Pieces of Samir Amin, 2011, Marxism’s
Tricontinental Vocation
Dedan Kimathi
Marx
of the East, Marx of the South
My
interpretation of historical capitalism stresses the polarization of the world
(the contrast of center/periphery) produced by the historical form of the
accumulation of capital. This perspective questions the visions of the
“socialist revolution,” and, more broadly, the transition to socialism, that
the historical Marxisms have developed. The “revolution”—or the
transition—before us is not necessarily the one on which these historical
visions were based. Nor are the strategies for surmounting capitalism the same.
It has to
be recognized that what the most important social and political struggles of
the twentieth century tried to challenge was not so much capitalism in itself
as the permanent imperialist dimension of actually existing capitalism. The
issue is therefore whether this transfer of the center of gravity of the
struggles necessarily calls capitalism into question, at least potentially.
Marx’s
thinking associates “scientific” clarity in the analysis of reality with social
and political action (the class struggle in its broadest sense) aimed at
“changing the world.” Confronting the basics—i.e., the discovery of the real
source of surplus value produced by the exploitation of social labor by
capital—is indispensable to this struggle. If this fundamental and lucid
contribution of Marx is abandoned, a double failure is inevitably the result.
Any such abandonment of the theory of exploitation (law of value) reduces the
analysis of reality to that of appearances only, a way of thinking that is
limited by its abject submission to the requirements of commodification, itself
engendered by the system. Similarly, such abandonment of the labor value-based
critique of the system annihilates the effectiveness of strategies and
struggles to change the world, which are thereby conceived within this
alienating framework, the “scientific” claims of which have no real basis.
Nevertheless,
it is not enough just to cling to the lucid analysis formulated by Marx. This
is not only because “reality” itself changes, and there are always “new” things
to be taken into account in the development of the critique of the real world
that started with Marx. But more fundamentally, it is because, as we know, the
analysis that Marx put forward in Capital was left incomplete. In the planned
sixth volume of this work (which was never written), Marx proposed treating the
globalization of capitalism. This now has to be done by others, which is why I
have dared to advocate the formulation of the “law of globalized value,”
restoring the place of the unequal development (through the center/periphery
polarization) that is inseparable from the global expansion of historical capitalism.
In this formulation, “imperialist rent” is integrated into the whole process of
the production and circulation of capital and the distribution of the surplus
value. This rent is at the origin of the challenge: it accounts for why the
struggles for socialism in the imperialist centers have faded, and it
highlights the anti-imperialist dimensions of the struggles in the peripheries
against the system of capitalist/imperialist globalization.
I shall not
return here to discuss what an exegesis of Marx’s texts on this question would
suggest. Marx, who is nothing less than a giant, with his critical acumen and
the incredible subtlety of his thought, must have had at least an intuition
that he was coming up against a serious question here. This is suggested by his
observations on the disastrous effects of the alignment of the English working
class with the chauvinism associated with the colonial exploitation of Ireland.
Marx was therefore not surprised that it was in France—less developed than
England economically, but more advanced in political consciousness—that the
first socialist revolution took place. He, like Engels, also hoped that the
“backwardness” of Germany would enable an original form of advance to develop,
fusing together both the bourgeois and the socialist revolutions.
Lenin went
still further. He emphasized the qualitative transformation that was involved
in the passage to monopoly capitalism, and he drew the necessary conclusions:
that capitalism had ceased to be a necessary progressive stage in history and
that it was now “putrefied” (Lenin’s own term). In other words, it had become
“obsolete” and “senile” (my terms), so that the passing to socialism was on the
agenda, which was both necessary and possible. He conceived and implemented, in
this framework, a revolution that began in the periphery (Russia, the “weak
link”). Then, seeing the failure of his hopes in a European revolution, he
conceived of the transfer of the revolution to the East, where he saw that the
fusion of the objectives of the anti-imperialist struggle with those of the
struggle against capitalism had become possible.
But it was
Mao who rigorously formulated the complex and contradictory nature of the
objectives in the transition to the socialism that were to be pursued in these
conditions. “Marxism” (or, more exactly, the historical Marxisms) was
confronted by a new challenge—one which did not exist in the most lucid
political consciousness of the nineteenth century, but which arose because of
the transfer of the initiative to transform the world to the peoples, nations,
and states of the periphery.
Imperialist
rent not “only” benefited the monopolies of the dominant center (in the form of
super profits), it was also the basis of the reproduction of society as a
whole, in spite of its evident class structure and the exploitation of its
workers. This is what Perry Anderson analyzed so clearly as “Western Marxism,”
which he described as “the product of defeat” (the abandonment of the socialist
perspective)—and which is relevant here. This Marxism was then condemned,
having renounced “changing the world” and committing itself to “academic”
studies, without political impact. The liberal drift of social democracy—and
its rallying both to the U.S. ideology of “consensus” and to Atlanticism at the
service of the imperialist domination of the world—were the consequences.
“Another
world” (a very vague phrase to indicate a world committed to the long road
toward socialism) is obviously impossible unless it provides a solution to the
problems of the peoples in the periphery—only 80 percent of the world
population! “Changing the world” therefore means changing the living conditions
of this majority. Marxism, which analyzes the reality of the world in order to
make the forces acting for change as effective as possible, necessarily
acquires a decisive tricontinental (Africa, Asia, Latin America) vocation.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Post a Comment