[News] The World Seen from the South: Interview with Samir Amin

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The World Seen from the South:
Interview with Samir Amin

by Irene León 6/20/12
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/amin200612.html


I would like to focus this interview on three 
distinct but related questions: your vision of 
the world and the possibilities of changing it; 
your conceptual and political proposal on the 
implosion of capitalism and delinking from it; 
your analysis of the global context, seen 
especially from Africa and the Middle East.  What 
is your vision of the world, seen from the South 
and from the perspective of the South?

To respond to this question, which isn't a simple 
one at all, it is necessary to divide the theme 
in three parts.  First of all, let's examine: 
What are the important, decisive characteristics 
of contemporary capitalism -- not of capitalism 
in general, but of contemporary 
capitalism?  What's really new about it?  What 
characterizes it?  Secondly, let's focus on the 
nature of the current crisis, which is more than 
just a crisis -- I define it as an implosion of 
the contemporary capitalist system.  Thirdly, in 
this very framework, let's analyze: What are the 
strategies of the dominant reactionary forces, 
that is, of dominant capital, of the imperialist 
triad of the United States-Europe-Japan and their 
reactionary allies in the entire world?  Only 
having understood this can we size up the 
challenge that the peoples of the South, in the 
emerging countries as well as the rest of the South, confront.

My thesis on the nature of the contemporary 
capitalist system -- which more modestly I will 
call "hypothesis" for it's open to discussion -- 
is that we have entered in a new phase of 
monopoly capitalism.  It's a qualitatively new 
stage, given the degree of concentration of 
capital, now condensed to the point that today 
monopoly capital controls everything.

To be sure, the concept of "monopoly capital" is 
not new.  It was minted at the end of the 19th 
century and developed as such, through successive 
distinct phases, during the 20th century; but, 
beginning in the 1970s-80s, a qualitatively new 
stage emerged.  Before that, it existed but did 
not control everything.  In reality, there is now 
no capitalist economic activity that is 
autonomous or independent of monopoly capitalism 
-- it controls each and every one of the 
capitalist economic activities, even those that 
preserve an appearance of autonomy.  An example, 
one among many, is agriculture in developed 
capitalist countries, where it is controlled by 
monopolies that provide inputs, selected seeds, 
pesticides, credits, and marketing chains.

This is decisive -- it is a qualitative change 
which I call "generalized monopoly," that is, 
monopoly that is extended over all spheres.  This 
characteristic entails substantive and 
significant consequences.  In the first place, 
bourgeois democracy has been completely 
nullified: if it was once based on a left-right 
opposition -- which corresponded to social 
alliances, more or less proletarian, more or less 
bourgeois, but differentiated by their 
conceptions of political economy -- now, for 
example, Republicans and Democrats in the United 
States, or the Hollande current of socialists and 
the Sarkozy current of rightists in France, are 
the same, or just about the same.  In other 
words, all of them are united on a consensus commanded by monopoly capital.

This first consequence constitutes a change in 
political life.  Democracy, thus nullified, has 
turned into a farce, as is seen in electoral 
primaries in the United States.  Generalized 
monopoly capital has very serious 
consequences.   It has turned the United States 
into a nation of "fools."  It's serious because 
democracy has no way of expressing itself any longer.

The second consequence is that "generalized 
capitalism" is the objective basis of the 
emergence of what I call "collective imperialism" 
of the US-Europe-Japan triad.  It is a point that 
I strongly emphasize, since, though it is still a 
hypothesis, I can defend it: there are no major 
contradictions among the United States, Europe, 
and Japan.  There is a little competition on the 
economic level, but on the political level the 
alignment with the policies defined by the United 
States as what the world's policy should be is 
immediate.  What we call the "international 
community" copies the discourse of the United 
States: in three minutes there appear European 
ambassadors with some extras, great democrats 
such as the Emir of Qatar and the King of Saudi 
Arabia.  The United Nations doesn't exist -- its 
representation of states is a caricature.

It is this fundamental transformation, the 
transition of monopoly capitalism to "generalized 
monopoly capitalism," which explains 
financialization, for these generalized 
monopolies are capable -- owing to the control 
that they exercise over all economic activities 
-- of suck up a bigger and bigger part of surplus 
value produced in the entire world and converting 
it into the monopolist launching pad, the 
imperialist launching pad, which is the cause of 
inequality and growth stagnation in the countries 
of the North, including the US-Europe-Japan triad.

That leads me to the second point: it is this 
system that is in crisis.  Or rather it is not 
just a crisis -- it is an implosion, in the sense 
that this system is incapable of reproducing 
itself from its own foundations, in other words, 
it is a victim of its own internal contradictions.

This system is imploding, not because it is being 
attacked by people, but because of its own 
success.  Its success, having managed to impose 
itself on people, has led it to cause a 
vertiginous growth of inequalities, which is not 
only socially scandalous but unacceptable and yet 
ends up being accepted, accepted without 
objection.  However, that's not the cause of the 
implosion, but the fact that it cannot reproduce 
itself from its own foundations.

That leads me to the third dimension, which has 
to do with the strategy of the dominant 
reactionary forces.  When I say the dominant 
reactionary forces, I refer to generalized 
monopoly capital of the historical imperialist 
triad of the Untied States-Europe-Japan, joined 
by all the reactionaries forces around the world, 
which are grouped, in one form or another, in 
local hegemonic blocs that sustain and are part 
of this reactionary global domination.  These 
reactionary local forces are extremely numerous 
and enormously different from one country to another.

The political strategy of the dominant forces -- 
that is, generalized, financialized monopoly 
capital of the historical, traditional collective 
imperialist triad, the United States-Europe-Japan 
-- is defined by its identification of 
enemies.  For them, the enemies are emerging 
countries -- in other words, China.  The rest, 
like India, Brazil, and others, are for them semi-emerging.

Why China?  Because the Chinese ruling class has 
a project.  I am not going to get into details 
about whether this project is socialist or 
capitalist.  What is important is that it has a 
project.  Its project consists of not accepting 
the diktats of generalized, financialized 
monopoly capital of the triad, which imposes 
itself through its advantages: control of 
technology; control of access to natural 
resources of the planet; control of mass media, 
propaganda, etc.; control of the integrated 
global monetary and financial system; control of 
weapons of mass destruction.  China has come to 
challenge this order, without making any noise.

China is no mere subcontractor.  There are 
sectors in China that function as subcontractors, 
as makers and sellers of cheap toys of poor 
quality, only because the Chinese need to get 
their hands on foreign exchange, and 
subcontracting is an easy means to do so.  But 
that is not what China is all about.  What 
characterizes China is its development and rapid 
absorption of high technology, its own 
development and reproduction.  China is no mere 
workshop of the world as is claimed by some.  It 
is not "Made in China" but "Made by China."  This 
is now possible only because they made a 
revolution: socialism paradoxically built the 
path that made it possible to practice a certain kind of capitalism.

I would say that, next to China, the rest of the 
emerging countries are secondary.  If I had to 
grade them, I'd say that China is 100% emerging, 
Brazil is 30%, and the rest are 20%.  The other 
emerging countries, in comparison to China, are 
subcontractors: they do major subcontracting 
business because there is a margin of 
negotiation, due to conformity between 
generalized, financialized monopoly capital of 
the triad and emerging countries like India, 
Brazil, and so on.  Not so with China.

That is why a war against China has come to be 
part of the strategy of the triad.  20 years ago 
there were already crazy Americans who advocated 
the idea of declaring war on China before it would be too late.

The Chinese have been successful, which is why 
their foreign policy is so peaceful.  Now, here 
comes Russia to join the Chinese in the category 
of truly emerging countries.  We see Putin 
proposing the modernization of the Russian armed 
forces, planning to remake the Soviet-era navy, 
which once constituted real counterweight to the 
military power of the United States.  This is 
important.  Here I'm not talking about whether or 
not Putin is a democrat, or whether or not his 
perspective is socialist; it's not about that, 
but about the possibility of countering the power of the triad.

The rest of the world, the rest of the South, all 
of us -- you the Ecuadorans, we the Egyptians, 
and many others -- do not count.  Our countries 
interest collective monopoly capitalism for the 
one and only one reason, access to our natural 
resources, because this monopoly capital cannot 
reproduce itself without controlling, wasting, 
the natural resources of the entire planet.  This 
is the only thing that interests monopoly capital.

To guarantee exclusive access to natural 
resources, imperialists must ensure that our 
countries will not develop.  Hence 
"lumpen-development," as was defined by Andre 
Gunder Frank.  Frank discussed it in much 
different circumstances, but I borrow the term 
here to apply it in new circumstances, to 
describe how the only project that imperialism 
has for us is non-development.  Development of 
anomaly -- oil-rich pauperization, fake growth 
fuelled by gas, timber, or whatever, in order to 
obtain access to natural resources -- that is 
what is about to implode because it has become 
morally intolerable.  People no longer accept it.

Hence the implosions.  The first waves of 
implosions originated in Latin America, and it's 
no accident that they happened in marginal 
countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, and 
Venezuela.  It's no accident.  Then, the Arab 
Spring.  We'll see other waves in Nepal and other 
countries for it's not something that would happen only in a particular region.

For the people who are the protagonists of this, 
the challenge is enormous.  That is to say, the 
challenge cannot be contained within the 
framework of this system, within an attempt to 
transcend neoliberalism to achieve capitalism 
with a human face, to enter into the logic of 
good governance, poverty reduction, 
democratization of political life, etc., because 
all those are modes of managing pauperization 
which is the result of this very logic.

My conclusion -- from the position mainly focused 
on the Arab world -- is that this is not just a 
conjuncture but rather a historic moment, a great 
moment for people.  I'm talking about 
revolution.  Though I don't want to abuse this 
term, there are objective conditions for building 
broad alternative, anti-capitalist social 
blocs.  There is a context for audacity, to propose a radical path.




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