Samir Amin 2011 - Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism

7/28/2019 Samir Amin 2011 - Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism

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I refer the reader to the writings of Jacques Berthelot on thesequ estions. H e is the be st and m ost critical analys t of the projects to

integrate agricultural and food production into world markets.I shall just mention two of the conclusions and most importantproposals that we have reached.

First: it is not possible to accept that agricultural and foodproduction, a s well as land, should be treated as ordinary 'go od s'and thus allow them to be integrated into the project of globalisedliberalisation promoted by the dominant powers and transnation-

alised capital.The World Trade Organisation agenda must just be rejected,

pure and simple. Opinion in Asia and Africa must be convincedof this, and particularly of the need for food sovereignty, begin-ning with the peasant organisations but also all the other socialand political forces that defend the interests of the popular classesand of the nation. All those who have not renounced a projectfor development that is worthy of the name must realise that thenegotiations underw ay in the framew ork of the WT O agenda willonly be catastrophic for the peoples of Asia and Africa. Capitalismhas reached the stage where the pursuit of profit requires 'enclo-sure' policies at the world level, like the enclosures that took placein England in the first stage of its (modern) development. Now,however, the destruction of the peasant reserves of cheap labourat the world level will result in nothing less than the genocide ofhalf of humanity.

Second: it is impossible to accept the behaviour of the mainimperialist powers (the United States and Europe) that are asso-ciated with the assaults against the peoples of the South withinthe WTO. These powers, which try to unilaterally impose lib-

eralisation proposals on the countries of the South, have freedthemselves from the same restrictions by ways that can only bedescribed as systematic trickery.

The Farm Bill of the United States and the agricultural poli-cies of the European Union violate the very principles that theW TO in tends to impose on other states. Th e 'partne rship ' p rojectsproposed by the EU, following the Cotonou Convention of 2008,

are nothing less than criminal to use the strong, but appropriate,expression of Jacques Berthelot.

These imperialist powers can and must be accused in the very


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courts of the WTO set up for this purpose. A group of countriesfrom the South can do this - and they m ust.

The alternative consists of national policies to construct/ recon-struct national fun ds for the stabilisation and sup port for p roduc-tion, completed by the establishment of common internationalfunds for basic products, enabling an effective alternative reor-ganisation of the international markets of agricultural products.Jean-Pierre Boris (2005) has elaborated such proposals in detail.

The peasants of Asia and Africa organised themselves dur-

ing the stage prior to the liberation struggles of their peoples.They found their place in the strong historical blocs that made itpossible to win victory over the imperialism of the time. Theseblocs were sometimes revolutionary (China and Vietnam) andthen had their main rural bases in the majority classes of middlepeasants and poor, landless peasants. Elsewhere, they were ledby the national bourgeoisie or sectors among the rich and middlepeasan ts wh o aspired to beco m e part of it, thus isolating the largelandowners in some places and the customary chiefs who were inthe pay of the colonisers.

That page of history having been turned, the challenge of thenew collective imperialism of the Triad will only be removedif historical blocs are constituted in Asia and Africa. But thesecannot be remakes of the preceding blocs. The challenge facedby the so-called alternative world movement and its constitutivecomponents of social forums is to identify, in the new condi-tions, the nature of these blocs, their strategies and immediateand long-term objectives. This is a far more serious challengethan is realised by many of the movements committed to thestruggles.

A complex and m ultidim ensional challenge

Is the capitalist modernisation path as effective as the conven-tional economists claim?

Let us imagine that, through capitalist modernisation, we candouble production (from an index of 100 to one of 200), but that

this is obta ined b y the expu lsion of 80 per cent of the surplu s ruralpopulation (the index of the number of active cultivators fallingfrom 100 to 20). The apparent gain, measured by the growth of


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produ ction p er active produ cer is considerable: it is m ultiplied byten. But, if it is seen in terms of the rural population as a whole,

it is only multiplied by two. Therefore it is necessary to distrib-ute freely all this growth in production in order simply to keepalive the peasants who have been eliminated and cannot findalternative work in the towns. It was in these terms that Marxwrote about the pauperisation associated with the accumulationof capital.

Th e challenge, which is to base deve lopm ent on renew ing p eas-

ant societies, has many dimensions. I will just call attention hereto the pre-conditions for constructing the necessary and possiblepolitical alliances that will enable progress to be made towardssolutions (in the interests of the worker peasants, of course) to allthe problems that are posed. The pre-conditions would includeaccess to the land and to the mean s to dev elop it properly, reason -able wages for peasant work, improvement of wages parallel tothe productivity of this work, and appropriate regulation of themarkets at the national, regional and world levels.

New p easan t organisations exist in Asia and Africa and are vis-ibly initiating and active in the struggles underway. Often, whenpolitical system s m ake it impossible for peasants to constitute for-mal organisations, the social struggles in the rural world take theform of movements with no apparent direction. These actions andprogram m es, where they exist, should be ana lysed m ore carefully.What peasant social forces do they represent and whose interestsare they defending? The majority mass of the peasants? Or theminorities who aspire to participate in the expansion of dominantglobalised capitalism? We should mistrust quick answers to thesequestions, which are complex and difficult. We should be careful

not to condemn a number of organisations and movements onthe pretext that they are not mobilising the peasant majorities onradical programmes. This would be to ignore the need to formu-late broad alliances and strategies by stages. But we should alsobe careful not to support the discourse of the 'naive alternativeworld people', who often set the tone in the forums and fuel theillusion that the world is on the right path only because of the

existence of the social m ovem ents. Th is is a discourse that belo ng smore to the many NGOs - with good intentions perhaps - than tothe peasant and worker organisations.


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I myself am not so naive as to think that all the interests thatthese alliances represent can naturally converge. In all peasant

societies there are the rich and the poor (who are often landless).The conditions of access to land result from different historicalexperiences which, in some cases, have rooted aspirations toownership in peoples' minds, while in others they have instil ledthe desire to protect the access to land of the greatest number.The relationships of the peasantries to state power are also theresult of different political paths, particularly as concerns the

national l iberation movements of Asia and Africa: populisms,peasant democracies, state anti-peasant autocracies show thediversity of peoples' heritages. The ways in which internationalmarkets are run favour some and penalise others. These diver-gences of interest are sometimes echoed in many of the peasantmovements and often in the divergences of the political strate-gies adopted.

BibliographyThe analyses and proposals put forward in this study do not only concernAsia and Africa. The agrarian questions in Latin America and the Caribbeanhave their own particularities and specifics. Thus, in the Southern Cone ofthe continent (southern Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile), modernisedla t i fundismo, which is mechanised and benefits from cheap labour, is a formof exploitation well adapted to the requirements of the liberal globalisedcapitalist system. It is more competitive even than the agriculture of theUnited States and Europe.

Alternatives Sl i d (2008) 'Etat des resistances dans le Sud, face h la crisealimentaire', vol. 15, no. 4

Amin, Samir (ed) (2005) L es u t t es pay sannes et ouv i eres a ce ati x defi s du X xesiecle, Paris, Les Indes Savantes. Includes references to peasant strugglesin China, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Ethiopia, West Africa,South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Amin, Samir (2006) B ey ond U S H egem ony , London, Zed BooksAmin, Samir (2006) Tndia, a great power?', in B eyo n d U S H eg em ony , London,

Zed BooksBerthelot, Jacques (2006) 'L'agriculture, talon d'Achille de l'OMC', http://

www.solidarite.asso.frBerthelot, Jacques (2006 ) 'Qu els avenirs pou r les socits paysan nes de

l'Afrique de l'Ouest?', http://www.solidarite.asso.frBoris, Jean-Pierre (2005) C om m erce nequi t abl e: l e oman n o i r d e mat i eres

premieres , Paris, Pluriel
http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/


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Chayanov, Alexander (1924 [1966]) O n t h e T h eo r y o f N on-Capit a l i st E co nom icSys tems (English edition)

Kautsky, Karl (1899 [1987]) O n t h e A gr a r i a n Q u est i o n , London, Zw anPublications

Mafeje, Archie (2003) T h e A g r a r i a n Q u est i o n , A ccess t o L a n d a n d PeasantResponses i n Sub-Sahar an A f r i c a, Geneva, UNRISD

Mamdani, Mahmood (1996) C i t i z en and S u b ject : Cont emporary A f r i ca a n d t h eL egacy o f Lat e Col onial i sm, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press

Mazoyer, Marcel and Roudard, Laurence (1997) H i st oi re des ag r i cu l t u res d umotide, Paris, Seuil

Moyo, Sam (in preparation) L a n d n t h e Po l i t i ca l E co n o m y o f A f r i ca nD e v e l o p m e n t

Parmentier, Bruno (2007) N o u r r i r r h u m a n i t e, Paris, La Dcouvert,Shivji, Issa (2008) interview by Marc Wuyts in D evel opm ent a nd Ch ange,

Institute for Social Studies, vol. 39, no. 3


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Humanitarianism orthe internationalism ofthe peoples?

The revolut ionary social is t t radi t ion has always proclaimeditself to be internationalist, at least in its intentions, its visions ofhumanity and i ts socialist future.

This tradit ion was started by the French Revolution whichin i ts radical moments abolished slavery, something that the so-cal led American Revolut ion never even thought of doing. Theslaves (of Santo Domingo) fought to win their freedom (it was notgiven to them): they were cit izens.

The new tradit ion could declare i tself for the Enlightenmentand for hu m an ism , ev en if the con cept of the latter was st il l in factl imited to the cosmopolitanism of the enlightened classes.

The social is t movement , Utopian and Marxis t , drew an imagi-nary picture of future world socialism and thus identif ied theneeds of the struggle to give i t greater consistency. When theInternat ional Workers Associat ion was founded Marx made funof the proposal by certain people who advocated the formula 'al lthe world are brothers ' (Marx said he was not the 'brother ' of allmen ) . He accepted instead the watchword 'workers of the worldunite ' and he went so far as to say ' the proletariat has no coun-try ' , a phrase that has since been wrongly interpreted by many

people.In practice, the worker and socialist movement of the capital-ist / imperialist centres has not always been consistent on thisissue. I t drif ted (see Translator 's note) towards social imperial-ism which had a l inear and determinist reading of history: f irstcapitalism (in which the peripheries, believed to be 'backward'on the road that must lead them to i t , must 'catch up') and then

on to socialism. This drif t was largely a result of what I have


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analysed as 'imperialist rent7. On the contrary, considering thecontrast between the centres and the peripheries, there should

have been a call to return the nations of the dominated peripher-ies to their place in the fight against capitalism, which is insepa-rable from imperialism. Moreover, this drift to social imperialismaccompanied rallying to the (imperialist) country, to the point ofaccepting the chauvinistic calls for an inter-imperialist war. Is thisno longer the case for Europe? (It is not for the United States andJapan.) Has it been superseded by the new cosmopolitanism of

the European Union? It is by no means evident.The historical Marxism of the Third International - Marxism-

Leninism - wanted to break with this trend and it formulated afamous distinction - also badly understood - between 'bourgeoiscosmopolitanism' and 'proletarian internationalism'. This distinc-tion is, however, based on an extremely important objective reality:the gradual formation of the plutocratic oligarchy of collective imp e-rialism. Thus this formulation was in som e w ays before its time: cos-mopolitanism, understood as the solidarity of national fragments ofthe globalised oligarchy, conscious of the need for their collectivem anagement of the world system, is now more visible than it couldhave been before (or even after) the Second World War.

The abandonment of Marxism (of historical Marxism and,before it, of Marx himself), after the waning of the first wave ofstruggles for the emancipation of workers and of peoples in the20th century, ended not in an increased consciousness of the needof the dom inated and exp loited for internationalism, bu t a retreatto positions of charity and humanitarianism. The central plank ofthis change was humanitarianism and development assistance,which helped to efface the real challenge: how to disengage from

capitalism and , for the peripheries, how to start this off, by gettingrid of dependence, aid, humanitarian charity, by delinking fromthe imperialist world system.

The first essential question: what kind ofdevelopment?

It is not difficult to agree that a discussion on aid makes no sensewithout the country benefiting from the aid having a clear visionand development strategy.


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From the 1981 meeting of the G7 at Cancun, the western pow-ers proclaimed through the voice of Ronald Reagan, supported

by his European colleagues, that the powers of the G7 countriesknew better than the countries of the South themselves whatwas best for the South to do. The Washington consensus and thepolicies of structural adjustment put this position (return to colo-nialism) into practice through policies that have, effectively, beenimplemented ever since. In spite of the current deep crisis whichshould certainly challenge the global vision of liberal globalisa-

tion, this challenge is not in fact happening.'Development7 cannot be reduced to its apparently major eco-

nomic dimension - the growth of GNP and the expansion of mar-kets (both exports and internal markets) - even when it takes intoconsideration its 'social' dimensions (degrees of inequality in thedistribution of incom e, access to public services like education andhealth). 'Development7 is an overall process that involves the defi-nition of political objectives and how they are articulated: democ-ratisation of society and emancipation of individuals, affirmationof the pow er and autonom y of the nation in the wo rld system.

This observation is all the m ore important beca use there is gen-eral agreement on the failure of development, as also on the fail-ure of aid, because the cou ntries concerned see that their d epen d-ency only increases rather than diminishing as time goes by.

The debate on aid is confined in a straitjacket, whose designwas defined in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005),drawn up by the OECD to be endorsed by (or, rather, imposedon) the recipient countries. Right from the start, the procedurewas illegitimate. If, as is claimed, there are two partners in aidwhich are in principle equal - the dono r country and the recipient

country - the design of the system should have been negotiatedby both parties. This was absolutely not the case. The initiativewas unilateral: it was the OECD alone that was responsible forthe drawing up of the Paris Declaration. Just like the UnitedNations Millennium Declaration, which was drafted by the USState Department, to be read out by the Secretary-General of theUn ited Nations at the Gen eral Assembly, the Paris Declaration did

not commit the international community. Also, the non-westerncountries that are not on the list of potential recipients of aid,particularly those which are themselves donors, refused, very


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legitimately, to associate themselves with the 'donor club' pro-posed by the declaration. If the international community was to

commit itself seriously, a commission that had this responsibilityshould have been constituted in the United Nations, associatingall the 'partners' from the start on the basis of true equality. Theprocedure adopted was part of the political strategy of the coun-tries of the Triad (United States, Europe, Japan) to downgrade theUnited Nations and substitute it by the G7 and its instruments,claim ing to be the international community, wh ich is of course an

imposture.The field of responsibilities of the rich countries is defined

according to the omnipresent principles of liberal globalisation.Sometimes this is explicitly stated: promoting liberalisation, theopening o f m arkets, becom ing attractive to foreign private inv est-ment. Sometimes it is indirect: respecting the regulations of theWTO. From this viewpoint, the Paris Declaration is a step backcompared with the practices of the first development decade(1960-1970) when the principle of the countries of the Southbeing free to choose their economic and social policies was morerecognised.

The unequal power relationship between donors and recipi-ents was further reinforced by insistence on the harmonisationof donor policies, which reduced the margins of manoeuvre thatthe countries of the South benefited from during the develop-m ent decades. Instead of 'partnersh ip', this relationship should b edescribed as 'reinforcement of control over the assisted countriesby the collectivity of the Triad states'. 'Partnership' is not progressbut rather a regression compared with what used to happen dur-ing the Bandung era (1955-1980). If the word 'partnership' was

put forward, it was precisely because that was not what waswanted. As George Orwell said, diplomacy prefers to talk aboutpeace while it prepares for war. It is more effective.

Furthermore, the Paris Declaration has reinforced the means ofpolitical control by the Triad by adding to the general economicconditionalities (subject to the requirements of liberal globalisa-tion - now in such disarray ) a nu m ber of political cond itionali-

ties: respect for hu m an rights, electoral and m ultiparty democracy,good governan ce. The fact that the dem ocratisation of societies is along, difficult process, resulting from social struggles and policies,


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common goods (education, health) but what it does in fact is toopen up spaces for the expansion of capital. It contrasts with the

European conception of public services and a civil society that isund erstood a s all the popu lar organisations (see Translator's note)defending rights.

Civil society, in practice, rarely includes organisations that arerooted in the tradition of popular struggle (such as trade unions,peasant organisations, and worker and sometimes peasant politi-cal parties). The fashionable discourse prefers the non-govern-

mental organisations (NGOs). This option is part and parcel ofanother aspect of the dominant ideology that sees in the state thenatural adversary of freedom. In the conditions of the real worldthis ideology is used to legitimise the 'jungle of business', as isillustrated by the ongoing financial crisis. In the real conditionsof the Third World, the pet NGOs are often called - ironicallyand rightly - GONGs (governmental NGOs), or MONGs (NGOs

operating like the Mafia) or TONGs (NGOs transmitting donorpolicies), etc.

Civil society is therefore the collection of neighbourhoodassemblies, of com m un ities (the con cept cann ot be separated fromthe communitarian ideology), of local interests (school, hospital,green spaces) which are themselves inseparable from ideologiesthat are split up, separated from one another (gender understoodin its narrow sense, respect for nature, which is also made intoan object that is separable from the others). Even if the defence ofthe dem and s of these assem blies that constitute the so-called civilsociety is often legitimate, the absence - w heth er deliberate or not- of any integration into a vision of the wh ole society im plies sup -port for the dogm a of consensu s. In other words, to the extent that

these demands succeed, it will be seen that 'the more it changes,the more it is the sam e thing 'It is true that in these NGOs sectors of society express their

defence of interests or of particular causes that are frequentlylegitimate (democracy and human rights, the rights of women,respect for the environm ent, etc), bu t som etim es they are am bigu-ous. Often they aim to make up for the shortcomings of the state

(in edu cation and health, for exam ple). They are interclass o rgani-sations by nature, able to mobilise the mid dle classes, bu t they arem uch less successful w ith the popular classes. In these con ditions,


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this civil society do es not offer an adeq uate fram ew ork for overallalternative projects, by definition consistent and political, to take

form. Civil society is thus imprisoned into an anti-political, anti-state situation, sometimes a way of legitimising non-action; thediscourse on the multitude (in the sense used in Negri and Hardt(2000)) serves this function. It is also the object of manipulationsand has served, among other things, as a battering ram againstsocialist or national populist regimes. The deficiencies of theseregimes are thus denounced not by the left but by the right, with

the intention quite simply of supporting the return to capitalism.The underlying ideology, which is that of American liberalism,is an invitation to abandon the positive inheritance of left-wingpolitical culture (the Enlightenment, emancipation and equality,alternative socialism) to the dom ination of capital o ver labour.

The term 'govern ance' w as invented as a substitute for 'po w er' .The opposing characteristics of the two - good versus bad gov-ernance - hark back to M anichaeism and m oralism, in place of ananalysis, as scientific as possible, of reality. Once again, this modecomes to us from the other side of the Atlantic, where religioussermons have often dominated political discourses.

The notion of good governance assumes that the deciders arefair, objective, impartial and, obviously, honest. For oriental read-ers, the list of adjectives produced by the abundant literature ofthe American propaganda services is an immediate reminder ofthe grievances of ancient times, presented by the loyal subjects tothe despot, wh o w as asked to be fair (not even enlighten ed ). T heproposals for establishing good governance institutions are nobetter: an interminable list of criteria, products of a bureaucraticimagination suffering from verbal diarrhoea.

The visible underlying ideology is just concerned with erasingthe real question: what social interests does the existing power,whatever it is, represent and defend? Ho w can this pow er be trans-formed so that it gradually beco m es the instrum ent o f the m ajori-ties, particularly th e victims o f the system such as it is? The recipeof electoral multipartyism has shown its limits in this respect.

All together, civil society, good governance, social justice and

the war on poverty constitute a perfectly functional ideology;what is essential - the real power of the capitalist oligarchy - iseliminated from debate.


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Humanitarian interventions, development aid,geo-economy, geopolitics and geostrategyTh e choice of recipien ts and form s of interven tion as well as of theaid's immediate, apparent objectives cannot be separated fromthe real geopolitical ob jectives und erlying them .

Sub-Saharan Africa is very well integrated into the globalsystem and is in no way 'marginalised' as, unfortunately, peopleoften say without thinking: foreign trade out of the region repre-

sents 45 per cent of its GNP, as against 30 per cent for Asia andLatin America, and 15 per cent for each of the three regions thatconstitute the Triad. Africa is therefore quantitatively 'more' andnot 'less' 'integrated, but it is so in a different way.

Th e geo-econom y of the region is based on two kind s of produc-tion which determine its structures and the definition of its place inthe global system: tropical agricultural products for export such as

coffee, cocoa, cotton, groundnuts, fruit, palm oil; and hydrocarbonsand mined materials, such as copper, gold, rare metals, diamonds.

The former category represents the means of survival - apartfrom peasants' subsistence crops - which finance the grafting ofthe state onto the local econom y and , through pub lic expend iture,the reprodu ction of the midd le classes. The term 'ban ana repu blic'corresponds, apart from its negative implications, to the placethat the dominant powers give to the geo-economy of the region.These agricultural products are of interest more to the local gov-erning classes than they are to the dominant economies.

On the other hand, what interests the latter above all are thenatural resources of the continent. Today these are the hydrocar-bons and the rare minerals. Tomorrow, they will be the reservesfor developing agrofuels, the sun (when the transport of electric-ity from solar energy becomes possible, which will be within dec-ades), water (when its export, direct or indirect, is feasible).

Niger is a textbook exam ple of all this. Th is country receives aidthat covers 50 per cent of its budget. This aid is 'indisp ensable ' forits survival although it is perfectly ineffective: the coun try remainsclose to the bottom of the list of the poorest cou ntries in the w orld.

But Niger is the third largest exporter of uranium in the world.Situated between Algeria, Libya and Nigeria, it could be tempted,through nationalism, to recover control over this wealth. Areva,


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the French firm that exploits the uranium mine, knows this verywell. It is not difficult to believe that aid to Niger has no other

objective than to m aintain the coun try as a client state.The race for rural territory to be converted to the expansionof agrofuels is well under way in Latin America. Africa, too,offers enormous possibilities in this field. Madagascar led theway and has already conceded large areas in the western part ofthe country. The implementation of the Congolese Rural Code(2008), inspired by Belgian aid and the Food and Agriculture

Organisation, will no doubt enable agribusiness to take overagricultural land on a huge scale in order to 'valorise' it, just asthe Mining Code formerly facilitated the pillage of the mineralresources of this former Belgian colony. The peasants, who havebeen rendered u seless, are the victims: their increasing destitutionwill perhaps attract humanitarian aid in the future, as well as aidprogram m es 'to reduce poverty' I once learnt that an old colonialdream for the Sahel in the 1970s was to expel all the populations(the 'useless' Sahelians) in order to install extensive Texan-typeranches of livestock for export.

We are now in a new pha se of history in which conflicts aboutaccess to the natural resources of the planet are becoming moreacute. The Triad means to reserve exclusive access to this 'useful'Africa (that of the reserves of natural resources) for itself and toprohibit access to the emerging countries whose needs in this fieldare great and will no doubt increase. The guarantee of exclusiveaccess is obtained through political control and reducing Africancountries to client states.

Foreign aid thus performs important functions in maintainingcountries as client states.

In a certain way, therefore, it could b e said tha t the objective ofaid is to corrupt the governing classes. Apart from the financialmisappropriations (which are well known but the impression isgiven that the donors are in no way responsible), this politicalfunction is served by aid which, as it is now the major sourcefor financing budgets, has become indispensable. It is thereforeimportant that this aid is not reserved exclusively for the classes

in power in the government: it must also go to the oppositionsthat m ay succeed them . Th is is where the role of the so-called civilsociety and certain NGOs comes in.


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Aid, if it is to be really politically effective, must also contrib-ute to maintaining the integration of the peasants in the global

system, which feeds the other source of income for the state.Aid, therefore, also has to promote the modernisation of cropsfor export.

In addition, it must facilitate access to common services (edu-cation, health, housing) by the middle classes and by some of thepopular classes (mainly in the urban areas). The political function-ing of the client state depends on this to a considerable extent.

In the Ban dun g era and during the develop m ent decad es Asiaand Africa, on the whole, initiated countergeopolitical policies,drawn up by the countries of the South, which aimed at counter-acting the geopolitical policies of the Triad. The conditions of theperiod - military bipolarity, global overall growth and increas-ing demand facilitating the exports of the South - favoured thiscounteroffensive, forcing the Triad to make concessions, minor ormajor, according to the circumstances. In particular, military bipo-larity prevented the United States and its associates in the Triadfrom reinforcing the power of their geopolitics by a geostrategybased on the threat of permanent military intervention.

These days, the geopolitics of the Triad, at the service o f its geo-economy, are reinforced by its geostrategic arm. It is now under-standable why the United Nations has to be marginalised andsubstituted, cynically, by the military arm of the Triad's geopoli-tics, NA TO. It is also un derstan dab le w hy th e discourse abou t theexternal secu rity of the countries of the Triad has beco m e so insist-ent. All this rhetoric about the war on terrorism and the roguestates, which is intended to legitimise the strategy of the Triad,thus takes on dimensions that have become all too familiar.

The shape of an alternative internationalsolidarityA sudden rupture in ongoing aid - bad as aid is - is not desirable.In fact, it would be a declaration of war aimed at destabilising theexisting power order and perhaps even at destroying the state.

This is the strategy that sanctions have implemented, and contin-ue to implem ent, the econom ic blockades of Cu ba and Zim babw ebeing good examples.


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The choice is not between aid, such as it is, or no aid. The bat-tle must be to transform radically the concept of the functions

of aid, for which the South Centre has developed the arguments(Tandon, 2008). Solidarity, and not humanitarianism, is a majorintellectual battle which should not recognise any red line thatcannot be crossed.

This is one of the battles to be had among those that proposethe construction of another, better, world, another globalisation,an authentically polycentric world system that respects the free -

and different - choice of states, nations and peoples of the planet.Let us leave to the World Bank and the arrogant techn ocrats of theNorth the monopoly of producing valid recipes to be imposed oneveryone.

The moral argument that the North owes a debt to the South,legitimising the principle of aid - as long as it becomes solidar-ity - is not without value. But more convincing - because theycan m obilise political me ans to supp ort them - are the a rgum entsabout the organisation of solidarity between peoples confrontedby the challenges of the future, in particular the consequencesof climate change. The UN Framework Convention on ClimateChange (UNFCCC) constitutes an acceptable point of departurefor conceiving of finance from the rich countries (which areprimarily responsible for the deterioration of the world envi-ronment) for programmes benefiting the peoples of the planet,especially the most vulnerable. But, precisely because this initia-tive started off within the United Nations, the western diplomatshave been busy - it is the least that can be said - in hindering itsdevelopment (one might call it sabotage).

The drawing up of a global view of aid cannot be delegated

to the OECD, the World Bank or the European Union. This is theresponsibility of the United Nations and of that body alone. It istrue that this institution is, by definition, limited by the monopolyof states, assum ed to be represen ting their peo ple. (Bu t the same istrue for the organisations of the Triad.) It is good that a proposalhas been made for a stronger, more direct presence of the people,along side their states, and it is worth discussing ho w th is could be

organised. But their presence must aim at reinforcing the UnitedNations. This cannot be done by substituting NGO participation(which would be carefully selected) in the conferences conceived


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and administered by the North (and inevitably manipulated bythe diplomats of the North).

I would also give importance to the initiative taken by the UNEconomic and Social Council in 2005 to create a DevelopmentCooperation Forum (DCF). This would lead to the creation ofauthentic partnerships based on the conception of a polycentricw orld. As can be im agined, the initiative was not well received bythe diplomats of the Triad.

Bu t it is necessary to go further and dare to cross the red line. It

is not a question of reforming the W orld Bank, the W TO , the IMF.It is not enough to limit oneself to denouncing the dramatic con-sequences of their policies, those of yesterday and those of today.What needs to be done is to propose alternative institutions, todefine their tasks in a positive way and to shape the institutionalarrangements.

Th e debate on alternative aid based on solidarity should imm e-diately get rid of certain chapters in the OECD DevelopmentAssistance Committee's official development assistance compila-tions wh ich in reality are not abou t aid from th e No rth to the South,bu t rather the reverse. Heading this list are the con cessional loans,given at rates that are claimed to be inferior to those of the mar-ket. These are the m eans by w hich aggressive commercial policiesimplem ented by the states of the Triad help the main beneficiaries,which are in fact the exporters of the N orth (rather like the p racticeof dumping). Debt reduction, presented almost as a charitable act(as is clear from the diplomatic jargon in which the decision wascouch ed) certainly do es not merit being included as aid.

The legitim ate response to this question, and not only from themoral viewpoint, should lead to an audit of all the debts in ques-

tion - private and public, on the side of the lender and on that ofthe borrower. The debts recognised as immoral (among others,because of their association with corrupt operations on one sideor the other), illegitimate (poorly disguised political support, asfor the South African apartheid regime), usurious (rates fixedunilaterally by the so-called markets, by the integral reimburse-ment of their capital - and well beyond it): all these debts must

be annulled and the victims, the debtor countries, recompensedfor having overpaid. A commission of the United Nations shouldbe created to draw up an international law worthy of the name


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which, in this field, has hardly been started. Naturally, the diplo-m acies of the Triad d o not wan t to hear of any such propo sals.

Th e option for an alternative aid is inseparab le from the form u-lation of an alternative development. I cannot go into this in anydetail here. However, it is perhaps useful to recall some importantprinciples about development in order to give greater meaning toproposals about alternative aid.

These important principles should include at least the following:

1. The problems of the rural world and of agriculture mustbe placed at the centre of a strategy for another kind ofdevelopment, based on keeping large numbers of the ruralpopulation in place (even if there will inevitably be a declinein the numbers, the process should not be accelerated).

As equal access as possible to land and the means fordeveloping it properly must be the orientation of this con-ception of peasant agriculture. Its major features shouldinclude priority for food sovereignty; industrialisation,without which the achievement of these objectives is impos-sible; and a radical questioning of the globalised liberalisa-tion of production and international trade in agriculturaland food products (see also Chapter 5).

The option advo cated by the dominan t system, which w asnot questioned by the Paris Declaration, is in com plete opp o-sition to the principles put forward here. This declarationis based on financial profitability, short-term productivism(rapidly increasing prod uction at the price of accelerating theexpulsion of surp lus peasants), all of which correspo nds verywell to the interests of the agribusiness transnationals and

those of a new class of peasants included as associates, but itis not in the interests of the pop ular classes and the nation.2. Development requires the building of diversified produc-

tive systems, starting with those already on the way toindustrialisation.

The vital industrial perspective d oes not definitively ruleout calling on international capital. Complex and diverse

form s of partnership , sta te /local priva te (w here it exists)/foreign capital, are com pletely acceptable - indeed, no do ubtinevitable. But this development must have a perspective


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that rejects liberalism, which is in essence about creatingattractive conditions for the transnationals as advocated by

the W TO and the so-called aid agencies. Real partnership instrategic decision-making and control over the re-exportedprofits must accompany industrialisation strategies.

3. Diversification (including of indu strialisation), w hich isfundamental, certainly requires building infrastructureswhere they do not exist in countries receiving aid that hasbecome indispensable for their survival.

This includes social infrastructure: there is no develop-ment without good education, from bottom to top, andw ithout a popu lation in good health. Such objectives for aid(financial and technical) could undeniably be positive andbeco m e solidarity. The eradication of end em ic diseases suchas Aids is an obvious example.

4. In turn, diversification and industrialisation requ ire buildingup forms of adequate regional cooperation. Countries thatare continents may well do without them. But those with anaverage population (around 50 million) can only start theprocess, knowing that they will soon reach thresholds thatthey cannot cross except through regional cooperation.

It will be necessary to reinvent these forms of regionalcooperation so that they are consistent with the develop-ment objectives outlined here. The regional common mar-kets, which dominate the institutions in place (where theyexist and function) are not consistent with such objectivesas they have been conceived as building blocks for liberalglobalisation (see Amin and Tchuigoua 2005).

5. The alternative development sketched here requires control

over foreign economic relationships, including abandon-ing the free trade system, which is claimed to be regulatedby the markets, and instead, replacing it with national andregional systems of controlled trade. Beyond the impos-sible reform of the International Monetary Fund, solutionsto the challenge should envisage the setting up of regionalmonetary funds, linked to a new system of world monetary

regulation, which the present crisis makes more than evernecessary. The reform (or mini-reform) of the IMF does notmeet these needs.


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More generally, control over foreign relations, whichdoes not mean autarchy, should define the outline of what I

have described as 'delinking', essential if a negotiated glo-balisation is to emerge.Such development also requires, obviously, national con-

trol over natural resources.This alternative develop m ent is based on the principle of

giving priority to internal markets (national and regional)and, in this framework, to the markets that meet the expan-

sion of the dem and from the popular classes and no t from theworld market. It is what I call 'autocentric developmenf.

6. Th e principle of the international solidarity of peop les, whichI defend, legitimises support for struggles for the democrati-sation of society, associated with social progress and effortsto undertake reflection that is radical and critical.

With this in mind, public aid, which is certainly desirablein itself, must support the reconstruction of the state and itscapacity to fulfil its functions (public services in the fields ofeducation, health, water and electricity supply, public trans-port, social housing and social security), challenges whichcan be met neither by the private sector, which reservesfor itself only the profitable parts of these activities, nor byassociations, even the well-intentioned.

7. There will alw ay s remain a case for intervention in the nam eof universal human solidarity, which is perfectly legitimate.

Help for the victims of natural calamities and for therefugees that unfortunately wars produce in large quanti-ties, cannot wait. It would be criminal to refuse help on thepretext that nothing had been done to prevent the deterio-

ration of situations that were at the origin of these catas-trophes (particularly warfare). Help first, then afterwardswe'll see. Nevertheless the danger exists of an unacceptablepolitical exploitation of 'humanitarianism'. There is no lackof examples, one of the most recent and most terrible beingHaiti, where the aid provided in response to the January2010 earthquake has given the US army an opportunity to

reoccupy the country. On the other hand, necessary imme-diate help does not exclude opening up an investigationinto the causes of the catastrophe. An independent critical


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reflection on these problems is necessary and there shouldbe a commitment to the social struggle necessary to rectify

deteriorating situations that goes beyond the immediatehumanitarian intervention.8. N orth-S ou th cooperation is not exclusive. There w as So u th -

South cooperation during the Bandung era and it waseffective in the conditions of that time. Support for the lib-eration movements in the Portuguese colonies, Zimbabweand South Africa, which was given by the Non-Aligned

Movement (the OAU of that period), China, the SovietUnion and Cuba, was important and sometimes decisive.Then, apart from Sweden and some other Scandinaviancountries, there was no development cooperation from thecountries of the Triad, which were subordinated to the dip-lomatic priorities of NATO (including Portugal) and sup-port for apartheid.

Today there are ample opportunities for renewing thisSouth-South cooperation. The South now has access tomeans that enable it to break the monopolies upon whichthe supremacy of the Triad was based. Certain countriesof the South are now capable not only of assimilating thetechnologies that the North wants to protect for its own use(precisely because it has now become vulnerable), but alsoof developing them still further on their own. If they wishto put them at the service of a different develo pm ent model,m ore app ropriate for the needs of the coun tries of the South,this could open an important new field for South-Southcooperation. The countries of the South could also give pri-ority access to the natural resources that they can control to

reinforce their own industrialisation and that of their part-ners in South-South cooperation.Certain countries of the South have access to financial

surpluses which, instead of being placed in the financialand monetary markets controlled by the Triad, now facingcollapse, could bre ak the mo nop oly o f the No rth in this fieldand the blackmail of aid that goes with it.

The South can do without the North but the reverse isnot true. But to achieve this, it is necessary that the peoplesand the leaders of the South free themselves from their way


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of thinking that interiorises dependency and that they ceaseto believe that aid constitutes the condition for the develop-

ment of their societies.

BibliographyIn the order in which they appear:Amin, Samir (1973) N eo-Col onial ism i n W est A f r i ca , London, Penguin Books

(includes references to Niger)Tandon, Yash (2008 ) E nd in g A id D epen d ence, Oxford and Geneva, Pambazuka

Press and South CentreAmin, Samir (2006) The Millennium Development Goals', M o nt h l y Rev i ew ,vol. 57, no. 10

Orwell, George (1949 [2008]) N i n et een E i g h t y F o u r, London, Penguin BooksAmin, Samir (2003) 'Africa in the world', in Lauer, Helen (ed.) H i st o n / a n d

Philosophy o f Science, Ibadan, Hope PublicationsBednik, Anna (July 2008) 'Niger's mine war', h e M o n d e Di plomati que, (English

edition)

Amin, Samir and Tchuigoua, Bernard Founou (2005) 'Les regionalisations,quelles regionalisations?' http://www.forumtiersmonde.net. Partiallyreproduced in Amin S. et al., A fr i que, exc lus i on progra m m ee ou R ena i ssance?,Maisonneuve et Larose, p. 129 onwards

Ndiaye, Abdourahmane (2008) 'Avenir des agricultures et des socitspaysann es en Afrique de l 'Ouest, U ne lecture critique des travau x duClub du Sahel', October, http://tiny.cc/kb0tw accessed 24 June 2010

Berthelot, Jacques 'OMC et Sud',http://www.solidarite.asso.fr Berthelot, Jacques 'La question agricole',http://www.solidarite.asso.fr Berthelot, Jacques (2008), 'Dmeler le vrai du faux dans la flambe des prix

agricoles mondiaux', 6 October, ht tp: / /www.cadtm.org/Demeler- le-vrai-du-faux-dans-la, accessed 24 June 2010

Berthelot, Jacques 'Cinq bonnes raisons pour ne pas signer 1'APE-AO'Boris, Jean-Pierre (2005) C om m erce nequi t abl e: L e roman n o i r des m at i eres

premieres , Paris, PlurielAmin, Samir (2009) 'Aid for Development?' in Abbas, Hakima and

Niyiragira, Yves (eds)A i d t o A f r i ca : R ed eem er o r C o l o n i s er ? O xford,Pambazuka Press

Negri, Antonio and Hardt, Michael (2000) E m p i r e , Harvard, HarvardUniversity Press

Negri, Antonio and Hardt, Michael (2004) M u l t i t u d e: G u er r e et democrat i e aI age d e I E m p i r e, P a r i s , La D couverte
http://www.forumtiersmonde.net/http://tiny.cc/kb0twhttp://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://www.cadtm.org/Demeler-le-vrai-http://www.cadtm.org/Demeler-le-vrai-http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/http://tiny.cc/kb0twhttp://www.forumtiersmonde.net/


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Being Marxist,being communist,being internationalist

I am a Marxist. An d by that I mean that M arx is m y point of depar-ture. I am conv inced that the criticism that Marx p ut on the agendaof thought and action - the criticism of capitalism, the criticism ofits main representation (the political economy of capital), the criti-cism of politics and its discourses - all these constitute a centraland essential theme for the struggles to achieve emancipation forthe workers and for the peoples.

I am not a neo-Marxist. To be one is to confuse Marx and his-torical Marxism, which is not my case. The neo-Marxists want tobreak with historical Marxism and they think by doing so it isnecessary 'to go beyond Marx'. In fact they are only against thoseI describe as 'paleo-Marxists', that is those who unconditionallysupport historical Marxism, particularly Marxism-Leninism, in itsvarious versions.

To be Marxist, as I understand it, is to be neither 'Marxian'(those w ho find such and such a theory o f Marx to be interesting,isolated from the work as a whole) nor 'Marxologue'. It necessar-ily means being a communist - because Marx does not dissociatetheory from practice. It is not possible to follow the traces of Marxwithout engaging in the struggle for the emancipation of the

workers and of peoples. To be communist means also being aninternationalist. This is not only a requirement of human reason-ing. It is impossible to change the world while forgetting aboutthe immense majority of peoples who form part of it, those of theperipheries. Now the onu s is on these peoples to take respo nsibil-ity for their future. It is no t the peop les of the rich im perialist cen-tres w ho alone can ch ang e the world (for the better ). They wish to

substitute charity, aid and humanitarianism for internationalism,


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in the sense of solidarity in struggle. This only contributes to theconsolidation of the world such as it is or, worse still, involves

constructing apartheid on a world scale.In the follow ing text I try to m ake m ore explicit the conclusion sat which I have now arrived concerning the criticism of capital-ism and that of the struggles in which its victims are engaged.They are not 'definitive conclusions' - a term that is alien to myway o f thinking (wh ich here, I believe, joins that of Marx). A go odnumber of the central theses that I present have their histories in

the development of my work. From one formulation to the next,I have obviously benefited from new readings - and re-readings- but I have also tried to take into accou nt the evo lutions of cap i-talism and the struggles that have been taking place in the mean-time. To make the text easier I have not made references to thedevelopment of the concepts and proposals as they evolved.

Political and social conflicts and theirrepresentationI insist on reversing the relationship of politics and economics, bywhich I define capitalism.

This reversal - econ om ics becom ing dom inant and substitutingfor politics - indicates a qualitative change in history. The socialsystem of capitalism is not just a system of classes, like those thatpreceded it, only based on a more advanced level of developmentof productive forces. The bourgeoisie does not have a conflictualrelationship w ith the proletariat like the aristocracy's relationshipwith the peasants. Th e relationship is no t only one of exploitation(wh ich it is in both cases), it is a qualitatively new on e. I also stress

the qualitative transformation of the dominant ideology (I preferthe term 'representa tion' - see below ), which was m etaphy sical inthe anciens regimes and economistic in capitalism.

Isabelle Garo's convincing book Marx, Une Critique de laPhilosophie confirmed m e in m y reading of M arx, bu t this readingis not dominant in historical Marxisms.

The capitalist state is not only a class state, like the state of the

An cien Reg ime. It is also a state that is qua litatively new. Politics isno t the pursu it of the exercise of pow er for the ben efit of the d om i-nant class, as it used to be. It is qualitatively different politics.


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It is in this sense that my emphasis on the rupture that theinvention of modernity represents is justified.

The relationship between the political conflicts (the state) and theclass struggle (in the sphere of econom ic and social m anagem ent)is peculiar to capitalism, different from the way it was beforecapitalism.

At the heart of this transformation lies the novelty introducedby modernity: the declaration that human beings, individually

and collectively, make their own history and want to do so in theway they choose, rather than as used to be done by God, ances-tors and customs. This transformation makes democracy neces-sary and possible. In itself this is a new dimension of social life,which has only distant relationships with Athenian democracy orwith all the forms of consultation and organised debates aboutthe decisions to be taken in the old societies. Neither the Islamicshura, nor the African palavers round a tree, nor the Indian vil-lage councils are comparable with modern democracy which, forthe first time, authorised itself to invent and not only to interpret(religion or customs).

Modernity and democracy initiate the liberation of the indi-vidual and beyond, potentially, of society. But they only initiateit, because they remain fettered by the requirements of capitalistreproduction. However, this beginning is not w ithout importance,far from it. Democracy enables social struggles (class struggles) tomake themselves felt, to flourish and perhaps to make possible adecisive transformation, the concept of socialism - beyond capi-talism - and the freedom to struggle with this perspective.

At the same time, modernity and democracy transform the

state and politics, where the conflicts take place both aroundpower and around the linking of its exercise to social interests,which are themselves in conflict on their own grounds. Thecomplexity of political struggle thus becomes a major reality. Itproduces a differentiation and a multiplication of representationsof reality and issues by the actors, who are themselves subject topermanent differentiation and multiplication of representations.

Marx, as Garo has powerfully demonstrated, was very carefulabout the complex interferences of perceptions, of systems of


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general or particular ideas (ideologies) in a specific field of socialand/or political struggle (or both at the same time).

When treating this subject he used a vocabulary which has abroad ran ge of term s. Garo cites 16 of them : appearan ce, represen-tation, presentation, abstraction, expression, signification, ideol-ogy, fiction, reflection, analogy, vision, fetishism, illusion, method,intellectual production, imagination (Garo 2000, p. 268).

Marx, critic of social thought, and the cen tralityof representationM arx was not a philosopher, an econom ist, a sociologist, a historian.He was not even a scholar who possessed all these fields of knowl-edge. He was more than that: the critic of philosophy, of politicaleconomy, of sociology, of representations of history. He was thecritic of social thought that based its formulations on the different

segments of knowledge brought together from these fields.All these specialised fields of knowledge (economics, social

history, political history) or generalised fields (philosophy) sharein common representations of reality or what they claim it to be.Th us they are intellectual prod uctions.

Philosophy itself, and all the philosophies, are representations.Whether it is Greek philosophy or that of the Enlightenment andof classical Europe, or of modern philosophers (after Marx), theyare all intellectual productions and therefore cannot be under-stood outside the social reality (the historical economic and socialformation, to which I shall return later) within which they wereformulated.

It is the same for the religions that have taken the place of phi-

losophy (and still do). They are representations that have foundtheir place as representations of the universe, of society and of thehuman being in the social formations in which they were consti-tuted. They h ave even been, I believe, the major and fundamentalrepresentations that conform to the needs of the reproduction ofsocial formations that I have described as 'tributary', precedingcapitalist modernity. But they have also proved their flexibil-

ity, that is their capacity to reinterpret themselves to survive thetransformations of social formations. In that respect they sharewith many representations (if not all of them) the capacity to


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evolve by themselves. These evolutions are ordered both by theirown internal logic and by that governing the social formation as

a whole. This coming together is fruitful, or not, possible or not,advantageous and positive or negative, depending on the case(I shall return to this question later, which I have described as'under-determination').

The same applies to philosophies or systems of thought inother, non-European societies. Confucianism is a representation.It has even been a powerful and flexible representation - power-

ful because flexible. After its first, original formulation it was rec-onciled with Buddhism, under the Tangs, especially, then it wasreformulated, during the Song and Ming dynasties, before thewestern intrusion into China's history, in a spirit that was firmlyinitiating modernity, with the abolition of the (Buddhist) statereligion and the invention of the first secularism.

At this t ime, Chinese philosophy developed before theEnlightenment (which, in fact, it inspired much more than isgenerally believed). Confucianism even found a new role in theeffort of modern nationalist China to reconcile it with capitalism- unfortunate, in my opinion - the failure of which opened upthe way to the penetration of Marxism/Maoism and communisminto Chinese thinking and action. Reconciliation, with a view to itsrestoration in ou r post-M aoist epo ch? It is a serious and imp ortantquestion. This Confucianism (or pseudo -Confucianism, wh ateverit is) is still the dominant ideology in Taiwan and partially inJapan (in a version deformed by being grafted onto Shintoism)and in Korea.

What I have said here about philosophy as (general) represen-tation is also valid for the segmented representations, particularly

political economy and political ideologies (liberalism and others).

M arx wan ted no t only to criticise representations. H e also wan tedto criticise first, reality, then its representation and finally its prac-tices, starting with the choices of action that the actors of historymade based on their representations. These three dimensions ofthe critique are inseparable for Marx.

The aim of the criticism of reality is primordial. By that Marxmeant that a correct representation of reality is possible. Thediscovery - gradual - of the reality of what societies have really


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been and are, yesterday and today, constitutes his first permanentconcern. In other words, Marx thought that representation could

become scientific, that is, making it possible to discover the actualreality. He proposed a formulation (his own 'intellectual produc-tion'), based on the abstract concept of historical social formation.This formulation is, in my humble opinion, greatly superior -whatever its limitations - to all the other 'theories' of society andhistory that have been proposed up until now.

To achieve it, Marx made two choices. One was for material-

ism: that is, the existence of a reality outside (and before) its rep-resentation, which may be correct (perhaps partially) or not at all(illusionary).

The other was for dialectics: the reality itself is inseparablefrom its m ovem ent, ordered by the contrad iction - A and B in con-flict - and its resolution by the inven tion o f C, w hich is neithe r thetriumph of A over B or vice versa, nor a new mixture of the two.Th is m aterialist dialectic (a term I prefer to 'dialectic m ateria lism ')qualitatively goes beyond formal logic. I refer here to what I havewritten on the subject in From Capitalism to Civilization (2010).

The result of Marx implementing this method (the work ofMarx) should be given the serious consideration it merits. Inhistorical Marxism it is all too often considered as the final result:there was nothing to be added, nothing to be corrected. I disagree:my point of view is that to be Marxist is to start from Marx, notstop with him.

Marx was not content just with criticising reality and its rep-resentations. He observed that human beings, individually andcollectively, were permanently engaged in acting, transform-ing and wanting to transform reality. They did so on the basis

and by means of the representations that they had of this real-ity. Even the 'conservatives', who claimed not to want change,acted, even if only to try to hinder the change. Marx saw this asa permanent task and chose his camp, not only, for completelyrespectable m oral and hum an reasons, that of the oppressed andexploited (who would dare to say that they do not exist ); also hechose the cam p of those w ho aim to chan ge the w orld by helping

them to deliver what his movement ambitiously aimed at: theabolition of oppression and exploitation, as well as of classes,and the replacement of capitalism by communism, which was


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necessary (in the sense that the movement went in that direction)and therefore possible.

This choice, which I wholeheartedly agree with, does, however,pose three series of qu estions that hav e to be faced.

First: em ancipation, envisaged as the com m un ist future, definesitself as the freedom from alienation, which is at the origin of thedistance separating representations of the world from its reality.For my part, I have proposed a classification listing these aliena-

tions in distinct, superimposed categories and I opted for a mod-est solution: communism allows a society to get rid of the econo-mist/market alienation, which is itself the condition that enablesthe reproduction of the capitalist system, but perhaps not alsothe alienations that I have described as anthropological. I referthe reader to these developments which I proposed in UnequalDevelopment (1976).

Second: as capitalism develops it produces its 'gravedigger'(the proletariat) and the time becomes ripe for the possibility of itbeing overtaken by communism. But is this inescapable? I wouldbe careful in drawing this conclusion, since in fact Marx doesnot do so. The collapse, or even self-destruction, of a society isalso considered possible. In order to understand and thus definethe necessary hypotheses for either the success or the failure ofthe transformation on the spectrum of the possible/necessary, Isuggest the concept of under-determination. In transition periodslike ours, there is a host of multiple determinations impacting onthe system, pushing it in a direction that can be revolutionary orchaotic (revolution or decadence, as I have put it).

Third: what should be made of the representation of society

that Marx's own construction has produced (an intellectual pro-duction like the others, that he himself criticised)? Should notMarxism be subjected to critical Marxism? Marx never avoidedthis question. T he representation that he proposed is no t a closedand definitive theory (Marxism) but an ensemble of open ques-tions, with no closure being possible. I do not believe that theattempt made by Karl Mannheim (1952) in Ideology and Utopia

helps us to progress on this question because he is making a -remarkable - criticism of historical Marxism, not of Marx.


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Marx: critic of cap italist reality and its bourgeoisrepresentation

Marx never separated his tireless research into the actual realityof capitalism - both its basis in the capitalist economy as well asthe way in which it functioned politically, in which were entan-gled class struggles (in the plural as they were not limited to thecentral bourgeoisie/proletariat struggle) - and political conflicts.Marx gradually discovered this reality, that of the historical social

formation of capitalism, through dissecting the representationsthat it gave itself.I would add that the reality that Marx wanted to understand

(to mak e the struggle m ore effective for the positive ov erthrow ofcapitalism) is both the economic laws that generate its reproduc-tion (I would prefer to say requirements rather than laws, whichimply a determinism that is foreign to Marx's thinking) and the

way in which its political form is deployed. These two faces ofreality are inseparable.

I also share the viewpoint of Garo, who saw no contradictionbetween the concrete historical analyses of French politics between1848 and 1871, and the theses of Capital, as has been wrongly sug-gested by Raym ond Aron, w ho is not well equipped to understandthe spirit of M arx's research in the way he artificially d ivides M arxinto 'economist', 'sociologisf and 'political actor'.

Marx thus produced a critique of political economy, the essentialsubtitle of Capital w hich was a critique of the econ om ic discourseof capitalism. And it is in this sense that Capital should be read,not as good economic science, as opposed to bad (or imperfect)economic science of others (classical or popular). Rather Capitalwas the discovery of the existence of this representation used bythe bourgeois political economy, in its origins and in its (active)functions in reproducing its system.

But it was also a study of capitalism's limits, its internal con-tradictions that it cannot overcome, and of its character that is,finally, not scientific but ideological. The term 'ideology' should

be understood here in one of the senses that Marx gave it: notsimply as a system of ideas, a vision, a 'Weltanschauung' (con-struction of the world), but in its pejorative sense of false con-


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sciousness, illusion, a masking of the alienations that conditionthe formulations.

The to-ing and fro-ing from the concrete to the abstract, fromapparent phenomena to the hidden essence, constitute the livingbody of materialist dialectics in operation. Work, value, goodsthus become forms of discovered abstraction which makes itpossible to define capital as the social relationship, the surpluslabour and the exploitation that originate in the mode of produc-tion (and not in the circulation and distribution of income). The

shift from the abstract (the capitalist mode of production) to theconcrete (social formation) thus integrates the forms produced bythe genesis of historical capitalism (ow nersh ip of land, rent), thoseforms produced by the requirements of its political management(the state, political economies, the management of credit andcurrency) and those produced by the enrolment of each of thesesocial formations of historical capitalism into the globalised capi-

talist system (foreign trade).The result of this effort is remarkable but also unequalled. All

the bourgeois economic science subsequent to Marx, even themost sophisticated of modern times, even the most critical (likethat of Keynes) make, in my humble opinion, a poor showingcompared with the monumental Capital.

That does not mean that the result is final - it cannot be. Thisis not only becau se M arx did not hav e the time to comp lete it, butbecause the very idea of its completion was alien to Marx's mindand method.

Marx was, after all, somewhat limited by his times. He did nottake a m iraculou s medicine that vaccinated h im against the errorsand especially all the illusions and visions of his times. He did

not claim to be infallible, even if his interpretation by historicalMarxism sometimes implies it.I myself have dared to propose continuing this critique of

the political economy by restoring the whole extent of the chal-lenge constituted by the world capitalist system. Thus I proposeextending the theory of value at the most abstract level of its for-mulation (in the mode of capitalist production, itself an abstrac-

tion) towards formulating the 'law of globalised value'. This hasbeen the central object of my research for half a century. I nowrealise, with the advantage of hindsight, that in order to do it I


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benefited from being outside the centre (developed capitalism)in the peripheries (the very result of globalised capitalism), with

a viewpoint that I thus hope was free from Eurocentrism. I alsocould not do it other than nowadays, after Marx, in our epoch ofthe capitalism of the oligopolies. And in doing it I benefited fromthe lead of Lenin in this field.

The conclusion that Marx came to, and to which I subscribe, isthat the bourgeois political economy, which had become vulgar(see Translator's note) by necessity (as it continues to be), is an

ideology in the strictest sense of the word: a functional repre-sentation, as Garo says, that is directly of use to 'ownership', bylegitimising its claimed necessity. This implies, right from thebeginning, that bourgeois political economy analyses only theimmediate realities through which economic life expresses itself.The capitalist takes profits in proportion to the capital that heputs to work, therefore the capital is productive. When I recalled,in my book From C apitalism to Civilization (2010), the productiv-ity of social labour, erased by today's left-wing economists (eventhose who claim to be Marxists ), I was just pointing out that therepresentation of the econom y that they propo se rema ins a vulgarrepresentation.

It is not surprising that a - positivist - Marxian politicaleconomy has replaced Marx's critique of the political economy.That this trend has mainly been produced by Anglo-Americanacademics, before being adopted by others, is understandablegiven the attachment to empiricism that characterises their cul-ture. The false question of the transformation of value into priceis an exam ple.

The transformation implies a rate of profit expressed in the

system of production prices that is different from the rate of profitexpressed in the system of values. Marxians see an 'error' herethat abo lishes the validity o f the law of value. How ever, accord ingto M arx's thinking, there is no contrad iction and still less an error:the rate of apparent profit (expressed in the pricing system) mustbe different from its real rate, itself directly associated to the rateof surplus value that measures the exploitation of work. Science

always involves going beyond appearances, as Marx said manytimes. For our economists, who are bogged down in empiricism,kno w ledge is reduced to w hat is imm ediately ap parent. I insist on


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this point, which is never understood by our Marxians who have,alas, established a school of thought on the European continent.

I have also propo sed read ing the M arx of historical M arxism ofthe 20th century

Documents

Samir Amin 2011 - Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism