Multipolarity, BRICS+ & Socialism

Theorizing the Global Class Struggle

Over the past year, there has been increasing discussion about the emerging multipolar world spearheaded by BRICS+, and what this means for the prospects of building socialism. Many on the left dismiss the idea that multipolarity offers any potential for advancing socialism, or worse, view it as a form of inter-imperialist conflict reminiscent of the conditions leading up to World War I. Greg Godels, for example, argues that the multipolar “capitalist world of today [is] not so different from the capitalist world on the eve of 1914.” While today’s multipolarity may resemble 1914 in some ways, it is also a unique product of historical processes that have developed at a more advanced stage of capitalism. It is therefore necessary to theorize the novel geopolitical conditions that characterize contemporary multipolarity and its relation to the struggle for socialism in the 21st century.

While it is true that most BRICS+ nations are capitalist, it should not be overlooked that all of them—except Russia—are located in the Global South. Nations across the Global South, particularly in Africa, are pivoting away from traditional forms of dependency on Western nations and global proxy institutions, and towards those established by BRICS+. BRICS+ currently includes more nations from Africa (three) than any other continent, and there have been strong indications that Algeria, Senegal, and other African nations are seeking membership as well. This pivot is occurring during revolutionary anti-colonial uprisings in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, which have already undermined imperialist interests across the Sahel region.

For states and nations across the Global South, BRICS+ represents a coalition with a concrete class character, standing in opposition to the geopolitical and economic interests of the imperialist North. This is a unique aspect of the global order that distinguishes the multipolar world of inter-imperialist competition among western powers, from today’s global class conflict between two clearly delineated antagonistic camps: “the West versus the rest.”

The UN General Assembly and UN Security Council are two arenas where this division has been most clearly evident, with consistent splits in voting trends between Western countries and the rest of the world. On May 10th, 2024, for example, the UN General Assembly forced the Security Council to adopt a motion to grant Palestine full statehood recognition. 143 Nations voted in favor, 25 abstained, and 9, including the U.S. voted against. This came one month after the U.S. unilaterally vetoed a Security Council resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. 

In contrast to the anti-Palestinian politics of western nations, the Global South has been at the forefront of the struggle for Palestinian sovereignty and human rights. South Africa—a BRICS+ member— has played one of the most significant roles in launching its landmark case in the International Court of Justice, which found Israel guilty of apartheid.

A major problem BRICS+ has posed for the U.S. empire has been the extent to which Saudi Arabia’s membership may undermine the power of the U.S. petrodollar. In 1973, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations agreed to purchase and sell petroleum on the world market in U.S. dollars thereby creating a global demand for U.S. currency. The U.S. petrodollar has been a fundamental building block of U.S. unipolar hegemony since 1973 but could now be at risk with Saudi Arabia’s membership in BRICS+.

Concerns about the decline of the U.S. petrodollar are compounded by the emerging dual-power financial structures being created under the purview of BRICS+. The New Development Bank, for example, offers developing countries an alternative credit model to the World Bank, IMF, and U.S. “economic hitmen.” 

Despite the importance of these developments, the most significant aspect of the emerging BRICS+ nations is the growing economic power of China. Since 1979, the Chinese economy has grown by a factor of 100, lifting nearly 900 million people out of absolute poverty. Life expectancy has doubled over the past century, and its high-tech sector is now a leading global competitor. This “economic miracle” was made possible through the creation of market socialism and opening up to the outside world.

Since the early 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping introduced China’s Reform and Opening Up, the country has embarked on rapid economic development without dropping a single bomb on another country. Today, Deng’s reforms are giving rise to a generation of youth who are finally reaping the fruits of long decades of building China’s productive forces. Chinese development has not depended on becoming a player in an assumed inter-imperialist rivalry at the global level. It has progressed by embracing socialist economic principles and a foreign policy of mutual benefit and cooperation.

Across the world, China builds ports, roads, and bridges, while the U.S. builds military bases.

Despite China’s historic achievements and the prospects for global cooperation and development made possible through the rise of a multipolar world order, many Western socialists still fail to see past the anti-communist propaganda demonizing China. Marx and Engels noted how bourgeois interests are often embraced by the working masses because they are presented as the national or general interest. China is a threat to U.S. imperialism and Western hegemony, which is why the ruling classes of NATO countries want working people worldwide to believe that China is a threat to them as well.

The Western working class is constantly bombarded with stories falsely characterizing China as authoritarian, anti-democratic, opposed to human rights, and seeking world domination. In Canada, news headlines baselessly accuse China of interfering in Canadian elections and even portray Chinese-Canadians as a fifth column at the behest of Beijing.

These irrational attacks against China are the latest manifestation of the West’s inability to cope with the realities of an emerging multipolar world. Imperialists have no recourse to save the global capitalist system of exploitation that has served them so well, so they continue to dig their heels in and spread increasingly outlandish lies and attacks against the rising Chinese superpower.

China is laying the foundation of a new global system of geopolitical and economic relations based on mutual benefit and socialist values. As China’s middle class becomes wealthier, it will rightly expect a higher standard of living and greater access to not only basic necessities but also luxury items and services. Under the current global capitalist system, it is impossible to facilitate such a magnitude of growth in prosperity. The U.S. constitutes 5% of the global population but consumes approximately 20% of the total output of goods and services. This is not a model that can be replicated in China—a new horizon of possibility and economic revolution.

In 2020, China achieved one of its Two Centenary Goals of achieving “moderate prosperity in all respects”—abolishing absolute poverty and laying the foundation for establishing a “modern and advanced socialist society” by 2049. Until 2020, China’s development focused on eliminating poverty and building its high-tech industries to catch up with the West. During this period, the emphasis was on quantitatively building China’s productive forces. However, since 2020, China has embarked on a new stage in the long road to socialism, shifting its focus towards improving the quality of economic development. Since 2020, the emphasis has been on efficiency, ecological considerations, improving services such as healthcare, and overall quality of life.

So, why is it necessary to view multipolarity through the lens of class struggle?

When the trade union movement erupted across the western world in the mid to late 19th century, workers held disparate and often confused ideas about how to struggle for labour rights. However, the trade union movement built working-class consciousness through socialist leadership and a process of experimentation throughout time. 

Today, BRICS+ may be understood as a great step in the Global South not only recognizing itself as the global proletariat, but proceeding into a form of collective and organized economic resistance to U.S. hegemony. BRICS+ represents an alliance between capitalist, socialist, and even theocratic governments, who share a common positionality in the Global South and seek a common form of sustainable development outside the purview of U.S. hegemony. Like the trade union movement, China is leading the BRICS+ alliance and has laid much of the theoretical groundwork for how the alliance is to promote global peace, cooperation and mutual benefit. Every day it becomes clearer that China is leading the world to a higher stage of development, and is doing so by challenging the systems that perpetuate our common exploitation under global capital. 

Too many Western “socialists” fail to recognize the true nature of the global class struggle and withdraw from realpolitik by condemning “both sides” of any conflict or attributing the rise of socialist China or BRICS+ to the re-emergence of “inter-imperialist rivalry.” These explanations misattribute the process of development in the Global South as the product of capitalism and therefore paint countries like China as “inter-imperialist” rivals to the U.S. rather than a colonized people, lead by a proletarian dictatorship, finally proving the superiority of socialist economic planning over capitalist anarchy. 

The century-long failure by Western socialists to produce any meaningful organized action or build a strong socialist movement against western capital is evidence enough to suggest that Western theories of Marxism and socialism are deeply flawed, disconnected from the working masses, and divorced from political practice. Western distortions of Marxism are flawed, but as the Communist Party of China continues to demonstrate, Marxism is not obsolete. China imported Marxism from Russia, which took it from the west and built a socialist society. It is time that the west learns from China, and discovers how Marxism can be used, not only to interpret the world, but to change it.