridge (...) developed by China, Thailand, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, will likely have a basic product ready by the year-end (...). It’s a joint effort with the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements (...) Using the system, a company in China could pay a vendor in the UAE by having its bank issue a digital e-yuan token through the People’s Bank of China on the mBridge blockchain, or ledger. There, this token could then within mere seconds be credited to the vendor’s bank in the UAE, which would in turn credit the vendor’s account with dirham, the local currency" (Bloomberg, 09-08-2023).
It is convenient to compare the previous report with this one:
"Eight years of work and preparations have taken the U.S. Federal Reserve to develop FedNow, a new technological system that, as of yesterday, allows financial institutions across the country to guarantee instant payments. At the moment, only 57 banks, including a selection of entities of different sizes, will use the system (...) to make a transfer between banks it takes approximately two days (sometimes three), although the time is doubled if it involves a bank and a Fintech (...) In the EU, it rarely exceeds 24 hours when transfers are handled in an ordinary way". (Expansión, 21-07-23).
While some are trying to move from three days to 24 hours for intra-national transactions, others are experimenting with moving to seconds for international transactions...
And they do it with the base technology of digital currencies that will be more and more the order of the day: "according to (...) the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the so-called central bank of central banks, in 2030 there will be up to 24 virtual currencies in circulation". (Expansión, 07-08-2023).
On the one hand, it is important not to confuse these currencies with the so-called "cryptocurrencies", which are experiencing a new bullish binge after their last big crash. On the other hand, the question that will have to be settled is which currencies, through which platforms, will prevail over the others.
The New Silk Road of Chinese imperialism
Since its launch ten years ago, Chinese imperialism has been expanding around the world on the basis of investments and agreements related to the New Silk Road: "Until the middle of last February, China had signed collaboration agreements with 151 countries and 32 international organizations within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. (...) During the first five months of this year, trade between the nation and the rest of the international partners participating in the initiative had a turnover of 5.78 trillion yuan (747 billion euros), an increase of 13.2% over the previous year. Between January and April, its non-financial foreign direct investment in these countries stood at $7.53 billion (€6.97 billion), 9% more than in the same period of 2022." (El País, 22-06-2023).
In fact, the share of China's total exports from the New Silk Road states is growing steadily, in general, and with the ASEAN states in particular:
"Shipments from China to the members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations have soared to nearly $600 billion a month (...) The shift has been helped by the Beijing-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which took effect last year to become the world’s largest free-trade bloc, said HSBC Chief Asia Economist Frederic Neumann. It’s also a testament to the reworking of global supply chains: parts sourced from China are increasingly moving to Southeast Asia for final assembly before being exported to the rest of the world, he said. (...) “In short, one of the key trade corridors in Asia, and, indeed, in the world, is now that between Asean and mainland China”". (Bloomberg, 05-09-2023).
As we have seen in previous issues of the magazine, Chinese imperialism has paid special attention to Africa: "(...) China has finished building or is in the process of improving 30,000 kilometers of roads and 2,000 of railways on the African continent, as well as infrastructures that will guarantee 85 million tons of annual port capacity and another 9 million tons of drinking water per day." (El País, 25-08-2022).
The role (or roles) of Saudi Arabia
Under Chinese auspices, two of the newly admitted BRICS members, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have recently re-established relations.
A few days after the US Secretary of State's visit to Saudi Arabia, " the Saudi capital has played host to the largest ever Chinese-Arab business gathering (...) Saudi officials spoke of integrating China into the Arab region and Chinese executives said they stood ready to “de-Americanize” the world’s top oil exporter." (Bloomberg, 13-06-2023).
But this does not mean that everything is developing to the liking of Chinese imperialism, nor that the other BRICS members are not trying to play their own game: "India and Saudi Arabia yesterday reaffirmed their commitment to the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor announced last weekend during the G20 summit, an ambitious project that aims to be an alternative to the Chinese Silk Road. (...) a project involving the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Germany, France, Italy and the European Union (EU). (...) The idea of the mega-project is to establish railroads and maritime routes connecting India with Europe through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, reconfiguring trade between these countries and significantly reducing the time needed to transport goods." (Expansión, 12-09-2023).
The plan also contemplates "a trans-African corridor with a railroad between the port of Lobito in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia." (El País, 10-09-2023).
The thrust of Indian imperialism
Thus, it should not be concluded that the BRICS are a "bloc" as such, given that they are neither completely homogeneous nor devoid of contradictions among themselves:
" The last Indian journalist in China has been asked to leave, as Beijing and New Delhi eject each other’s reporters in a tit-for-tat row deepening a rift between the Asian economic powerhouses." (Bloomberg, 12-06-2023).
India, which in April 2023 surpassed China in population and is a major importer of Russian weaponry, has been intensely courted by both the US and the EU, with speeches to the US Congress and Senate, dinners with the presidents in office and military parade for the day of the storming of the Bastille in France.
From a speculative economic standpoint: "Stocks in India have lured almost $10 billion in net foreign inflows since March, set to be the most in any quarter since the end of 2020. Rupee-denominated bonds are on track to witness the longest streak of monthly buying by overseas funds in almost four years, while the local currency is offering the second-best carry returns in Asia this year.” (Bloomberg, 21-06-2023) and from a productive investment standpoint: "Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are committing to ramp up investments in India as the tech giants seek to spur growth in a key market. The move follows a meeting held by US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held with top technology executives, including of Amazon and Google, at the White House Friday.” (Bloomberg, 24-06-2023).
It is necessary to take advantage of these occasions when the procession of businessmen accompanies its representative-puppet to recall the precise definition contained in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
Reducing US dependence on China by way of increasing it with India is not a viable path to restoring US dominance in the world economy. Leaving aside the different orders of magnitude of infrastructure and investment volume, it would not change much in this respect if Asian goods were to flood European markets via India and the Middle East rather than via Russia and Belarus. However, a war between China and India could have a major impact, reducing the two main epicenters of the production volcano to ashes and allowing the imperialisms that are currently being put on the ropes to intervene from the outside and relaunch another new macabre cycle of reconstruction, even if the ultimate result would still be to arrive... back to square one. Therefore, the US will try to encircle as much as possible the relationship of the Chinese and Indian imperialisms with each other. In any case, it will not be the wishes of the US but the development of the economy that will determine whether or not the clash is triggered.
India is also extending its influence in Africa:
"Africa has become the second-largest recipient of credit from India as the country tries to catch up with China in expanding its influence in the resource-rich continent.
Forty two African nations received about $12 billion or 38% of all credit extended by India in the last decade — just a few percentage points below its neighbors, (...) While China’s loans to Africa have dipped since 2016, overall in the 10 years to 2020, it pledged $134.6 billion to African nations, according to data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. That’s almost 11 times more than what India has offered. (…) In the last nine years, 18 of the 25 new Indian embassies or consulates were in Africa." (Bloomberg, 04-07-2023).
Imperialisms, older and younger
In this struggle between capitalist powers to dislodge each other from their positions, the situation, interests and material needs of each imperialist group will determine the appropriate rhetoric as a reflection of their will and consciousness of their social being.
The two world wars meant the gradual but inexorable dismantling of British and French imperialism, allowing the USA to obtain an overall dominant position never equaled in power by Stalinist Russia. This did not (and could not) however allow it to stop the spread of capitalism in the Asian and African areas or to prevent the DEVELOPMENT AND INTERCONNECTION of the productive forces in those areas, as well as in the US backyard: Latin America.
The bourgeoisies fighting in those areas (bourgeoisies that were revolutionary in Asia and Africa, but not in Latin America where the capitalist form of production was already hegemonic despite the low population density) against the capitalist metropolises and their local supporters, called themselves anti-imperialists and ideologically reflected their struggle for a part of the cake of the EXPLOITATION OF THE LOCAL AND WORLD PROLETARIAT as a struggle against the "empire".
At the present moment, in which the younger capitalisms run over the older ones, both will make use of this type of rhetoric to try to ideologically bind the proletariat to the defense of their bourgeoisie. This is the meaning of the declarations of the President of Brazil (Lula): "We cannot accept a new colonialism", referring to the predominance of the dollar. These are the declarations of the first economic power of South America, at the summit of an economic bloc which controls 37% of the world GDP, which has amply surpassed the GDP of the G-7 (a mixture of victors and vanquished of World War II). We shall have to see the classic imperialisms also lamenting being reduced to the situation of a colony!
The working class must always remember that the First World War was justified by the theory of the liberation of the oppressed nations (each power pretended to be liberating those oppressed by the rest, while keeping its own under its boot) and that even in industrialized Germany assimilation to a colony could be propagated by the effect of the Treaty of Versailles. This was the theoretical basis of German national socialism and of the lurches of "national Bolshevism" which managed to settle in the 3rd International even in 1923 while the latter slipped down the slope of degeneration without being able to stop.
The text "Communism and the national question" (1924), besides summarizing with precision the need of the communist movement to have principles or, better, acquired stable programmatic postulates and their "codification" in clear tactical rules of action, denounced the tactical eclecticism that cut off any relation with the principles that had originated certain tactics (correct in a situation of anti-feudal revolution, treacherous in a situation of already prevailing capitalism):
"Here is how forgetting the principled origin of communist political solutions can lead to applying them where the conditions that suggested them are lacking, under the pretext that any complicated expedient can always be usefully employed. It cannot but be considered as a phenomenon which has a certain analogy with the enterprises of social-nationalism, the fact that comrade Radek, in order to sustain at an international meeting the tactic encouraged by him, "discovers" that the gesture of the nationalist self-sacrificing in the struggle against the French in the Ruhr has to be exalted by the communists in the name of the principle (new to us, and unheard of), that above the parties anyone who self-sacrifices for their idea should be sustained." (Communism and the National Question, 1924).
IMPERIALISM IS A HISTORICAL PHASE OF CAPITALISM, not a peculiar characteristic of certain national bourgeoisies: " we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: (1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed." (Imperialism: the Highest Stage of capitalism, Lenin, 1917).
At the heart of all "anti-imperialists" beats the ambition of a great imperialist because the economic (capitalist) impulse that moves them to get rid of the control of other powers is the same that pushes them to control the world market themselves.
In the same way, at the heart of all consolidated imperialism there survives the little candid and victimizing voice that appears when it is being run over by others or when it has to justify the greatest bestialities in its actions.