A group of young people in Paris are enjoying a drink in a café on an unseasonably warm evening. The conversation drifts into politics, but—as one young woman says—“Let’s not talk about France.” The others nod their assent. They focus on the U.S. presidential election, a slight bit of Gallic arrogance at play as they mock the near certainty that the main candidates will be President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Biden is 81 years old and Trump is 77. A Special Counsel in the United States has called Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory,” hardly the words required to inspire confidence in the president. Trying to defend himself, Biden made the kind of gaffe that is fodder for online memes and affirmed the report that he tried to undermine: he called President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt the “president of Mexico.” No new evidence is required, meanwhile, to mock the candidacy of Trump. “Is this the best that the United States can offer?” asks Claudine, a young student at a prestigious Parisian college.
​
These young people are aware enough that what appears to be comical on the other side of the Atlantic—the U.S. presidential election—is no less ridiculous, and of course less dangerous, in Europe. When I ask them what they think about the main European leaders—Olaf Scholz of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France—they shrug, and the words “imbecilic” and “non-entity” enter the discussion. Near Les Halles, these young people have just been at a demonstration to end the Israeli bombing of the Rafah region of Gaza. “Rafah is the size of Heathrow Airport,” says a young student from England who is spending 2024 in France. That none of the European leaders have spoken plainly about the death and destruction in Gaza troubles them, and they say that they are not alone in these feelings. Many of their fellow students feel the same way. The approval ratings for Scholz and Macron decline with each week. Neither the German nor the French public believes that these men can reverse the economic decline or stop the wars in either Gaza or Ukraine. Claudine is upset that the governments of the Global North have decided to cut their funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN Palestine agency, although another young person, Oumar, interjects that Brazil’s President Lula has said that his country will donate money to UNRWA. Everyone nods.

A week later, news comes that a young soldier in the United States Airforce—Aaron Bushnell—has decided to take his own life, saying that he will no longer be complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians. When asked about the death of Bushnell, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the President is “aware” and that it is a “horrible tragedy.” But there was no statement about why the young man took his life, and nothing to assuage a tense public about the implications of this act. Eating an ice cream in New York, U.S. President Joe Biden said that he hoped that there would be a ceasefire “by the beginning of the weekend” but then moved it to “by next Monday.” The meandering statements, the pledge for a ceasefire alongside the prevarication, and the arms deliveries do not raise the confidence of anyone in Biden or his peers in Europe. With the Emir of Qatar beside him, France’s President Emmanuel Macron called for a “lasting ceasefire.” These phrases—“lasting ceasefire” and “sustainable ceasefire”—have been bandied about with these adjectives (lasting, sustainable) designed to dilute the commitment to a ceasefire and to pretend that they are actually in favor of an end to the war when they continue to say that they are behind Israel’s bombing runs.

In London, the UK Parliament had a comical collapse in the face of a Scottish National Party (SNP) resolution for a ceasefire. Rather than allow a vote to show the actual opinions of their members, both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party went into a tailspin and the Parliament’s speaker broke rules to ensure that the elected officials did not have to go on the record against a ceasefire. Brendan O’Hara of the SNP put the issue plainly before the Parliament before his words and the SNP resolution was set aside: “Some will have to say that they chose to engage in a debate on semantics over ‘sustainable’ or ‘humanitarian’ pauses, while others will say that they chose to give Netanyahu both the weapons and the political cover that he required to prosecute his relentless war.”

Global desire for an immediate stop to the Israeli bombing is now at an all-time high. For the third time, the United States vetoed a UN resolution in the Security Council to compel the Israelis to stop the bombing. That the United States and its European allies continue to back Israel despite the widespread disgust at this war—exemplified by the death of Aaron Bushnell—raises the frustration with the leadership of the Global North. What is so particularly bewildering is that large sections of the population in the countries of the North want an immediate ceasefire, and yet their leaders disregard their opinions. One survey shows that two-thirds of voters in the United States—including majorities of Democrats (77 percent), Independents (69 percent), and Republicans (56 percent)—are in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. Interestingly, 59 percent of U.S. voters say that Palestinians must be guaranteed the right to return to their homes in Gaza, while 52 percent said that peace talks must be held for a two-state solution. These are all positions that are ignored by the main political class on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The qualifications of “lasting” and “sustainable” only increase cynicism among populations that watch their political leadership ignore their insistence on an immediate ceasefire.

Clarity is not to be sought in the White House, in No. 10 Downing Street, or in the Élysée Palace. It is found in the words of ordinary people in these countries who are heartsick regarding the violence. Protests seem to increase in intensity as the death toll rises. What is the reaction to these protests? In the United Kingdom, members of parliament complained that these protests are putting the police under “sustained pressure.” That is perhaps the point of the protests.

Author

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
​
Source: Globetrotter

Author

Ned Brown is a community organizer and writer. In the past, he has organized to overturn ICE policies in Arkansas. He is a contributor at CommunityParty.net and the Alienated Press. ​

​The way China engages in corporate governance and enterprise discipline has been subject to much scrutiny, particularly by the Left. Many in the Western Left claim that China’s corporate governance is far too lacking. This article is designed to go over the way China is able to exert its party influence over both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises. It is the third part in our series of articles that conduct an in-depth investigation of China’s economy. Our first article of the series investigated the degree of state-control over China’s economy. The second article of the series investigated how finance, banks, and investments work in China, in addition to how China was able to survive the many financial crises mostly unharmed that many other countries - including the West - could not.

Corporate Social Credit

According to the Communist Party of China (CPC) document “The Planning Outline for the Establishment of a Social Credit System (2014 - 2020)”, the following is stated the establishment of a social credit system:

“... must have advancing the establishment of creditworthiness in government affairs, commerce, and society and establishment of judicial credibility as its primary content; must have advancing the establishment of a culture of creditworthiness and establishing mechanisms to encourage trustworthiness and punish untrustworthiness as key points; must be supported by advancing the establishment of industry and region specific credit, and developing credit services markets; must have raising the entire society’s awareness and levels of creditworthiness, and improving the economic and social operating environment as its goals; and must put people first, to form an environment across all society in which trustworthiness is honored and untrustworthiness is shameful, and make honesty and trustworthiness the entire populations’ conscientious behavioral norm.” [1]

What is credit worthiness? It is being able to comply with financial agreements and willingness to pay debts. And in the context of the social credit score, to ensure companies enact on their promises. The score is used to regulate the private sector and continue to clamp down on potential exploitative behavior that may be undergone. In other words, social “credit” can also be translated from Chinese as social trustworthiness. The score is given to private firms and there are real punishments and drawbacks for those who do not comply or fail to achieve a high score.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is pushing ahead with social credit-based supervision of all commercial entities from large firms to small, independently owned and operated businesses, which prompted complaints over corporate privacy and heavy-handed government intervention [2]. The social credit rating will include court rulings, tax records, environmental protection issues, government licensing, product quality, work safety and administrative punishments by market regulators [2]. In 2019, Lian Weiliang, deputy chairman of the NDRC, stated the following:
​
“All the existing credit incentive and punishment measures listed in the memorandums are based on laws and regulations... For severe violations, especially those endangering life and property, harsh punishment will be adopted, such as a temporary or even permanent ban on market entry.” [2]

While the China Blacklisting system is still in its early stages, it is already the most prominent system of its kind worldwide. China has already put this system into action, and has barred thousands of Chinese residents’ rights to buy plane tickets and travel either domestically or abroad. However, most of the blacklisting that has occurred to date has been as a result of violations or misbehavior of companies and the individuals working for them. [3]

Individuals who end up on a blacklist due to mistreatment of workers or violating the laws around workers’ rights are given penalties. These penalties can be as severe as having their business license revoked or barring them from using social amenities and public services until they fix their social credit score. How the social credit score is measured according to CreditChina, the website responsible for openly publishing corporate social credit data lists the following reasons for a low social credit score:

• Basic identifying information for the company, including the company’s Unified Social Credit Code and permits held;
• Any applicable administrative penalties; 
• Any payment defaults recognized by the Courts; 
• Any instances of tax evasion and fraud; 
• Instances of illegal importing or exporting; 
• Unpaid wages

Ultimately, the Social Credit System is meant to serve as a market regulation mechanism. The goal is to establish a self-enforcing regulatory regime fueled by big data in which businesses exercise “self-restraint”. The basic idea is that with a functional credit system in place, companies will comply with government policies and regulations to avoid having their scores lowered by disgruntled employees, customers, or clients. Companies with bad credit scores will potentially face unfavorable conditions for new loans, higher tax rates, investment restrictions, and lower chances to participate in publicly funded projects. [4]

A study found that the Corporate Social Credit System could be used in a way that signals “corporate fealty” to the Party. This incentivizes more corporate social responsibility programmes such as participating in poverty alleviation, strictly implementing deadlines for national industrial and environmental policies. The credit system itself does not award scores based on profitability, profitability is not a metric that is factored. [5]

There is however a wide misconception that the social credit score is something that only impacts people. However, state owned enterprises and other government bureaucrats who work at state owned enterprises can be subject to the corporate social credit. The social credit system is ‘self-reflective’: Bureaucrats and politicians themselves will be subject to the regime, with the goal of reducing corruption. This core concept is known as “Government integrity” which is a part of Xi Jinping’s Anti Corruption crackdown. [3]

Blacklists and Redlists

As mentioned earlier, with the Social Credit System (SCS), there comes consequences to gaining low scores or high scores. This comes in the form of Blacklists and Redlists. The blacklist is negative while the redlist is positive.

A blacklist is a type of public record which identifies companies and individuals found in violation of a predetermined set of regulations — for example, one blacklist may identify companies which have violated work safety regulations, while another identifies parties found in violation of patent laws. A redlist is the opposite: a roster of companies and individuals demonstrating consistent compliance with a specific set of regulations, such as consistent tax payment or low rates of import-export violations. [6]

The majority of existing blacklists and redlists were created between 2016 and 2018. Since then, the announcement of new national-level lists has slowed dramatically. As of November 2019, forty established blacklists and eight redlists were in effect at the national level. Of these, about half have a broad scope, such as those targeting violations in the areas of environmental protection, import-export, social security, tax arrears, and e-commerce fraud. The remaining blacklists are only applicable to enterprises and professionals operating in specific sectors, such as financial services, transportation, insurance, salt production, domestic services, travel, real estate, food, agriculture, and medicine. [7]

Companies found to have engaged in “seriously untrustworthy behavior” may have their business license revoked and credit irreparable. And of course, being subject to imprisonment. [8]
​
These acts include:

• Violations of food and drug safety, environmental protection, engineering quality, production safety, product quality, and fire safety regulations [8]

• Bribes, tax evasion, debt default, failure to pay wages, illegal fund-raising, contract fraud, pyramid schemes, unlicensed operations, infringement of intellectual property rights, bid rigging, false advertising, infringement of consumer rights, infringement of investor rights, serious internet behavior violations, and disruption of social order [8]

An example of a company being subject to punishment from engaging in “seriously untrustworthy behavior” would be Shanghai Husi, the Chinese subsidiary of U.S. holding company OSI Group. In 2014, they were reported for using expired meat, falsifying production dates and violating hygiene regulations. These products had ended up in KFC and McDonalds in China. [9]

​This further solidifies the state control over foreign enterprises inside China, where the terms are dictated by the state, and these corporations have to follow the line. When the Communist Party tells foreign entrepreneurs to jump, the response from these entrepreneurs is to ask how high and how far.
​
According to the EU Chamber of Commerce, the corporate social credit score system will mean life or death for foreign enterprises wanting to operate in China. China’s Corporate Social Credit System is here to stay. Businesses in China need to prepare for the consequences, to ensure that they live by the score, not die by the score. [16]

This further solidifies the fact that foreign enterprises cannot escape the grasp of the Communist Party of China.

Corporate Party Organizations

A study in 2008 looking into listed organizations found that for every listed enterprises’ board of directors, there is a parallel power structure known as the firm’s Party Committee, headed by a party secretary. In the large SOEs (state-owned enterprises), the Party Secretary appoints the top executives and directors, often simply relaying orders from the Communist Party of China’s Central Organizational Department, and effectively exercising a leading role in the company. Thus, significant overlap between the Party committee or group with traditional corporate structures. Where the two structures do not overlap, real power flows through the party channels, leaving the board and formal corporate top executives with scant real authority. The figure below visualizes this arrangement. [17]

In the book, Capitalizing China, it was found that:
​
Parallel to this corporate governance system, each (Listed) enterprise also has a Communist Party Committee, headed by a Communist Party Secretary. These advise the CEO on critical decisions, and are kept informed by party cells throughout the enterprise that also monitor the implementation of party policies. Indeed, the party secretary plays a leading role in major decisions, and can overrule or bypass the CEO and board if necessary. For example, foreign independent directors on the board of CNOOC reportedly first learned of that enterprise's takeover bid for Unocal, an American oil company, from news broadcasts. Directors often also learn of such major strategic moves, and of equally major personnel moves such as the rotation of oil company top managers described earlier after the fact. Despite their formal powers, CEOs and boards are thought to welcome party advice, and any directors likely to have reservations are kept out of the loop to preserve harmony-especially if issues the CCP views as strategically important are involved. [18]

Furthermore, according to Article 33 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China:

Primary-level Party organizations in non-public sector entities shall implement the Party's principles and policies, guide and oversee their enterprises' observance of state laws and regulations, exercise leadership over trade unions, Communist Youth League organizations, and other people's group organizations, promote unity and cohesion among workers and office staff, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of all parties, and promote the healthy development of their enterprises. [19]

Most of the listed shareholder firms have a party secretary. A study on 4,104 listed firms was conducted between 2000 and 2004, which represents 68% of the total firms with A-shares in China during that period. Note, referring back to our previous article, A-Shares are shares of companies based in mainland China that are listed on either the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchanges that are off limits to foreigners. It was found in this study that only 11% of the firms said that they did not have a party secretary. In those firms with party secretaries, many of the secretaries hold other management positions as well: 5% also serve as both the chairman and the CEO; 18% also serve as the chairman; 6% also serve as the CEO; and 26% also serve as a supervisor, director, or executive. Thus, many party secretaries have a significant effect on firm management. [20]

One example can be observed with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), a central SOE holding group. As of October 2019, the Party group in CNPC had eight members (see Table below), six of whom simultaneously held top management positions: the chairman of the board, the general manager, the chairman of the supervisory board, the head of the discipline inspection office, the chief accountant (i.e. chief financial officer) and the chief safety monitor. With this level of insider control, the Party group dominates corporate decision making. In addition, many of these Party group members simultaneously held positions in the publicly listed subsidiary company – as board members and/or members of the subsidiary Party organization. For example, Liu Yuezhen was simultaneously a Party group member, chief accountant of the parent company and non-executive director of the subsidiary. Thus, to recap, the Party committee exercises strong horizontal control within the parent company’s top management through overlapping positions, but also exercises strong vertical control through SOE control of subsidiary enterprises and more overlapping positions. The result is more streamlined management as a result of how embedded the Party is in these enterprises. [38]

In Taizhou, 39 listed firms in 2018 modified their charter to include party construction in their constitution. And the party organization’s role entails the party branch to have more say in the company's selection and employment of personnel, to play a core role in political leadership, as well as decision-making in other major corporate decisions. For instance, feedback/voice on the acquisition of other enterprises, which falls under having a role in corporate business decisions. [21]

Interestingly, as a side effect of having Party Committees, a study found that Communist Party Committees actually improved enterprise value and reduced corruption within SOEs, indicating that they are not just a tool to enforce party leadership, but also assist positively in business decisions. [22]

Another study found that while ostensibly cooperative enterprises (Township Village Enterprises) had private revenue rights, their control rights were not. In reality, collective enterprises are under close control of the government. Major investment and employment decisions could not be made without government direction or approval. [23]

Enterprises which have party committees are much more likely to engage in “Green Innovation”, which refers specifically to inventing technologies or having processes which reduce environmental pollution. [24]

​The Three Importants and One Big

But what does this entail specifically? How do party committees actually engage in their day-to-day management of enterprises? One of the largest key aspects of this is the ability to set performance indicators. The party’s pre-decision powers include the “three importants and one big” (sanzhong yida, 三重一大), which refers to:

• Major strategic decisions concerning the “important issues” i.e. implementation of party-state principles, policies, laws and regulations, and matters related to security and stability, in addition to enterprise development strategy;
• Appointments and dismissals of “important cadres” of mid-level or above in the enterprise holding group and in directly subordinate enterprises and units;
• Major project arrangements for “important projects” that have an impact on the scale of assets, capital structure, profitability, production equipment and technical conditions;
• The “one big” (yida, 一大), which refers to large-scale capital operations, meaning the use of large amounts of funds. [25, 38]

This doesn’t occur just in SOEs but also in mixed ownership enterprises (more on that later) where the state holds a significant minority stake. [26]

First and foremost, party committees (party groups) at all levels are expected to actively reform and improve leadership methods, adhere to and improve democratic centralism, combine collective leadership with individual division of labor and responsibility, fully develop intra-party democracy, and strive to improve scientific decision-making, democratic decision-making, and decision-making in accordance with the law, ability and level. Moreover, party group members, especially the principals in charge, should correctly handle the relationship between democracy and centralism, work together with decision-making bodies, take the lead in implementing democratic centralism, ensure the correct exercise of power, and prevent the abuse of power. [27]

Intra-Party regulations shall be decided by the shareholders' meeting, the board of directors, the management team without a board of directors, the workers' congress/union and the party committee (party group) matters. It mainly includes the major measures taken by enterprises to implement the party and the country's lines, principles, policies, laws and regulations, and important decisions of superiors, enterprise development strategies, bankruptcy, restructuring, mergers and reorganizations, asset adjustments, property rights transfers, foreign investments, interest allocation, organizational adjustments, etc. major decisions on corporate party building, security and stability, and other major decision-making matters. [28]

Party Organizations in Foreign Enterprises

Foreign enterprises and their joint-ventures are not free from party organizations. As the majority of foreign enterprises are actually joint-ventures ran with SOEs (State-owned enterprises), naturally there would be a spillover in terms of party committees. Party committees were first implemented in SOEs afterall and naturally their subsidiaries (which include joint-ventures with foreign companies) would be affected as a result.

In 2018 an analysis prepared by the European Commission investigating the Chinese Party-State’s role in the domestic Chinese economy. It noted that Party organizations in both SOEs and private companies “can potentially wield significant influence, and allow for the CCP to directly influence the business decisions of individual companies.” [29]

In May 2018, the US-China Business Council noted that certain SOE joint venture companies had asked some of their foreign partners to alter their articles of association to support Party groups within the joint venture, even going so far as to request that they be amended to allow critical matters to be approved by the party organization before they are presented to the board. [29]

In one example, Mercedes-Benz established a Party organization in its local Chinese joint venture in 2013. The secretary of the Party organization participates in the company’s economic management meetings through the entire process and has full authority to participate in the company’s major decision making. This means that even in joint-ventures, party organizations still have sway in major decision making and economic management. [30]

​In 2018, a Samsung subsidiary had seven Chinese executives of the company who are all Party members and 74 percent of middle managers and above are Party members. The same article notes that 70.8% of all foreign enterprises have party organizations. In Pinpu Company given in the article, it was found that Party organizations play decisive roles in R&D decisions as well as decisions over production optimization. They also play a role of promoting party policies, such as for instance with Ford’s China subsidiary being convinced to start investing in New Energy Vehicles. In Nokia Shanghai, it was found that party organizations assisted heavily in human resources, especially in regard to employee management and development plans. [31]

Another 2018 article on Nissan’s automotive joint venture Dongfeng Motor Co. notes that their Party organization has been written into the enterprise charter, with members of the Party organization playing a role in enterprise decisions. This includes ensuring the direction of business development, complying with national laws and regulations, ensuring legal operations, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of employees, and promoting corporate stability, especially in the selection and use of talents. [32]

Control Via Shares

Previous essays in the series have gone over how limited liability corporations (Multiple shareholders in one company) could be controlled/steered towards state directives via internal corporate governance through the use of a majority or controlling state shareholder that coordinates the enterprise alongside party directives.

As mentioned earlier, it is not just SOEs that have implemented the Party Committees, but also limited liability corporations, some of which are listed on the stock market while others have a significant minority state share. 

Corporate groups in the People’s Republic of China, and by extension their subsidiaries and divisions, are therefore actually controlled by Party-State nomenklatura insider appointees working at the core holding company level, and as directors and officers of the subsidiary entities controlled by the core holding company. As Party-State bureaucratic political actors seeking advancement in the Party system, these individuals are perfectly responsive to Party-State policy (which necessarily includes national industrial policy), while at the same time they are content to ignore the interests of external minority shareholders in the listed subsidiaries they formally manage. [33]

Consequently, there are also ways for the CPC to institute corporate governance within these mixed ownership enterprises without establishing a controlling/majority share in these companies, via something that is known as a golden share. A golden share is a type of share that gives its shareholder veto power over changes to the company's charter. One golden share controls at least 51% of voting rights and may be issued by private companies or government enterprises. [34]

This concept was first introduced in 2013, to allow the CPC to exert more influence over private enterprises, particularly media conglomerates [35]. Between 2018 and 2022, several government entities took 1% stakes in popular news and content platforms, including US-listed Sina Weibo, 36kr, Qutoutiao and Kuaishou, according to company filings or public registration records. [36]

The stakes in subsidiaries of Alibaba and TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. have allowed the government to get in on—and police—the growth of the tech behemoths. Golden shares have become a useful tool to keep companies like these in line with party objectives without the need for the state being a major stakeholder. Companies that sell the government the much smaller stakes called golden shares are finding that even this way, the government is getting a lot of power over their businesses. The director whom China’s cybersecurity watchdog named to the board of ByteDance’s main subsidiary has veto rights over content on apps including Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, according to people close to the subsidiary. The director also can vote on corporate issues such as the subsidiary’s personnel decisions, compensation packages and investment or divestiture plans. [37]

Conclusion

In short, the idea that corporate entities, whether foreign, private or collective are somehow free from state influence, but more specifically party influence is untrue. Even companies with minority shares from the State have party committees onboard, let alone joint ventures with foreign enterprises. The Social Credit System is a means to hold corporations and their bosses accountable to certain standards to the benefit of the mass public. Corporate Governance in China is one that does not allow any corporate entities, SOE or non-SOE, to escape its grasp.

Author

​Chen Kojira.

Republished from RTSG substack ​

​In his recent book, La défaite de l'Occident (The Defeat of the West), Emmanuel Todd observes that the United States and its associates react to every international crisis only in violent ways, which enabled them to give Israel an unlimited license to kill on October 8, 2023. This "reaction" noted by Todd in fact goes much further than an expression of the nihilism of a civilization in perdition, even if it testifies to the moral decadence of Western elites who keep on imposing their rules on the entire planet. But the bellicose moods of our leaders are also the result of the ever-growing weight of the private military-industrial complex that has developed in Western countries at the expense of civilian production committed to the economic and social progress of their populations. The result has been the relocation of civilian industries to low-wage countries, and the transition in the Western bloc towards the domination of its financial sector over its industrial sector.

​The fight for peace and against the militarization of our societies is therefore not just a moral imperative, it complements the necessary struggle to defend existing civilian enterprises and promote a policy of re-industrialization of our countries. This can only be done within the framework of an economic policy planned by a state power under popular control, favoring socially profitable, productive, and creative investments at the expense of merchants of death. The fight against sending weapons to Ukraine or Israel, against military interventions and the dispatch of soldiers or mercenaries to Ukraine and Israel, against the bombing of Yemen or other countries targeted by NATO, against the presence of foreign troops in Europe and elsewhere, against sanctions and blockade policies, is also the fight for the reconstruction of our productive forces, for the development of scientific research and for social progress. Only then will we be able to defeat the forces that serve the murderous interests of the merchants of death running around the world to increase their profits. Profits from which wage-earners, workers, the precarious and the unemployed, receive fewer and fewer crumbs, as the rate of profit continues to fall.

Late globalized capitalism has reached the end of its road, since the whole world has been subjected to its rules and tariffs, and there are no longer any new markets to conquer. In reaction, local peoples and bourgeoisies have begun to promote development in the territories where they live, work, produce and create. This explains the emergence of counter-hegemonic powers such as China and Russia, and of ideologically very different states such as Cuba, Venezuela, (North) Korea, Nicaragua, Belarus, Iran, and Eritrea, all of which have chosen to oppose "capitalism without borders".

The fight for peace therefore aims to disarm powers that have failed to fulfill their commitments, such as those expressed in the preamble to the French constitution, which is supposed to institute a "social republic", and those contained in the United Nations Charter prohibiting the use of force outside the right of self-defense, a right that should be interpreted solely within the framework of the United Nations system.
 
Geopolitics as a method for analyzing international conflicts and social relations

Initially, geopolitics was a method of analysis developed mainly by researchers working for certain colonial powers. Its aim was to analyze, on the basis of geographical and territorial data, the fundamental interests of each state, which was supposed to be either opposed to or, on the contrary, a partner of other states. This method tended to determine, in an initially rather mechanical way, conflicts seen as almost "natural" and inevitable, with the aim of controlling a "vital space". In its most extreme form, this led to the justification of Nazism, which sought to conquer "the vital space necessary for the German people". After 1945, geopolitics was delegitimized as a bourgeois, imperialist science, before that is, relevant elements of this method were gradually rediscovered in the USSR of the 1970s, as well as in the USA, especially if made dynamic through a class analysis of each state's politics.

To use geopolitics dynamically, we must first determine the class basis of each state, in the knowledge that in our time, there is no such thing as a "chemically pure" system, since every state is confronted with trends either pushing it towards more capitalism and deregulated markets or, on the contrary, pushing it away from them to build alternative paths. It is in this context that the place occupied by each country in the era of globalization in the "international division of labor" combines with the territory it occupies and the economic potential this gives it. This explains why our era is one of a de facto Third World War between forces of unipolarity centralized around the USA, NATO and their allies, and counterforces of multipolarity. Today, however, this war is taking place in a "hybrid" form, with multiple "local" hot wars being waged by protagonists unable or unwilling to confront each other directly. This "pacifying" factor is all the more evident as the domination of the consumer society model and the triumphant individualism of neoliberalism have led a mass of people to reject the idea of risking their lives in the service of a higher cause.

The dominant Western powers are controlled by bourgeoisies who can set commodity prices ("terms of trade") and derive wealth from them. Depending on the balance of power between countries and social classes, this wealth can be used to distribute crumbs in order to corrupt at least some of the working classes who would have an objective interest in breaking away from the capitalism organized around Wall Street and the City of London.

In economically dominated countries, on the other hand, we have to deal with a comprador bourgeoisie that takes advantage of its role as local intermediary for foreign imperialist bourgeoisies. But there are also national bourgeoisies seeking to defend their national market, their territory, and to launch self-centered development policies to face up to the competitive pressures of those powers dominating the world market. In this context, wage-earners in dominated and overexploited countries, as well as those in "central" countries, act as a spur to greater independence for their national bourgeoisies and petty bourgeoisies. In this struggle, the popular forces and national bourgeoisies rely on the advantages of their national territory, in terms of resources and geostrategic position. Their aim is to conquer autonomous spaces that will enable them to launch policies of development, industrialization, and even socially progressive reforms. Geopolitics can therefore be a useful scientific method if it combines analysis of the territorial situation of each political entity, in terms of strategy, resources, historical links with its neighbors ("geo-economics" and "geo-culture"), etc., with analysis of the class base of each state formation. It is against this backdrop that, among the forty or so armed conflicts in the world, known or unknown, more or less active or "frozen", since October 2023, the conflict in Palestine has become the "central conflict" between the unipolar bloc and the "nebula" of countries and peoples manifesting counter-hegemonic tendencies. This conflict is a continuation of the wars and tensions we are witnessing in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, the African countries of the Sahel, Taiwan, and the Korean peninsula - in other words, all around the Eurasian core.
 
Geopolitics of Palestine

If we look at the map of Palestine and the Israeli entity that took total control of it between 1948 and 1967, the first thing that stands out is the fact that its borders were drawn during the Anglo-French Sykes/Picot agreements following the First World War in such a way as to encompass the entire southern desert (Negev or Naqab), This enabled the territory to extend all the way to the Red Sea, giving whoever controlled Palestine a "dagger" cutting through the Arab nation, the Islamic world and the Afro-Asian space ("Third World" or "Global South") in two. These two parts, located on either side of the Palestinian territory redesigned by the English colonist, can no longer communicate directly without passing through Palestinian ("Israeli") territory. As a result, every Arab, every Muslim and every anti-colonial activist in Africa or Asia sees his or her territorial, national, cultural, religious or anti-colonial solidarity space - and therefore both his or her imaginary and political space - blocked or at least hindered in their movements. This was the historical reality of the Crusader state in the Middle Ages and, geopolitically speaking, it is exactly the same position occupied by the Israeli entity (see the geostrategic context of Zionism from the development of English colonialism).

As a result, the Palestinian question has become the emblematic cause of all anti-colonial movements worldwide. Depending on their political and cultural sensitivities and class cleavages, each has been able to accentuate the anti-imperialist, nationalist, cultural or religious component of this state of affairs. So, in the geopolitics of Palestine, there is simultaneously an anti-Western geopolitical aspect, a social aspect aimed at promoting the struggle of the working classes against the bourgeoisie of the "collective West", and a symbolic and identity-related aspect that can take the form of Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, a more specific Palestinian nationalism or an Islam experienced as an element of affirmation in the face of the colonizer. For, as Thomas Sankara once said, "You don't read the Bible or the Koran in the same way if you're rich or poor, otherwise there would be two editions of the Bible and two editions of the Koran". This was amply demonstrated by the period that followed the dismantling of the socialist camp and the Soviet Union.
 
Palestine at the heart of the contemporary world's geopolitical contradictions

This central aspect of the Palestinian question, at once geopolitical, political and identity-related, explains why there is a particularly violent opposition between the Arab comprador bourgeoisies at the head of regimes that have little legitimacy and are therefore particularly authoritarian, and the "Arab street", the term used to designate the Arab masses, especially the Palestinians, including the Palestinian masses who have taken refuge in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Gulf states. This situation also explains why all the conflicts in Western Asia, Northern Africa and generally elsewhere in the world have a more or less direct link with the Palestinian question. This is very clearly seen in the Arab-Islamic cultural area, but it is also evident in sub-Saharan Africa, in socialist countries, in Latin America and among the various layers of marginalized populations in the West. The exceptional mobilization visible today and in the past among the Irish in support of Palestine therefore appears extremely symptomatic of the objective and subjective reasons mentioned above, in connection with the national liberation struggle of the Irish people, for Ireland was geopolitically confronted with British imperialism as it still is today within the framework of the unipolar world centered on the Anglo-Saxon powers.
 
Palestine and national liberation struggles

Palestinian geopolitics is marked by the attempt made by Zionists since the beginning of the colonization of Palestine to "de-territorialize" the indigenous people, replacing them with imported colonial settlers who are supposed to "territorialize" in their place. And today, all the world's conflicts around the issue of globalization actually raise the question of territory and its role in the politics of right to development in the face of policies pushing for relocation of production and promoting "supranational" strategic and economic choices. This explains why "Israel" has been and remains perceived by all Arab peoples as a "foreign body" prevenitng any possibility of regional integration and development. This situation also explains why, until the demise of the USSR, the Palestinians were generally able to rely on socialist, non-aligned, and decolonized countries. After the crisis and the end of this "bipolar" world, the Palestinians found themselves on their own in an environment where, quite naturally, the comprador bourgeoisies of the Gulf, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan tended to dominate the region. But more broadly, all the peoples of the world see the Palestinian cause as emblematic of their own relationship to the right to development, recognized in the 1970s by the UN, globalized capitalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. The Iranian revolution, the rise to power of the People's Republic of China and the return to world politics of a Russia where a national bourgeoisie has partly asserted itself in opposition to the "oligarchs" (making up in fact the local comprador bourgeoisie) have been the cause of the development of the Eurasian integration process, which has led to the formation of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

These organizations represent a counterweight that is helping to loosen the imperialist stranglehold on West Asia and Africa in particular. And as Euro-Atlantic imperialism has entered a deep crisis, particularly since 2008, fractions of the bourgeoisie in key countries such as the Gulf states, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Venezuela, etc. have been increasingly tempted to distance themselves from the unipolar center in favor of the "multipolar adventure". The latest episode is the accession of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt to the BRICS. Against this backdrop of multiple global and social contradictions, we can see that, both objectively and indirectly, the process of asserting counter-powers around the world has given new impetus to the resistance of the Palestinian people as a consequence of the weakening of the Western pole. Today, the Palestinians, thanks to the military aspect of the action of October 7, 2023, and after the American-European defeats in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and at least in part in Ukraine, have been able to regain their central place on the dividing line between the "collective West" and the "global South", a new counter-hegemonic factor towards which the more independent "Eastern European countries" are also tending. For the first time since the 1970s, China has justified armed struggle as a legitimate and internationally recognized means of struggle for a colonized people.
 
The new stage in the struggle of peoples, countries and states towards sovereignty

The relocation and de-industrialization of countries in the NATO bloc centered on the USA, the Anglo-Saxon Five Eyes, the EU, and Japan, with Israel as their colonial outpost at the Afro-Asian crossroads, have reinforced the weight of the only non-relocated productive sector in these countries, the military-industrial complex. The emerging counter-hegemonic powers, for their part, are tempted to promote a more productive and therefore more peaceful economic development policy. This explains why Russia waited from 2014 to 2022 before reacting to NATO's eastward thrust threatening Ukraine, and why China and Iran favor diplomacy and economic ties over the use of force to alter the international balance of power. This is in line with the interests of the local national bourgeoisies, who are also organically reticent about any international tension that might push the popular masses to take direct control of the struggle for national sovereignty, and therefore for popular sovereignty and the democratization of social and economic relations, and political systems.

The difference between the national bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie in the countries of the Global South is clearly perceptible when we observe the fear of the people that plagues the comprador bourgeoisies, while national bourgeoisies seek to retain the support of its people and wishing to retain a monopoly on power; in other words, betrayal on the one hand, opportunism on the other. In a context where social tensions tend to explode all over the world due to the relative and often absolute impoverishment of the masses, Palestine, and Gaza in particular, is the world's "pressure cooker", bound to explode following attempts by Western powers and conservative Arab and African regimes to bury the Palestinian question by putting forward less burning issues. This is one of the reasons why the military leadership of Palestinian Hamas has decided to take a proactive response to the despair of the people of Gaza and Palestine, as well as of neighboring countries and those further afield who feel humiliated. Indeed, it had long been preparing for the coup de force of October 7, which, whatever one may think in the specifics, fundamentally altered the international balance of power.

This explains the extraordinary response to Gaza from people all over the world, including in Western countries. In the USA, for example, the mobilizations in support of the Palestinians represent the most massive demonstrations to have taken place in that country in the last two decades, to the point where 40% of Jews in the USA disassociate themselves from Israel and 30% of neo-evangelicals are now in favor of the Palestinians. This shows that prejudice aimed at essentializing one religious group, or another is counter-productive. In France, the Macron government's ban on demonstrations denouncing the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the repeated aggressions targeting Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank, are not evidence of power strength, but, on the contrary, of its weakness. France's conservative authorities have been forced to adopt a particularly authoritarian stance, in keeping with what happened during the Algerian war, and gradually with the mass movement of the Gilets jaunes, in order to avoid a possible "convergence of struggles" between "pro-Palestinians", working-class neighborhoods largely populated by people of immigrant origin, the movement for decent pensions, farmers, outlying towns, Gilets jaunes, trade unionists, community activists, radical political activists, Muslims, Marxists, working-class priests and so on.

For all progressives in France and elsewhere in the world, and regardless of what some may think of the Palestinian tool that is Hamas (supported by its secular or Marxist allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq), this tool has been able to take into account the local and global contradictions of the moment. This qualitative leap explains why no Palestinian organization, including even the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, felt able to criticize this action. While we must always avoid the fetishism that leads to the adulation of certain organizations or, on the contrary, the demonization of others, we must also be in a position to observe how they are capable or incapable of modifying the balance of power in the long term. Organizations are merely tools which, sometimes consciously, sometimes less consciously so, can from time to time trigger a new process of struggle, turning things on their head and leading to the delegitimization of a whole bloc of powers. This explains the immense joy of the "Arab street", and more broadly of working-class neighborhoods and strata the world over, at the sight of young Palestinians storming the latest Israeli tanks. At a time when, in Ukraine, tanks sent by Western powers are being destroyed. To make us forget these extraordinary Palestinian feats of arms, we have been told about the horrors committed by these new fedayeen, even since certain Israeli witnesses and certain investigations by rare Israeli media remaining free have begun to cast at least some doubt on those horror tales.

(see: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-report-7-october-testimonies-strikes-major-blow-to-israeli-narrative/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkHs7ZG7rFY/
https://www.chroniquepalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Hamas_our_narrative.pdf).

All this reminds us of the article written by Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune describing the violence committed by the Indian Cipayan insurgents against British settlers responsible for prior, far more painful, violence and humiliations. So, even if the extreme pain we feel in the face of Gaza's martyrdom reminds us of other martyrdoms in history - the Paris Commune, the Warsaw Ghetto, the thousands Soviet, Yugoslav, Polish, Chinese, Greek, Algerian, Vietnamese, and Korean villages, etc. whose populations were exterminated to punish them for having given birth to rebels who might themselves have committed questionable or even reprehensible acts of violence, the essential historical fact is that the Palestinian question goes far beyond the question of Hamas alone, which is no more than a tool of the Palestinian people at a given moment in history. On the other hand, Hamas's action has put the Palestinian question back at the heart of the global contradiction, namely the pivotal issue in the balance of power between the imperialist pole and the various counter-hegemonic currents emerging around the world. This is what the peoples of the world have already remembered, and this is what world history will remember. (Note: For thoughts on the possible future of a reunited, multi-ethnic Palestine after the collapse of the "two-state solution", see my article in the 2020 Géostratégiques magazine.)

The current "hybrid world war" situation therefore demonstrates that geopolitics is a useful method of analysis, to be combined with the analysis of social and economic relations. At this stage in human history, it is becoming essential to make an intellectual effort to understand the world as a whole, and to link the tragedy being experienced by the Palestinians with that being experienced by Ukraine, Syria, and all other countries at war or under economic blockade, in the face of a dominant capitalist world whose rotten nature is becoming ever more apparent.

Author

Bruno Drweski is an activist and a professor at the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations in Paris. He sits on the editorial board of 4 peer-reviewed journals and has published extensively (articles, chapters, and books) in history, political sociology, and geopolitics.