is not a status that a country achieves once and for all. It consists of successive steps—earlier ones, if successful, would prepare the way for the following ones or, if not successful, would lead to an impasse.
In the same way, the relation between the emergent economy and the world economy is itself in constant transformation and part of different overall possibilities, which could support social solidarity in the nation or weaken it. Emergence is thus not synonymous with growth in exports and the rising power of a country measured in this way. A growth in exports hinges on the growth of an internal market that has to be specified (for the working classes, the middle classes) and the former can become a support or an obstacle to the second. A growth in exports can thus weaken or strengthen the relative autonomy of the emergent economy in its relations to the world system.
Emergence is a political project, not only an economic one. An evaluation of its success is thus based on an examination of its capacity to reduce the way in which the dominant capitalist centers continue their domination, in spite of the economic successes of emergent countries measured in the terms of conventional economics. For my part, I have defined these means in terms of control by the dominant powers of technological development, access to natural resources, the global financial and monetary system, means of information, and weapons of mass destruction. I also maintain the thesis that there is indeed a collective imperialism of the triad that intends to maintain, by any means, its privileged position in the domination of the world and prevent any emergent country from challenging this domination. I conclude from this that the ambitions of the emergent countries are in conflict with the strategic objectives of the imperialist triad, and the extent of the violence in this conflict is proportional to the degree of radicalness in the challenges from the emerging countries to the privileges of the center enumerated above.
The economics of emergence also cannot be separated from the international policy of the countries in question. Do they align themselves with the triad’s politico-military coalition? Do they, consequently, accept the strategies implemented by NATO? Or do they attempt to counter them?
An authentic project of emergence is the exact opposite of one that includes unilateral submission to the requirements of the globalized capitalism of the generalized monopolies, which can only result in what I call “lumpen-development.” I am here freely borrowing the term used by the late André Gunder Frank to analyze a similar development, but in different spatial and temporal conditions. Today, lumpen-development is the result of accelerated social disintegration connected to the model of “development” (which does not deserve the name) imposed by the monopolies of the imperialist centers on the dominated societies of the periphery. It is reflected in the dramatic growth in survival activities (the so-called informal sphere), in other words, by the pauperization inherent to the unilateral logic of capital accumulation.
Among the experiences of emergence, some fully deserve the label because they are not part of processes of lumpen-development. In other words, in these situations, pauperization does not afflict the working classes. Instead, there is an improvement in their conditions of life, whether modest or strong. Two of these experiences are clearly capitalist: Korea and Taiwan (I will not discuss here the particular historical conditions that made possible the success of the emergence project in these two countries). Two others inherit the legacy of socialist revolutions: China and Vietnam. Cuba could be included in this group if it succeeds in surmounting the contradictions it is currently undergoing.
There are other cases of emergence connected to obvious processes of lumpen-development. India is the best example of that. Parts of that country’s situation correspond to what emergence requires and produces. There is a state policy that aims at strengthening a sizable industrial system, there is an accompanying expansion of the middle classes, there is progress in technological capacities and education, and there is a foreign policy capable of autonomy on the world scene. But there is also accelerated pauperization for the great majority—two-thirds of the society. This is an example, then, of a hybrid system that combines emergence with lumpen-development. We can even bring out the complementarity of these two faces of reality. I believe, without intending to make a huge overgeneralization, that all the other countries considered to be emergent belong to this hybrid family, whether it be Brazil, South Africa, or others. But there are also—and this is true of most other countries in the South—situations in which the elements of emergence are barely apparent while the processes of lumpen-development clearly are dominant.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF MAOISM
The “workerist” and Eurocentrist Marxism of the Second International shared with the era’s dominant ideology a linear view of history in which all societies have to pass first through a stage of capitalist development, for which colonization—in this regard “historically positive”—planted the seeds, before being able to aspire to socialism. The idea that the “development” of some (the dominant centers) and the “underdevelopment” of others (the dominated peripheries) were inseparable, like two sides of the same coin, both immanent products of capitalism’s worldwide expansion, was totally alien to it.
The polarization inherent to capitalist globalization—a major fact with significant worldwide social and political implications—calls for a perspective that leads to the surpassing of capitalism. This polarization is the basis for the possible support of large fractions of the working classes and, above all, the middle classes (whose development is itself favored by the position of the centers in the world system) in the dominant countries for social-colonialism. Simultaneously, it transforms the peripheries into a “zone of storms” (as the Chinese expression has it) in a permanent natural rebellion against the capitalist world order. Certainly, rebellion is not synonymous with revolution, but it is the possibility for the latter. Motivations for rejecting the capitalist model are not lacking, even at the system’s center, as the case of 1968, among other examples, illustrates. Undoubtedly, the Chinese Communist Party’s chosen formulation of the challenge at one time—“the countryside encircles the cities”—is consequently too extreme to be useful. A global strategy for the transition beyond capitalism toward global socialism must coordinate struggles in the centers with those in the peripheries of the system.
Initially, Lenin distanced himself from the dominant theory of the Second International and successfully led a revolution in the “weak link” (Russia), but always with the belief that this would be followed by a wave of socialist revolutions in Europe. This was a disappointed hope. Lenin then moved toward a view that gave more importance to the transformation of rebellions into revolutions in the East. But it was up to the Chinese Communist Party and Mao to systematize this new perspective.
Maoism made a decisive contribution to a comprehensive assessment of the issues and challenges the globalized capitalist/imperialist expansion represents. It allowed us to place the centers/peripheries contrast immanent to the expansion of the inherently imperialist and polarizing “really existing” capitalism at the center of the analysis, and to draw from that analysis all the implied lessons for the socialist struggle in both the dominant centers and the dominated peripheries. These conclusions have been summarized in a beautiful Chinese-style expression: “States want independence, nations want liberation, and peoples want revolution.” States—the ruling classes of all countries in the world when they are something other than lackeys and conveyors of external forces—work to enlarge their space of movement which allows them to maneuver within the (capitalist) world system and raise themselves from “passive” actors, condemned to adjust unilaterally to the dominant demands of imperialism, to “active” actors, who participate in shaping the world order. Nations—that is, historical blocs of potentially progressive classes—want liberation, specifically, “development” and “modernization.” Peoples—that is, the dominated and exploited working classes—aspire to socialism. The phrase allows us to understand the real world in all its complexity and, therefore, formulate effective action strategies. It shares the view that the transition from capitalism to world socialism will be long, very long even, and, consequently, breaks with the Third International’s concept of the “short transition.”
THREE
