Samir Amin is an Egyptian born Marxist and one time member of the both the Communist Party of France and the Communist Party of Egypt. Today, he is one of the formost Marxist thinkers on Imperialism, inspired by the critical Marxists developments of Lenin and Luxembourg. Amin sees the world as divided in a centre and periphery controlled by the colllective imperialism of the US, EU and Japanese triad.
Below are a few short articles readers might find of interest:
At the Heart of Today's Problem: Capitalism of Oligopolies,
Which Has Been Generalized, Globalized, and Financialized
Capitalism
has reached a stage of centralization and concentration of capital out of all
comparison with the situation only 50 years ago, and I thus describe this
capitalism as one of generalized oligopolies. "Monopolies" (or,
better, oligopolies) are in no way new inventions in modern history. What
is new, however, is the limited number of registered oligopolies
("groups") which stands at about 500, if only the colossal ones are
counted, and 3,000 to 5,000 in an almost comprehensive list. They now
determine, through their decisions, the whole of economic life on the planet,
and more besides. This capitalism of generalized oligopolies is thus a
qualitative leap forward in the general evolution of capitalism.
The reason
given for this evolution - and usually it is the only one - is that it is the
inevitable result of technological progress. This is only very partially
true - and even so, it is important to specify that technological invention is
itself commanded very largely by the requirements of concentration and
gigantism. For much production, efficiency not only does not demand
gigantism but, on the contrary, "small" and "medium"
enterprises. This is the case, for example, with agricultural production,
in which modern family agriculture has proved to be far more efficient.
But it is also true of many other types of production of goods and services,
which are now subordinated to the oligopolies that determine the conditions of
their survival.
In actual
fact, the most important real reason is the search for maximum profits, which
benefits the powerful groups who have priority access to capital markets.
Such concentration has always been the response of capital to the long, deep
crises that have marked its history. In recent history, it happened for
the first time after the crisis that started in the 1870s and for the second
time, exactly a century later, in the 1970s.
This
concentration is at the origin of the "financialization" of the
system, as this is how the oligopolies siphon off the global surplus value
produced by the production system, a "rent monopoly" that enables
oligopolistic groups to increase their rate of profit considerably. This
levy is obtained by the oligopolies' exclusive access to the monetary and
financial markets which thus become the dominant markets.
"Financialization,"
therefore, is not, in any way, the result of a regrettable drift linked to the
"deregulation" of financial markets, even less of
"accidents" (like subprimes) on which vulgar economics and its
accompanying political discourse concentrate people's attention. It is a
necessary requirement for the reproduction of the system of generalized oligopolies.
In other words, as long as their (private) status goes unchallenged, the talk
of bold "regulation" of the financial markets is in vain.
The
capitalism of generalized and financialized oligopolies is also
globalized. Here, again, "globalization" is in no way a new
characteristic of capitalism, which has always been
"globalized." I have even gone further in the description of
capitalist globalization, stressing its inherently "polarizing"
character (producing a growing gulf between the "developed" centers
of the system and its dominated peripheries). This has taken place at all
stages of capitalist expansion in the past and present, and it will in the
foreseeable future. I have also advanced the thesis that the new phase of
globalization is necessarily associated with the emergence of the
"collective imperialism of the Triad" (the United States, Europe, and
Japan).
The new
globalization is itself inseparable from the exclusive control of access to the
natural resources of the planet exercised by collective imperialism.
Hence the center-peripheries contradiction - the North-South conflict in
current parlance - is central to any possible transformation of the actually
existing capitalism of our time. And more markedly than in the past,
this, in turn, requires the "military control of the planet" on the
part of the collective imperialist center.
The
different "systemic crises" that have been studied and analyzed - the
energy-guzzling nature of production systems, the agricultural and food crisis,
and so on - are inseparable from the exigencies of the reproduction of the
capitalism of generalized, financialized, and globalized oligopolies. If
the status of these oligopolies is not brought into question, any policies to
solve these "systemic crises" - "sustainable development"
formulae - will just remain idle chitchat.
The
capitalism of generalized, financialized, and globalized oligopolies has thus
become an "obsolete" system, in the sense that the socialization of
oligopolies, that is the abolition of their private status, should now become
the essential strategic objective in any genuine critical analysis of the real
world. If this does not happen, the system by itself can only produce
more and more barbaric and criminal destruction - even the destruction of the
planet itself. It will certainly mean the destruction of the societies in
the peripheries: those in the so-called "emerging" countries as well
as in the "marginalized" countries.
The
obsolete character of the system as it has reached the present stage of its
evolution is itself inseparable from changes in the structures of the governing
classes ("bourgeoisies"), political practice, ideology, and political
culture. The historical bourgeoisie is disappearing from the scene and is
now being replaced by the plutocracy of the "bosses" of
oligopolies. The drift of the practice of democracy emptied of all
content and the emergence of ultra-reactionary ideological expressions are the
necessary accompaniment of the obsolete character of contemporary capitalism.
The
domination of oligopolies is exercised in the central imperialist Triad under
different conditions and by different means than those used in the countries of
the peripheries of the system. It is a decisive difference, essential for
identifying the major contradictions of the system and then imagining the
possible evolutions in the North-South conflict, which will probably increase.
The
collective imperialist Triad brings together the United States and its external
provinces (Canada and Australia), Western and Central Europe, and Japan.
The globalized monopolies are all products of the concentration of national
capital in the countries that constitute the Triad. The countries of
Eastern Europe, even those that now belong to the European Union, do not even
have their own "national" oligopolies and thus represent just a field
of expansion for the oligopolies of Western Europe (particularly
Germany). They are therefore reduced to the status of the periphery.
Their asymmetric relationship to Western Europe is, mutatis mutandis,
analogous to that which links Latin America to the United States (and,
incidentally, to Western Europe and Japan).
In the
Triad, the oligopolies occupy the whole scene of economic
decision-making. Their domination is exercised directly on all the huge
companies producing goods and services, as well as on the financial
institutions (banks and others) that pertain to their power. And it is
exercised indirectly on all the small and medium businesses (in agriculture as
in other fields of production), which are often reduced to the status of
subcontractors, continually subordinated to the constraints that the
oligopolies impose on them at all stages of their activities. The oligopolies
of the Triad operate in the countries of the periphery using various methods
that will be described later on.
Not only do
the oligopolies dominate the economic life of the countries of the Triad.
They monopolize political power for their own advantage, the electoral
political parties (right and left) having become their debtors. This
situation will be, for the foreseeable future, accepted as
"legitimate," in spite of the degradation of democracy that it
entails. It will not be threatened until, sometime in the future perhaps,
"anti-plutocratic fronts" are able to include on their agenda the
abolition of the private management of oligopolies and their socialization, in
complex and open-endedly evolving forms.
Oligopolies
exercise their power in the peripheries in completely different ways. It
is true that outright delocalization and the expanding practice of
subcontracting have given the oligopolies of the Triad some power to intervene
directly into the economic life of various countries. But they still
remain independent countries dominated by local governing classes through which
the oligopolies of the Triad are forced to operate. There are all kinds
of formulae governing their relationships, ranging from the direct submission
of the local governing classes in the "compradorized"
("re-colonized") countries, above all in the "marginalized"
peripheries (particularly, but not only, Africa), to sometimes difficult
negotiations (with obligatory mutual concessions) with the governing classes,
especially in the "emerging" countries - above all, China.
There are
also oligopolies in the countries of the South. These were the large
public bodies in the former systems of actually existing socialism (in China of
course as in the Soviet Union, but also at a more modest level in Cuba and
Vietnam). Such was also the case in India, Brazil, and other parts of the
"capitalist South"; some of these oligopolies had public or
semi-public status, while others were private. As the globalization process
deepened, certain oligopolies (public and private) began to operate outside
their borders and copy the methods used by the oligopolies of the Triad.
Nevertheless, the interventions of the oligopolies of the South outside their
frontiers are - and will remain for a long time - marginal, compared with those
of the North. Furthermore, the oligopolies of the South have not captured
the political power in their respective countries for their own exclusive
profit. In China the "statocracy" of the Party-State still
constitutes the essential core of power. In Russia, the mixture of
State/private oligarchies has returned autonomous power to the State that had
lost it for a while after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In India,
Brazil, and other countries of the South, the weight of the private oligarchy
is not exclusive: power rests on broader, hegemonic blocs, including mainly the
national bourgeoisie, the middle classes, the owners of modernized large
estates (latifundia) and rich peasants.
All these
conditions make it impossible to confuse the State in the Triad countries
(which functions for the exclusive use of the oligarchy and is still
legitimate) and the State in the peripheries. The latter never had the
same legitimacy as it has in the centers and it may very well lose what little
it does have. Those in power are in fact fragile and vulnerable to social
and political struggles.
The
hypothesis that this vulnerability will be "transitory" and likely to
attenuate with the development of local capitalism, itself integrated into
globalization, is, even for the "emerging countries," unquestionably
mistaken - a hypothesis that derives from the linear vision of "stages of
development" (formulated by Rostow in 1960). But conventional
thought and vulgar economics are not intellectually equipped to understand that
"catching up" is impossible in this system and that the gap between
the centers and the peripheries will not "gradually" disappear.
The
oligopolies and the political powers that serve them in the countries of the
Triad pursue their sole aim of "emerging from the financial crisis"
and basically restoring the system as it was. There are good reasons to
believe that this restoration - if it succeeds, which is not impossible,
although more difficult than is generally thought - cannot be sustainable,
because it involves returning to the expansion of finance, which is essential
for the oligopolies if they are to appropriate monopoly rent for their own
benefit. A new financial collapse, still more sensational than that of
2008, is therefore probable. But, these considerations apart, the
restoration of the system, designed to expand the fields of activities for the
oligopolies again, would mean aggravating the process of accumulation by
dispossession of the peoples of the South (through seizure of their natural
resources, including their agricultural land). And ecologist discourses
on "sustainable development" will not prevail over the logic of
expansion of oligopolies, which are more than capable of appearing to
"adopt" them in their rhetoric - as we are already seeing.
The main
victims of this restoration will be the nations of the South, both the
"emerging" countries and the others. So it is very likely that
the "North-South conflicts" are destined to become much greater in
the future. The responses that the "South" will give to these
challenges could thus be pivotal in challenging the whole globalized
system. This may not mean questioning "capitalism" directly,
but it would surely mean questioning the globalization commanded by the
domination of the oligopolies.
The
responses of the South must indeed focus on helping to arm their peoples and
States to face the aggression of the oligopolies of the Triad, to facilitate
their "delinking" from the existing system of globalization, and to
promote multiple substantial alternatives of South-South cooperation.
Challenging
the private status of the oligopolies by the peoples of the North themselves
(the "anti-plutocratic front") is certainly an absolutely strategic
objective in the struggle for the emancipation of workers and peoples.
But this objective has yet to become politically mature and it is not very
likely to happen in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the North-South
conflicts will probably move to center stage.
"Aid" - a Complementary Instrument to Control
Vulnerable Countries
"International
aid," presented as being indispensable for the survival of the "least
developed countries" (UN terminology for many African countries and a few
other ones), plays its role here. Because its real objective, aimed at
the most vulnerable countries of the periphery, is to create an extra obstacle
to their participation in an alternative front of the South.12
Concepts of
aid have been confined within a straitjacket. Its structures were defined
in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), which was drawn up by the
OECD, then imposed on the beneficiaries. The general conditionality,
alignment with the principles of liberal globalization, is omnipresent.
Sometimes it is explicit: promoting liberalization, opening the markets,
becoming "attractive" to private foreign investment. Sometimes
it is indirect: respecting the rules of the WTC. A country that refuses
to subscribe to this strategy - which has been unilaterally defined by the
North (the Triad) - loses its right to be eligible for aid. So that the
Declaration of Paris is a step back - and not an advance - in comparison with
the practices of the "development decades," the 1960s and 1970s, when
the principle of free choice by the countries of the South to follow their own
system and economic and social policies was recognized.
In these
conditions, aid policies and their apparent, immediate objectives cannot be
separated from imperialism's geopolitical strategies. For the different
regions in the world do not have the same functions in the globalized liberal
system. It is not enough to mention their common denominator
(liberalization of trade, opening to financial markets, privatizations).
Sub-Saharan
Africa is very well integrated into this global system, and in no way "marginalized"
as it is claimed, unfortunately all too often without thinking. Its
foreign trade represents 45 percent of its Gross National Product, compared to
30 percent for Asia and Latin America and 15 percent for each of the regions
constituting the Triad. Africa is thus quantitatively "more"
and not "less" integrated, but in a different way.13
The
geo-economy of the region depends on two production systems that determine its
structures and define its place in the global system:
1.
the export of "tropical" agricultural
products: coffee, cocoa, cotton, peanuts, fruits, oil palm, etc.; and
2.
hydrocarbons and minerals: copper, gold, rare metals,
diamonds, etc.
The former
are the means of "survival" (apart from food for the auto-consumption
of peasants), which finance the transplanting of the State onto the local
economy and, through public expenditure, the reproduction of the "middle
classes." This kind of production is of more interest to the local
governing classes than to the dominant economies; in contrast, what interests
the latter is the products of natural resources of the continent. Today
it is hydrocarbons and rare minerals. Tomorrow it will be the reserves
for developing agrofuels, the sun (when long-distance transport of solar electricity
becomes feasible, within a few decades), water (when its direct or indirect
"export" becomes possible).
The race to
convert rural areas for the expansion of agrofuels is under way in Latin
America. In this field, Africa has tremendous possibilities. Madagascar
has started the movement and already conceded large areas in the west of the
country. The implementation of the Congolese Rural Code in 2008, inspired
by Belgian aid and the FAO, will no doubt enable agribusiness to take over
agricultural land on a massive scale to "exploit" it, just as the
Mining Code has already enabled the pillage of the mineral resources of this
former colony. "Useless" peasants will pay for it, and
increasing destitution that awaits them will perhaps attract future humanitarian
assistance and "aid" programs to reduce poverty! In the 1970s I
learnt about an old colonial dream for the Sahel, which was to expel the
population (useless Sahelians) in favor of extensive, Texas-style ranches
raising livestock for exportation.
The new
phase of history that has opened is marked by the sharpening of conflicts for
access to the natural resources of the planet. The Triad intends to
reserve for itself the exclusive access to this "useful" Africa (that
of natural resource reserves) and to prevent such access by the "emerging
countries" whose needs in this respect are already great and likely to
increase. Guaranteeing exclusive access means political control and
reducing African countries to the status of "client states."
It is not
therefore wrong to consider that the aim of aid is to "corrupt" the
governing classes. Apart from the financial appropriations (which, alas,
are well known and for which we are led to believe that the donors are in no
way responsible), aid has become "indispensable" as it is an
important source of financing budgets and fulfils a political function.
It thus becomes necessary to think of aid as being permanent and not prepare
for its elimination through a serious development effort. Hence it is
important that it is not reserved exclusively and wholly for the classes in
power, for the "government." It must also give stakes to
"oppositions" that are capable of succeeding them. The
so-called civil society and certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have
a role to play here. The aid in question, if it is to be really effective
politically, must also help to maintain the entry of peasants into this global
system, this entry bringing another source of revenue for the State. The
aid must also be concerned with progress in "modernizing" export
crops.
Right-wing
criticism of aid is based on the notion that it is for the countries concerned
to take action to liberate themselves from this dependence by opening up still
more to foreign capital. This was the substance of Sarkozy's speech at
Dakar and Obama's at Accra. This oratorical appeal avoids the real
question. For aid, an integral part of the imperialist strategy, in fact
seeks to marginalize the peoples of Africa who are useless and troublesome, the
better to continue their pillage of African resources!
The
critique made by the "do-gooder" left, which is that of many NGOs,
accepts that the "donors" will honor their pledges. It limits
itself to pointless talk about "absorption capacity,"
"performance," "good governance," promoted by "civil
society." It calls for "more" and "better"
aid! Radical critique, on the contrary, supports autonomous
development. One can imagine that aid in this context would derive from
peoples' international solidarity, confronting (and against) the
cosmopolitanism of capitalism.
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