Multipolarity vs. world revolution

Hi guys, Joe Attaud here. Just a quick announcement before we get started. International Marxist radio has been going for over 20 episodes now, and we've been so overwhelmed at the support that all of our listeners have shown us. But all good things must come to an end, and in not too long, International Marxist radio will be taking a bit of a break. But don't worry, first of all, we're not going to go out with a whimper. We have some really excellent episodes planned that we're sure you're really going to enjoy. But also, we're not disappearing. Think of it a bit more of what Hagel described as a negation of the negation. We'll be leaving for a while, but then coming back bigger and better than ever before. So keep an eye on your preferred streaming service in the latter half of 2023, because rest assured, the communists will not be disappearing from the internet airwaves. Okay, that's all for now. I'll put up a proper announcement and teaser about what we have in store for our second incarnation in a few weeks' time. But let's get on with this week's episode. Welcome to International Marxist radio. The official podcast of the International Marxist tendency, Marxist.com. Join us every single week for Marxist news, theory and analysis. Hello and welcome to International Marxist radio. In previous episodes, we talked about the changing balance of power on the world stage, and particularly the relative decline of US imperialism and the rise of countries like China and Russia, competing in the void left behind by the Americans relative retreats. And we're going to dig into this question about what it means for world relations, what it means for the international class struggle, and what the tasks of the communists are in relation to this new situation. And we're very happy to welcome Hamid Ali Zadeh, who is an editor for Marxist.com. Hamid, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for inviting me, Joe. So a term that I've heard a lot in the last couple of months is multi polarity or a multi polar world. And it's something that people on the left speak about positively. What exactly is a multi polar world? And is it something the we as Marxists think would be positive for world peace, for the class struggle, for humanity? Well, this is an idea that's been floating around in the past 20 or 30 years, in particular, and both on the left and on the right, basically, which says that well, on the one hand, you have in the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a world dominated by one single superpower, the US, the most powerful capitalist nation this ever existed. And the argument then goes, people look at the crimes of the US, the way that the Americans kind of just walk into one country after another with complete impunity. What's policemen? The world's policemen exactly starting wars and imposing their will on all other nations of the world. People think that well, that should be changed. What we need to have is a world where there are several powers which can balance each other off more or less like the Soviet Union and the US did so in the post war period. Right. And create, well, the argument goes a more democratic, peaceful world essentially. And speak clear Marxists do agree and do say that US imperialism is and remains the most reactionary force on the planet. Well, yes, of course. I mean, this is the most powerful capitalist economic military force that's ever existed on this planet. It interferes in the politics and the runnings of more or less all of the world's countries in one way or another. It controls a huge part of the world economy. It has massive military apparatus which stretches all around the globe and into intervenes wherever it sees necessary to defend the interests of US imperialism. It subjugates different nations and peoples in different ways. And in any place where there is a genuine revolutionary movement of the working class, the US is one of its primary, if not its primary enemy when it interferes against all every single revolution to divert them to crush them to defeat them one way or another. And it's done so in the whole of the post war period. I mean, the track record of the US is unrivaled really in the amount of bloodshed death and destruction that is left in its trails. Do we agree as Marxists, acknowledging that the US is clearly the most predatory of all the predatory world powers, that if it declines and competitors start to balance out its dominance. It's dominance of the world. Why is that not a good thing from our point of view? We've got the leaders not necessarily on the left, but the leaders of countries like South Africa, the countries throughout Latin America who say that well, you know what we face colonialization and naked exploitation by America and European powers in the past. And the relationship that we have with countries like China is not as naked the predatory and maybe it will be a good thing for the Americans to be taken down a few pegs. What do we say to that? Well, yes, there is this idea in particular that we have to support this is also among some parts of the left that we have to support Russia and China because they are fighting against US imperialism, which is as we established before the most reactionary force on the planet. But the point is that competition and conflict amongst different layers of the ruling class always takes place. It doesn't mean that any of them have the interests of the working class at heart. What is the purpose of the intervention of China, for example, in Latin America or in Africa? It's not to help those countries, not to develop those countries. It is to secure for itself raw material, it takes over different minds and other elements to secure for itself energy and to create trading routes and basically take over or open up new markets for its own goods. That's the process we've seen in the past 20, 30 years with the development of China to become the world's second largest capitalist nation. At the same time, you also see in it with Russia, for example, the intervention of Russia in Syria. Yes, it was fighting against US imperialism. It was the Americans, the West and the Gulf states that destabilized Syria completely like they did all the other countries of the Middle East. But does this mean that Russia's interventionist Syria is for democracy, for the improvement of the conditions of the working class? Does it have a progressive character? Absolutely not. Or the intervention of Russia in Libya where it supports the Haftar government, which is a reactionary government that controls the eastern part of Libya as it is today. The same you can say, the intervention of Russia in Sudan, again where it's backing counter revolutionary forces. And Russia is also intervening in many of the West African countries, Mali and so on, with no other purpose than to further the interests of the Russian oligarchy itself and the regime. It has nothing in common with the interests of the working class. It has nothing in common with it has nothing to do with improving the conditions of people, even of spreading democratic rights or creating a more fair world without the injustices of the US. In fact, Russia and China are not fighting US imperialism, well they are fighting US imperialism but they are not fighting imperialism as such. They are just fighting to replace it to offer their own version of a different type of imperialism essentially. Now whether they be able to replace the US or not, I don't think that's on the cards at the moment. But there's certainly nothing progressive with the rise of China as a world power and also Russia to a certain extent. Russia is not obviously a power on the same level as China. There's nothing progressive about this and there's nothing progressive about the Russian or Chinese regime. There's nothing fundamentally in the sense that they are both vicious capitals or they're all vicious capitalist regimes. In that sense there's nothing that fundamentally distinguishes the Chinese, the Russian and the American ruling class apart from their power. to take a bit of a theoretical slant on this. I know that a number of communist parties around the world. So the Stalinist parties, former Soviet line parties, have spoken favorably about this idea of multiple aridcy, more or less openly. And reading these articles, reading these comments by politicians and by activists to these parties, it puts me very much in mind of the popular fronts of the 1920s and 30s and 40s, where the Stalinists would ally with this or that bourgeois, nationalist bourgeois party or figurehead, in order to, as they put it, fend off the greater evil, this feels like popular frontism on a global scale, and it runs into all the same mistakes. I wonder if you feel the same way. Yes, that's precisely what's happening. That the idea that's being fostered here is that there is within capitalism, you can actually solve the world's problems within the confines of capitalism. There are some parts of the capitalist class, which are progressive, in fact, whereas there is no such thing as progressive capitalism. That doesn't exist. The capitalist class, the enemies of the working class-- that's the only way the capitalist class can sustain a self is by exploiting the working classes. Its interests are diametrically opposed to those of the working class. And what these theories are doing, they might sound very radical because they say, oh, we are anti-imperialist, we're fighting as US imperialism. Well, on that, we can agree. But in reality, they don't take the fight very far. They just fight to replace one form of imperialism with another one form of one shape of capitalism, essentially, with another. And that actually so illusions in the system itself that it wouldn't change anything. And what it shows to me-- and this has always been the criticism we've had of the Stalinists-- and the reformists. They share a fundamental lack of faith in the power of the working class to govern society on their own. What this belies when you have people on the so-called left saying, well, it's a good thing. We should get behind China or Russia when they're opposing US imperialism. They don't trust the working classes of Russia, China, America, or anywhere else to manage society, to conquer power on their own. They see them as too weak to backward, not sufficiently revolutionary. I don't know what. And they say, well, as a pragmatic gesture, we have to get behind the lesser evil. And it feels to me that's where this distortion comes from. And these people love to quote Lenin, especially in the Communist parties, but Lenin was always excoriating about the idea of there being a possibility of a successful alliance with the so-called progressive bourgeois. Yeah, they think-- these people think they're being sensible. They think they're being realistic. But in reality, their politics doesn't change anything. Let's take the thought experiment to its extreme and say that the Russia and China are going to gang up tomorrow, and they're going to beat US imperialism on every front. What's going to happen is going to be a new world with China as the main world power, potentially Russia as a secondary one. What's that going to change? What's that going to change for the world's working classes? It just means that one form of subjugation of nations is being changed by another form. However, it may express itself. It doesn't really change anything. I think also there is another aspect in this. Is that in that-- you see, in Russia and China itself, we have two very powerful working classes, the Chinese working classes, the biggest working class in the world. And who is the enemy of the Chinese working class? Who is the primary enemy of the Chinese workers? It's the Chinese regime. It's the CCP regime, the Chinese capitalist class. And in order to liberate themselves, the Chinese workers must fight against the Chinese regime now and take power into their own hands. Now, what these people are doing, the people who defend this multiple world theory, are essentially stopping that struggle, they're sowing illusions on the one hand in these regimes, in these capitalists. And at the same time, they're blocking the path for the Chinese workers to liberate themselves. What would be the slogan of Marxists in China? Well, obviously, we would have to oppose the ruling class. We would have to expose this saying, this is obviously not a communist country. This is not a real communist party. The people who run this society are the capitalists and the clique at the top of the state. They are the enemies of the workers. The working class must take power into its own hands. At the same time, here is the thing in that the Chinese regime uses-- because of the history of China, and its relationship with US imperialism, there is a deep-seated hatred amongst the Chinese workers against the Americans. Why, they said? Again, of course, against US imperialism, because of all the crimes that is committed, both against China and against other countries throughout the world. And the Chinese ruling class uses this correct anti-imperialism demagogically in order to cut through the class struggle in China. I to dilute the class contradictions in China, to say to the Chinese workers, yes, we are also against-- we are under threat. We are under attack by the Americans, by US imperialism. I need to protect the Fender ourselves, and with the only ones here to defend you, we need to stand united workers and bourgeois alike and fight against this thing. So in that sense, they use the threat of US imperialism to dilute class contradictions and push the Chinese workers rally them behind themselves. Now, our task is to clarify those class lines. It's to say, in reality, these people are not fighting against imperialism. They don't have the interests of the Chinese workers at heart. Our interests are diametrically opposed. What the Chinese workers need to do is to take power into their own hands. And then, of course, we still need to fight against US imperialism. It would still be an enemy of the Chinese working class. But that can be done by class solidarity and internationalism. The other thing that I find really contradictory about this position is the view that somehow the world would necessarily, on a capital this base, is be more stable if only you had different seats of power rather than just one pole of power. Because the two world wars in the 20th century occurred precisely because you've had competing blocks of capitalist world powers. And I don't think you could say that that's evidence that this brings about stability in peace. Oh, precisely. I mean, the thing is, war is a component part, is an inherent part of capitalism. Because of the internal contradictions of the system, which drive different capitalists and different capitalists nations against one another, again and again, in order to, how do you say, reorder the world market between themselves. This is an inherent part-- this was explained by Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky, many, many times. If you want a world without war, what you need to do is to get rid of capitalism, not to try to balance it in such a way that the different powers balance each other out. Essentially, what these people are talking about is you have several powers which are armed to the teeth, to such an extent that no one can fight off the other person, the others. And that's just an absolute utopia, as you said yourself. In the world wars, this was precisely the situation. You had multiple powers. But because of the underlying shifts precisely in those power relations sooner or later, these powers would have to come into conflict with one other. And we saw that in the world wars. Likewise, today, in fact, if you look at the war in Ukraine, what is that, if not precisely an expression of a changing situation on a world scale? And we'll come to that in more detail in a minute, because I think that we've set the terms of our disagreement with this argument. So let's get into some of the specifics. You recently wrote, along with Ben Curry, another alumni of our show, a good article for Marxist.com, The widening fishes and world relations and the tasks of the communists. I'll put a link in the episode description where you deal precisely with this changed balance of power given the relative decline of the US. And I asked John Peterson last week, the editor of Socialist Revolution, our US section. I'll put a link to that episode in the description as well if you haven't heard it, where we had taught briefly about what it actually means for America to have undergone a relative decline. But can we talk about that in a bit more detail? What exactly is the standing of US imperialism at this moment? Well, in order to understand the situation, today, I think we need to go back to the early 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union, where a new situation developed, where the US, the US imperialism was the sole superpower of this planet, a power which was far stronger than any other of its closest competitors, in which dominated the world market almost entirely. And it could do for a period whatever it wanted, essentially. It could, you know, it's the Saddam Hussein didn't want to listen to the Americans. They started a war without any problems. They interfered, broke up the Yugoslavia with terrible consequences in Eastern Europe. They pillaged all of the Eastern block in the ex-Soviet countries, including Russia, sabotaging it, trying to destroy it as much as possible in order for Russia to become a competitor again. And they basically, well, they started wars in Somalia. All over the world, they basically did whatever they wanted to. And they seemed and they thought they were invincible, also in the way that they presented themselves. You know, you had Coca-Cola, Michael Jordan, action heroes, and all of these things. Well, I think Rambo was the 80s, if I'm being so, sorry, film the. Oh, yes, of course, of course. But McDonald's, obviously. And they thought they were invincible. Obviously, regardless of how big a power you are, you're never invincible. There's always a limit to everything. And that limit was met in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Where basically the Americans were defeated, essentially. In Afghanistan, they dragged out the final retreat until, was it two years ago. And in Iraq, they still have some forces. But essentially, they were defeated. Not only did they incur huge costs in terms of military spending and a massive weight on, you know, the heavy debt that accumulated within the state budget. But they also stirred up, among the American population, a deep-seated anti-war sentiment. The American people do not want to go to war. And you saw that, for instance, when Donald Trump was elected, with drawing from wars and stopping this kind of tradition of intervening throughout the world and being the world's policeman, that was one of his main slogans. And he got a massive support for that. And you made the point in your article as well, even before when Obama failed to get support in Senate and Congress for a limited invention in Syria. They couldn't even bomb Syria. They couldn't even get the support in Congress to bomb Syria. Why? Because people knew that if they voted for this, they could be, you know, lose their spots in the following elections. This was a hot potato. And that puts certain limitations for the ability of the Americans to intervene throughout the world. And although US imperialism is still by far the most powerful nation in every sense of the world almost, it cannot intervene as it used to. It cannot deploy troops as it used to. And that means that it's limited in what it can do. And it has certain consequences. That is, authority is unable to, how does it follow through with defending its authority and imposing its will as it used to. That then led to a massive shift within world relations. You saw countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia that were previously close allies of the Americans taken slightly, well, basically starting to hedge their bets, not entirely towing the line. It is still a very important member of NATO. Increasingly following its own interest dealing with Putin, with the Iranian regime, with anyone it wishes basically. And yes, all of this was a reflection of the declining, how does it say, authority, the relatively declining authority of US imperialism. The thing is that the Americans lost the war in Syria because they couldn't intervene as they used to, which meant that once the Russia intervened in Syria and supported the Assad regime and the Iranians and the Russians ganged up together, they basically defeated the American led coalition. And that completely changed the balance of forces in the Middle East. And the same with Iraq, once ISIS started developing and coming to the fore, the Americans could not, in order to stabilize the regime, they could not send in their own troops. They had to collaborate with Iranian-linked militia and Iranian-linked armed forces in order to fight against ISIS, which then disrupted their relationship with the Saudis and with the Israelis and so on and so forth. Now within, at the same time, you have another process, which is that on the economic field, you have the development of China, which is now the world's second largest economy, and which plays a bigger and bigger role on a world scale, becoming kind of a polar attraction to certain other countries, which are trying to increase their own room for maneuvering. So you see the Chinese are making deals, for instance, all over Latin America. China has got a very good relationship with many of the regimes, which previously used to be very close to American imperialism. And these processes come together in this situation, where you have, that's why we call it, if this does not mean that the days of US imperialism as the biggest power on the planet are finished, not at all. It doesn't mean that, but it does mean that the US, whereas it's still the most powerful force on the planet, is that's unconsistible that position at this stage. Nevertheless, it's not able to enforce its will as it used to, and that creates some room for maneuvering for other countries. And speaking of the Ukraine war, that has really accelerated this whole process, because the Americans intervened in Ukraine, and they said this openly, as a means, they saw this war as a means to weaken Russia, so that in that sense that they could essentially weaken the main ally of their main enemy, which is China. China is the real enemy of US imperialism, and they thought Russia is an ally, is the most important ally of China, and if we can weaken Russia, then we can isolate China and we can deal with the Chinese. But the fact is that that has completely backfired, because the war, whereas on the battlefield, nothing is really decided yet. Everything is either way, really speaking, is going on. But the attempt of the Americans to try to isolate Russia on an international scale has completely backfired. They thought they could use this war to rally the whole world behind them, and show, as a short force, and crush the Russian economy. And it's true, the Russian economy has suffered, like any economy would with such a brutal siege, which essentially what these sanctions are. These sanctions are a whole lot of warfare, right? Yes, it amounts to a siege, essentially. But they haven't broken the Russian economy far from it, and in fact, what has happened is that a huge amount of the world's countries, I think in fact, no, it is the majority of the world's countries, the majority of the world's nations, representing a vast majority of the world's population, have refused to one way or another, implement these sanctions. Yeah, it's interesting whenever the Americans in particular, or the UN, or the EU, talk about the international community, they actually do not mean the majority of the world's population. Well, here's, I mean, well, even from their own point of view, the international community has not really followed suit in what the Americans were demanding. Look, China, the world's second biggest economy, has not cut its relations with Russia. In fact, it increases economic ties with Russia. And they have made several new trade deals when Xi Jinping was in Moscow recently. And they are helping Russia circumvent the sanctions in particular on microchip. and these kind of other specialized components that the Russians need, in particular, in particular for their arms industry. The same with Turkey, Erdogan, the Turkish President has refused to impose sanctions on Russia. And it's called, he was a couple of weeks ago, he called the relationship with Russia a special economic relationship. Yes. The Saudi again last week agreed to decrease oil production as a means to keep up oil prices, which was, which benefits Russia, and which is to the detriment of the US imperialism because they wanted to cut off Russian oil and gas income. The Israelis are refusing to impose any sanctions on Russia, they maintain friendly relations. Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, all of these Latin American countries. As you said, South Africa, I just hosting, in fact, they're refusing to abide by this warrant that they have been. The international criminal court, the rest warrant of Putin. Yes. They're refusing, they passed the law, refusing to implement that. They've had what do you call it, military, naval exercises with Russia and China and so on. India and so on and so forth. Throughout the world, a huge number of countries, for their own reasons, refusing to impose sanctions on Russia, refusing to cut relations with China. In fact, what this whole thing looks like is again, is a massive loss of authority for US imperialism itself. In other words, this process has been accelerated and it's not to the benefit of the Americans. The Chinese are now. The Chinese recently, how do you say, mediated a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Again, a massive humiliation of US imperialism. More and more countries are joining the Chinese. Let's go to Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is, I think, it's like a competitor to the World Bank and IMF, but a Chinese-based one. Including the Gulf States, including many Latin American and African-key African countries. Many countries are applying for membership of the BRICS, which is again an organization led by Russia and China. And so, in reality, what's happening is not that the Americans isolating Russia. They, in fact, pushed Russia closer into the arms of the Chinese, whereas if they've made a deal with Russia, then they could've actually isolated the Chinese. They pushed Russia and China closer to one another. And they've undermined their own position because from the point of view of the majority countries of the world, this war has no benefit for them. The impact that it's had is rising general instability, obviously. Rising oil prices, energy prices, rising grain prices, and generalizing. Rising fertilizer prices, which are extremely important, especially in the poorest countries, in order to maintain social stability. The ruling classes in these countries are saying, well, if you look throughout Africa, that every country is on the verge of social explosion, this hunger, destitution, poverty, all of these things increasing rapidly. And then you have on top of this another war, which is being dragged out by the West, which again pushes the prices of basic goods that ordinary people use even higher. Well, people would rather deal with Russia where they can get cheap grain, cheap fertilizer, cheap oil, and so on. I mean, it's not funny, but it's grimly funny in a way sitting here in London, and obviously the UK and the British ruling class have been some of the biggest hawks over Ukraine. They're completely in the American's pocket. They're playing their own game as well, but generally speaking, they're one of the US imperialist, loudest lap dogs. They're buying Russian oil by the back door that India purchased from Russia, but at a premium. It's not very funny when I look at my energy bills, but nevertheless, there's a certain, there's a certain dark comedy to it. But I want to talk again about the way that the Chinese have played this situation, because Xi Jinping has been quite skillful. It seems to me in terms of how he's played the Ukraine more diplomatically, because he presented this peace deal, a proposed peace plan as a kind of mediator, fully aware that there was no chance it was going to work. There's no way that the Kiev regime would agree. But the point is, the signal that China sends to the world is, and you make this point neurotical, the Americans bring instability and chaos and war and war here, bringing peace and stability and trying to find some way to make all these problems go away. So you can see how these rising powers are benefiting from the quagmire, the Americans, and bound themselves up in the Ukraine. And I'm sure we're going to see more and more of that. So let's talk about the Europeans, because in the Ukraine war, there's been the very least on the surface, a very public and loud display of solidarity and unanimity. Europe was all together against Russian aggression, backing Ukraine to the Hilt and, more importantly, closely behind American imperialism after a period of sort of soured relations, particularly during the Trump presidency and also during COVID, particularly for countries like Germany, who previously had charted a bit of an independent course on China and Russia. But how closely does this public show solidarity actually match the real situation behind closed doors? Well, Europe is in a very contradictory position, because on the one hand, US imperialism exerts enormous influence within Europe in every way, economically, diplomatically, and so on. And therefore, it's pushing essentially Europe into this war. And one of the reasons, in fact, for the US to intervene in the Ukraine war was to sever the connection between the Europeans and the Russians. And European Union, in particular France and Germany and the bigger capitalist countries in Europe, were heavily and are very dependent on cheap Russian gas in order to remain competitive on a world scale in order for their industries to be competitive on a world scale. It's very hypocritical what you think about the way they bang on about the nasty anti-democratic and brutal Russia today. Of course, of course, but at the end of the day, interests are always going to carry the day within capitalism. And the interest of the European capitalist class is to remain competitive and to be able to sell their goods at the lowest price on a world market. But from a US perspective, Europe's dependence on Russia was seen as a threat. And they saw this war as a means to cut that relationship and to thereby to dominate Europe even more to bring Europe closer into their own orbit. Now, that has had a huge impact on Europe. I just saw this morning, I think, yesterday, the European Union is now in a recession. Yes. The European economy has declined two quarters in a row, which is a direct, directly linked to the war, to the inflation caused by the war to the declining, to the rising energy prices, declining competitiveness, and so on and so forth. And the US, and it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it's going to get any better anytime soon. The Europeans are not happy about this war. And at every stage, they've been dragging their feet if you see they don't contribute, at least the main, we're talking here about Germany, friends, and the main capitalist countries. They do not see this war as being in their interest. They want to have a negotiated settlement as soon as possible so that they can come back to business as usual and to reestablish ties with Russia again. Especially on the question of gas and so on. But the Americans are keep pushing this and they're dragging the Europeans along. But we do see these disagreements coming to the surface that the Europeans increasingly are at odds with the way that the Americans are taking the world. We saw both Shulz, the German Chancellor and the French President Macron visiting China recently, you know, widely publicized trips with lots of businessmen that they took to ink deals with the Chinese. Lots of controversy facing Shulz, particularly from the Green Party in Germany. Yes, precisely because the Greens are direct mouthpiece of US imperialism. But this was clearly a defiance of the Americans. Defiance of the general trend that the US is taking the world and trying to isolate Russia and also thereby damaging the Europeans. And also we see that the Americans introduce this inflation reduction act, which is basically a $400 billion package aimed at, how do you say, well, aimed against European companies, essentially in support of their own companies and against European companies. So essentially it's a measure of a trade war brewing there, developing there. And the Europeans have taken, are taking similar measures. So the conflict between Europe and the US is also continuing, is also brewing, although not as openly as the Americans are in conflict with many other countries. But certainly what has been proven is that this idea of consolidating the US's power, the world policeman's power, that is completely backfired. And in reality, what really stands out in this picture is not so much how powerful the US is, but what really stands out is the limits of his powers. And every, everyone is taking note of this, which means that we're going to see increased instability in the next period. I wanted to get your opinion and you don't deal with this in your article, which is why I'm asking. But I was thinking about what it would look like if Ukraine is thoroughly defeated by Russia or ends up in a frozen conflict, not favorable to Kiev, because the Europeans have endured massive economic crises. You've already mentioned that the Eurozone is in recession. You've had the cost of living crisis going on for well over a year now. And the Americans as well have thrown billions into the battlefield. There's rising discontents amongst the American population at the state of their own economy. You've got the entire cities literally rotting through lack of investments. And Biden keeps herding money into the Ukraine mail stream. If US imperialism is unsuccessful again in an attempt to curb a competitor in this proxy war, what's that going to mean for its standing on the world stage and for the situation in world politics? Well, that's a difficult one to say because we don't know what's going to happen. Obviously, I mean, the biggest price of all of this is being paid by the Ukrainian people. The Ukraine has such has been destroyed. But who wins on the battlefield? For Marx's first of all, it doesn't really matter who wins. We don't support either of these sides. It's clear that if the key of government and by de facto thereby the West as their puppet masters lose, that would lead to a big crisis in the West, a political crisis in the West. All the countries, the more the support has been, the more humiliated would their governments and those countries stand. And it would add to the social crisis and the class struggle that's brewing throughout all of these countries that goes for Eastern European countries in particular Poland and all of these countries, the Baltic states. But also for the rest of Europe, which has also been involved, and of course, also for US imperialism, the Biden regime, the Biden government would be extremely humiliated. In fact, the Ukraine war was one of the few actual policies that Biden has managed to carry out. So that would really raise the heat underneath the Biden government. And it would add to the instability that's going on in the US. On the Russian side, it would probably strengthen the regime for a period. And obviously, that would be to the detriment of the Russian workers working class. If Russia should lose, however, it would be obviously the other way. US imperialism, the Western imperialism would be strengthened temporarily. And in Russia, you could see revolutionary developments. You could see social upheavals. But on a world scale, I think obviously, defeat of US imperialism with would again accelerate the same process that we saw before with declining authority of US imperialism. It would embolden more powers to challenge US imperialism. China and Russia of course, on the one side, but also smaller powers and also even allies of the Americans. Like we saw with the Saudis who are now openly dealing with Russia and China as well as the US, Israel and so on, European countries. You would in general see, yes, more instability and more sort of rebellion against the world's policemen by the other bullies in the schoolyard. If you want to use that expression. And that would lead to increase the instability. Similar to when we saw the decline of the British Empire and at that time, the rise of US imperialism, which led to increased to increase instability. It also led to revolutionary upheavals in many of the colonies. Now we don't know what's going to happen. And we're certainly not saying that this would be the end of US imperialism. We don't know where things are going and how things will pan out. But certainly, a defeat of US imperialism would, as I said, accelerate this process and increase the general instability on a world scale, feeding into the general crisis of world capitalism. So you were clear earlier that there's no prospect of China overtaking the US anytime soon. But what's their situation at home? And how does that play into their foreign policy? Yeah, there is this idea that China would grow and grow and grow and overtake the US. But as you kind of hint, that's not necessarily the way that things are going. At the moment, China has a GDP, which is around 18% of the world's GDP. And the Americans have something like 24%. And many people take that to say, "Oh, well, look, the gap is narrowing and soon they will take them over." But I think things are not as simple as that. First of all, the US economy is far more advanced than the Chinese on technologically and far more complex. The control of the US economy that it exerts over the world economy, over different parts of the world economy is far, far, far beyond what China controls. And therefore, you can't really compare these at all on an economic basis, industrially or otherwise. Militarially, also, you have a situation where the US military is by far the biggest military force in the most powerful in the world. It's bigger. The military budget is bigger than the next 10 countries combined. And I think the total military expenditures of the US is around 40% of the total military expenditures of the whole world. The Americans have 11 aircraft carriers, 9 amphibious assault ships, the Chinese, and these are top grade, extremely modern weapons with thousands of people. Essentially small armies with nuclear engines, which can be deployed anywhere in the world, basically within a very short period of time. The Chinese have two aircraft carriers, which are on a far lower technological level than the Americans. The Americans have 750 military bases. The Chinese have five, I think. And you can go on comparing the different, I was at the power of the US empiricism with that of China. And you will see that there's actually quite a far way between the two. Now, the other question, which is important, is that at the same time, is true that in the past 20 or 30 years, you've seen a very rapid economic development in China. At one point, I think you had the growth rates of 10, 15%. And obviously, the China has been completely transformed in the past period. Especially after the introduction of capitalism. But at the same time, precisely because China is now a capitalist country, it also means that it's accumulated the same contradictions which accumulate throughout the world in other capitalist countries. And what you have now is actually a China, which in terms of the debt levels and the economic contradictions is on the same level as all other countries in the world. I think the Chinese debt GDP ratio is above 300%. There is in the local governments, there's more than $7 trillion worth of debt, which is very unlikely to be that they can actually pay off the income of the local governments is declining very fast. And there are huge contradictions gathering in China on the economic front, on the social front as well. A few years ago you saw the collapse of Evergrande this property development company which was worth $500 million and there are many more like that waiting. So sooner or later the Chinese economy will enter into a crisis and that will obviously serve the, how do you say, up what you're acting? The trajectory of the Chinese economy which means that no at this stage we're not going to see the same level of development that we saw in the previous stage. We'll have to see what happens in the next period but at the moment there's no indication that China will be able to challenge the power of US imperialism as an equal. It does not mean however that it will not play a bigger role. It's China is clearly a world power now. It's establishing economic and diplomatic relations, expanding its military footprint all over the world and you will see increasingly different countries trying to balance or use China as a way to gain more concessions from the Americans and trying to balance these two powers off against one another in order to gain more independence for themselves. You will also see even smaller power, smaller nations being completely crushed and gobbled up by these two powers. In that sense this is not going to create more stability as the defendants of the multiple world theory claim. It's going to create more instability. You see already for instance in a country like Taiwan where both the Americans and the Chinese are vying for influence. It's moving towards an incredibly unstable situation. The same in Burma where again you have the same two powers have been competing against one another. And in more and more countries in East Asia you see the different factions of the ruling class being supported by one of these two powers leading to increased instability and the similar thing you will also see in other countries as well. We've covered a lot of ground and I think it's time to bring this discussion to a close with the second part of the headline of your article which is the tasks of the communists because the reason we're talking about this new situation is because we as communists have to know how to orientate ourselves in order to best facilitate our activities in the class struggle. So given the decline of US imperialism, given the increased turbulence on the world stage, given the rise of these competing powers, what are the tasks of the communists, the internationalists, the Marxists who are fighting not for the victory of one imperialist over the other but for world revolution? Well I think first of all the main thing is to recognize that this world that we're seeing with extreme instability, with poverty and hunger and wars, clashes between nations, economic wars, sanctions and so on and all of the reactionary consequences that it has is in essence a product of capitalism, of world capitalism and that is the best of all worlds within the capitalist system. There's no way to improve this system from inside and therefore what we fight for is the socialist society to overthrow capitalism all over the world and fight for world socialist federation. Now in that struggle, obviously the struggle against imperialism is an incredibly important struggle. The struggle against US imperialism is a very very important struggle that cannot be separated from the struggle for socialism. There's no such thing as let's fight against imperialism now, as some people say, as the people, you know, essentially that is what people fighting for the multipolar world on the left are saying, let's fight against imperialism now. We will ally with the Chinese and the Russians and these and these people and then we'll fight for socialism later but the point is that the struggle against imperialism is a part of the struggle for socialism and vice versa. For the Western working class, of course, Western imperialism plays an incredibly important role in stabilizing the rule of the Western capitalist class at home, is used politically with the whipping up of patriotism and nationalism and so on. It's used, obviously, economically to sustain themselves and every defeat for imperialism out there in the world equally is a defeat for the ruling class at home. That's why we say that a defeat for US imperialism, let's say, in the Ukraine war, would add to the social instability in the US and would benefit the US working class. And therefore, the US workers have just as much interest in fighting their own imperialism as the workers in the rest of the world have to fight against US imperialism and their fight is the same. The Western-based workers have the same interest as the workers in other countries. But when our ruling classes talk about going out there, spreading democracy and spreading our Western values and all of these things, our task as Western-based Marxists is to expose that and to expose that for what it is that the interventions of the West throughout the world is nothing but reactionary, narrow-minded endeavors to protect the position of the ruling class at home, to protect and to further the interests of the capitalist class in the West itself. And we're opposed to it and we must oppose it in any way possible throughout all times. It's not our task as the Western-based workers to overthrow, let's say, the Putin regime or the CCP regime in China, that is the task of the Russian workers and the Chinese workers and so on and so forth. But in fighting our own ruling class and in fighting our own imperialism, we also support the struggle of all the workers all around the world who are also fighting their own ruling classes as well as West and Imperialism. So the slogan is, "The main enemy is at home." The main enemy of the Western-based working class is the ruling classes here, our own capitalist class, our imperialists. And for the workers and poor in other countries and the oppressed nations and so on, the main enemy is at home there. Now, just because there are, say, let's say the Chinese and Russian regimes who want to fight against US imperialism for their own reasons, it doesn't mean that we support them. In fact, for the Russian and Chinese workers, we also say the enemy is at home. The enemy is a CCP regime. Of course, we also want to fight imperialism and let's say tomorrow if the Russian workers take power, the first enemy would be US imperialism, we would try to intervene in every possible way to undermine that revolution. And it would have to fight against that US imperialism, but it would do so with power in its own hand and for the benefit of the interests of the world working class. And in an alliance with the workers of the world, with the workers of the West as well, for whom each step forward for the workers of any country is a step forward for themselves as well. So workers of the world unite. That's essentially summing up the whole discussion that in order to fight against wars and civil wars and all this reactionary mess that you see around the world, we need to organize for an international revolution. And it's in times of war that the real internationalists are separated from the show vanists of the so-called left. And we've seen that over the course of the Ukraine war. And the international Marxist-Hedmency can proudly say that it took a principle internationalist stance from the beginning and still does. Yes. Once more, the article that Hamid has written with Ben, the widening fishes in world relations and the task of the communists is available on Marxist.com. I'll put the link in the description. Give it a read, it's a really good piece, and it can elaborate some of the stuff that we've touched on in the course of this episode. All right. See you next week. International Marxist Radio. Thanks for joining us. Tune in again same time next week. For more Marxist news, theory and analysis. 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