By adding two new African member-states to its roster, last week's summit in Johannesburg heralding the expanded BRICS 11 showed once again that Eurasian integration is inextricably linked to the integration of Afro-Eurasia.
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Belarus is now proposing to hold a joint summit between BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).  President Aleksandr Lukashenko's vision for the convergence of these multilateral organizations may, in due time, lead to the Mother of All Multipolarity Summits.

But Afro-Eurasia is a much more complicated proposition. Africa still lags far behind its Eurasian cousins on the road toward breaking the shackles of neocolonialism.   

The continent today faces horrendous odds in its fight against the deeply entrenched financial and political institutions of colonization, especially when it comes to smashing French monetary hegemony in the form of the Franc CFA - or the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community). 

Still, one domino is falling after another – Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon. This process has already turned Burkina Faso's President Captain Ibrahim Traoré, into a new hero of the multipolar world – as a dazed and confused collective west can’t even begin to comprehend the blowback represented by its 8 coups in West and Central Africa in less than 3 years. 

Bye bye Bongo 

Military officers decided to take power in Gabon after hyper pro-France President Ali Bongo won a dodgy election that “lacked credibility.” Institutions were dissolved. Borders with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo were closed. All security deals with France were annulled. No one knows what will happen with the French military base.

All that was as popular as it comes: soldiers took to the streets of the capital Libreville in joyful singing, cheered on by onlookers.  

Bongo and his father, who preceded him, have ruled Gabon since 1967. He was educated at a French private school and graduated from the Sorbonne. Gabon is a small nation of 2.4 million with a small army of 5,000 personnel that could fit into Donald Trump’s penthouse. Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water. 

The military qualified Bongo’s 14-year rule as leading to a "deterioration in social cohesion” that was plunging the country “into chaos."

On cue, French mining company Eramet suspended its operations after the coup. That’s a near monopoly. Gabon is all about lavish mineral wealth – in gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, niobium, iron ore, not to mention oil, natural gas, and hydropower. In OPEC-member Gabon, virtually the whole economy revolves around mining. 
 
The case of Niger is even more complex. France exploits uranium and high-purity petrol as well as other types of mineral wealth. And the Americans are on site, operating three bases in Niger with up to 4,000 military personnel. The key strategic node in their ‘Empire of Bases’ is the drone facility in Agadez, known as Niger Air Base 201, the second-largest in Africa after Djibouti.  

French and American interests clash, though, when it comes to the saga over the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline. After Washington broke the umbilical steel cord between Russia and Europe by bombing the Nord Streams, the EU, and especially Germany, badly needed an alternative. 

Algerian gas supply can barely cover southern Europe. American gas is horribly expensive. The ideal solution for Europeans would be Nigerian gas crossing the Sahara and then the deep Mediterranean. 

Nigeria, with 5,7 trillion cubic meters, has even more gas than Algeria and possibly Venezuela. By comparison, Norway has 2 trillion cubic meters. But Nigeria’s problem is how to pump its gas to distant customers - so Niger becomes an essential transit country.  

When it comes to Niger’s role, energy is actually a much bigger game than the oft-touted uranium – which in fact is not that strategic either for France or the EU because Niger is only the 5th largest world supplier, way behind Kazakhstan and Canada. 

Still, the ultimate French nightmare is losing the juicy uranium deals plus a Mali remix: Russia, post-Prighozin, arriving in Niger in full force with a simultaneous expulsion of the French military. 

Adding Gabon only makes things dicier. Rising Russian influence could lead to boosting supply lines to rebels in Cameroon and Nigeria, and privileged access to the Central African Republic, where Russian presence is already strong.  

It's no wonder that Francophile Paul Biya, in power for 41 years in Cameroon, has opted for a purge of his Armed Forces after the coup in Gabon. Cameroon may be the next domino to fall. 

ECOWAS meets AFRICOM 

The Americans, as it stands, are playing Sphynx. There’s no evidence so far that Niger's military wants the Agadez base shut down. The Pentagon has invested a fortune in their bases to spy on a great deal of the Sahel and, most of all, Libya. 

About the only thing Paris and Washington agree on is that, under the cover of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), the hardest possible sanctions should be slapped on one of the world’s poorest nations (where only 21% of the population has access to electricity) - and they should be much worse than those imposed on the Ivory Coast in 2010.  

Then there’s the threat of war. Imagine the absurdity of ECOWAS invading a country that is already fighting two wars on terror on two separate fronts: Against Boko Haram in the southeast and against ISIS in the Tri-Border region.

ECOWAS, one of 8 African political and economic unions, is a proverbial mess. It packs 15 member nations - Francophone, Anglophone and one Lusophone - in Central and West Africa, and it is rife with internal division.

The French and the Americans first wanted ECOWAS to invade Niger as their “peacekeeping” puppet. But that didn’t work because of popular pressure against it. So, they switched to some form of diplomacy. Still, troops remain on stand-by, and a mysterious “D-Day” has been set for the invasion. 

The role of the African Union (AU) is even murkier. Initially, they stood against the coup and suspended Niger's membership. Then they turned around and condemned the possible western-backed invasion. Neighbors have closed their borders with Niger.  

ECOWAS will implode without US, France, and NATO backing. Already it’s essentially a toothless chihuahua – especially after Russia and China have demonstrated via the BRICS summit their soft power across Africa. 

Western policy in the Sahel maelstrom seems to consist of salvaging anything they can from a possible unmitigated debacle - even as the stoic people in Niger are impervious to whatever narrative the west is trying to concoct. 

It's important to keep in mind that Niger’s main party, the “National Movement for the Defense of the Homeland” represented by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, has been supported by the Pentagon – complete with military training – from the beginning.  

The Pentagon is deeply implanted in Africa and connected to 53 nations. The main US concept since the early 2000s was always to militarize Africa and turn it into War on Terror fodder. As the Dick Cheney regime spun it in 2002: “Africa is a strategic priority in fighting terrorism.” 

That’s the basis for the US military command AFRICOM and countless “cooperative partnerships” set up in bilateral agreements. For all practical purposes, AFRICOM has been occupying large swathes of Africa since 2007.

How sweet is my colonial franc

It is absolutely impossible for anyone across the Global South, Global Majority, or “Global Globe” (copyright Lukashenko) to understand Africa's current turmoil without understanding the nuts and bolts of French neocolonialism. 

The key, of course, is the CFA franc, the “colonial franc” introduced in 1945 in French Africa, which still survives even after the CFA - with a nifty terminological twist - began to stand for "African Financial Community". 

The whole world remembers that after the 2008 global financial crisis, Libya’s Leader Muammar Gaddafi called for the establishment of a pan-African currency pegged to gold. 

At the time, Libya had about 150 tons of gold, kept at home, and not in London, Paris, or New York banks. With a little more gold, that pan-African currency would have its own independent financial center in Tripoli – and everything based on a sovereign gold reserve. 

For scores of African nations, that was the definitive Plan B to bypass the western financial system. 

The whole world also remembers what happened in 2011. The first airstrike on Libya came from a French Mirage fighter jet.  France's bombing campaign started even before the end of emergency talks in Paris between western leaders. 

In March 2011, France became the first country in the world to recognize the rebel National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya. In 2015, the notoriously hacked emails of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton revealed what France was up to in Libya: "The desire to achieve a greater share in Libyan oil production,” to increase French influence in North Africa, and to block Gaddafi's plans to create a pan-African currency that would replace the CFA franc printed in France. 

It is no wonder the collective west is terrified of Russia in Africa – and not just because of the changing of the guard in Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and now Gabon: Moscow has never sought to rob or enslave Africa. 

Russia treats Africans as sovereign people, does not engage in Forever Wars, and does not drain Africa of resources while paying a pittance for them. Meanwhile, French intel and CIA “foreign policy” translate into corrupting African leaders to the core and snuffing out those that are incorruptible. 

You have the right to no monetary policy 

The CFA racket makes the Mafia look like street punks. It means essentially that the monetary policy of several sovereign African nations is controlled by the French Treasury in Paris.

The Central Bank of each African nation was initially required to keep at least 65 percent of their annual foreign exchange reserves in an “operation account” held at the French Treasury, plus another 20 percent to cover financial “liabilities.” 

Even after some mild “reforms” were enacted since September 2005, these nations were still required to transfer 50 percent of their foreign exchange to Paris, plus 20 percent V.A.T.

And it gets worse. The CFA Central Banks impose a cap on credit to each member country. The French Treasury invests these African foreign reserves in its own name on the Paris bourse and pulls in massive profits on Africa's dime.

The hard fact is that more than 80 percent of foreign reserves of African nations have been in “operation accounts” controlled by the French Treasury since 1961. In a nutshell, none of these states has sovereignty over their monetary policy. 

But the theft doesn't stop there: the French Treasury uses African reserves as if they were French capital, as collateral in pledging assets to French payments to the EU and the ECB. 

Across the “FranceAfrique” spectrum, France still, today, controls the currency, foreign reserves, the comprador elites, and trade business. 

The examples are rife: French conglomerate Bolloré's control of port and marine transport throughout West Africa; Bouygues/Vinci dominate construction and public works, water, and electricity distribution; Total has huge stakes in oil and gas. And then there’s France Telecom and big banking - Societe Generale, Credit Lyonnais, BNP-Paribas, AXA (insurance), and so forth. 

France de facto controls the overwhelming majority of infrastructure in Francophone Africa. It is a virtual monopoly. 

“FranceAfrique” is all about hardcore neocolonialism. Policies are issued by the President of the Republic of France and his “African cell.” They have nothing to do with parliament, or any democratic process, since the times of Charles De Gaulle. 

The “African cell” is a sort of General Command. They use the French military apparatus to install “friendly” comprador leaders and get rid of those that threaten the system. There’s no diplomacy involved. Currently, the cell reports exclusively to Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron.  

Caravans of drugs, diamonds, and gold

Paris completely supervised the assassination of Burkina Faso's anti-colonial leader Thomas Sankara, in 1987. Sankara had risen to power via a popular coup in 1983, only to be overthrown and assassinated four years later. 

As for the real “war on terror” in the African Sahel, it has nothing to do with the infantile fictions sold in the West. There are no Arab “terrorists” in the Sahel, as I saw when backpacking across West Africa a few months before 9/11. They are locals who converted to Salafism online, intent on setting up an Islamic State to better control smuggling routes across the Sahel. 

Those fabled ancient salt caravans plying the Sahel from Mali to southern Europe and West Asia are now caravans of drugs, diamonds, and gold. This is what funded Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), for instance, then supported by Wahhabi lunatics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. 

After Libya was destroyed by NATO in early 2011, there was no more “protection,” so the western-backed Salafi-jihadis who fought against Gaddafi offered the Sahel smugglers the same protection as before - plus a lot of weapons.

Assorted Mali tribes continue the merry smuggling of anything they fancy. AQIM still extracts illegal taxation. ISIS in Libya is deep into human and narcotics trafficking. And Boko Haram wallows in the cocaine and heroin market.  
There is a degree of African cooperation to fight these outfits. There was something called the G5 Sahel, focused on security and development. But after Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Chad went the military route, only Mauritania remains. The new West Africa Junta Belt, of course, wants to destroy terror groups, but most of all, they want to fight FranceAfrique, and the fact that their national interests are always decided in Paris. 

France has for decades made sure there’s very little intra-Africa trade. Landlocked nations badly need neighbors for transit. They mostly produce raw materials for export. There are virtually no decent storage facilities, feeble energy supply, and terrible intra-African transportation infrastructure: that’s what Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects are bent on addressing in Africa.  

In March 2018, 44 heads of state came up with the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) – the largest in the world in terms of population (1.3 billion people) and geography. In January 2022, they established the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) – focused on payments for companies in Africa in local currencies. 

So inevitably, they will be going for a common currency further on down the road. Guess what’s in their way: the Paris-imposed CFA. 

A few cosmetic measures still guarantee direct control by the French Treasury on any possible new African currency set up, preference for French companies in bidding processes, monopolies, and the stationing of French troops. The coup in Niger represents a sort of “we’re not gonna take it anymore.”

All of the above illustrates what the indispensable economist Michael Hudson has been detailing in all his works: the power of the extractivist model. Hudson has shown how the bottom line is control of the world’s resources; that’s what defines a global power, and in the case of France, a global mid-ranking power.

France has shown how easy it is to control resources via control of monetary policy and setting up monopolies in these resource-rich nations to extract and export, using virtual slave labor with zero environmental or health regulations. 

It's also essential for exploitative neocolonialism to keep those resource-rich nations from using their own resources to grow their own economies. But now the African dominoes are finally saying, “The game is over.” Is true decolonization finally on the horizon? ​

​(OrinocoTribune.com) - Military leaders in Gabon have taken power, placing the president under house arrest following disputed elections. The military takeover follows recent coups d’état in the former French colonies of Niger (earlier this year), Burkina Faso (2022), Mali (2020 and 2021), and Guinea (2021). Gabon’s military was likely inspired by the recent military coup in Niger, which France and its allies, including Nigeria and the US, have been unable to overturn.

“I think, obviously, the soldiers have been inspired by the coups in other countries, beginning primarily in 2020 with Mali,” said Milton Allimadi of Black Star News. “They have seen that, in spite of international denunciation and a call by the West, a call by the United States, France, by ECOWAS—which is a regional economic organization, the  Economic Community of West African States—for the people who initiated the coups to reverse them and surrender power to civilians, in each successive state they’ve seen that the people who carried out the coup have survived… After the military takeovers, you have seen the scenes of people coming out and celebrating in the streets. So, obviously, there is a major contradiction when a call for the military to reverse the coup is coming from Western leaders and organizations that people believe are actually propped by the West.”

Fifty-five-year family dynasty overthrown

The incumbent in Gabon’s recent election, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was declared the winner of presidential elections on Wednesday. Ali Bongo has led Gabon since 2009, and his father, Omar Bongo, was president of Gabon from 1967–2009.

Although it is sparsely populated, with only 2.4 million inhabitants, the Central African country of Gabon, located on the Atlantic coast of the continent, has significant reserves of oil—accounting for about 80% of Gabon’s exports—manganese, and timber that have been exploited in recent decades. As a result, Gabon’s GDP is much greater than that of many African countries. According to Gabon’s 2022 GDP per capita, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), Gabon is the sixth-wealthiest nation on the continent. Nevertheless, about 40% of the population lives in poverty, and unemployment is widespread.

Gabon’s Bongo dynasty has traditionally been an ally of the West during its 55 years in power, backing the illegal NATO bombing of Libya and assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, for example. Gabon’s economy is heavily dependent on links with France. However, in recent years, tensions between Gabon and France have developed. Numerous members of the Bongo family are currently implicated in French corruption investigations.

The Bongo administration had recently banned French media outlets France24 and RFI for their alleged bias in coverage of the elections. This was viewed by some as retaliation for the investigation into Bongo dynasty corruption.

The military leaders announced on state television that General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema of the country’s presidential guard has been designated president of a transitional committee to lead Gabon. It has been widely reported that Oligui is a cousin of Ali Bongo, and it is unclear whether the change in leadership represents a new direction for the country in terms of its relations with France and the West.

“The biggest question is, is the coup a result of the aspirations of the people of Gabon or the government of France?” wrote African Streams on social media.

As a former French colony and part of the Franc Zone, Gabon’s currency is the Central Africa CFA franc, which is pegged to the euro, and France has hundreds of soldiers permanently deployed in Gabon. France’s mining giant Eramet is the second-largest private employer in Gabon.


Cold War context

Speaking on Sputnik News’ The Critical Hour, historian Gerald Horne placed the most recent coup in the context of the new Cold War between the imperialist West, led by the US, and the emerging powers of China, Russia, and the global majority. In addition, Horne suggested that the spate of coups on the African continent, particularly in former French colonies, may continue.

“There are some intriguing aspects to this regime change in Gabon, and this is what your audience should focus on,” Horne noted. “That is to say, you could see this, in many ways, as the final chapter of the Cold War, because, before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, you had a plethora of states on the African continent that were pledging themselves to follow the socialist route. That included Benin, for example, that included Mozambique, that included Angola, that included the present Republic of the Congo—which, by the way, might be next on the list for regime change. It is a former French colony. In fact, it has been so close to France that during the Nazi occupation, the so-called free French set up their headquarters in Brazzaville, in the present-day Republic of the Congo. In fact, the then People’s Republic of Congo hosted a large delegation from the Black Panther Party during the good old days of the battle against global imperialism, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Horne continued, “these nations were frog-marched into being free market autocracies, so to speak, and now we see an ongoing rebellion against that. We see, in fact, we can fairly predict, that probably next on the list will be Cameroon, where Paul Biya is now 89 years old and has been serving for decades. He is trying to match the record of the late Omar Bongo. And there is restiveness in Cameroon, not least because he has imposed a very autocratic regime on those who do not speak French, believe it or not, and that has led, in fact, to an armed uprising in Cameroon.”

“There is one figure your audience may want to follow in the coming days with regard to Gabon,” suggested Horne. “I am speaking of Jean Ping, a former high-level official at the African Union, in Ethiopia, a high-level official in Gabon [Ping ran against Bongo in Gabon’s 2016 presidential elections], who has been detained up until the last few months. Interestingly enough, his father is Chinese and his mother is Gabonese, and there is a suggestion that the post-Bongo regime in Gabon, like many African countries—Zimbabwe, for example, South Africa, for example—will be looking eastward. And that means, of course, looking towards China, where Jean Ping will play a pivotal role.

“Between Washington and Paris.” added Horne, “there was this de facto agreement that Washington would step aside and let France maintain this neocolonial empire as long as it could keep the lid on it. But it can’t keep the lid on it, and Washington is now concerned about the encroachment of China, the encroachment of Russia in Africa, and whether their [US] stranglehold over natural resources will be jeopardized. Inevitably, this will lead to tensions with France. I might be tempted to say that we are officially in a new order, a new post-Cold War order.”

Traditionally, BRICS policy makers turn their attention to African issues every five years, when the summit is held in South Africa. Last month’s gathering was no exception, and compared to the previous years, was even grander in scale. For the first time ever, invitations were sent out to all the leaders of the continent, and almost everyone responded. The event in Johannesburg was attended by the leaders of 19 African countries, ten were represented by vice-presidents and prime ministers, and ten others by ministers of foreign affairs, ministers of economy, and ministers of finance.

The summit became a turning point for the BRICS, given it was most likely the last meeting of the association’s five founders in the traditional format. On January 1, 2024, six more states will join as full members: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, and Iran.

As a result, the world’s fastest-growing continent, Africa, will be represented in BRICS not just by one, but by three countries. The invitation to Egypt – and particularly Ethiopia –came as a surprise to most observers, but we may confidently assert that the development of Africa and the work of BRICS on the continent will become an essential and permanent part of the grouping’s agenda. 

In this regard, Russia has a particular responsibility as the host of the next summit, which will be held in Kazan in the summer of 2024.

Africa for BRICS and BRICS for Africa

The expansion of BRICS into Ethiopia and Egypt means that the summits will be held in Africa more often, and the organization’s activities will expand on the continent.

Several initiatives in the fields of logistics, energy, and finance have already been announced under the auspices of BRICS. All of them are different in scale and have varied in terms of success. Many affect the interests of Africa, but so far, no project has been implemented outside of South Africa. The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) could play an important role in financing these schemes. The physical presence of BRICS in Africa is currently limited to the NDB’s Africa Regional Centre, but it too finances projects only in South Africa.

Since 2016, the NDB has supported 14 projects in South Africa aimed at developing transport infrastructure, water supply systems, and the energy sector, as well as projects dealing with environmental protection and recovery from COVID-19. The only one outside its territory – the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, Phase II – also concerns South Africa, since it deals with supplying it with water. Most programs are implemented through the provision of loans that cover the entire cost or up to half of the cost of the project. Some projects also attract funding from the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Obviously, the activities of the National Development Bank require geographical diversification and more consistent profiling.

The parties agreed that specific criteria for obtaining the status of a “BRICS partner country” will be developed by the next summit. Many African countries may be interested in obtaining this status if it comes with practical advantages such as access to financing, assistance in the field of food security, the digitalization of public administration, the BRICS energy platform, and others. In other words, the status of a “BRICS partner country” will allow projects to be implemented under the auspices of the organization. Each state concerned will receive new development opportunities and will commit to ensuring the necessary conditions for implementing such projects.

Who was invited?

According to South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Naledi Pandor, 23 countries have applied to join, including the following African states: Egypt, Ethiopia, Senegal, Nigeria, Algeria, and Morocco. However, the Moroccan Foreign Ministry denied South Africa’s statement and Rabat’s officials did not take part in the events of the summit. One of the reasons for this was the presence of representatives from Western Sahara – a disputed territory.

Ethiopia and Egypt, as well as South Africa, are long-standing and reliable partners of Moscow. However, these countries have difficult relations with each other. This primarily concerns the long-standing conflict over the GERD dam, which Ethiopia is building on its section of the Nile and which Egypt considers a threat to its water supply. The BRICS platform may allow both to negotiate on an international level without interference from the West. It will also help the countries find common ground in the field of economics without escalating the political side of the issue. Meanwhile, for BRICS this will be a good opportunity to work out mechanisms for establishing economic ties between the participants even as they face various disagreements. 

By the start of the summit, Egypt had already become a shareholder of the BRICS New Development Bank, even as the country remains one of the most heavily indebted on the African continent. Cairo’s volume of external debt amounts to $163 billion, and the Egyptian pound is steadily depreciating. Because of this, using alternative currencies for trade and especially imports is a priority for the country. Russia is the most important supplier of grain to Egypt. Converting trade into rubles, yuan, pounds, and now UAE dirhams will be an important task in the coming years.

Within BRICS, Ethiopia will represent the African continent in a no less major way than South Africa. Ethiopia is a founding country of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and home to the headquarters of the African Union. Moreover, Addis Ababa is widely considered the diplomatic capital of Africa. However, just like in the case of Egypt, the problem of external debt ($28 billion, with a significant part owed to China) has significantly impeded the country’s development in recent years. Ethiopia’s debt restructuring process has now started and new BRICS partners, such as the UAE, will be able to participate in this process not only on a bilateral basis, but also by means of the NDB and other institutions which will be created in the future. 

The Algerian government has also applied to join BRICS and become a shareholder of the NDB, offering an initial contribution of $ 1.5 billion. In July of this year, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune visited Russia and China, and the Algerian side “informed, again, the Chinese side of the steps it has taken to apply for Algeria's membership of the BRICS” and China “welcomed Algeria’s positive willingness to join this group and affirmed supporting its efforts to achieve this objective.” However, Algeria did not receive an invitation.

If a change in government sees Argentina withdraw its candidacy, Russia could theoretically resume negotiations with others. Algeria – a long-standing and loyal friend –  could become an ideal representative of the Francophone world in BRICS, as long as the window of opportunity remains open. This may be possible since the document defining the participation criteria and the procedure for accepting new members has not yet been publicly disclosed. 

Russia for BRICS and BRICS for Russia

An important part of the preparations for the BRICS summit in South Africa were negotiations held at the Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, which took place in July. The goal to promote a deeper BRICS-Africa partnership, for example, was sealed there. Russia, which will host the 2024 BRICS event, intends to promote the expansion of economic cooperation tools and to establish a structure for relations between members, as well as with Africa.

For Moscow, it is particularly important that de-dollarization has become a systemically important BRICS initiative – and not only in matters of trade, but also investment, banking, and international reserves.  BRICS countries are already doing a lot in this respect, including accumulating physical gold reserves and reserves in each other's currencies, and connecting to systems for the transfer of financial messages. However, there is still a lot to be done.

According to the summit’s final declaration, finance ministers and the directors of central banks were given the task of optimizing trade in national currencies, and the like, which should strengthen the role of BRICS financial institutions. This will help African countries overcome dependence on Western-dominated internationallenders – the successors of the Bretton Woods system – and will provide tools for dealing with energy poverty and ensuring food security.

The need to create sustainable food supply chains was also stated. This vital both for Africa and for exporters, represented within BRICS primarily by Russia.

The expansion in Africa largely depends on Moscow. The NDB has refused to finance projects in Russia due to sanctions. This means that those funds may now be sent to Africa – especially since Egypt has become one of the bank’s shareholders, and Ethiopia will likely have a similar opportunity soon. However, first of all, the interests and recommendations of Russia as a shareholder must be taken into account. 

Today, Russia's priorities within BRICS are concrete projects such as the International North–South Transport Corridor and the general development of logistics and other transport corridors. There are also plans to create a trust fund to support BRICS research infrastructure.

September 2 marked the 78th anniversary of the World War Two surrender ceremony onboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. This moment formalized Japan’s unconditional capitulation to the United States, and its allies, and marked the end of the conflict. From the Japanese perspective, it had been ongoing since the Marco Polo bridge incident of July 7, 1937, which started the Sino-Japanese War.
​
There was no negotiation, only a simple surrender ceremony in which Japanese officials signed documents, without conditions.

Because that is what defeat looks like.

History is meant to be studied in a manner that seeks to draw out lessons from the past that might have relevance in the present. As George Santayana, the American philosopher, noted, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The Ukrainian government in Kiev would do well to reflect on both the historical precedent set by Japan’s unconditional surrender, and Santayana’s advice, when considering its current conflict with Russia. 
First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. ‘Denazification’ is a term that the Russian government has used in describing one of its stated goals and objectives. President Vladimir Putin has made numerous references to the odious legacy of Stepan Bandera, the notorious mass murderer and associate of Nazi Germany who is feted by modern-day Ukrainian nationalists as a hero and all but a founding father of their nation.

That present-day Ukraine would see fit to elevate a man such as Bandera to such a level speaks volumes about the rotten foundation of Kiev’s cause, and the dearth of moral fiber in the nation today. The role played by the modern-day adherents of the Nazi collaborator's hateful nationalist ideology in promulgating the key events that led to the initiation of the military operation by Russia can neither be ignored nor minimized. It was the Banderists, with their long relationship with the CIA and other foreign intelligence services hostile to Moscow, who used violence to oust the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, from office in February 2014.

From the act of illicit politicized violence came the mainstreaming of the forces of ethnic and cultural genocide, manifested in the form of the present-day Banderists, who initiated acts of violence and oppression in eastern Ukraine. This, in turn, triggered the Russian response in Crimea and the actions of the citizens of Donbass, who organized to resist the rampage of the Bandera-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists. The Minsk Accords, and the subsequent betrayal by Kiev and its Western partners of the potential path for peace that these represented, followed.

Ukraine cannot disassociate itself from the role played by the modern-day Banderists in shaping the present reality. In this, Kiev mirrors the militarists of Imperial Japan, whose blind allegiance to the precepts of Bushido, the traditional ‘way of the warrior’ dating back to the Samurai of 17th century Japan, helped push the country into global conflict. Part of Japan’s obligations upon surrender was to purge its society of the influence of the militarists, and to enact a constitution that deplatformed them by making wars of aggression – and the military forces needed to wage them – unconstitutional.

Banderism, in all its manifestations, must be eradicated from Ukrainian society in the same manner that Bushido-inspired militarism was removed from Japan, to include the creation of a new constitution that enshrines this purge as law. Any failure to do so only allows the cancer of Banderism to survive, festering inside the defeated body of post-conflict Ukraine until some future time when it can metastasize once again to bring harm.

This is precisely the message that was being sent by Putin when, during the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum this past July, he showed a video where the crimes of the Banderists during the Second World War were put on public display. “How can you not fight it?” Putin said. “And if this is not neo-Nazism in its current manifestation, then what is it?” he asked. “We have every right,” the Russian president declared, “to believe that the task of the denazification of Ukraine set by us is one of the key ones.”

As the Western establishment media begins to come to grips with the scope and scale of Ukraine’s eventual military defeat (and, by extension, the reality of a decisive Russian military victory), their political overseers in the US, NATO, and the European Union struggle to define what the endgame will be. Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line, these Western politicians now have the task of shaping public perception in a manner that mitigates any meaningful, sustained political blowback from constituents who have been deceived into tolerating the transfer of billions of dollars from their respective national treasuries, and billions more dollars’ worth of weapons from their respective arsenals, into a lost and disgraced cause.

A key aspect of this perception management is the notion of a negotiated settlement, a process which implies that Ukraine has a voice as to the timing and nature of conflict termination. The fact is, however, that Kiev lost this voice when it walked away from a peace deal brokered between its negotiators and their Russian counterparts last spring, at the behest of its NATO masters as communicated through then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The decision to prolong the conflict was predicated on the provision to Kiev of tens of billions of dollars in military equipment and assistance. The authorities duly staged a mass mobilization, meaning that Ukrainian troops vastly outnumbered their Russian counterparts. 

Kiev's new NATO-trained and equipped force achieved impressive territorial gains during a fall offensive. The Russian reaction was to stabilize the front and carry out a partial mobilization of its reserves to accumulate enough manpower to accomplish the mission assigned from the outset of the operation – denazification and demilitarization. Denazification is a political problem. Demilitarization is not. In the case of Ukraine, it means to effectively destroy Ukraine’s ability to wage armed conflict on a meaningful scale against Russia. This objective also presumably entails the need to remove all NATO military infrastructure, inclusive of equipment and material, from Ukraine. 

Russia has been undertaking the successful demilitarization of Ukraine’s armed forces since the initiation of partial mobilization. The equipment Ukraine is provided by the West is similarly being destroyed by Russia at a rate that makes replacement unsustainable. Meanwhile, Russia’s own defense industry has kicked into full gear, supplying a range of modern weapons and ammunition that is more than sufficient.

The harsh reality is that neither Ukraine nor its Western allies can sustain the operational losses in manpower and equipment that the conflict with Russia is inflicting. Russia, on the other hand, is not only able to absorb its losses, but increase its strength over time, given the large number of volunteers that are being recruited into the military and the high rate of armament production. At some point in the not-so-distant future, the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine in the theater of operations will reach a point in which Kiev is unable to maintain adequate coverage along the line of contact, allowing gaps to open up in the defensive line which Russia, able to employ fresh reserves, will exploit. This will lead to the collapse of cohesion among Ukrainian troops, more than likely resulting in a precipitous withdrawal to more defensive positions that could be established west of the Dnieper River.

Ukraine, through its actions in 2014, lost Crimea. Ukraine, and through its choices in 2022, lost the Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson. And if Kiev persists in extending this conflict until it is physically unable to defend itself, it runs the risk of losing even more territory, including Odessa and Kharkov.

Russia did not enter the conflict with the intent of seizing Ukrainian territory. But in March 2022, Kiev rejected a draft peace agreement (which it had preliminarily approved at first), and this decision to eschew peace in favor of war led to Russia absorbing Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson.

As one of its conditions to even begin negotiating for peace with Moscow, Kiev demanded the return of all former Ukrainian territories currently under Russian control – including Crimea. To achieve such an outcome, however, Ukraine would have to be able to compel compliance by defeating Russia militarily and/or politically. As things stand, this is an impossibility.

What Ukraine and its Western partners do not yet seem to have come to grips with is the fact that Russia’s leadership is in no mood for negotiations for negotiations’ sake. Putin has listed its goals and objectives when it comes to the conflict – denazification, demilitarization, and no NATO membership for Ukraine. 

This is the reality of the present situation. Russia is working to achieve its stated goals and objectives. As things stand, there is little Ukraine or its partners in the US, NATO, and the EU (the so-called ‘collective West’) can do to prevent it from accomplishing these aims. The timeline is not calendar-driven, but rather determined by results. The longer Kiev – and its Western partners – drag out this conflict, the greater the harm that will accrue for Ukraine.
It is time for Ukraine and its Western partners to move to the path of peace and reconstruction. But this can only happen when Ukraine surrenders and accepts reality. 

Author

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. 

​Republished from RT.

The Moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
 
- The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám​

​In This Life, the philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that:

​Homer’s The Odyssey presents us with a similar message in book five. The situation Odysseus (the central character) is thrust into on Calypso’s Island reflects the meaninglessness of eternal life (Calypso is a beautiful female deity which has detained Odysseus for seven years). In the Island, Odysseus is guaranteed immortality and all the bodily pleasures he can imagine. However, when the character’s stay on the Island is introduced to the reader, Odysseus is weeping, missing his family, and longing to return with them.
​
In our contemporary logic of shallow hedonism (or non-Epicurean hedonism), where the satisfaction of desires and pleasures has raised itself into an ethical imperative, Odysseus’s actions reflect those of a madman. Within this contemporary logic, Odysseus’s actions are as unfathomable as Abraham’s killing of his son, Isaac, on God’s orders. Abraham’s action, as the Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard notes, is beyond the limits of comprehension, it is absurd and cannot be grasped as a “distinction among others embraced by understanding” (Kierkegaard 1985, 75).

Within the logic of contemporary bourgeois society our dominant mode of experience is having – we are what we have and what we consume (Fromm 1976, 26-7). In our capitalist hyper-consumerist societies, the Cartesian cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is turned into Cōnsūmere ergo sum (I consume; therefore, I am). The world is turned into a big “theater of consumption,” where meaningless enjoyment – whose real and well-hidden telos is the realization of profit obtained in the consumed commodities –becomes life’s prime want (Mbembe 2004, 394). An Island of infinite pleasure would seem, within the confines of this mode of relationality and irrational rationality, the purest form of good – a heavenly Island.

But it isn’t enough for Odysseus. Why?

Well, not only are there things that matter more than pleasure (if you wish, think of a hierarchy of values, some of the higher ones which are inaccessible in Calypso’s Island), such as honor, loyalty, family, etc., but the possibility of anything mattering at all within the confines of immortality is impossible. Odysseus’s life on the Island might have been pleasureful, but – insofar as it was sustained within conditions of immortality – it would have also been meaningless.

Only when the ever-present reality of our finitude is the background of all our actions can life obtain meaning. Death, that which Martin Heidegger called “the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all,” is the nexus through which meaning can emerge in our life (1962, 307). It is the fragile character of our lives which functions as the conditions for the possibility of meaning.

Odysseus’s struggle to leave the Island is a struggle for life, for family and honor, but most importantly, for a return to the finitude which underlays our being-in-the-world and provides us with the conditions for living meaningful, truly human lives.

As Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 masterpiece Troy has Achilles (played by Brad Pitt) say: “The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.” 

While it is our finitude which grounds our ability to lead meaningful lives, an awareness of our finitude does not guarantee that we’ll find, or create, meaning in our lives. An awareness of our mortality, therefore, while necessary, is not in itself sufficient.
​
We know we are not immortal. In fact, in our hyper-consumerist societies, the primacy of shallow hedonism is often rooted in a deep sense of our mortality. For instance, just a few years ago the acronym that grasped the zeitgeist of the U.S. was ‘YOLO,’ which stood for You Only Live Once. Under this motto, pleasure-centered licentiousness was legitimized. After all, why shouldn’t I enjoy myself to the fullest if I only live once?  

But this sense of mortality has not, and (under the conditions in which it exists) cannot, provide the fertile ground needed for us to create meaning in our lives. We live in societies riddled with depression, anxiety, stress, etc. As the young Karl Marx had already observed by 1844, capitalism systematically alienates us from our labor, its product, our fellow human beings, nature, and from our species-essence (gattungswesen, by which he meant our ability to creatively objectify ourselves onto nature through our labor).[1] These are profound crisis at the human level (crisis comes from one of the Greek words for separation, krísis), and pervade our lebenswelt (life-world) or forms of being-in-the-world under our current capitalist-imperialist mode of life.

In many ways, a lot of these social-psychological ills have been normalized. As Dr. Gabor Mate shows in The Myth of Normal, even things like chronic illness, which in many cases can be traced back to stress patterns formed out of the habits people are thrusted into by the dominant order, are anything but normal – in fact, they are “profoundly abnormal” in just about every way possible (Mate 2022, 7). Trauma (both its big T and small t iterations) is essentially rooted, as Dr. Mate notes, in a “fracturing of the self and of one’s relationship to the world” (Mate 2022, 23). This is, in essence, another form of the same crisis Marxism has explained, condemned, and combatted since the middle of the 19th century.

In the midst of our alienated, exploited, and oppressed mode of existence, the form of life we live in must, in order to successfully finish the cycle of capital accumulation for which we were exploited in the first place, bombard us with advertisements destined to make us Homo consumericus in those few hours of the days were – although feeling the lingering affects of the work day – we are not directly getting exploited. The consumption of advertisements – which studies have shown to take up, on average, four years of our lives – is a form of consumption which proliferates our desires to consume. It is the equivalent of drinking Coca-Cola, a drink shown to dehydrate us further, in order to quench our thirst.

Additionally, since we often can’t afford this (wages have stayed low, prices and job precarity have risen), we are forced to turn to borrowing to pay for what we consume. The American working class, indubitably, is amongst the most indebted in the history of humanity. This form of debt-slavery which characterizes the lives of the modern American proletariat and reproletariat (i.e., the section of the last century’s middle-classes which have fallen back to precarity and instability), is a form of what Marx calls in the third volume of Capital the “secondary exploitation… which runs parallel to the primary exploitation taking place in the production process itself” (Khrachvik 2024; Marx 1974, 609). This has ushered into world-history a new form of superexploitation within the metropole itself, where its working masses are not only exploited (direct, primary exploitation) but cripplingly indebted (secondary exploitation), and therefore, super, or doubly, exploited.

How can any meaning arise in lives plagued by alienated work and meaningless consumption? It is not enough to show that we are dealing, as a society, with a deep crisis of meaning. Viktor Frankl, for instance, already described in the middle of the last century through many widely read and celebrated books the universal character of meaninglessness in modern bourgeois society (Frankl 1985, 164). But is this recognition enough? Must we not inquire as to its origins? Must we not explain, and not just describe these crises?  

A scientific explanation of these pervasive social-psychological ills would have, as Dr. Mate notes, “revolutionary implications” (Mate 2022, 8). The question would be, can the sciences in these fields (especially its mainstream trends), be able to overcome what the Marxist scientists Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin have called their “Cartesian reductionism” (Levins and Lewontin 1985, xii)? Can they move away from bourgeois philosophical assumptions which divide mind and body, individual and society, which observe things as dead and static entities, and which reify them from the larger totalities whose existence in they presuppose? In short, can these sciences adopt – either consciously or not – the materialist dialectic and its focus on universal motion, interconnection, contradiction, totality-analysis, etc.? These are the foundations through which we may reproduce the concrete concretely in thought, and hence, understand the world in all its complexities (Garrido 2022, 34-40).

A central obstacle in this task is not only the bourgeois character of the institutions they’re forced to operate through, but, as an ideological reflection of this, their adoption of the view that they are (and this is especially true in the ‘hard’ sciences) somehow above ideology and philosophy. What an ideologically loaded sentiment! We are back to Plato’s cave, back to prisoners who take the conditions of their particular enchainment to be the whole of reality itself. The truth is, while the sciences often fancy themselves to be ‘above’ philosophy and ideology, “in most cases,” as Friedrich Engels had noted, they are “slaves to precisely the worst vulgarized relics of the worst philosophies” (Engels 2012, 213). “Nothing evokes as much hostility” in scientists, Levins and Lewontin write, “as the suggestion that social forces influence or even dictate either the scientific method or the facts and theories of science” (Levins and Lewontin 1985, 4). A re-grounding of the mainstream sciences in a consistent dialectical materialist worldview, along with the uprooting of the profit motive that dictates its telos in our mode of life, would readily provide a richer, more comprehensive, and – necessarily – a more revolutionary understanding of our crisis of meaning and what overcoming it entails.[2]

​The point which I would like to get across here is the following: the crisis of meaning we are experiencing is systematically rooted in the capitalist mode of life. This is something which can, and has, been scientifically proven. It is not simply a question of ‘culture’ or ‘individual accountability’. While it manifests itself in our culture and individual lives, its existence there reflects the forces at play in the economic base of society. The crisis in our culture and in our individual lives is a product of the heightening of the contradictions at the foundation of a moribund capitalist-imperialist order.
​
This is where a lot of the commentary (especially critical in character) on the crisis of meaninglessness misses the mark. It merely describes the way the crisis looks by the time it gets to the social-psychological level, remaining ‘cultural’ in its critique through and through, never explaining the underpinning motion and contradictions producing that which they critique. The superiority of the Marxist outlook (i.e., dialectical materialism) is found in its ability to do precisely this – to explain and not just describe, to show the underlying foundations producing movement at the surface, and not simply taking that surface for the whole of reality.

It is important to note, however, that our contemporary crisis of meaning doesn’t necessarily entail that meaningful lives are impossible. In the fringes of quotidian society there are still people who, like Odysseus, find meaning in their family life, in tending to familial duties. There are also, like Odysseus, people who may be rooted in a strong sense of honor, in a deep drive for greatness in their respective fields. This is certainly a reality for many athletes, whose striving within their sports provides a source of meaning in their lives.

However, no greater meaning can be derived than that which arises from fighting against a world which systematically produces these crises of meaning. The greatest and most memorable human beings in the history of our species have been those, like Socrates, Jesus, Simón Bolívar, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Marx and Engels, José Martí, V. I. Lenin, Mao, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and many more, who have found their life’s purpose in the struggle to move humanity forward into a more rational and free world. There is, therefore, tremendous meaning to be found in the struggle against a world governed by exploitation, alienation, and oppression. A capitalist-imperialist order that has murdered tens of millions (four million in the Muslim world in the last two decades alone) and that is threatening humanity with nuclear Armageddon to sustain its hegemony, is worth making the object we commit our lives to destroying.

But a purposeful and meaningful life does not have as its only end destruction. We seek to destroy this order, not so that we can dance on the rumble, but so that the fetters it has set on humanity are destroyed. We seek to destroy not for destruction’s sake, but because what we destroy is itself a system, as the British Marxist William Morris called, of waste and destruction (Morris 1884). We destroy, in other words, so that we may construct a future which obliterates poverty, exploitation, plunder, war, oppression, alienation, meaninglessness, bigotry, etc. We destroy so that we may construct a world in which humanity can flourish, where people of all creeds may, as Che Guevara hoped, achieve their “full realization as a human creature” (Guevara 1969 162). 

Footnotes

[1] For more on the development of the concept of alienation through Marx’s work, see my review article: “Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation,” Monthly Review Online (June 11, 2022): https://mronline.org/2022/06/11/karl-marxs-writings-on-alienation-by-marcello-musto-reviewed-by-carlos-l-garrido/

[2] I have shown elsewhere how this poverty of outlook, conjoined with the material incentives of capitalism, has led to the utter failure of the sciences (the mainstream ones, there’s always good folks doing work that goes against the grain) to understand social-psychological ills such as depression (See: “The Failed Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Marxist Analysis”). An elaboration of these critiques is beyond the goals of this brief paper, I recommend interested readers to read the article referenced above from more of my work in that area. 

Author

Carlos L. Garrido is a philosophy teacher at Southern Illinois University, Director at the Midwestern Marx Institute, and author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (Forthcoming 2024).

A group of Serbian lawmakers has proposed joining the BRICS group of nations, arguing that Belgrade’s aspirations of EU membership have stalled and that the move would offer better economic prospects.
​
The Movement of Socialists, which acts as a junior partner to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, submitted a resolution on the issue to the Serbian parliament on Monday.

In a statement, the group insisted on a public dialogue to address “the indisputable fact that Serbia’s so-called European path has a clear alternative embodied in… BRICS.” 

The MPs insisted that the world “has become multipolar again,” adding that “the political hegemony of the collective West” was clearly coming to an end.

The Movement of Socialists, which is led by Aleksandar Vulin, the head of Serbia’s main intelligence agency, also denounced “the imposition of EU integration as a ready-made solution and the only way,” as well as “the hypocrisy of the Brussels administration.” 

It further claimed that the EU was engaged in “political blackmail” by pushing Serbia to give up part of its territory, in reference to the bloc’s demands that Belgrade recognize the breakaway region of Kosovo.

The group of MPs stated that nearly two-thirds of Serbians view BRICS membership as “a better and more acceptable integration option” which offers improved long-term prospects for economic development. This is evidenced by the recent expansion of BRICS, the statement added.

Earlier this month, BRICS – which currently consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – approved the candidacies of six countries to join the group. Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates will all become full-fledged members in January 2024.

Commenting in June on Serbia’s future, President Aleksandar Vucic suggested it may have to choose between BRICS and the EU. While reiterating that Belgrade would “stick to the European path,” Vucic admitted that EU membership was not on the cards in the foreseeable future.

“[The choice between BRICS and the EU] will be a matter for the new Serbian population in some ten or 20 years,” the president said, claiming that many countries want to “get out of the West’s dominance.”

​“You can’t be Neutral on a moving train”
- Howard Zinn ​

I am standing in front of an assemblage of found objects, culled from a midwestern city ravaged by capitalism and racism. The pile has been helpfully located here by an artist with support of the local billionaire’s philanthropic foundation, and a private art school in the suburbs. The artist’s statement informs me that the work is about the possible importance of these objects in the past, before they were abandoned, he wants me to consider how the objects were theoretically important to someone once. I’m confused because these are not trinkets from ancient Rome, many of the people who abandoned them are likely still alive, and the reason they were abandoned seems inextricably connected to the billionaire who paid for the show. I move along to a second piece, a display of books about the apocalypse. The artist's statement again offers insight, saying that they find the books interesting because the apocalypse has never come. I turn and look back at the shards of shattered lives that the artists had piled up with the help of the billionaire. It seems that the apocalypse came for those people. Their worlds ended and broke. Perhaps it doesn’t count if the apocalypse didn’t affect the rich people. Perhaps the next apocalypse will. The artist's statement assures me that the meaning is in the uncertainty, the billionaire’s logo bids me farewell as I leave.

Ambiguity is a key tool of the artist. The use of unresolved imagery and open metaphors allows for artwork to incorporate collaboratively constructed meaning, built by both the artist and the viewer. This allows the artists to deepen and expand their craft- developing a broad range of approaches to connect with an audience beyond direct literal representation. However when we look around at the post modern context, something seems to have gone wrong with this tool. What was once uncertain meaning has become in many cases intentionally oblique artworks, at best requiring an advanced degree to appreciate, and at worst offering little more than their own lack of clarity as a thesis. Today, the art world seems to have fetishized ambiguity: celebrating inscrutability for its own sake, regardless of the effect on the piece- and seem almost to value a failure to communicate with a mass audience as the highest form of work. It seems worth at least briefly investigating the effects of this trend, try to understand why it may be playing such a role at this moment in history, and offering a lens to understand and critique not ambiguity as such, but this trend of fetishized inarticulate artistic production.

In the modern art world, so completely dominated by capital: from foundations, to galleries, auction houses, collectors, tax loopholes, and media; excessive ambiguity seems to abdicate the construction of meaning not to the individual viewer, but to these very capitalist institutions. The artist allows capital to construct and guide the meaning of a piece far beyond any mythologized individual interaction between viewer and artwork. Taken from this perspective ambiguity risks creating art that simply allows the meaning of culture to be even more shaped by the rich and stamped with their world view. 

I am personally invested in the role of artwork in helping shape and transform the world, how it can support working class emancipatory politics, and inspire communities engaged in this struggle. This is obviously not the only goal of art, however, judging by present discourse in the art world, it appears to be a deeply undervalued one. Empowered by this broad indifference, I hope to offer not a complete conclusion, but to at least reassert a key avenue of critique.

To begin we must generally define what we mean by “Ambiguity.” For the purposes of this critique I identify ambiguity as the quality of uncertain meaning or subject in a piece of artwork, and the endorsement of this uncertainty by the creator. As stated above, at its best ambiguity allows an artwork to elevate beyond pure depiction, or a single viewpoint, and create a space where the perception of the viewer helps create the piece. Sometimes this creates a specific interpretation but just as likely it can make the uncertainty and quest for meaning a living part of the work. All of this is perfectly reasonable and indeed critical as a tool of the artist. A career of artwork that speaks in one voice and offers no space for engagement is less that of an artist and more of an advertiser. The quarrel then is not with ambiguity as such, but the more specific role it plays in the socio-economic context of the modern art world. 

It is difficult to define a clear line between the use of ambiguity by any one artist, and the more general trend of fetshized ambiguity. This is in part because the difference occurs not just at the level of the individual creator, but at the structural level- what works are purchased, funded, rewarded, and discussed by the broader art world. The break arises when ambiguity becomes not a tool for engaging an audience member, but to distance them from the artwork, to enforce a division between an elite who “gets” the piece, and the masses who are increasingly deflected from engagement. Rather than creating space for the audience to collaboratively craft meaning, fetishized ambiguity seems intent upon alienating or distancing a significant portion of the audience, in order to make what can often boil down to fairly shallow points about the uncertainty of modern life. Some of this is visionary complex work to be sure, but it seems worth questioning the inherent elitism of this approach, its widespread popularity among the institutions of the art world- and its intention in an art world already so deeply imbued with divisions class and power.

As with all aspects of cultural production, ambiguity functions in a matrix of several variables, and its meaning must be evaluated in this context. Key factors include: the relative visibility of the artist in society, the socio political system of artistic production and validation, and the overall reproductive system of the society at large. Thus, as the visibility of the artist in the society escalates, or the system artistic production is more captured by a specific class interest, or the political moment becomes more tenuous, the issue of ambiguity must be critiqued with more precision. In this context, the tool of ambiguity can overtake the overall mission of artwork- becoming fetishized into an end in it’s own right in order to serve specific class interests. This tendency is similarly conditioned by the very same social/political factors such as methods of display, popularization, materials costs, scale etc. that condition production as a whole. The question is not one why artists are creating ambiguous work, nor why their work is increasingly fetishizing ambiguity, this but why this tendency is being rewarded by the capitalists in control of the artistic sphere.  

In our present moment then, we must engage with how the art world functions and the role that fetishized ambiguity might play in this system. The art world in capitalist society is controlled not by the public, artists, critics, or even curators- but by capital. This is a point made by many fabulous scholars, though I am most influenced by Mike Davis essays, and Chin Tao Wu’s book “Privatizing Culture.” Through this scholarship, we can understand the art world less as a site of artistic production than of capital accumulation, appreciation, and tax avoidance. As a site of capitalist production, it has faced the same escalating investment as any industry, with capital propping up key galleries, expensive artistic experiences or traveling shows, and private foundations as key value and taste making institutions. A huge amount of artistic labor is done on speculation, never rewarded by collectors/foundations uninterested in its output, or by communities too under resourced to support it. 

Under capitalism the “art market” is concerned with the production of commodities that meet the needs of it’s consumers — who, be it through the foundation, gallery, or direct patronage, are the rich. Art becomes less about expression and more about developing either speculative value on the art itself OR a variety of side benefits be it to increase the value of a real estate holding, improving the patrons’ image, or helping avoid taxes. There remains a portion of this that is artistic production, attempting to explore human experience, emotions, history etc. but this role is increasingly eclipsed by the role of accumulation and commodification that has developed to serve the broad goals and needs of the rich. While the rich may also patronize specific works of a radical, or particular voice, these exceptions prove the broader structural rule of the modern art world- creating imagery in the service of capital. It is in this context that the fetishization of ambiguity must be evaluated for it’s purpose and role in the art world- which is to say in the goals of the rich. 

So why does artwork that fetishizes ambiguity serve the goals of the rich? In the context of capitalist production, art is valued as a site of surplus value production, cultural capital, and to obscure value from the state. None of these goals is invested in the content of the work- and in fact many of them may be harmed by work with a specific viewpoint that makes it unappealing to other wealthy buyers, particularly when coming from new artistic voices without pedigree that can be banked upon. A Jackson Pollock painting thus is more easily sold and resold by various investors (the word collector here seems to give them too much credit) than is a piece with a more clear, enunciated, or challenging content. Particularly once key taste making foundations and funders have funded and popularized his work. Thus ambiguity serves to increase the transferability of an artwork- no just allowing the rich to control it’s messaging, but to complete the transformation of artwork into a transferable token of wealth- a goal potentially undermined by political stance and clarity of purpose of the artists.

This fetishization of ambiguity is even more particularly interested, not just in the ambiguity of message- but in an ambiguity of solutions. Political artwork has long proved perfectly capable of being incorporated as yet another commodity to be incorporated into the value circuits outlined above. While it may suffer some limitations as a commodity that more formalistic or abstract work does not (narrower market, negative reception etc.) it can still be metabolized to this system and its goals. Where the line of demarcation is more starkly apparent however, is on the ambiguity of solutions about the political problems we face. The reason for this is not overly complex- living as we do within a capitalist society characterized by the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority in order to benefit the wealthy- many solutions that fundamentally address the problems we face are tied up with doing away with this system, and by extension the rich as a class. Artwork that clearly asserts this fact and communicates with a working class audience not only doesn’t serve the goals of the rich, but actively inverts the distancing of modern art, alienating the primary force creating and shaping the art world: wealth, and reaching out instead to a mass audience. Criticism is acceptable, collectible, and profitable, so long as the artist does not begin to reach for solutions, and/or so long as those solutions remain unconnected from the working class. 

When a piece of artwork is created, it is not released into an abstract individualized world, but rather into a web of social relationships constructed by capital and history. To release an ambiguous piece, in a context where the audience, spaces, language, and reward structures are all inextricably linked to and shaped by capital, is to risk handing over the task of interpretation to the rich. What institutions frame the work, what “public” views it, and what interpretations are crafted and elevated all become conditioned by a specific capitalist class, race, and gender analysis. In this context, is a gallery that relies upon the Gilbert foundations likely to show work that points out the exploitative/feudal relationship he has built with the city and its people; and If it does, will the gallery prioritize this critical interpretation if given the space to avoid doing so by the ambiguity of the piece and the artist’s stance? 

The point is not that ambiguity is a bad tool- it is that constructing an art world around the fetishization of ambiguity does not put the artists into dialogue with an independent audience, but rather into a dialogue with a disproportionately rich, white audience in an art world shaped by the rich. Ambiguity then becomes a tool for the rich to shape meaning in such a way as to continue their primary goals of profit expansion, and shaping our understanding of reality so as to limit the alternatives to the status quo. What’s more, we should perhaps be more sketical of an ambiguity that repeatedly asks questions with researchable answers, or invite us to once more contemplate the complexity of life.

So if the problem is not with ambiguity as such, but with the broader structures of wealth, where does that leave us? I would hesitate to fully prescribe a solution to such a vast and structural issue- however the very scale of the forces involved does suggest a first step: enter into a community practice. Socially conscious art can not be made in isolation, and an individuals distanced observations will all too frequently retain a voyeuristic shallow quality. Join a party, an organization, a reading group, a union, your block club- the point is to enter into the life of the masses, not attempt to interpret your community in isolation.

Beyond this, it would be foolish to try and prescribe some sort of universal formula for how to approach ambiguity as an artist. It seems better to hold a few questions in tension as we produce work- a lens to critique how and why we are choosing to use ambiguity in our work. Why are you choosing to use ambiguity in your work? Are you uncertain about the question you are asking? Have you done enough research to make a meaningful statement? Does your work stop at asking “what is happening?” Or does it invite the viewer into a process of imagining and building the future? Who will see this work, and in what context? What readings of the work will be most empowered by that audience and venue? 

Finally, there is the issue of the artist who stands behind the work. While it is no substitute for creating work that is able to communicate, artists must use as much of their platform as possible to explicitly combat a softening or limiting of their work by the art world. This does not mean self martyrdom by refusing to ever make money, or ever have your work engaged with by the art world, but it does mean being explicit about your values when in these spaces- and not deriving our value as artists from these spaces. Again this approach becomes meaningful and possible only as the artist roots themselves in their community and the actual work of understanding the world. The struggle to produce impactful work does not end when the artist sends their work out into the world- it continues as long as capital dominates the institutions and structures that interpret culture.

Despite all of this ambiguity remains a critical tool. The future is full of uncertainty, and art has a huge role to play in helping us as we struggle toward a future that we do not yet know. Ambiguity, framed as a collaboration with a working class audience to develop new meanings for our work and our world- this is a key place for this type of artistic ambiguity and exploration in our world. What we must abandon, or at least interrogate far more critically, is the ambiguity of analysis, of alternatives, of struggle. Neither artists nor the working class more generally needs yet another discussion of “what does it mean to pay rent and live in a world of ruthless exploitation, imperialism, and ecological collapse,” rather we need artwork that is helping us all engage with what me must do about these facts: a decisive shift from endlessly reflecting “what is happening” and toward the new horizons of “what is to be done?”

I​N THE last four years, covering the period of the Covid pandemic, China’s economy has grown two-and-a-half times as fast as the US, 15 times as fast as France, 23 times as fast as Japan, 45 times as fast as Germany, and 480 times as fast as Britain.
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To add in smaller G7 countries, China has grown four times as fast as Canada, and 11 times as fast as Italy.

China’s outperformance of advanced capitalist countries is even greater in per capita terms — a still better measure of productivity changes and potential for increasing living standards.

China’s per capita GDP grew three times as fast as the US, five times as fast as Italy, 44 times as fast as Japan or France, and 260 times as fast as Britain — while per capita GDP fell in Germany and Canada.

China’s outperformance of developing capitalist countries shows the same pattern — China’s per capita 4.4 per cent GDP annual average growth compares to 2.6 per cent in India, 1.3 per cent in Brazil, or 0.9 per cent in South Africa.

What is important about such economic growth, of course, is not abstract statistics but its meaning for the real lives of ordinary people.

The International Labour Organisation data on real, inflation-adjusted, wages shows that up to the latest available data — for most countries to 2022, and for India to 2021 — China’s annual real wage growth was 4.7 per cent.

For Britain it was 0.1 per cent, for the US it was 0.3 per cent, in France it was minus 0.4 per cent, in Germany minus 0.7 per cent and in India minus 1.3 per cent.

Given this enormous economic outperformance by China of capitalist countries, any rational discussion that should be taking place in Western mainstream media about the international economic situation would be, “why is China’s economy hugely outperforming the US and the rest of the capitalist West?” and, “what lessons are to be learned from China’s socialist economy that is so outperforming the West?”

For the left, the issue that needs to be assessed and publicised is, “Why are real wages rising 18 times as fast in China as in the US, 44 times as fast as in Britain, while in France, Germany or India real wages are falling?”

Indeed, the present author would argue that much greater stress should be placed on the latter point. The international left has begun to absorb that China has lifted more than 850 million people out of World Bank-defined poverty in 40 years — by far the greatest poverty reduction achievement in human history.

But it has not yet internalised how rapidly not only the poorest but average living standards are rising in China — far faster than in any Western country.

But, of course, this real economic situation can’t be discussed in the mainstream media, because its conclusions would be too damaging for the capitalist West.

Instead, a type of mad discussion is unfolding, with US claims about China’s economy becoming increasingly bizarre — one might say deranged — as they get further and further out of touch with reality.

President Joe Biden, for example, recently made a speech claiming China’s economic growth rate is “around 2 per cent,” when it was 5.5 per cent in the first half of this year and, as already noted, China’s economy is growing two-and-a-half times as fast as the US.

Biden bizarrely claimed that in China “the number of people who are of retirement age is larger than the number of people of working age” — entirely false, and inaccurate by a figure of many hundreds of millions of people.

Discussion in the US financial media equally refuses to face real facts. Because I am an economist, every morning, after the overall news, I switch on Bloomberg TV to catch up on the latest economic data. Discussion there is like Alice Through the Looking Glass — the book the principle of which is that everything is reversed compared to the real world.

Apparently, according to Bloomberg’s analysis, China’s annual average of 4.5 per cent a year growth in the last four years is an economy in severe crisis, whereas the US’s 1.8 per cent is allegedly strong growth — not to speak of Britain’s 0.1 per cent. Similar rhetoric, out of all contact with factual reality, pervades the Financial Times, The Economist, or the Wall Street Journal.

The left is well used to such US political lying — the completely fake claim that North Vietnamese ships attacked US naval vessels on August 4 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, used to launch the Vietnam war, or the equally untrue claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify the US invasion, were classic examples.

Today, the US systematically lies about the state of China and its own economy because it is crucial for US capitalism to prevent its own citizens, and close allies, from understanding the real economic trends.

It is further proof, if one were needed, of the truth that if the real world and a theory do not coincide only one of two things can be done. One is to abandon the theory, the other is to abandon the real world.

In this case, the theory is that the US, because it is capitalist, should outperform socialist China. The real world is actual economic performance — in which China continues to outperform the US and other capitalist countries by an enormous margin.

Unable to abandon its theory the US is therefore forced to abandon the real world — hence the demented denial of comparative economic performance noted at the beginning of this article.

While the left should expect lies from capitalism what is rather shameful is that some sections of the left repeat such nonsense — apparently believing that if they put in a few left phrases into an analysis taken from the Western press this constitutes “socialist” commentary.

For example, an article in the New Left Review’s Sidecar called China a “zombie economy.” Some “zombie” when China’s economy is growing anywhere between two-and-a-half times and 480 times as fast as any major capitalist economy.

The real data shows the reality is simple. China has far outgrown any Western capitalist economy for more than 40 years. It continues to do so.

The result in China is by far the world’s most rapid rise in living standards — not only for the poorest but for the whole average population. It is known as the practical advantage of socialism. It is fact. We know why the US has to make up big lies about it. There is no justification for sections of the left echoing them.

This year, five documents were released that confirmed the participation of the United States before and after the coup d’état in Chile against Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Below, are some details regarding the declassified files.

Documents from the US National Security Archive reveal that five weeks before the coup, President Richard Nixon ordered a CIA-orchestrated plot.
​US President Richard Nixon called in his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to oversee operations to prevent the inauguration of President-elect Salvador Allende. Kissinger reported that the Chilean army turned out to be “a rather incompetent group” after failing to take advantage of the chaos caused by the attack on the commander in chief of the Chilean Army, General René Schneider.

​The key role of the media in the coup
Agustín Edwards, owner of Chile’s newspaper El Mercurio, met with President Nixon and the CIA at the White House. We know in advance the role of the private media in the coup: propaganda and disinformation.

Unpublished audio files of Orlando Letelier confirm that Salvador Allende was preparing to call a plebiscite on September 11, 1973
​An unpublished audio recording of the murdered former minister Orlando Letelier confirms that President Salvador Allende was prepared to call a plebiscite on Tuesday, September 11, 1973, the day he was killed. There was never a plan to defend the government by way of arms. This was confirmed after the release of the US president’s daily report of September 8, 1973, in which he said that, for President Allende, the only solution to the conflict was “political.”

Attack on the left
The release of the secret files of Álvaro Puga, an adviser to Pinochet’s intelligence services, reveals how the dictator used lies and fabrications against the left to create a negative vision of it and thus justify the atrocities committed.



(Misión Verdad)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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The Aug. 8 wildfires that devastated parts of Maui are the deadliest in the U.S. since the 1918 Cloquet fire in northern Minnesota. Some two weeks after the fires, the official death toll stands at 115, and authorities in Hawaii have released the names of 388 people still unaccounted for. Tens of thousands have evacuated. Over 3,000 acres burned in Lahaina and neighboring communities.

Eighty percent of Lahaina burned. The town of 13,000 was called Lele in the Hawaiian language and was the capital of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i from 1802-1812 and again from 1820-1845. Native Hawaiians have inhabited the islands for about 1,500 years. The U.S. imperialists annexed Hawaii in 1898.

Investigations into the causes of the fire are still ongoing, but, as the Washington Post put it,

there is mounting evidence that Hawaiian Electric’s wind-damaged equipment sent sparks into the dry, overgrown vegetation surrounding its poles.

Maui County is suing Hawaiian Electric, alleging that the power company negligently failed to shut off power despite high winds from category 4 storm Dora. The dangers produced by drought conditions combined with hurricane winds were not unforeseen. On Aug. 7, Chevy Chevalier with KHON2 had written:

Although Hurricane Dora is passing well to the south of the Big Island, it will still be able to help pack a good punch with strong winds over Hawaii with high pressure building to the north at the same time. It will be windy, especially Tuesday morning through the afternoon, but it will also be dry with humidity levels down to around 40%. This can be a dangerous combination to start and quickly spread wildfires.

People’s fightback needed, not conspiracy theories

In 2022, a United Nations team comprising 50 researchers from six continents issued a report on devastating fires worldwide. They estimate that the incidence of such fires could increase by up to 57% by the end of this century.

This summer—amid record temperatures -- Canada had its worst wildfire season on record. Over a third of the U.S. population was under air quality alerts because of the Canadian wildfires.

Clearly, increasingly devastating wildfires are emerging as a major component of the climate crisis and from profit-driven land-management practices. Working-class and oppressed people the world over are on the frontlines and need to band together to take on the fossil fuel companies, banks, governments, and military establishments (especially the Pentagon) driving the crisis. We need a movement demanding public ownership and peoples’ democratic control of the utility companies; Hawaiian Electric is not the only private power company implicated in recent climate-related disasters. We need to stand behind indigenous communities and others affected by environmental racism.

What we don’t need are conspiracy theories. Aside from stoking faux-outrage, these do nothing to empower people and disempower us by making it more difficult to organize a fightback against the rich and powerful people who are causing the crises. When we spread this type of disinformation, we do the work of the banks and corporate executives.

From the Satanic Panic playbook

Unfortunately, these conspiracy theories have been amplified by social media algorithms. For example, some influenced by the dangerous QAnon movement have claimed that the fires were started by shadowy ‘’elites’’ to destroy evidence of underground tunnels where human trafficking occurs.

The idea of underground tunnels of this sort goes back at least to the 1980s with the outbreak of the ‘’Satanic Panic’’—a witch craze 2.0. The basis of Satanic Panic was the idea that there was a vast conspiracy of Devil worshipers ritually abusing and sacrificing children. The unsubstantiated claims were popularized through the 1980 book ‘’Michelle Remembers,’’ written by a psychiatrist and his patient, whose memories of childhood Satanic abuse were ‘’recovered’’ through hypnosis. That is to say, these were false memories implanted through the hypnosis process itself. The stories spread through daytime talk shows and tabloids.

Although no evidence of Satanic ritual abuse ever emerged, lives were destroyed. In Manhattan Beach, California, hundreds of children were interviewed during the McMartin preschool investigations and trial—likely traumatizing them in the process. They were questioned in leading and coercive ways, some even stating that they saw witches fly. Claims about tunnels entered into the investigations. Multiple excavations revealed only old structures and debris on the school property, no tunnels. Nobody was convicted in the 1987-1990 trials.

To return to the present situation in Lahaina, the claims about the intentional destruction of tunnels merely obscure the reality of climate change. For the social media figures benefitting from such conspiracy-mongering—as for fossil fuel CEOs—the name of the game is ‘’anything but climate change,’’ no matter how outrageous.

Land grabs don’t require sabotage

Another conspiracy theory circulating especially through right-wing media spheres is the claim that ‘’elites’’ caused the fires intentionally—sometimes with lasers, as conspiracy theory influencers preposterously alleged about California wildfires in 2018 and 2020—in order to buy up land for low prices, effectively robbing residents.

In fact, residents of Lahaina have been receiving calls from real estate investors wanting to buy up their properties. But this is opportunism, not evidence of arson.

Where this writer lives in the New Orleans area, waves of gentrification followed hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. New Orleans was not intentionally flooded, but developers and others saw their opportunity. The storms displaced thousands of mainly Black, working-class New Orleanians, and many could not return because the government never funded a people’s recovery. The rich and their politicians remade the city, demolishing public housing, replacing public schools with a mishmash of private and charter schools, and more.

Ruling-class offensives like that of post-Katrina New Orleans and potentially what is happening in Maui are likely to increase as climate change continues. We need to be prepared for this. But, again, we can only wage effective struggles when our analyses are based in fact. Conspiracy theorists co-opt the language of rebellion, but by sowing confusion and division, they prevent people from resisting and thereby aid the rich and powerful.

BRICS has decided to invite six countries to join the bloc — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The leaders also agreed on a future plan of expansion and called for increased use of local currencies in trade as opposed to the dollar

The three-day BRICS summit in South Africa concluded on Thursday, August 24 with the adoption of the Johannesburg II declaration, calling for “inclusive multilateralism” in global politics. The group also announced its expansion.  

The host of the 15th BRICS summit, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the outcome of the summit, saying that the bloc’s leaders had decided to invite six new members — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — effective January 1, 2024.
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After the inclusion of new members, BRICS will represent 36% of the global economy and 47% of the global population. Ramaphosa also confirmed that the group has decided on a process of further expansion in the future on the basis of consensus. ​

The summit was organized around the theme of ‘BRICS and Africa: Partnership for mutually accelerated growth, sustainable development and inclusive multilateralism’. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the summit, in addition to Ramaphosa. Russian President Vladimir Putin attended it virtually. Apart from the BRICS countries, more than 60 other countries also participated in the summit, with close to two dozen officially applying for its membership. 

The joint declaration at the end of the summit stressed on the need to increase the use of local currencies in international trade and other financial transactions. It noted that BRICS members have instructed their central banks to find ways to increase the use of local currencies in international trade and report on their success at the next summit scheduled to be held in Russia. 

The declaration expressed concern about conflicts across the globe and called for their peaceful resolution. It also demanded the “full and effective implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) [Iran nuclear deal] at an early date.” 

Inclusive multilateralism 

The declaration called for fundamental reforms in global governance, particularly in the United Nations and its Security Council to make them “more democratic, representative, effective and efficient and to increase the representation of developing countries in the Council’s memberships.” 

The summit expressed concern over the use of “unilateral punitive measures” by some countries in complete contradiction to the principles of the UN charter and called for greater respect and adherence to international law and the UN charter.  

The declaration also called for the promotion of human rights, including the right to development, and addressing issues in a non-selective and non-politicized manner. It demanded that all attempts to link terrorism with any religion, nationality, or ethnicity be rejected. 

The countries also called for building a global economic consensus and addressing systematic risks while promoting international cooperation to deal with debt vulnerabilities and support economic recovery in crisis-affected countries. 

They called for faster completion of the ongoing review of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) quota system with the objective of restoring their “primary role” and demanded that “any adjustments in quota shares should result in increases in the quota shares of emerging markets and developing economies (EMDCs) while protecting the voice and representation of the poorest members.”      

Restoration of rules-based multilateral trading system 

​The BRICS countries demanded an “open, transparent, fair, predictable, inclusive, equitable, non-discriminatory and rule-based multilateral trading system” with the World Trade Organization at its core and special and differential treatment for developing countries. In recent times, developing countries, especially the US, have been undermining the World Trade Organization (WTO),

They also called for a “a fair and market-oriented agricultural system, ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition,” claiming that “trade restrictive measures which are inconsistent with WTO rules, including unilateral illegal measures such as sanctions” affect agricultural trade and must be avoided.   

The declaration emphasized the “importance of G20 to continue playing the role of the premier multilateral forum in the field of economic and financial cooperation that comprises both developed and emerging markets.” 

It noted that BRICS countries are working to develop a “fast, inexpensive, transparent, safe and inclusive payment system” for international trade. This is seen as a response to the political use of the existing international payment systems by some developed countries. 
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The BRICS countries stated that they look forward to a greater role played by their New Development Bank (NDB) “in promoting infrastructure and sustainable development of its member countries.” They confirmed that three countries, Bangladesh, Egypt and the UAE, have joined the NBD as new members. They also expressed desire for the faster operationalization of the BRICS Think Tank Network for Finance that was established last year. ​

Conventional historians often like to talk about the so-called ‘Greek Miracle’ lasting from about 700-300 BCE in which many of the foundational concepts of the Western world first emerged. Pioneering developments in disciplines as diverse as architecture, drama, philosophy, poetry, political science, and sculpture were made by creative geniuses such as Euripides, Phidias, Socrates and Aristotle who remain the starting points for study in their respective fields. The era also witnesses dramatic political upheavals including the rise of Athenian democracy, its clashes with the Persian Empire and the Spartan state and the climactic hegemony of Alexander the Great.

Marx was intrigued by the philosophical problem of why this era, perhaps above all other pre-capitalist ones, retained its appeal in the modern world:

‘The difficulty we are confronted with is not, however, that of understanding how Greek art and epic poetry are associated with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still give us aesthetic pleasure and are in certain respects regarded as a standard and unattainable ideal. Why should not the historical childhood of humanity, where it attained its most beautiful form, exert an eternal charm because it is a stage that will never recur? Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm their art has for us does not conflict with the immature stage of the society in which it originated. On the contrary, its charm is a consequence of this and is inseparably linked with the fact that the immature social conditions which gave rise, and which alone could give rise, to this art cannot recur.’

Built on slavery

As materialists, Marx and Engels were clear-eyed that the undoubted epochal achievements of antiquity were rooted in a merciless and rapacious system of human slavery which condemned the bulk of the population to grinding misery so that an exploitative stratum, including the aforementioned personalities, had the time and leisure to develop their revolutionary concepts and techniques. Engels writes:

‘It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised.’

No miracle

Also as materialists, Marx and Engels understood that the achievements of the Greek Miracle were the consequence of a conjuncture of social and economic forces converging in the Eastern Mediterranean at a particular historical point, and not due to any supposed superiority of Western values, as bourgeois historians in the 18th and 19th centuries had argued. Greece and its associated islands in the Aegean Sea were ideally situated to benefit from the intersection of trade in both goods and ideas that flowed between the neighbouring civilisations of Egypt, Babylon and India as the Iron Age supplanted the Bronze Age round about 800 BCE.

These societies were more economically advanced but their predominantly flat geographical terrain made them vulnerable to top-down control by oppressive and powerful monarchies. As a largely mountainous territory, Greece in contrast, was harder for rulers to establish expansive hegemony and the linked islands developed efficient navies to protect their independence. Money had emerged in Asia Minor during this era, allowing the maritime economies of the Greeks to expand and prosper.

Ionian revolution

Significantly, it was in Ionia on what we call the west coast of Turkey that philosophy first developed. The coastal port of Miletus, in particular, was home to a remarkable sequence of thinkers who collectively created an unprecedented materialist view of the universe; that is to say, one which underplayed or even eliminated religion as a factor in the conception of the natural world. The city, and the surrounding region at this time became the site of intensified class struggle between the new class of merchants and traders who challenged the political power of established control of landowning aristocracies. This added to the intellectual and economic ferment that stimulated the rise of the school of Milesian materialism, pioneered by Thales who lived from about 640 to 546 BCE.

Although our knowledge about him is extremely scanty, ancient sources record that Thales remarkably predicted the solar eclipse that took place in 585, a remarkable testament to the astronomical and mathematical advances that accompanied the expansion of commerce and navigation in the Aegean at this time. Unsurprisingly in light of his location, the foundation of Thales’ materialism was a belief that water is the basis of all things in nature. Like all the Milesian materialists, Thales’ brilliant intuition may seem simplistic to our sophisticated scientific outlook in the 21st century but considering the crucial importance of water in the development of life on Earth and in our own bodies it represents a huge step forward in loosening the grip of religious dogma.

One of Thales’ relatives and pupils, Anaximander, brilliantly anticipated the Darwinian view of evolution many centuries before the great Victorian scientist by highlighting the interaction of quantitative and qualitative change in all living and non-living things: ‘It is the principle of all becoming and passing away; at long intervals infinite worlds or gods rise out of it and again they pass away into the same.’ Common to the Milesians, Anaximander based his supposition not merely on abstract reasoning on close observation of nature, particularly how the fossil record indicated the existence of many species which although long extinct had contributed in some way to the surviving life forms on the planet.

Pristine simplicity

The last of the great early Ionian materialists, Anaximenes, postulated that modulations of air were the primary building blocks of the universe. Again, an inspired guess in light of our current understanding about the critical role of hydrogen in the early history of the universe. Engels neatly observed how the unadorned directness of the Milesians was at once the source of both their greatness and their ultimate limitation:

‘Here dialectical thought still appears in its pristine simplicity… Among the Greeks — just because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect, analyse nature — nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particular; to the Greeks it is the result of direct contemplation. Herein lies the inadequacy of Greek philosophy, on account of which it had to yield later to other modes of outlook on the world. But herein also lies its superiority over all its subsequent metaphysical opponents.’

The Ionian materialists laid the foundations for the next wave of Greek philosophers who overlapped with the revolutionary events in Athens which famously brought the world’s first democracy to power. In 508 BCE a coalition of merchants, small property owners and indebted peasants coordinated an uprising in the city that expelled the Pisastratids, a family of tyrants, and initiated a framework of popular participation and voting which represented the peak of political development in antiquity. The democracy of the following 5th and 4th centuries was limited by modern standards-excluding women, foreigners and slaves-but still was a huge advance on the absolute monarchies which dominated previous societies.

Lenin on Heraclitus

The first of the truly dialectical thinkers to emerge in the Aegean region was Heraclitus who lived from c 540-483 BCE and resided in Ephesus in modern Turkey. His seminal idea about change being a fundamental aspect of reality reflects the intensified class struggle of this crucial era. He is probably the best known of these Presocratic thinkers with his famous aphorism that ‘you cannot step into the same river twice’ frequently cited even today. Heraclitus explicitly rejected the existence of the gods and proposed fire as the primordial element of the universe: ‘This one order of things was created by none of the gods, nor yet by any of mankind, but it ever was, and is, and ever shall be eternal fire-ignited by measure and extinguished by measure.’

His emphasis on strife or conflict as an essential and ever-present factor in all aspects of nature was a significant influence, centuries later, on the thinking of Marx and Engels about the centrality of class struggle in human societies. Heraclitus writes: ‘We must know that struggle is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.’ Lenin also hailed Heraclitus as one of the trailblazers of dialectics for this underscoring of how the clash of conflicting forces is the dynamo of progress at all levels:

‘For the One is that which consists of two opposites, so that when cut into two the opposites are revealed. Is not this the proposition that the Greeks say their great and famous Heraclitus placed at the head of his philosophy and gloried in it as a new discovery.’

Marx and the Atomists

The most important of the Greek philosophers, as far as the fathers of Marxism are concerned, were Democritus and Epicurus. As a student in Germany in the early 1840s, Marx focused  his doctoral dissertation on a comparison of these two great thinkers. At this point in his life, Marx of course was yet to fully develop the theoretical system that would come to be associated with his name, but this work was one of the avenues of thought that would lead him towards revolutionary socialism a few years later. Democritus was the pioneer of atomic theory, writing about 460-370 BCE. Incredibly without any scientific equipment, Democritus speculated that the whole of nature is composed of invisible and indivisible particles of matter which are in constant motion and interaction through the void, which he first described as atoms. Our modern understanding of the sub-atomic world means that the Democritean framework looks simplistic but his fundamental insight about the essential building blocks of nature remains a cornerstone of physics.

From philosophy to politics

Marx recognised the great achievement of Democritus but valued Epicurus, who lived a few decades later, as even more important in his ideas. For the latter, atoms are the unseen components of nature but their activity is not deterministic or mechanistic as Democritus suggested. For Epicurus, autonomy and chance play significant roles in the movements of atoms. As young Marx was inching his way towards a version of historical materialism which emphasised human agency as a force in history, his preference for Epicurus over Democritus becomes comprehensible. As Marx wrote in his doctoral thesis:

‘The deviation of the atom from the straight line is not an accidental feature in the physics of Epicurus… Just as the atom frees itself from its relative existence, the straight line, by setting it aside, by withdrawing from it, so the whole Epicurean philosophy withdraws from the limitative mode of being, wherever the abstract notion of individuality, autonomy and the negation of relativity in all its forms find expression in it.’

This, of course, is not the clearest expression of Marx’s breakthrough emphasis on the self-emancipation of the working class but his promotion here of Epicurus’ more dynamic model of the atom is an embryonic version of what would emerge as the distinctively Marxist belief in the ability of human beings to be the subjects, and not just the objects of history.

Author

Sean Ledwith is a Counterfire member and Lecturer in History at York College, where he is also UCU branch negotiator. Sean is also a regular contributor to Marx and Philosophy Review of Books and Culture Matters.

​Republished from Counterfire.

The head of state called for the mobilization following an intensified destabilization campaign by the right-wing opposition

​Thousands of people took to the streets of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on the afternoon of Tuesday August 29 to express their support for the government of President Xiomara Castro. The head of state had called for the mobilization in response to the attempt by right-wing opposition deputies to impede the election of a new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General.

Xiomara and others from the Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) have warned that the moves by the National Party, which ruled for 12 years following the coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and its allies from the Patriotic Alliance and Salvador Honduras parties, are part of a broader campaign of destabilization with the objective to carry out a coup against her.

When addressing the sea of red on Tuesday afternoon, Xiomara declared: “We must remain united, organized and mobilized in resistance so that in Honduras there will be no more coups d’état, narco-dictators nor pillaging.”

While the threats by the National Party against Xiomara’s government have been constant since she was sworn in, the ending of the term of the country’s current Attorney General, Óscar Chinchilla, and the government’s decision to elect a new one, has sparked the latest wave of tension. National Party deputies allege that the decision by Libre Party deputies to elect a new Attorney General to replace Chinchilla following the expiration of his mandate on August 31 is a “violation” and an attempt to “impose a socialist dictatorship in Honduras”.

Chinchilla served as Attorney General of Honduras since 2013 and was a crucial ally to the coup-installed National Party governments. For many Hondurans, the election of a new Attorney General is an essential piece of rebuilding the country and freeing it from the grip of the far-right forces.

Pedro Mejía, a lawyer from the Studies for Dignity Law Firm, told Criterion HN that while serving as Attorney General Chinchilla used “the Office to persecute environmental defenders and social fighters; and on the other hand, guaranteeing impunity for political and business elites who benefited from environmental permits and corrupt environmental concessions.”

Mejía added that Chinchilla’s role was to “ensure through criminalization, on the one hand, that there was no opposition to the imposition of extractive mining, hydroelectric and forestry projects in the territories.”

Carlos Zelaya, the Secretary of the National Congress and a member of Libre Party, said in a press conference, “The National Party is afraid to elect a prosecutor who can set important precedents against corruption.” He added that the country suffered from “12 years of corruption and impunity, even the United States has accused a former National (Party) president (Juan Orlando Hernández) of drug trafficking, while here, he has gotten off scot-free.”

Amid the rising tensions and destabilization moves, a member of US Congress María Elvira Salazar who leads anti-left and anti-Cuba legislation, wrote, “Xiomara in Honduras looks more and more like her husband Zelaya, who passionately embraced castro-chavismo. Just as Castro created the CDRs in Cuba and Chavez the colectivos in Venezuela, now Madam President organizes ‘teams’ to silence and arrest opponents. Bad road!”
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Honduras’ National Congress began deliberations on the evening of August 29 to elect the new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General and are set to finalize before August 31.

We are very pleased to publish below the report by the progressive French academic Aymeric Monville of his recent (August 2023) trip to Xinjiang. The report responds directly to the obscene anti-Chinese propaganda that has been raging for several years in the Western media regarding ostensible human rights abuses against China’s Uyghur population.

Aymeric describes his visits, along with the writer Maxime Vivas, to Kashgar, Urumqi and assorted villages. The picture he paints is dramatically different from the stereotype found in the Western media of a dystopian nightmare characterised by brutal repression and cultural genocide.

Arriving at the Kashgar bazaar in the middle of the night, I found it to be a profusion of light, joy, song and happy people in the streets. In particular, the sight of young women on scooters, their hair blowing in the wind, gave me an impression of great freedom.

He notes that, if the whole thing had been somehow staged for his benefit, it would have been a remarkable feat of organisation: “an absolute record for a Hollywood production involving literally thousands of people”.

Of particular note is the account of a visit to a de-radicalisation centre – what would be described in the Western media as a “concentration camp”:

In fact, it was a school where young people who had not committed any crimes but had been influenced by jihadism were taught not only Mandarin so that they could integrate into Chinese society, but also the constitution and a trade. They can play sport, winning table tennis competitions for example, and can go home at weekends. Recognising the basic characters 图书馆, I realise that this is the school library and ask to enter. I also asked to be shown books in Uyghur as well as Mandarin, which was done. I was also assured that the pupils’ Muslim faith is respected and I have no reason to doubt this.

The report includes an interesting discussion of the Uyghur language – its origins, widespread use, and connection to Uyghur culture – as well as various observations on the everyday activities and living conditions of the Uyghur people. There is no evidence of any “cultural genocide”; indeed massive efforts are made to protect the diverse cultures of the region. Monville points out that, if religious fundamentalist separatists were allowed to succeed in their aims, this cultural diversity would come under serious threat: “We can be sure that Uyghur culture in all its diversity, like that of the other ethnic groups living in the region, would have been very much at risk of eradication.”

The report is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the truth about Xinjiang. We hope it will be widely disseminated.

Aymeric Monville, born in France in 1977, is the author of several philosophical and political essays. In English, he has just published “Neocapitalism according to Michel Clouscard” (foreword by Gabriel Rockhill). He is deeply involved in the fight against anti-Chinese propaganda, and has published essays in France such as “The Ramblings of the Antichinese in France” and “China without Blinkers”.

- Introduction from Friends of Socialist China.

       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am back from Xinjiang, where I spent several days in the company of the writer Maxime Vivas, some of whose books I have had the honour of publishing. We visited Kashgar, a town close to the Afghan border with a 92 percent Uyghur population; then Urumqi, the capital with a population of over 2 million; and finally the new town of Shihezi, developed in the 1950s by the bingtuan (兵团), peasant-soldiers sent by Mao Zedong to develop pioneer areas so as not to have to compete with the local population for water in this semi-desert region. Not forgetting a diversion to sublime Lake Tianchi, to the east of the Celestial Mountains.
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Xinjiang has around 25 million inhabitants in an area three times the size of France, but only 9.7 percent of the territory is inhabitable, so I think that this visit to the major urban centres and the main roads used to reach them gives me a sufficiently representative overview to be able to talk about this region with more authority than many French journalists who have never been there, certainly not recently, and particularly since the slander campaign orchestrated by Mike Pompeo and the CIA from 2019.

It was my first visit, and the third for Maxime Vivas.

Having long understood that the campaign about the alleged “genocide of the Uyghurs”, the “genocide in progress” (according tothe French daily Libération) or the “cultural genocide”, the forced sterilisation of women and so on, which has even been voted on by the French National Assembly, is nothing more than a copy and paste of the same campaign that took place ten or fifteen years earlier on Tibet, I was obviously expecting to meet many Uyghurs living in perfectly decent conditions. Nevertheless, I was struck by the relative prosperity of this remote region of China. Arriving at the Kashgar bazaar in the middle of the night, a few hours late, I found it to be a profusion of light, joy, song and happy people in the streets. In particular, the sight of young women on scooters, their hair blowing in the wind, gave me an impression of great freedom and made me think of what their fate would be on the other side of the Afghan border, where they would lose all their rights. We asked people in the street to pose for photos with us. Everyone, including the women, happily participated.

If it had been a “Potemkin village” type operation (I make this assumption to counter any objections in advance), it would have been an absolute record for a Hollywood production involving literally thousands of people, as I was able to criss-cross the length and breadth of the entire Kashgar bazaar, and later, in the same way, the entire Urumqi bazaar.

The city centre of Kashgar has been completely renovated, taking care to preserve its authenticity. The city centre has clearly become a fashionable tourist destination for Chinese people, even if there are still few Europeans to be seen there, no doubt because of what Western propaganda tells us. As a general rule, all the roads I crossed, from town to town, were dotted with buildings under construction, factories and tree plantations, attesting to intense economic activity.

While I freely admit that I probably wouldn’t have been able to visit so many places without the logistical help of the Chinese authorities, who provided us with a bus and an interpreter, I’d like to say that I was completely free to go where I wanted, to branch off to the right and to the left, and that my knowledge of Mandarin – although admittedly very basic – makes me sufficiently autonomous to manage on my own. Maxime Vivas also confirmed that, with jihadist terrorist attacks having been eradicated since December 2016, the security situation is much calmer than before. I was therefore not subject to any surveillance or banned from going to any particular place.

For instance, as I’ve got into the habit of systematically learning sufficient polite formulations so as not to impose English on people, I started many formal conversations in Uyghur. This elicited amused reactions and indulgent smiles from my interlocutors, but obviously didn’t cause any panic that would have resulted from uttering a forbidden, forgotten, persecuted idiom, even in the presence of Han Chinese. In the countryside, a visit to a Uyghur family enabled me to realise that, while the parents needed to have questions asked in Mandarin translated, the children had a good understanding of the language and were therefore at school. The little girl in the family had clearly developed a passion for football and posted photos of her sporting exploits on the walls of part of the house. This reminded me of the liberation of Chinese women by communism, the end of patriarchal oppression and the abolition of foot-binding for women – women who, in Mao Zedong’s words, “hold up half the sky”. So now, in the remotest corners of China, these liberated female feet even play football!

A Chinese television crew took images all along our route, showing the profusion of areas we visited and the people we met. It will shortly be broadcast in China and France on the CGTN channel. So much for the preposterous accusation of genocide. Maxime Vivas pointed out to me that the French Daily Le Monde isalready backtracking and in July 2023 ran an article with the headline “Xinjiang, Uyghur region that must become Chinese like the others”. Of course, this is a silly headline, since the region is only half-populated by Uyghurs and includes many other ethnic groups, all of whom are “Chinese”, citizens of the People’s Republic of China. But in the final analysis, we are now talking about normalisation, certainly not the eradication of a people or a culture.

As for the so-called “cultural” genocide, I visited, among other things, the great theatre of Urumqi, which organises choreographic performances of the “twelve muqâms”, world heritage preserved by UNESCO, and which are performed all over the world. We were lucky enough to attend the performance of three of these muqâms, which Communist China has consistently promoted throughout the ages. I was able to learn about the pioneering role played by the CPC in the recording, as early as the 1950s, of the greatest virtuosos of this learned art, in particular Turdi Akhun, capable of playing all twelve muqâms from memory, a musical marathon lasting over twenty hours and comprising 252 melodies, whose statue stands proudly next to the theatre. At Urumqi airport, for example, I was able to take a photo of a Uyghur playing the dotâr and singing in his own language, in the midst of many Hans (the majority nationality in China) returning to Beijing.

 I visited the mosque in Kashgar, the largest in China, in the company of the imam, who spoke in Uyghur. In Urumqi, it was the madrasah (Koranic university) where the imam-rector spoke in Mandarin, but also taught in Uyghur and Arabic. It was in Arabic, of course, that we heard him chant the Koran. The library stalls are in three languages, with Uyghur standing out from Arabic at first glance through its use of diacritical marks to note vowels unknown to the language of the Koran (like how Germans write ü and ö, for example). It should also be noted that although Uyghur was first written in Cyrillic, like the other languages of the region, and then, after the Sino-Soviet break-up, in Latin (as for Pinyin, the phonetic transcription of Mandarin), it was during the time of Deng Xiaoping that the Arabic alphabet was introduced to better respect the particularity of Uyghur culture. We saw a canteen full of seminarians taking their exams to become imams. The imams are paid a salary by the central government. I would remind you that in France, my country, Muslims are also asked to comply with our republican laws.

In Xinjiang, all the official signs, all the road signs, are bilingual Uyghur/Mandarin throughout the territory. In Kashgar, this bilingualism even applies to the smallest stall. I think that a quick look on Google Earth will quickly give you proof of this, in any urban location.

I visited perfectly automated cotton fields and spinning mills. In response to the accusation made by US competitors that the textile industry in Xinjiang uses “slave labour”, I was able to see that the need to save as much water as possible in this largely desert region, not to deplete the water tables but to transport water from the mountains, means that watering is systematically replaced by pipes in the ground that operate automatically to prevent any loss. I was also able to make the logical observation – but sometimes I have doubts as to whether logic can still be invoked, even in the land of Descartes – that a country which today registers 40 percent of the world’s patents has no interest in employing a servile workforce, not to mention the supervisors to guard them, when what it is seeking is to develop a sufficient number of engineers for each generation. Finally, I visited a spinning mill where the few workers present were mainly occupied with checking the machines.

So what do the Uyghurs do? They seem to be integrating well into society, working in agriculture, commerce, tourism, running shops, some are imams as has been said, and others civil servants, sometimes members of the Communist Party (I saw a whole group of them on the plane back to Beijing) and constitutionally enjoying republican equality and even a system similar to that of affirmative action as existed in the USSR and as exists, more imperfectly, in the United States. At the time of the one-child policy, the Uyghurs, like all the other 55 non-Han ethnic groups, were exempt from this obligation.

Maxime Vivas specifically wanted to visit one of the de-radicalisation centres that have been portrayed in the media as “concentration camps”. In fact, it was a school where young people who had not committed any crimes but had been influenced by jihadism were taught not only Mandarin so that they could integrate into Chinese society, but also the constitution and a trade. They can play sport, winning table tennis competitions for example, and can go home at weekends. Recognising the basic characters 图书馆, I realise that this is the school library and ask to enter. I also asked to be shown books in Uyghur as well as Mandarin, which was done. I was also assured that the pupils’ Muslim faith is respected and I have no reason to doubt this.

Teaching these pupils the country’s constitution is presented in our media as “brainwashing” “communist propaganda”. The Communist Party of China does indeed play a role as a constitutional pillar, but let’s not forget that it is the party that liberated the country from foreign invasion and lifted 700 million Chinese out of poverty. Some of my compatriots are free to harbour the anti-communist prejudices that are now too systematically inculcated in my country, but the fact remains that it is much better to be a Muslim in China than a Muslim in Afghanistan. I also note that Tajikistan, itself an almost entirely Muslim country, is also fighting against Islamist fanaticism and Wahhabism, which it rightly sees as foreign interference, since Islam in this region is more influenced by the very tolerant Hanafi legal school. It is also striking to see that the customs of the Uyghurs are marked by dance, which is practised in groups, with no particular separation between men and women. Women often also play instruments. Xinjiang is also China’s largest wine-growing region, and we were able to visit Changyu Manor, which produces a wine whose sunshine is reminiscent of that of the Côtes-du-Rhône. In fact, I tasted a surprising blend of syrah and cabernet-sauvignon that I thought was just right.

We can be sure that Uyghur culture in all its diversity, like that of the other ethnic groups living in the region, would have been very much at risk of eradication if the jihadists had taken power. The account of the violence and barbaric acts committed by the jihadists, presented in a museum in Urumqi, shows the nightmarish scenes experienced by the civilian population from 1990 to 2016, from Xinjiang to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The Western media repeatedly show the same photograph of Uyghur prisoners, convicted of jihadist terrorism, which the Chinese prison authorities deliberately circulated, no doubt to demonstrate their determination to combat and eradicate terrorism. It shows strict conditions of detention, but certainly not the shocking sensory deprivation of which the United States is guilty at Guantánamo or the torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Moreover, it is not the Muslim countries that are condemning China over Xinjiang, it is the countries of the North Atlantic. The fight against jihadist terrorism should be the object of global solidarity and not another opportunity to stigmatise China in its desire to create shared prosperity and to activate the new Silk Roads in which the Uyghurs, who speak a Turkic language close to Uzbek first and foremost, but also Kyrgyz and Kazakh, have everything to gain.

Back in Beijing, we meet Zheng Ruolin, author of the book Les Chinois sont des hommes comme les autres, (The Chinese are people like anyone else) published by Denoël in 2012. It’s true that in the West, the fact that the Chinese live on the same planet as us is a reality that we all too often tend to forget. Mr Zheng is a key player in French studies in China and lived in our country for a long time. I ask him if he ever plans to return to Paris. He replied that he now prefers to make himself useful by explaining to his compatriots about the outside world, which he feels they still know too little about. I replied that there are worse things than not knowing; there are, as some French people do, not knowing and still giving lessons. Once again, I am brought back to the fundamental contradictions of my country, which counts among its citizens, for example, on the one hand, the soldiers who ransacked the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 and, on the other, Victor Hugo who protested loudly against this barbaric act.

I got back on the plane with enthusiasm, but wondering whether my compatriots would understand me enough, or whether, as a Chinese saying (a chéngyǔ, to be precise) goes, I wouldn’t have the impression of “playing the lute in front of the buffalo” (对牛弹琴), in other words of speaking for the deaf. Worse still, if I’m not going to be accused of wanting to harm, by virtue of some ‘hatred’ I’ve suddenly developed, the Uyghur people whose existence I only learned about a few years ago. I dare to hope that Maxime Vivas and I, who nonetheless enjoy a favourable reputation among progressive and left-wing people in France, will be listened to. I also hope that we will finally come to understand that, after Tibet and Xinjiang, the next campaign launched by the CIA on one or other of the 56 ethnic groups that proudly make up China will no longer be able to reach our compatriots with such blatant lies.

Top studios are determined to wait out the strike by starving out entertainment workers, while workers fight to be stewards of their own creative process

248 days after the inauguration of the Hollywood writers’ strike, and 47 days after the kickoff of a similar strike by Hollywood actors, it appears that the big studios are no closer to reaching worker demands and finalizing contract negotiations. 

“We accepted [the] invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work,” wrote the Writers Guild of America on August 22, in a message to union members. “Instead, on the 113th day of the strike—and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side—we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.” The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) heard the same story from studios, who are represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). On August 27, SAG-AFTRA leadership stated, “Unfortunately, as we’ve seen from the recent news out of the WGA negotiations, it appears the AMPTP is still unwilling to make the concessions necessary to make a fair deal that would bring the strikes to a close.”

Based on recent reports, it seems as if AMPTP stonewalling is part of a sinister strategy undertaken by many bosses during extended strikes: starve the workers out. As per a July 11 Deadline report, studio executives intend to “break the WGA.” “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” one executive told the news site.

Both writers and actors are fighting to survive as the days of striking go by, with studios no more willing to return to the bargaining table than before the strike began. It’s one of the toughest positions an organized worker can be in, especially as despite enormous Hollywood profits, many of these workers live on the precipice of poverty. The minimum an actor must take home in one year to qualify for SAG-AFTRA healthcare is only USD 26,470, yet only 12.7% of members qualify. The WGA has written extensively about how compensation has not kept pace with ballooning profits.

Profit-making tools threaten to replace workers 

Why keep up the fight? Writers and actors are fighting for more than just their livelihoods. They are fighting for the integrity of their craft as technological innovations such as Artificial Intelligence, controlled entirely by the studios, threaten what writers and actors have built as an artform. 

SAG-AFTRA says that what AMPTP has proposed and is largely already doing to actors with AI is dystopian. According to SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, “[The AMPTP] proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation.” 

“All they have to have is just a certain number of samples and they have your image and they can recreate you in any way they want,” veteran actor Kevin Scullin told Peoples Dispatch on the picket line back in July.

SAG-AFTRA member and organizer with Anticapitalism for Artists Chris Myers told Peoples Dispatch that while AI can hypothetically be a useful tool for artists, “what the unions are mostly concerned with is how it can undercut labor itself… not just as a tool, as an aid, but as a replacement. That’s the heart of the matter.”

Consumers are unlikely to encounter major AI performances on their television screens anytime soon, but both the labor unions and the AMPTP are preparing for an uncertain future. Part of the reason the fight is so contentious now is because of how streaming technology has altered the outcomes of the current contract, principally by undercutting the amount workers are paid in residuals.

“These contracts are never about right now,” Myers said. “They’re always looking a decade or more into the future… I don’t think anybody thinks that in the next year or two we’re going to have good AI scripts, or good AI performances… I think that in ten or 15 years you might very well get decent AI scripts and decent AI performances.”

“I say decent, not good because this industry, unfortunately, hasn’t hinged on good in a very long time.”
While AI technology in the hands of corporations has the potential to replace human actors with “deepfakes,” most people in the US do not want to see AI-generated performances in TV and film. This seems to matter little to studios, who are moving forward with the technology regardless.

“I don’t think anybody’s seeing Chat GPT scripts that are better than what humans can do… I’ve seen some of the clips of AI ‘deepfake’ performances and they’re horrible. I don’t think anybody wants this except for employers who want to increase their ability to extract surplus at the point of production.”

Fighting for “human connection”For writers, their concerns hit at a similar desire to be in control of their own creative process in the industry. “We don’t want the studio to have the ability to draft a first draft with AI and then hire a writer to come in and fix that,” Jazz Peck, writer at Monkeypaw Productions and WGA West member, told Peoples Dispatch. “Instead of having writers be paid through each step of the process and be part of the initial ideating process.”

“We’re not here to correct, we’re here to create,” they said.

Writers, like actors, are trying to get ahead of the game before AI becomes an industry standard. “We’re also working as a prevention method rather than allowing [AI] to become like the standard operation and then trying to fix it once it’s already taken a hold, because that again, allows the studio system to be the arbiter of the ways in which it’s implemented,” said Peck.

“Broadly, technology in the hands of a corporation is never as good as technology in the hands of people. And we’ve seen it happen in other industries, in factory spaces and grocery stores, gas stations, industry after industry, where things have been automated, presumably in the name of convenience.
“But is it really convenient? Is it really convenient for the for the consumer to have less interpersonal interaction and in the process, whatever process it is, whether you’re in IKEA trying to check out, or whether you’re at the movie theater and watching a movie that’s written not by the hands of a person, but by the hands of a corporation?”

AI is only a part of the overall deterioration of the artistry of the entertainment profession in the name of profit. “These companies as tech companies are not interested again in artistic productions,” said Myers. “They’re interested fundamentally in our attention. And that isn’t as simple as making the best quality artistic movie possible. It’s just what can get eyeballs on the script. So if you can use a trending content creator turned actor who acts in an AI-generated script, his performance is mostly bad. But saved through AI, it doesn’t matter as long as that gets attention. And I think that they know that and they want a contract that allows room for that.”

Peck worries about the increasing misuse of their artform to hawk products at consumers. They reference the examples of “a product like Barbie and Flamin’ Hot and Air, and all these movies about how hard it is for execs to make a product to sell to people. They’ve become glorified commercials for these things.”

“And I can only imagine what would be looming ahead if we continue to remove people from our process, versus allowing people to use tools to make it easier.”
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“Film and television and artwork in general is about human connection and human commentary on culture. So when you move people from that, what does it become?”