To the Memory of Sam Moyo

Introduction

The brutal disappearance of Sam Moyo has left us without a voice. Sam was a very dear personal friend. Sam was one of the key founders of the activities we developed within the Third World Forum (TWF) and the World Forum for Alternatives (WFA) over the past 10 years. From our first meeting, it was clear that beyond his qualities as a cultivated and intelligent scientific researcher, he was also a courageous and determined activist who pursued the cause of peoples and nations—his own (Zimbabwe), of Africa and of the Global South—with conviction. With every passing day, our collaboration brought us closer.

Sam’s major works addressed the agrarian question. Sam had understood that the deployment of imperialist strategies could produce nothing other than the savage and tragic destruction of the rural sphere and the decimation of peasants in Africa and Asia.

Drawing on his own country’s experiences, where millions of peasants were expropriated from the land of their ancestors to make way for a few thousand colonists, Sam had rigorously examined the systematic application of such criminal policies. He had grasped the dramatic realities of the situation and placed himself firmly in support of the agrarian reform programme undertaken by President Mugabe. In spite of its limitations—which Sam also measured—he denounced the hypocrisy displayed by the United Kingdom in its refusal to honour its engagements in this area.

Sam did not content himself with analyzing reality and denouncing its tragic nature. He made major contributions to the formulation of humane alternatives to these challenges—elaborating options for sovereign, genuine, national and people-orientated development projects—which would have the capacity to promote real democracy within the context of reinvigorated peasant production and renewal in the countryside. He could locate the struggle for the pursuit of such alternatives in his own national political context, as well as in the broader international situation. He knew that this struggle was inseparable from popular struggles against contemporary forms of imperialism. He had the courage to analyze its manifestations and its outcomes and to use the conclusions he drew from this work to confront the tenuous debates advanced by the proponents of so-called ‘neoliberalism’.

Sam had become a pillar of our discussion circles dedicated to addressing the agrarian question in Africa and in the Global South. In this respect, he was a central figure in organizing highly successful round-table discussions—notably for our interventions at the African and World Social Forums. These enabled thousands of experts from the three continents in which popular and peasant social struggles were taking place to come together to examine the peculiarities and similarities of their experiences and to gain a better understanding of their collective struggles for the social and political emancipation of each respective nation. Sam was the Vice President of the WFA (for the Southern African region). He was the Executive Director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies, an important institution which was one of the most active members of the ‘network of networks’ which constitutes the TWF and the WFA.

The prolific works authored by Sam and his colleagues were featured in major publications. Two such collective works which appeared only months before Sam’s tragic death—The Struggle for Food Sovereignty: Alternative Development and the Renewal of Peasant Society Today, edited by Remy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau (London: World Forum for Alternatives and Pluto Press, 2015) and Réponses radicales aux crises agraires et rurales africaines, edited by Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua and Abdourahmane Ndiaye (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2014)—embody his powerful contribution to the debates. One of the authors of the latter title, our friend Issaka Bagayogo, also passed away in 2015. The texts produced by Sam are, and will remain, central to all those engaged in the struggles for Africa and its peasants.

Historically, the development of capitalism in Europe, the United States and in Japan reduced the active population engaged in agriculture to 5 per cent in each of its regions, without compromising the capacity of the new capitalist modernized agriculture to meet demands for expanded food production. Why then should it not be possible for the countries of the periphery to be set on an accelerated course down this same path—even if somewhat belatedly? This proposition is unsustainable because it ignores the specific conditions which allowed the West to prosper and which, in themselves, preclude their own reproduction elsewhere. Its success, for instance, was only made possible because the industries established at the time, during the nineteenth century, were able to absorb a large proportion of rural populations expelled from the countryside. In addition, surplus populations had the option of mass migration to the Americas (considering that the European population made up 15 per cent of the world’s population in the 1500s and that combined with the European descendants in America, it made up 36 per cent of the population in 1900, emigration abroad allowed for the development of a ‘second Europe’). In the contemporary situation, the demands that industries in the peripheries should be ‘competitive’ on world markets justify the use of modern technologies which reduce the level of labour-intensive work. At the same time, there are no new Americas to open for mass migrations from Asia or Africa. In such conditions, the pursuit of a model based on historical capitalism produces nothing other than migration from devastated countrysides to squalid urban slums.

The conclusion that emerges from these facts is that another trajectory of development is required for today’s periphery. It is necessary to imagine and to articulate a new model of industrialization shaped by the renewal of non-capitalist forms of peasant agriculture, which in turn implies delinking from the imperatives of globalized capitalism.

Firmly anchored in this perspective, Sam Moyo’s works provide us not only with the best analyses of rural disaster in Africa but also with the frameworks for an alternative. I need say no more—Sam’s work speaks for itself and the analysis here converges with his contributions to the publications cited above.

In this context, I will elaborate on a few reflections concerning other dimensions of the challenges which have been at the centre of debates between myself, Sam and others, during our frequent meetings (Amin, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2015a).

What Is the ‘Emergence’ of States and Nations?

This term is and has frequently been employed to characterize radically different contexts, often without specifying which particular meaning is implied or attributed to it. I take this opportunity to specify the meaning I would attribute to the collective processes of economic, social, political and cultural transformations which make it possible to speak of the ‘emergence’ of a state, a nation or a people which have been placed in a peripheral position (in the sense I have personally attributed to this term) at the heart of the globalized capitalist system.

Emergence is not measured by high levels of GDP growth rates (nor exports) over a long period (exceeding a decade), nor, in fact, by society having achieved a high level of GDP per capita, as the World Bank would have it. Rather, emergence implies sustained growth of industrial production in the country concerned and an increase in the capacity of local industry to be competitive on a global scale. It is, however, still necessary to specify the relevant industries and to define what is meant by competitiveness.

Extractive industries (minerals and fuels) must be excluded from the analysis, since they alone can generate accelerated growth without making any significant change to the overall productive capacity of the country in question. An extreme example of such ‘non-emerging’ countries is that of the Gulf States, Gabon and others. The competitiveness of productive activities must also be considered as part of the economy’s production system as a whole and not by measuring the performance of a number of units of production on their own.

Through the relocation of production, or subcontracting, multinationals operating in countries of the South can establish local production units (either as branches of multinationals or as independent productive units) capable of exporting to external markets. In the language of conventional economics, this qualifies them as competitive. This truncated concept of competitiveness—which proceeds from an empiricist methodology of the first order—does not correspond to our way of seeing things.

Competitiveness relates to the productive system as a whole. A productive system should exist—which is to say that the economy under analysis should be made up of productive establishments and branches which are sufficiently interdependent to justify the term ‘system’. The competitiveness of this system then depends on various economic and social factors, amongst them, the general level of education and of technical training of workers across sectors, as well as the efficiency of institutions responsible for executing national policies (fiscal, the regulatory environment for business, employment, credit, public services, etc.).

Nor is a country’s productive system reducible to the industries dealing with transformative processes for manufactured goods destined to either production or consumption (although their absence makes it impossible to consider the existence of a productive system worthy of its name). Rather, it integrates food and agricultural production as essential services for the normal operation of the system.

The concept of emergence implies an approach which is both political and holistic. A country can be considered to be emergent only to the extent that the logic of those in power prioritizes the construction of a strong nationally focused economy (albeit open towards the exterior) and its national economic sovereignty. This complex objective implies the affirmation of sovereignty in all aspects of economic life. Notably, it implies policies that promote the consolidation of food sovereignty, and sovereignty in the control of its own natural resources, as well as access to these outside of its own territory. These multiple and complementary objectives stand in stark contrast with those of a comprador political authority which contents itself with subjugating the country’s growth model to the demands of the dominant liberalized global system and to the possibilities it offers.

The relationship between policies concerned with a country’s emergence, on the one hand, and the social transformations which accompany them, on the other, do not depend exclusively on the internal coherence of such policies. Instead, they depend on the degree of complementarity to (or contradiction with) the social transformations they engender. Social struggles—class struggles and political conflicts—do not ‘adjust’ themselves to the outcomes produced by the logics underlying the deployment of projects ostensibly aimed at a state’s emergence. On the contrary, they are shaped by these outcomes. Experiences from such transformations currently under way illustrate the diversity and fluctuations in the relationships between policy logics, policy outcomes and social transformations: ‘emergence’ is often accompanied by increased inequality.

It is necessary to specify the exact nature of these inequalities, namely, inequalities which benefit a small minority or a strong minority (such as the middle classes) and which occur in a framework that brings about the pauperization of the working-class majorities; or on the contrary, if it does bring about an improvement in the conditions of the working class, this framework nonetheless fails to bring about increases in rates of remuneration of labour which are commensurate to the level of increases in income accruing to the system’s beneficiaries. In other words, the implementation of policies aimed at a state’s emergence is capable of bringing about pauperization, with or without emergence. Emergence does not constitute a definitive or immovable condition for a state; it occurs in successive stages, the earlier stages successfully laying the groundwork for what follows, or conversely, moving towards deadlock.

Similarly, the relations between the emerging economy and the globalized economy are themselves in a state of continuous transformation and are influenced by changing rationales and perspectives. They may favour the consolidation of sovereignty, or promote its weakening, and they may support the consolidation of national social solidarity, or promote its weakening. Measured in this manner, we can see that emergence is neither synonymous with export growth nor with economic consolidation for the country concerned. Growth in exports occurs at the expense of domestic/internal markets (specifically, popular, middle class), and can, in fact, become an obstacle to national economic consolidation. Growth in exports can weaken or reinforce the relative autonomy of emerging economies in their relationships to the world system.

Thus, emergence is a political project, not simply an economic one. The measure of its success relates to its capacity to reduce the means through which the currently existing dominant capitalist centres reproduce their domination, despite the success achieved by emerging countries measured in conventional economic terms. I define these means in terms of the control exerted by the dominant powers over technological development, natural resources, the globalized financial and monetary system, information systems and arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. I subscribe to the thesis concerning the existence of a collective form of imperialism exercised by the Triad (United States, Europe and Japan) whose aim is to maintain, at all cost, its privileged position of domination over the entire planet and to preclude any questioning of this order by emerging countries. I have concluded from this that the ambitions of emerging countries are in conflict with the strategic objectives of this imperialist Triad. The levels of this conflict are themselves determined by the degree of radicalization with which attempts to question the dominant order are pursued by individual countries (and by their place in the present ordering of the system), on the one hand, and the status of individual countries in the present economic order on the other hand, considering that the economy of emerging countries is inseparable from their foreign policies. Are they aligned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) political and military complex? Do they accept NATO strategies? Or do they attempt to resist them?

There can be no emergence without the policy of a state, which derives its legitimacy from a progressive relationship with society. Such a state should possess the capacity to coherently construct and implement a project of production geared primarily to serve national requirements. Its effectiveness is also complemented by policies to ensure that the majority of popular classes are also able to benefit from growth.

At the opposite end of the scale from the positive evolution of a project geared towards genuine emergence of the type described above, there stand states which unilaterally submit to the imperatives of globalized capitalist deployment through generalized monopolies which produces ‘lumpen development’. I borrow this term freely from Andre Gunder Frank who used it to analyze similar changes under other conditions. Today, lumpen development is produced by accelerated social disintegration associated with the model of ‘development’ (which is not in fact worthy of its name), imposed by monopolies in the imperialist centres on the societies of the periphery which they dominate. It manifests itself by the dizzying growth of survival strategies (the so-called informal sphere), or, in other words, pauperization, which is inherent in the unilateral logics of capital accumulation.

Amongst the experiences of emergence, certain instances appear fully to deserve the qualification because they are not associated with the process of lumpen development; there is no occurrence of pauperization of the popular classes, but on the contrary, there occurs progress in their conditions of life. Two of these experiences are visibly and entirely capitalist—those of Korea and Taiwan (I will not, here, discuss the particular historical conditions which enabled the deployment of this project to succeed in both countries). Two others inherited their aspirations to revolutions in the name of socialism—China and Vietnam. Cuba could join this group if it succeeds in managing the contradictions it is currently experiencing. But we know other cases of emergence associated with the deployment of a process of lumpen development on a massive scale. India is perhaps the best example in this category as its reality displays characteristics which correspond with the conditions for ‘emergence’. State policy promotes the consolidation of a strong system of industrial production associated with a significant expansion of the middle classes. There is also significant development of technological and educational capacities and an autonomous foreign policy approach capable of standing independently on the world stage. But there is simultaneously a great majority—two-thirds of society—trapped in accelerated pauperization. This is a hybrid system that simultaneously connects ‘emergence’ and lumpen development. It is even possible to highlight the complementarity of relations between these two faces of reality. I believe, without suggesting an abusive generalization, that all other country cases considered as emergent actually belongs to this hybrid family, be they Brazil, South Africa or others.

But there are also many countries of the South in which elements of ‘emergence’ do not appear at all. In such countries, the processes of lumpen development, virtually on their own, characterize almost the entire developmental process. African countries in a general manner can be organized into this unfortunate category.

The Question of Emergence under Contemporary Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa

Flattering accolades have been delivered by the World Bank over the past few years to African economies: ‘Africa Emerging’ and ‘Africa: Continent of the Future’. The objective, however, has certainly not been to support the establishment of sovereign African projects. Quite the opposite; by purporting to set African countries on the path of emergence, the objective has been to lock the continent’s economies into the dead-end path of neoliberalism, which is in fact likely to preclude any likelihood of emergence. The type of ‘emergence’ conceived by the World Bank and its cohorts (notably the European Union) never speaks of the continent’s industrialization, which is considered to be contrary to ‘Africa’s vocation’ (with all its racist implications). Papers published by US politicians and journalists on this point are highly instructive. The shining future of Africa rests on its abundant natural resources, oil, minerals, agricultural land, sun and water. Future advancement is simply a matter of paving the way for the entrance of Western multinationals to pillage these resources, nothing more.

At a general level, independent Africa has not broken with the modes of its insertion into the world system shaped under colonization. The term ‘neo-colonial’, previously in vogue among left-wing national liberation movements, was entirely justified. I personally found such a qualification ‘moderate’; in my estimation, the reality would be better described as ‘paleo-colonial’ in view of structural adjustment plans which were imposed from the 1980s. Since then, all governments on the continent have—in spite of themselves—accepted the dictates of this form of globalization. Worse still, popular resistance movements do not appear to be conscious of the fact that economic neoliberalization lies at the root of the problem.

Viewed from this perspective, the situation can be considered desperate. In my opinion, it is, in fact, less so than it appears. The history of the past 50 years shows that people, and to a certain degree even African states, have never considered their submission as necessarily being final. Attempts to exit the neo-colonial impasse through projects of national and popular sovereignty have been rapidly increasing throughout the continent; the substantive analysis of these is, in fact, the subject of my book entitled L’Eveil du Sud [Awakening of the South] (Paris: Le Temps des Cerises, 2008).

I recently reread what I wrote at the end at the first decade of independence: Trois expériences africaines: le Mali, le Ghana, Guinée (1965), Le développement du capitalisme en Côte d’Ivoire (1967) and L’Histoire économique du Congo (1969). My conclusions could appear pessimistic; but history has—in the interim—confirmed my predictions, that is, my thesis of ‘miracles without a future’, such as the one in the Ivory Coast (to which the World Bank saw fit to respond with a report ‘proving’ that in 1985 Ivory Coast would have overtaken South Korea—which is utterly laughable). My rigorous examination of attempts at emergence, highlighting their original conceptual and practical weaknesses, has also been confirmed by subsequent developments. Advances have always been followed by predictable regressions (reference here to L’Eveil du Sud). The general thesis that I formulated in L’Afrique de l’Ouest bloquée always appears to me as essential to understand Africa’s history over the past 60 years. The potential of the colonial model of development was already redundant well before political independence had been achieved by the peoples of the African continent. Colonies that had been ‘valorized’ (the term ‘valorized’, which was utilized by the colonial powers themselves is, in fact, more accurate than the term ‘developed’) before others, such as Senegal, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Dahomey (now Benin) or Togo, became suffocated and trapped in an impasse. These offered an instructive picture of the fate awaiting the new arrivals to this model of ‘development’ (Ivory Coast, Kenya and Malawi), which in their turn were to become trapped in the same impasse.

The diagnosis I make today of the causes underlying the impasses to development in Africa would not be different from the assessment I made 40 years ago in L’Afrique de l’Ouest bloquée (which is also why I also subtitled this book ‘the political economy of colonization, 1880–1970’). Africa has persisted on this path beyond 1970, to this day, in spite of the somersaults associated with attempts to extricate itself from this rut. This discouraging observation is a sorry reminder that Africa has lost 60 years as a result of following the advice of the World Bank and Europe.

So is there no hope? Is Africa condemned forever? Such an idea is not only unthinkable to me, as it is to all Africans; it actually also appears quite baseless, both theoretically and empirically. Certainly, evidence abounds of the dramatic involutions and total disintegration of societies and states which have resulted from the crisis of the exhausted/redundant colonial and post-colonial model: the spread of criminal delusions carried by politically reactionary forms of Islam in the Sahel countries (Mali, Niger and Chad)—launching from new bases created by the planned disintegration of Libya (now bases for Qaïda and Daesh)—Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Shebabs in Somalia and others; ethnic wars without end (Congo, Rwanda and Central African Republic) and similar threats elsewhere.

These involutions are not only the predictable outcomes of the senseless pursuit of neoliberal policies, often supported by the poison of ‘aid’ (see the analysis of Tandon [2008]). They are also openly or surreptitiously supported by political strategies deployed regionally by the United States and Europe. The Sahelistan project pursued by the Islamists from the area needs to be analyzed from the perspective I have elaborated here. The realization of the Saharo-Sahelian project, similar to that of Daesh in the Middle East, would be extremely useful in the systematic pillaging of the region’s natural resources for the greatest benefit of imperialist monopolies. This is a model inspired and embodied by Saudi Arabia, which, as we know, represents an endless source of unconditional supply of oil for the West to squander, and for this reason of course, it is also a favoured ally of the West. Predictably, terrorist abuses are of little consequence in the face of the benefits to be gained from the West from this system (Amin 2013b).

But this saddening image is only half the real story. The proliferation of organized and unorganized social movements engaged in social and political struggles which unequivocally formulate legitimate demands (sometimes fragmented and at other times coherent and lucid) bears testimony to a real potential or the radicalization of progressive visions of the future. New initiatives could equally be undertaken by governments on the continent—these should not be dismissed lightly because of their timid ambitions or the ambiguities of their initial formulations. Associated with this is the opening of new paths for international co-operation with China and other countries of the South, to the practice of a more democratic tolerance of popular movements. These initiatives must be supported. The African peoples concerned have the right and duty to discuss such initiatives freely with their governments. It is also incumbent on popular movements to propose alternatives to enable the effective participation of the popular classes in the formulation and implementation of projects aiming to contribute to their development.

I need say no more. The concrete formulation of sovereign projects and of the objectives driving their initial phases makes sense only if they are serious, realistic and adapted to local conditions and the actual options open to the states and peoples concerned. One can do little more here than formulate broad strokes of the objectives which would characterize desirable forms of emergence, standing on one’s own two feet, in other words, engaging a process of industrialization, on the one hand, and promoting the renewal of family-based peasant agriculture on the other; opening up to new partners in the Global South (China and others) and to the best options that regional co-operation can offer; connecting advances in national sovereignty to policies promoting genuine social progress for the popular classes; and opening new channels to the democratization of politics and society. ‘Experts’ from the World Bank and the European Union are poorly equipped to contribute to such formulations. In the first instance, the task of defining appropriate paths towards these objectives has to be taken up by the best intellectual minds and militants from the national sphere—and later extended to encompass voices from the Global South whose knowledge and experiences can usefully contribute to the debates.

The End of the Debate About Emergence?

The term ‘emergent’ was put into common usage by the World Bank a few years ago. It has been used by the historical powers of imperialism (the United States and its junior allies in Europe and Japan) as their Ministry of Propaganda. Orchestrating successive campaigns of ideological intoxication to give an appearance of legitimacy to the deployment of their strategies for globalized and financialized monopolies (the ‘great’ multinationals), it has allowed the United States, Europe and Japan to assume the control over these processes. By imposing a ‘fashion’ of always using the same name to designate—and hide—the same thing, in successive discourses (which always fail to deliver on their promises), the term ‘emergent’ has become meaningless.

The World Bank’s response has been to launch the idea of ‘emerging markets’, where the choice of the word ‘markets’ is far from neutral. For the past four decades (since 1975, to be precise), growth levels amongst the imperialist Triad have collapsed. In other words, the expansion of markets in these economies has only slowed down. To acknowledge this would be to accept that the long and profound crisis affecting these economies risks raising questions about the capitalist system’s ability to meet the simple popular expectations for an improvement in the living conditions of the majority. The World Bank has drawn attention to the fact that outside of the Triad (the ‘old countries’), growth rates have been acceptable and, in some cases, exceptionally high (as in China). The expansion of markets equals GDP growth—at least according to the simplistic economic dogmas which feed World Bank thinking (or rather, non-thinking). According to this logic, the world system is not in crisis, only the ‘old countries’ are momentarily affected. The presence of ‘emerging markets’ provides opportunities to extract profits, in the first place, for ‘old country’ multinationals.

‘Stages of growth’, ‘emerging markets’, all originate in the same overly simplistic economic para-theory, which neither can nor wants to distinguish between concepts synonymous with growth and market expansion, on the one hand, and the concept of progressive development of society, on the other. Thinking in terms of development of society necessarily implies the articulation of a holistic and coherent theory of growth (measured by GDP, for want of a better indicator), of social progress, of the affirmation of national autonomy in its relation with others and of the transformation of its modes of governance over political power. The commonly used term ‘development’ itself is only meaningful if it produces an improvement in the living conditions of all, irrespective of class or social strata, or other distinctions (i.e., between men and women, nationals and immigrants, youth and adults, etc.). Growth which benefits only a minority, or even a majority whilst still excluding a significant number of the underprivileged, is not development. One can even be more demanding and consider that the improvement in the general conditions affecting all people is only valid if it actually aspires to the reduction of inequalities.

The analysis must also go beyond the purely economic aspect of the problem. The world is made up of nations and states, and is likely to continue on this foundation for a long time to come. It is, therefore, essential for development to enable ‘emergent’ nations (and not markets) to establish themselves in a way which allows them to grow stronger within the world system of nations and states. This will permit them to take an active role in shaping the operation of globalization; putting an end to the differentiation which opposes active states and shapes the world in which condemned states are compelled to adjust unilaterally, asymmetrically and passively.

Going further still, one can demand that material development (of productive capacity) should constitute the foundation stone of political progress, defined as active and increasingly decisive participation of people, particularly the majoritarian popular classes, in the decision-making processes at every level of social and political life. A good definition of democracy suggests a continuous process, probably endless.

Defining the concept of development in this way clearly calls for intellectual, political and ideological debates of major proportions, which in any case move away from the false discourses of ‘growth’, as advanced by conventional economists. It is in this context too that Marxist thought and the historical writings which inspired its elaboration in the area of global transformation need to be relocated. This is equally true of other thoughts/actions which have animated the workers’ struggles in the West (such as historical social democracy), or those which have provided the building blocks for national liberation struggles in countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Sam’s remarkable work inscribes itself firmly in this defence of an innovative vision of an alternative for the countries of the South.

The World Bank not only evades the questions of the emergence of nations and their ambitions to become active protagonists in the world but also considers the questions of social justice which are of concern to the popular classes but damaging to the project of ‘growth’. The consolidation of political power and the achievement of social advancement and autonomy of emergent nations undoubtedly constitute obstacles to the dominance of the Triad’s multinationals and would, in this sense, certainly be ‘damaging’ to the World Bank’s real objectives.

The World Bank is only interested in the expansion of ‘solvent’ markets. Its concept of ‘development’ congratulates itself on the development of a class system and the accession of the middle classes in the contemporary South, even if this comes at the expense and pauperization of the majority of the popular classes. Compelled to acknowledge the pauperization which occurs, the Bank contents itself with proposing ‘plans for poverty reduction’ which disregard the actual causes of poverty in the neoliberal policies it imposes.

A good example illustrating this contradiction is found in the neoliberal support of policies aiming at the systematic destruction of peasant agriculture in the South. These policies work for the benefit of international agribusiness and result in the consolidation of a minority of rich farmers and large landowners. These policies indisputably lead to the accelerated pauperization of hundreds of millions of peasants. On this topic, I refer the reader back to what I have written on the subject, with a few others, first amongst whom was Sam Moyo.

The underlying objective of the neoliberal project is to exploit the opportunity inherent in the expansion of markets in the South to re-engage the process of accumulation in the historical centres of imperialism—in other words, the emergence of markets through the submersion of peoples and nations.

The emergence of nations is another question altogether, which has little to do with the emergence of World Bank-style markets. The global expansion of capitalism has always been, and remains, polarizing and imperialist in nature. The peoples and nations compelled to submit to the demands of accelerated capital accumulation imposed by the centres of the system have been quick to react. They have attempted to participate as independent partners in shaping this part of modern history, through ‘emergence’ projects, in the serious sense of the word, of nations. Not all of them are ‘new’—amongst them are some of the ‘oldest’, such as China, Egypt, Iran and others.

Egypt’s ‘emergence’ project proceeded successfully in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, from Mohamed Ali (1805) until the middle of Khedive Ismaïl’s reign (1875). The project was defeated by the financial and military interventions of Great Britain, the major imperialist power of the time. In China, transformations brought about through the Taipings revolution (1855–1865) and the reforms implemented by the imperialist Tseu Hi, Sun Yat Sen and the Kuo Min Tang and, later, the Chinese Communists constitute important and successive stages in the struggle for re-emergence of modern China. Confrontations with Western and Japanese Imperialism continue today in different forms. Ataturk, Reza Shah and Arab nationalisms (Nasserism, the Ba’ath Party, the Algerian FLN) also embody projects of national reconstruction and emergence. The Russian socialist revolution must also be placed in the wider frame of liberation struggles of peoples and nations on the peripheries of the system of globalized capitalism. I analyze the period of Bandung (1955–1985) precisely as an expression of a large alliance of peoples, nations and states in Asia and Africa, engaged in a struggle for liberation from the forms of globalization of their time. An alliance which quite naturally found the favourable ear and support of the Soviet Union; an alliance of East and South not against the North but against a globalization dominated by the forces of historical imperialism in the North. The analysis I have made of the global expansion of capitalism elevates the struggles of people and nations in the peripheries to the ranks of a major factor in the transformation of the modern world (Amin, 2015b).

As always in the history of humanity, the successes—not the failures—were remarkable, even though they were limited and relative. But progress has always been uneven and followed by regression. Undermined by their internal contradictions which generally opposed popular and potentially socialist aspirations (‘emerging by withdrawing from capitalism’) to the ambitions of local existing or aspiring bourgeoisies (‘to avoid socialism’), these successes were provisionally derailed, at the end of the twentieth century.

The successes of Bandung benefitted all the nations involved: sub-Saharan Africa would probably not have gained its independence so quickly without Bandung; Gabon could not have collected its own incomes from oil without Bandung. The proof of this is in the counter-scenario of Niger, third largest producer of uranium in the world, which is prevented from benefitting from a large part of its mining income due to the triumph of neoliberal imperialism.

Do these sad contemporary realities express an absolute and final impossibility of meeting the outrageous ambitions of the peoples of the three continents? I do not believe so, because new waves of struggle by the nations of the South and the former East against the forms of globalization now in place, which assume the form of sovereign projects of emergence, are already visible. The World Bank conceived its ideological campaign under the name of ‘emerging markets’ precisely to constrain the entrenchment or advancement of projects of national sovereignty. Intended to play on major internal contradictions which characterize the major emancipatory struggles of yesterday and today, it aims to counter these projects by stoking illusions about the possibility of emergence into contemporary global capitalism.

There is a need for an interim assessment of the advances (and regressions) of the first years since the deployment of the second wave of resistance. Along with others, I am associated with these movements. I draw the following initial conclusions. China is at the heart of these debates (Amin, 2013a). This is no coincidence, since the options currently at its disposal have their roots in the establishment of a uniquely daring project of national sovereignty whilst simultaneously remaining anchored in a fundamental contradiction which can be expressed in two complementary ways.

One way of addressing this dichotomy is as follows. Is the project aimed at emergence into the world system as it is, using the traditional capitalist methods/paths (private property, free enterprise, etc.), with at best a few mitigations (close negotiations with the dominant powers, the United States in the first instance; social concessions to the popular classes)? Or is it rather a project of emergence progressing in spite of its conscious conflict with logics underpinning the deployment of contemporary imperialistic capitalism?

The second way of considering the issue is to question the underlying reasons driving the state’s active intervention in this project: whether its objective is transformation into a bourgeois project. In other words, would this imply Communist Party evolution in the direction of a successful Kuo Min Tang? Or, alternatively, a project based on genuine popular concerns? Policies that have been implemented to promote renewal of the peasant economy would point towards the latter hypothesis. The case of China provides perhaps the best illustration of the tensions between the project’s social dimensions and the class struggles which inherently develop in its framework, on the one hand, and the international dimension, on the other. I will not develop this point further but would refer the reader back to the suggestions which I, along with Sam and some others, have put forward in debates we have had on China.

The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa —make up another special group in contemporary debates. One could also add a few other country examples of apparent economic success: Mexico, Turkey, Thailand and Malaysia. In these cases, success is primarily defined in terms of the neoliberal ideology, as an example of the success of ‘happy globalization’. My analysis of the experiences currently underway in these countries offers more nuanced conclusions. Russia hesitates between (destructive) submission to the contemporary form of globalization (a perspective which is defended by the country’s comprador oligarchies) and a project of national renewal through the reconstruction of sovereign state capitalism. India and Brazil’s projects are truncated and devoid of substance. South Africa is not engaged in any ordinary project of emergence.

The crisis currently taking place in Brazil actually signals the unravelling of the World Bank discourse on ‘emerging markets’. As usual, propositions orchestrated by the World Bank, and rapidly contradicted by reality, have been short lived. They have necessitated constant reformulations of their actual objectives, without being able to elude what constitutes the Bank’s exclusive and permanent objective: the protection of finance capital and the interests of imperialist powers.

Brazil’s emergence was from the outset established on a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, the PT governments have undertaken important progressive reforms which have enabled growth to take place by opening up new internal markets. But, on the other hand, these governments did not challenge the dominant positions occupied by private Brazilian capital, which is both monopolistic and comprador in character. The type of growth engaged by these capitalist forces was established primarily on the back of natural resource exports (oil, minerals and capitalist agribusiness production) and integration into financial globalization. This odd couple worked as long as circumstances allowed it. However, under conditions where the offensive launched by financialized global monopolies led to a collapse in raw material prices, the balance of payments deficit compounded by the Brazilian currency’s devaluation put an end to the much vaunted Brazilian miracle. Growth rates have collapsed and the public purse is no longer able to finance social programmes. Under conditions which are undoubtedly different, though for the same reasons, India’s emergence remains vulnerable.

A new financial crisis, more serious than that of 2008, is currently taking shape on the horizon. Even though financial monopolies have been able to extract considerable profits from the opening up of markets in the South, and the pillaging of their natural resources, these profits have not been reinvested in the expansion of productive systems in the North. On the contrary, they have been accumulated as income by highly financially solvent monopolies to feed an infinitely spiralling growth in speculation. The inevitable financial demise of this system will put a term to illusions of emergence.

China is in a better position than others to face up to these financial troubles, precisely because to date, its financial system remains outside the system of globalized finance, and the country continues to pursue a model of non-capitalist agricultural renewal, as I have discussed elsewhere. This specificity has allowed China to better resist a reversal of fortunes by investing directly in the development of domestic markets, with the result that its growth rate has only dropped from 10 to 7 per cent per annum. If China is still outside the globalized financial system when the crisis hits, it will be in a position to reinforce its positions in the world—the yuan will represent an important refuge to capital fleeing the devaluation of both the US dollar and euro. But if, in the interim, China has entered into the system of globalized finance, it will pay the exorbitant price of this decision and suffer a similar fate to that of the countries of the South. The imperial powers will be placed in a position to threaten its detractors with their superior weapon: military intervention.

The discourse about ‘emerging markets’ is already in decline. In view of the approaching financial catastrophe, the World Bank considers it more important to redirect its propaganda efforts and to exercise all its pressures to ensure the entrance of countries which have to date been recalcitrant to do so, namely, China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, India. The argument presented to convince them of such a path is that their entrance would purportedly reduce the risks of catastrophe. This is untrue. It would only enable the costs of repairing and rebuilding the system to be more easily transferred to the South; this is, in fact, the real objective of new discourses. Brazil only provides a tragic illustration of what others can expect.

Sovereign Projects are Needed for African Countries to Restore Hope for Development

Engagement is necessary with what we call sovereign projects—in other words, projects which are conceived of by us, for us and which are to the greatest extent independent of the tendencies and pressures exerted by the global capitalist system. Industrialization must be the goal of sovereign projects. There can be no development without industrialization. Even agricultural development, through efficient modernization, is impossible without industries to support it. It is necessary to walk on one’s own two feet.

What goes by the name ‘international aid’, notably in African countries—in other words, aid extended by the World Bank, or by development agencies from Western imperialist countries, the United States or the European Union—is not genuine development aid. It is a financial support intended to maintain our position as subordinate countries, and thus to reproduce underdevelopment.

The only solution is to forget all this and think differently. We must start thinking in terms of sovereign projects. Is this possible? Yes. The African continent is often dismissed as ‘handicapped’ by virtue of having generally small countries. This is not true of all African countries: Egypt has a population of 92 million, Ethiopia of 90 million and Nigeria of 180 million—these are not small countries. Nonetheless, the main structures of Nigeria’s economy are not significantly different from those of a small country like Benin. One could say that in spite of its population of 180 million, Nigeria is just like 15 Benins, nothing more. The advantage of size is not put to good use, even by large African countries.

Becoming engaged on the path of autonomous development, based on sovereign projects, is not easy for anyone, even China. For smaller countries of average size, the challenges are obviously greater. But there is always a margin, even though this margin may be very limited at the outset. If certain countries were to initiate autonomous development, independently and on the basis of sovereign projects (even modest ones to start off with), this could quickly snowball into something much greater. It would create favourable conditions for closer links, political solidarity, and, no doubt, for economic and possibly financial co-operation between African countries and the Global South more generally. We could, in this manner, become active in shaping the world and be in a position to impose ourselves as such. Even though this may not be easy, we can also approach China which has now become financially powerful. We have witnessed the articulation of various proposals for co-operation during the meetings between China and African states in Johannesburg. The ball is in our court. We now have the prerogative to seize it and to open negotiations. But one can only open negotiations if one knows what one wants.

The constraint lies with the ruling classes. The ruling classes in African countries, such as those in Asian and Latin American countries, have largely been produced and shaped by the integration of their own countries as subaltern and dominated partners into the system of globalized capitalism. To describe these, I use the term ‘comprador bourgeoisie’—which was first coined by Chinese communists, a long time ago, in the 1920s. The word comes from Portuguese and means ‘traders, buyers, intermediaries’ between the dominant imperialist world and the local world of notably peasant producers.

Our dominant classes are comprador classes. I would even say that state bureaucracies, which are neither entrepreneurial classes nor property owners in the capitalist sense, also constitute largely ‘comprador’ bureaucratic classes. The challenge, then, effectively exists in our own environment, at home with us; it is to be found in the actual nature of the dominant and political classes. But the deployment of social movements can modify these givens and thus create the conditions for coming out of the impasse.

It is in this framework that the contribution made by Sam Moyo’s work has been of the greatest significance.