The Long Revolution of the Global South. Samir Amin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and often marginalized. Other no-less reactionary ideological approaches compensate in the same way for the emptiness created by the liberal virus: “nationalisms” and ethnic or para-ethnic communitarianism are good examples.

      In the countries of the periphery, the challenge can be taken up only if, during a long transition period (centuries long), the political systems of popular democracy successfully combine three objectives: (i) maintain and strengthen national independence in a multipolar international system based on the principle of negotiated globalization; (ii) accelerate the development of productive forces without which it is futile to speak about eradicating poverty and building a balanced multipolar world; and (iii) affirm the growing place of socialist values, particularly equality. This challenge involves three-quarters of humanity. Democracy is not a ready-made formula that simply needs to be adopted. Its realization is a continuous process, which is why I prefer the term democratization. The proposed formula—a multiparty system and elections—turns into farce and runs a serious risk that the struggle for democracy will lose legitimacy. Accepting this solution as “less bad” would trap the unsuspecting in a demoralizing impasse. Rhetorics on “good governance” and “reduction of poverty” provide no adequate response to liberalism’s destructive effects.

      The struggle for the democratization of society is inseparable from the struggle to change the established government. The fight for democratization requires mobilization, organization, choice of actions, strategic vision, tactical sense, and the politicization of struggles. Undoubtedly, these prerequisites of struggle cannot be decreed in advance on the basis of sanctified dogmas. But identifying them is imperative because it is indeed a matter of defeating the system of established powers and replacing it with another one. Undoubtedly, the idea that “the revolution” will replace the power of capital straightaway with that of the people must be given up. In contrast, revolutionary advances are possible, based on new and real powers of the people that push back the power of those who will continue to defend the principles of reproducing inequality.

      Abandoning the question of power is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Believing that society can be transformed without destroying, even if gradually, the established system of power, displays the most extreme naïveté. So long as the established powers remain what they are, far from being dispossessed by social change, they are capable of co-opting it and integrating it into the strengthening—not weakening—of capital’s power. The sad diversion of ecologism, which has become a new field for capital’s expansion, bears witness to that. Evading the question of power is to place social movements in a situation that does not allow them to move on the offensive, and instead restricts them to maintaining a defensive posture and resisting the offensives of those who hold power. In sum, it is to cede the initiative to the enemy.

      The movement toward socialism throughout the world, in both North and South, will invent new forms of authentic democracy. Advances must, at each stage of the struggle, include their adequate political and legal institutionalization. The reader will find examples in appendix 2 in chapter 7, “Audacity, More Audacity.”

       3. Ecology and Marxism

      The ecological question arises in almost all debates. This is understandable given that the scale of ecological disasters is now clearly visible. Yet these debates rarely get beyond confusion. Only a minority of movements understands that a response to the challenge demands leaving behind the logic of capitalist accumulation. The established powers quickly understood the danger and expended major, supposedly scientific, efforts—which in reality are purely ideological propaganda—to demonstrate that a green capitalism was possible. I talked about this in my analyses of the question of “sustainable” development.⁷ I also, in contrast, contended that the works of Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, to which I referred, illustrate the possibility of calculating (I emphasize the word calculating, that is, a quantified measure) use values, on the condition of breaking away from capitalism. François Houtart’s book (2010) dissects the hoax of “green capitalism.” John Bellamy Foster (2000) has given a masterful analysis of Marx as an ecologist.⁸ For these reasons, I believe it might be useful to the reader of my memoirs to know what my viewpoint is on these questions, one that I have tirelessly advocated in many debates. The text that follows is drawn from my book The Law of Worldwide Value (2010).

      The viewpoint of the dominant currents in environmentalism, particularly in the fundamentalist variety, is certainly not that of Marxism, although both rightly denounce the destructive effects of “development.”

      Environmentalism attributes these destructive effects to the Eurocentric and Promethean philosophy characteristic of “modernity” in which the human being is not part of nature, but claims to subject the latter to the satisfactions of its needs. This thesis entails a fatal culturalist corollary. It inspires a call to follow another philosophy that emphasizes humanity’s belonging to nature, its “mother.” With that in mind, supposedly alternative and better philosophies, such as one derived from a particular interpretation of Hinduism, are praised in opposition to so-called Western philosophy. This is ill-considered praise, which ignores the fact that Hindu society was not (and is not) different from so-called Western societies, neither concerning the use of violence (Hindu society is anything but as nonviolent as it claims to be) nor the subjection of nature to exploitation.

      Marx develops his analysis on a completely different terrain. He attributes the destructive character of capital accumulation to capitalism’s logic of rationality, which is governed exclusively by the pursuit of immediate profit (short-term profitability). He demonstrates that and draws the explicit conclusions in volume 1 of Capital.

      These two methods of interpreting history and reality lead to different judgments on “what must be done” to meet the challenge—the destructive effects of “development.” Environmentalists are led to “condemn progress” and thereby join the postmodernists in viewing scientific discoveries and technological advances negatively. This condemnation leads, in turn, to a method of envisaging what the future might be, which is, at the very least, not very realistic. Thus projections are made in which a particular natural resource will be exhausted (fossil fuels, for example), and then the validity of these—fatally alarmist—conclusions is generalized by the assertion that the planet’s resources are not infinite, which is certainly correct in principle, but not necessarily in terms of what can be deduced from it. Thus possible future scientific discoveries that might counter a particular alarmist conclusion are ignored. Of course, the distant future remains unknown and there will never be any guarantee that “progress” will always make it possible to find solutions to unknown future challenges. Science is not a substitute for the belief in eternity (religious or philosophical). In this context, situating the debate on the nature of the challenges and the ways to deal with them would lead us nowhere.

      On the contrary, by placing the debate on the terrain cleared by Marx—the analysis of capitalism—we are able to advance in analyzing the challenges. Yes, there will still be scientific discoveries in the future on the basis of which technologies for controlling the riches of nature might be derived. But what can be asserted without fear of contradiction is that as long as the logic of capitalism forces society to exercise its choices on the basis of short-term profitability (which is implied by the valorization of capital), the technologies that will be implemented to exploit new scientific advances will be chosen only if they are profitable in the short term. Consequently, this implies that such technologies will carry an increasingly higher risk of being environmentally destructive. It is only when humanity has designed a way of managing society based on prioritizing use values instead of the exchange values associated with the valorization of capital that the conditions for a better management of the relations between humanity and nature will come together. I do say “better management” and not “perfect management.” The latter implies the elimination of the limitations to which all human thought and action are subject. The early critique of Eurocentrism that I advanced (taken up in the second and expanded edition of my book Eurocentrism) СКАЧАТЬ