Capitalism took over the world a century ago in its pursuit for material/economic interests, leading to a comprehensive war that resulted in the re-division of the world among its powers. However, it also created the conditions for the emergence of its opposite, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (1917), which triumphed despite the Western capitalist invasion. Most of Europe’s ruling regimes opposed the new state, deploying around a million and a half troops, to support the armies of the Tsar’s generals, reaching the borders of the socialist state, and forming what came to be known as the “Iron Curtain.”
As a result, the Arab world was colonized by the Western imperialists, defeating the Ottoman colonization, and subjected to imperialist division, facilitated by local rulers, tribal leaders, reactionary forces, and merchants, all appointed by imperialism. In this period imperialism designed the Sykes-Picot Plan/conspiracy (1916) which fragmented the Arab Homeland and the prepared for imposing the Zionist Ashkenazi Entity (ZAE) in Palestine.
The outcome of the First Imperialist War (1914-1918) and the crisis of 1929 the great depression led to a resurgence of capitalist clashes in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, resulting in the re-division of the world. This produced the expansion of the socialist camp and the victory of the Chinese revolution, as well as numerous revolutions in peripheral countries. However, the West replaced the British crown with the U.S. dollar as the currency of the new dominant imperialism.
The Arab Homeland is divided into:
1. Progressive and unified developmental trends led by revolutionary uprisings or coups.
2. The entrenchment of dependency on Western imperialism through monarchies, emirates, sheikhdoms, etc.
During this period, the Sykes-Picot was implemented in Greater Arab Mghrib, and its new eastern version created Gulf entities.
The aggression against Palestine continued in the alliance between British imperialism and the Zionist Movement which led to the occupation of most of Palestine, the creation of the ZAE and the eviction of majority of its people.
By the mid-1960s, economic prosperity in the West declined, coinciding with the Soviet Union’s deterioration and the retreat of the global revolution until the socialist bloc disintegrated, and capital triumphed over labor. However, the victor carried deep wounds due to its structural imbalance.
Nevertheless, the West/Center compensated by forming a new alliance between:
1. The capitalist classes of the capitalist center.
2. The comprador bourgeoisie classes of the periphery.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the planet transformed into what I call a Global Capitalist Public Sector (GCPS), i.e., market shared between the two partners of the class alliance based on the Trickle-down Economy.
During this extended period, the Arab world served as a tool and resource for counter-revolution, especially by aligning itself with the petrodollar. The Arab revolution declined, and the regimes returned to being comprador dominated by religious political forces, even deploying Arab armies against other Arab countries to serve imperialism. This resulted in the subjugating of Egypt for imperialism and Zionism, the destruction and occupation of Iraq, then Libya, an ongoing war in Syria, the war on Yemen, and the occupation of Bahrain, among others.
However, global contradictions did not cease to generate their opposites or semi-opposites. Three main trends emerged:
1. The rise of systems in peripheral countries: contrary to the center in terms of interests, field, foreign policy, rate of growth, and productivity. These new regimes in periphery notably, China, India, post-Yeltsin Russia, South Africa, and Brazil contributed to the development of this bloc whether capitalist or hybrid, have ideologies ranging between semi-socialist and capitalist, but without an imperialist content. Western and China’s corporations exploited Chinese labor forces through “minimum wage capitalism,” resulting in enabling China to become the second world economy and leading a global bloc that became the world’s leading economic power.
2. Developments in Latin America: After failing of the guerrilla revolutions against the ruling military juntas and their imperialist servitude, in the 1960s and 1970s, except for Cuba, a wave of popular or populist revolutions took place in several countries, such as Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, etc. These revolutions or movements captured that power through elections, were less radical than full-scale revolutions but higher than maintaining the status quo.
3. The movement that began and expanded in Africa, including Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Republic of Central Africa, and today in Niger. It marks an attempt to control the hemorrhage of wealth from its African reservoir. The extent of the new regime in Niger remains unclear, but it aligns with several other countries heading eastward, moving away from the center/western orbit, which seeks to stabilize its position and confront the new roles of Russia and China in Africa. These developments opened up possibilities for what we want to conclude in this article.
The place of these Three Developments in the of Theory of Global System School
I previously mentioned hurriedly that the coup in Niger, with its eastward orientation and the declaration of halting uranium and gold exports to France and Europe in general, as well as the support, even backing, from Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Central Africa, and perhaps others for the new Niger regime, is leading to a tangible degree of breaking away or possibly de-linking from the Western imperial center. This coincides with transformations in other African countries such as Burkina Faso, where its prime minister, Tambila, an ally of the late Sankara, quoted Che Guevara in his speech at the Russia -Africa conference in July of this year and had also participated in Nicaragua’s celebration of the Sandinista revolution’s 40th anniversary.
We can interpret these indicators to mean that even if they are military coup events, it is not true that they will not turn into revolutions, and there is evidence of that from the experience of Nasser or Sankara.
This takes us to interpret the three developments, especially the developments in Africa, in light of where the center of the global revolution is located.
Since the 1970s, the “Global System School” has developed its theory on the global revolution, leading the world to socialism or, as some see it, post-capitalism. This school was founded on the works of Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein, André Gunder Frank, and Giovanni Arrighi.
This school sees that the center of the global revolution lies in the peripheral countries, where revolutions and uprisings break away from the global capitalist market. This means stopping the flow of wealth/surplus from the periphery to the center, putting an end to the logic of the global capitalist system, and working on focusing on a local or regional law of value.
With the cessation of this flow, capitalist systems in the center are forced to:
Here, the class disparity grows, becoming a class differentiation, contradiction, and class struggle between capital and labor. In this case, the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” finds its practical application.
Moreover, there seems to be an objective and practical alliance among the three above-mentioned developments:
· BRICS group
· Leftist regimes in Latin America
· New regimes in Africa
While BRICS is announcing its new currency this month after having carried out exchanges between its member states, Argentina declared that it will adopt the BRICS currency in its trade exchanges. This is a bold step from a country outside of BRICS but geographically and objectively connected to Latin America.
Argentina’s move is highly sensitive and important not only because of the country’s economic size and foreign trade, but also because it marks the beginning of other countries exiting the dollar’s circle, where global trade used to be 90% in US dollar, and now it has decreased to less than 60%. This reminds us of Iraq’s decision to sell oil in currencies other than the dollar before being occupied by US imperialism in 2003, and Libya’s decision to create an African currency and an African Monetary Fund also before being destroyed by NATO in 2011. Both decisions of Iraq and Libya played a crucial role in the destruction of these countries.
We are not discussing here the interaction of Russia and China with the developments in Africa, such as providing better aid and establishing infrastructural and developmental projects without intervening in the political systems of these countries.
Perhaps it will be sufficient to mention what Russian President Putin stated in the Russia -Africa conference at the end of July 2023, affirming Russia’s readiness to provide wheat as a grant to many countries facing difficulties in obtaining wheat shipments or affording its price.
This supports our expectations of a positive intersection between BRICS and the revolutions in Africa and Latin America.
This raises the question: How will the West/Capitalist Center respond to these three global developments?
We can consider the importance of these three events that were led by the ruling social-political regimes in those countries, due to their geographical locations extending across several continents.
This brings us to another trio, the revolutionary popular trio. What is its relationship and stance towards the trio of regimes? What are the boundaries of their intersection or/and contradiction between the two?
By the revolutionary popular trio, we mean the revolutionary socialist forces in:
· BRICS countries, especially China
· Peripheral countries in general
· Countries of the Capitalist Center as well
Meaning that an alliance of necessity between the two trios is possible at a certain stage as a historical, possibly temporary alliance, to confront the Western imperialist capitalist system and move towards the establishment of the new world order, which also contains its own contradictions, i.e. some of BRICS capitalist regimes may turn imperialist on the one hand, and contradiction between these regimes and revolutionary forces within their countries themselves which are pushing towards a global socialist path.
We cannot predict how things will evolve, but it is certain that they are developing positively, which is essentially contingent on the actions of revolutionary forces on this planet.
The question remains: Where does the Arab Homeland position itself amidst these global developments?
This is not the place for analysis, but rather a description, as this Homeland is completely absent from contributing progressively to global developments, due to being governed by regimes that are hostile to the people, thus serving either imperialism and even regional regimes, i.e. Turkey and Iran seeking to dominate the Arab Homeland, being ruled by despotic reactionary and dependent regimes that impede the collective consciousness of the people and suffering from the incapability of the Arab liberation movement to present a revolutionary and socialist project.
The Arab homeland is still filled with the hallucinations of the Politicized Islamic Religion (PIR) led by Shaikhs, both Sunni and Shi’a, and their wars that range from the torment of the grave to harking back to the history of political conflict for power Ali and Muawiya fourteen centuries ago in order to strike at any beginnings of an Arab project, as the destruction and uprooting of Arabism is the goal of all these forces, be they intellectuals, political parties, or ruling Arab or regional regimes.