Forces Populaires
THE LONG REVOLUTION OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH
PROLOGUE
Successive Waves of the South’s Awakening
This second volume of my memoirs offers a detailed account of my activities from 1970 up to June 2014 within the successive frameworks of the IDEP, the TWF, and the joint TWF/WFA.
A large part of the material in this volume was previously published in French in 2008, which covers the period up to the beginning of the 2000s.1 I experienced the Bandung era from the inside in the exercise of my duties, first in Egypt (1957–1960), then in Mali (1960–1963). I gave an account of that period in the first volume of my memoirs.2 The exercise of my duties at the IDEP and the TWF occurred during the declining phase of the Bandung era. This report of my activities during those years testifies to this decline.
The contemporary period of the history that I experienced can be divided into three distinct periods: 1) the growth then stagnation of the Bandung era from 1955 to 1980; 2) the restoration of the new imperialist order called “liberal globalization” from 1980 to 1995; and 3) the beginning of the capitalist/imperialist system’s implosion in 1995 and the parallel beginning of renewed struggles for “another, better world,” particularly in the new “Global South.”
The title of the French edition of this volume, The South’s Awakening, reflects my view of this global history.
The twentieth century witnessed the development of an initial wave of victorious struggles to escape the hold of capitalism and/or imperialism. The victories of liberation from imperialist domination carried in themselves the potential of going beyond capitalism toward socialism.
This first wave exhausted its capacities for development, which led, beginning in the 1980s, to the restoration of a new and savage capitalist/imperialist order, almost tantamount to colonization as pillage for the peoples of the South. But the new order, inherently unstable, has already been called into question by the rise of a second wave of the South’s awakening. The challenge is more serious than ever, but is this second wave, like the first, going to occupy center stage only in the countries of the world system’s peripheries, or is it going to start the concomitant transformation of the South and the North, with advances beyond capitalism in both areas of the globalized world?
This work is considered a memoir, a personal account of my activities. But it seems useful to offer in this prologue a synthesis of my analyses of key issues, just as I did in the first volume, without which the reader would have trouble understanding the motivations behind my activities.
First, I present three concise documents that clarify my analysis of the three successive moments of the history in question: 1) Bandung and the first globalization of struggles; 2) generalized monopoly capitalism; and 3) emergence and lumpen-development. I supplement them with a brief exposé of what I understand by Maoism, understood as a form (and maybe stage) of the development of historical Marxism.
Then I offer three documents that summarize my view of the major challenges confronting humanity: 1) the agrarian question (central for the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America); 2) the democratization of societies; and 3) the ecological challenge.
These three documents will spare me much needless repetition because these questions always arise in debates on the radical left, and thus the arguments I have developed in my presentations could not disregard them. This is also true for other questions, such as “international aid,” which persistently reappears in debates, particularly in Africa. That is why I also thought it helpful to recall my arguments on these questions in various chapters of these memoirs.
BANDUNG AND THE FIRST GLOBALIZATION OF STRUGGLES (1955–1980)
This text supplements what was presented in the first volume under the title “Deployment and Erosion of Bandung.”3
The governments and peoples of Asia and Africa proclaimed in Bandung in 1955 their wish to reconstruct the world system based on the recognition of the rights of up-till-then dominated nations. This “right to development” was the foundation of that era’s globalization, implemented within a negotiated multipolar framework that was imposed on an imperialism that had to adjust to these new requirements. Bandung’s success—and not its failure as is increasingly said without thinking—lies behind a great leap forward for the peoples of the South in education and health, in the construction of a modern state, often in the reduction of social inequalities, and in the path toward industrialization. Undoubtedly the limitations of these achievements—particularly the democratic deficit of national populist governments that “gave to the people” but never allowed the people to organize themselves—must be taken into account when assessing the era.
The Bandung system was linked to two other characteristics of the postwar systems: Sovietism (and Maoism) and the welfare state of the social democratic West. These systems were certainly competing, even in conflict (although any conflicts were completely contained within limits that prevented them from expanding beyond local armed confrontations), but also, consequently, complementary. In these conditions, to speak of the globalization of struggles makes sense since, for the first time in the history of capitalism, resistance occurred in every area of the world and inside of all nations, and thereby formed an initial step toward this globalization.
The proof of the interdependence that characterized these struggles, along with the historical compromises that ensured stability in the management of such societies, was provided, conversely, by the changes that occurred after the parallel erosion in the developmental potential of the three systems. The collapse of Sovietism also entailed the collapse of the social democratic model. Its—quite real—social advances were necessary because they were the only possible way to face the “communist threat.” We can also point to the echo of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1968 Europe.
The progress in industrialization that began during the Bandung era did not result from the logic of imperialism’s deployment, but from the victories achieved by the peoples of the South. Certainly this progress fostered the illusion of “catching up” that appeared to be on the way to realization, whereas, in fact, imperialism, forced to make adjustments to the requirements of development in the peripheries, reconstructed itself around new forms of domination. The old opposition between imperialist countries/dominated countries, which was synonymous with the opposition between industrialized countries/non-industrialized countries, gradually gave way to a new opposition based on the centralization of the advantages derived from the “five new monopolies of the imperialist centers” (control over new technologies, natural resources, financial flows, communications, and weapons of mass destruction).
The achievements of the period, along with their limitations, lead us to reexamine the central question of the bourgeoisie and capitalism’s future in the system’s peripheries. This is an ongoing question since capitalism’s
