![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The International Manifesto Group launched its manifesto, “Through Pluripolarity to Socialism” on 5 September 2021. Then, the world’s attention was riveted to the US’s ignominious exit from Afghanistan. The following speeches, delivered at the webinar to mark the first anniversary of the event, reflect on the tumultuous events of the year since, dominated by the US-led war on Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, its wider international reverberations which have underlined as well as accelerated the US’s decline and declining international influence and by the very real prospect that a similar US-led war is being planned against China using Taiwan region as a proxy. The speeches below find that, though the Manifesto’s text was finalised before anyone could have imagined such wars, its general line pointing to the decline of capitalism and imperialism and the imperative for humanity to progress through pluripolarity—a world of variety of national economic formations that will inevitably result as efforts to build productive and egalitarian societies are undertaken—to socialism as capitalism’s ability to deliver anything remotely similar is manifestly exhausted, has been vindicated.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Karl Marx, “Speech of Dr Marx on Protection, Free Trade and the Working Classes.” First published in The Northern Star, no. 520, October 9, 1847 with an editorial note: “From Our German Correspondent.” In Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol 6, 290. New York: International Publishers.
2 It’s on October 17, 2022.
3 Lenin, V. I. [1914] 2011. “Karl Marx.” In Lenin Collected Works, vol. 21, 43–91. Digital edition. Moscow: Progressive Publishers. The original remark of Marx is from Marx’s letter to Engels (Letter 281, April 9, 1863), in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 41, 466–469. Digital edition. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
4 See Slavoj Žižek. “Pacifism Is the Wrong Response to the War in Ukraine.” The Guardian (June 21, 2022): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/21/pacificsm-is-the-wrong-response-to-the-war-in-ukraine.
6 Source: Penn World Data, author calculations. GDP is measured in local constant prices and weighted by population. The chart shows a four-year moving average. For the selection of countries, see Freeman (2019a) in Note 7.
7 Freeman, A. 2019a. “The Sixty-Year Downward Trend of Economic Growth in the Industrialized Countries of the World.” Geopolitical Economy Research Group Data Project Working Paper #1, January 2019. https://www.academia.edu/38192121/The_sixty-year_downward_trend_of_economic_growth_in_the_industrialised_countries_of_the_world.
8 Freeman, A. 2019b. “Divergence, Bigger Time: The Unexplained Persistence, Growth, and Scale of Postwar International Inequality.” Geopolitical Economy Research Group Data Project Working Paper #2, March 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333434051_Divergence_Bigger_Time_The_unexplained_persistence_growth_and_scale_of_postwar_international_inequality.
10 Borrell’s speech on October 13 is available at https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/european-diplomatic-academy-opening-remarks-high-representative-josep-borrell-inauguration_en.
11 Borrell’s speech on October 10 is available at https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/eu-ambassadors-annual-conference-2022-opening-speech-high-representative-josep-borrell_en.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Radhika Desai
Radhika Desai is a professor at the Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group (GERG). Her latest book is Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy and it is available open access.
Enfu Cheng
Enfu Cheng is an academician at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, distinguished professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Chairman of the World Association for Political Economy.
John Ross
John Ross is Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. Since 1992, and the publication in Russia of his “Why the Economic Reform Succeeded in China and Will Fail in Russia and Eastern Europe,” he has been the author of over 500 published articles on China’s economy and geopolitical relations, and of two best-selling books published in Chinese, i.e., The Great Chess Game: A New Perspective on China’s Destiny (2016) and Don’t Misunderstand China’s Economy. His new book in English is China’s Great Road: Lessons for Marxist Theory and Socialist Practices (2021).
Carlos Ron
Carlos Ron is Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America of Venezuela, and currently serves as the president of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among Peoples. As a diplomat, he was Venezuela’s Chargé d’affaires to the United States of America (2017–2018), and he represented Venezuela before the United States of America (2014–2018) and the Federative Republic of Brazil (2010–2014). He was an adviser at the Office of Presidential International Relations (2006–2010), coordinator of the Research Program on Regional Integration and Multilateral Agreements at the Miranda International Center (2006). He graduated in Latin American Studies from Rutgers University, USA, and also has a postgraduate degree in International Relations from the University of Brasilia, Brazil.
Jenny Clegg
Jenny Clegg is an independent writer and researcher, former senior lecturer in international studies and long-time China specialist, author of China’s Global Strategy: Towards a Multipolar World (2009), and activist in peace and anti-war movement in Britain.
Ajamu Baraka
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace in the United States and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket.
Keith Bennett
Keith Bennett is an active member of the International Manifesto Group and a consultant specializing in Chinese and Korean affairs. He is a co-editor of Friends of Socialist China and the deputy chair of the Kim Il Sung Kim Jong Il Foundation (KKF).
Oleg Barabanov
Oleg Barabanov is a Russian historian and political scientist, program director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, and professor at the European Studies Institute of MGIMO University.
Gabriel Rockhill
Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic and activist. He is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique, and professor of philosophy at Villanova University. He has published nine books, as well as numerous scholarly and journalistic articles, including most recently Contre-histoire du temps present (2017; available in English as Counter-History of the Present), Interventions in Contemporary Thought (2016), and Radical History & the Politics of Art (2014). For more information: https://gabrielrockhill.com.
Sara Flounders
Sara Flounders is a longstanding political activist and author based in New York City. She is a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition and the International Action Center, and is the author of numerous books, including Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China and the US (2020, co-authored with Lee Siu Hin) and NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition (1998, co-authored with Ramsey Clark).
Alan Freeman
Alan Freeman is the co-director, with Radhika Desai, of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group (GERG) at the University of Manitoba. He was an economist at the Greater London Authority between 2000 and 2011, where he held the brief for the creative industries and the living wage. He wrote The Benn Heresy (2014), a biography of British politician Tony Benn, and co-edited three books on value theory. He is honorary life vice-president of the UK-based Association for Heterodox Economics and a Vice-Chairman of the World Association for Political Economy.
Carlos Martinez
Carlos Martinez is an independent researcher and political activist from London, Britain. His first book, The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse, was published in 2019 by LeftWord Books. His main area of research is the construction of socialist societies, past and present. He is a co-editor of Friends of Socialist China and co-founder of No Cold War.
Ben Norton
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the founder and editor of the independent media outlet, Geopolitical Economy Report (formerly Multipolarista), where he reports in both English and Spanish. His journalism focuses primarily on US foreign policy and geopolitics. He has reported from many countries around the world and is currently based in Latin America.