A pair of reports published Thursday show that many workers employed in the U.S. military-industrial complex support shifting manufacturing resources from military to civilian use—a conversion seen as vital to the fight against the climate emergency.
Moving “from a war economy to a green economy” can help avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, noted the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, publisher of the new research.
“Ever-higher military spending is contributing to climate catastrophe, and U.S. lawmakers need a better understanding of alternative economic choices,” Stephanie Savell, co-director of Costs of War, said in a statement. “Military industrial production can be redirected to civilian technologies that contribute to societal well-being and provide green jobs. This conversion can both decarbonize the economy and create prosperity in districts across the nation.”
In one of the papers released Thursday, Miriam Pemberton, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, described “how the United States developed a war economy,” as reflected in its massive $858 billion military budget, which accounts for roughly half of all federal discretionary spending.
As Pemberton explained:
When the U.S. military budget decreased after the Cold War, military contractors initiated a strategy to
protect their profits by more widely connecting jobs to military spending. They did this by spreading their
subcontracting chains across the United States and creating an entrenched war economy. Perhaps the
most infamous example: Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which is built in 45 states.
The strategy proved successful. Today, many members of Congress have political incentives to continue to
raise the military budget, in order to protect jobs in their districts. Much of the U.S. industrial base is
invested in and focused on weapons production, and industry lobbyists won’t let Congress forget it.
Not only is the Pentagon a major contributor to planet-heating pollution—emitting more greenhouse gases than 140 countries—and other forms of environmental destruction, but a 2019 Costs of War study showed that “dollar for dollar, military spending creates far fewer jobs than spending on other sectors like education, healthcare, and mass transit,” Pemberton continued.
Moreover, “military spending creates jobs that bring wealth to some people and businesses, but do not alleviate poverty or result in widely-shared prosperity,” Pemberton wrote. “In fact, of the 20 states with economies most dependent on military manufacturing, 14 experience poverty at similar or higher rates than the national average.”
“A different way is possible,” she stressed, pointing to a pair of military conversion case studies.
“The only way to really lower emissions of the military is you’ve got to make the military smaller.”
As military budgets were shrinking in 1993, Lockheed was eager to expand its reach into non-military production.
“One of its teams working on fighter jets at a manufacturing facility in Binghamton, New York successfully shifted its specialized skills to produce a system for transit buses that cut fuel consumption, carbon emissions, maintenance costs, and noise, called ‘HybriDrive,'” Pemberton explained.
By 1999, Lockheed “sold the facility producing HybriDrive buses and largely abandoned its efforts to convert away from dependence on military spending,” she wrote. “But under the new management of BAE Systems, the hybrid buses and their new zero-emission models are now reducing emissions” in cities around the world.
According to Pemberton, “This conversion project succeeded where others have failed largely because its engineers took seriously the differences between military and civilian manufacturing and business practices, and adapted their production accordingly.”
In another paper released Thursday, Karen Bell, a senior lecturer in sustainable development at the University of Glasgow, sought to foreground “the views of defense sector workers themselves,” noting that they “have been largely absent, despite their importance for understanding the feasibility of conversion.”
Bell surveyed 58 people currently and formerly employed in military-related jobs in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and found that “while some workers said that the defense sector is ‘socially useful,’ many were frustrated with their field and would welcome working in the green economy.”
“This was a small group so we cannot generalize to defense workers overall,” writes Bell. “However, even among this small cohort, some were interested in converting their work to civil production and would be interested in taking up ‘green jobs.'”
One respondent told Bell: “Just greenwashing isn’t going to do it. Just putting solar panels up isn’t going to do it. So we’re trying to stress that the only way to really lower emissions of the military is you’ve got to make the military smaller.”
“By the way, do we really need to update all our ICBMs [Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles]?” the survey participant asked. “Don’t we have enough to blow up the world three times over, or five times over? Why don’t we take those resources and use them someplace else where they really should be?”
Anastasia Witts, a U.K.-based arts producer, wasn’t yet out of bed on the morning of Feb. 24 when her phone buzzed with news notifications of Ukraine being invaded. Despite the shock, the first thing she did was post on Facebook: “This war is not in my name.” Looking back, she said she felt “compelled to react immediately, to show I understand what is going on, and I am not part of it.”
Witts left Russia years ago, after Putin became president, knowing what an ex-KGB officer in power meant for the future of the country. In the U.K., she found herself straying from the everyday politics of her homeland. “Half of my life is in Britain, I don’t ‘feel’ Russian on a daily basis. I am only reminded if someone asks where my accent is from.”
This understanding quickly eroded as bombs fell over Ukrainian cities. Witts soon became entangled in a situation where her identity as a Russian carried a different weight now, and she decided to act. Within a month of the war, Witts had set up The Voice Of Russia, or TVOR — a nonprofit comprised of Russian creatives around the world, standing united against the war in Ukraine. Witts also volunteers with Ukrainian refugees in the U.K. with the “Homes for Ukraine” project.
Witts is hardly the exception among Russian expats scattered around the world. Even as diaspora Russians often find themselves on the receiving end of scornful sentiments, many are joining with antiwar activists in Russia and neighboring Belarus to form a growing global network of resistance that’s gone largely overlooked. Despite the intense repression — where even a city council official can receive a 7-year prison sentence for criticizing the war — antiwar Russians and Belarusians can be found everywhere, engaging in resistance activities under the unifying phrase of “Free Russia, victory to Ukraine, justice for Belarus.” It’s these demands and a strong belief in people power that keep the movement alive despite adversity.
Anastasia Witts speaking at a protest in the U.K. (WNV/Anastasia Witts)
Polling dissidence
With Russia’s best weapon being its control over the narrative, activists gather evidence to counter disinformation. Alexey Minyaylo is an opposition politician who has been detained for his activism in the past, but that hasn’t slowed him down. On the day the war started, Minyaylo called friends and colleagues to make plans. “People wanted to rally in Moscow,” he explained. “I persuaded them not to go because it was dangerous. We took the responsibility to do something more than going to street protests.”
Ever since, Minyaylo and his colleagues have been collecting statistics and scoping public opinion for the Chronicles project they founded. The idea was conceived out of the need to address Putin’s propaganda and weaponization of false polls, which has led to the Kremlin falsely citing that 70 percent of Russians support the war. According to Minyaylo, this number is significantly inflated due to the inclusion of troops sent to the frontline and those who fear the consequences of saying otherwise. “Dictatorships rely on the ‘illusion of majorities,’ and people think the majority shares the goals of the state, approving its actions,” said Minyaylo, whose project has enabled antiwar Russians to address the Kremlin’s false consensus.
Alexey Minyaylo
Since February, the Chronicles team has conducted seven polls, with findings that paint a very different picture. The data was collected by questioning a representative sample of 1,800 people each time. In the Chronicle polls, when those who said they support the war were asked “should the special operation end as soon as possible without reaching military goals or should the Russian army fight until Ukraine is defeated,” only 36 percent said that the “special operation” should continue. “After multiple experiments, we found the real level of support being somewhere around 25-35 percent, which is a more realistic level of declared support for the war,” Minyaylo said.
Crucially, since March, Chronicles has noted a turnaround in people’s attitudes towards the war. “Support is dropping, and we don’t see any factors that would change this,” Minyaylo said, noting that supporters have indicated prolongation of the war or incompetence might change their attitude. “Every day the war gets longer, and people see the incompetence, if not crimes.” This is also corroborated by recently-leaked Kremlin documents showing that support for the war is fading.
While Chronicles sparked discussions domestically and abroad — receiving quite a bit of publicity as a result — Russians, in particular, have shown their support. “It’s heartening for people to know they’re not alone,” Minyaylo said, recognizing that amid the propaganda, it is hard to know what the next person is thinking.
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Diaspora at the front lines of dissent
Diaspora groups are essential in coordinating antiwar action. Among them is the young activist Vladislava Petrova. Although her family left Russia in the 1990s for Italy, she was always connected to Russia, being vocal on issues such as LGBT discrimination. It was when the war started that Petrova became an “all-out activist.” As she explained, “Everyone with a glimpse of consciousness couldn’t just stay silent. So many of us started organizing without prior knowledge of how to do so.” She is now co-organizing the activities of the Russian Democratic Society, which — since February — has led protests, supported fundraisers and facilitated a global network of antiwar Russian groups “from New York to Seoul,” as Petrova described it.
Initially, Russian activists were joining protests organized by Ukrainian diaspora groups, but eventually they decided to conduct their activities separately — in part because, as Petrova explained, “We understood it might be painful for Ukrainian people to see us there.” These diaspora groups are able to connect to each other and pursue action away from the suppression they’d be facing inside Russia. Petrova said this is unprecedented because Russian emigrants don’t have a culture of “sticking together” and lack strong community structures abroad. Given that the war came as a shock to many, they had to mobilize quickly to create these networks from scratch. “We’re more united than ever,” she said. “It makes me sad this had to happen as a result of war, but I hope it means change is coming.”
These networks are important for providing a much-needed common space. Petrova shared her experience of attending antiwar meetings in Italy where Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian and local groups came together under one roof, which left her with a feeling of empowerment. Similarly, Witts also found a way to help amplify the voices of Ukrainian artists by helping with the publication of a special issue for a Belgian magazine dedicated to Ukrainian artists. “We don’t leave our footprint on this project,” Witts said.
In these spaces, Russian Indigenous and ethnic minority groups have a strong presence. Tuyara is an ethnic Sakha from Yakutia, Siberia. [Her real name has been withheld for safety reasons.] While studying in Moscow, the racism and discrimination Tuyara faced, played a part in her decision to leave the country. She initially joined the protests of other Russian groups, but after seeing the devastating impact of Putin’s mobilization on minorities, she decided ethnic people should organize separately to bring attention to their cause.
The Free Buryatia Foundation found that ethnic Buryats are eight times more likely to be killed in the war — and Tuva people 10 times more likely — than Slavic Russians.“Seeing other ethnic minorities face the same problem means we must be united,” said Tuyara, who set up the London branch of Indigenous Minorities of Russia Against the War along with other minority individuals living in exile. “A lot of ethnic women went to protest because if we don’t speak out the Russian army will take our men. We go by the saying ‘It’s 10 or 10.’ Either 10 years in prison or 10 minutes in the war,” Tuyara said. For some, cooperating with other Russian antiwar groups is important to their cause. “The relationship between us is great, and when we organized our first protest, the other groups supported us a lot.” They spread the word, brought microphones and speakers, took photos and provided a steward to ensure everyone kept safe.
Indigenous people in exile — apart from protesting outside Russian embassies — also organized various international actions such as “Salam of Peace and Friendship.” Inspired by ancient Indigenous traditions, they tied multicolored ribbons on a rope with the word “peace” in the different languages of the peoples of Russia. Recently, Indigenous groups sent an appeal to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, bringing attention to the threats facing Indigenous antiwar activists.
Vera Horton at a Belarusian diaspora women’s protest in London last year. (WNV/Vera Horton)
Antiwar Belarusians are facing a similar situation, as the country’s dictator Aleksander Lukashenko is supporting Putin while intensifying opposition crackdowns within Belarus. Many activists have been forced out of the country and are now compelled to operate from exile. One such person is Vera Horton, a U.K.-based Belarusian actress, who, like Witts, had left much of her homeland life behind. Horton’s life as an activist started two years earlier when Belarus was shaken by anti-regime protests. They were a culmination of the very reasons she left in the early 2000s: fizzled out post-90s reforms, crushing authoritarianism, dependence on Russia and no real hope for change. “In 2020 my belief that Lukashenko will remain in power forever ended as Belarusians fought for freedom,” Horton said. “A new generation has grown wanting change, including the diaspora. My idea ‘we shouldn’t worry about it’ completely transformed into me becoming an activist.”
Since then, Horton has gotten involved with opposition groups in exile, such as Our House, a collective of Belarusian civil rights defenders campaigning against Belarus’s involvement in the war, while also supporting Ukraine. “Russian aggression in Ukraine opened the eyes of many because we suddenly realized we are already occupied and our establishment is dominated by Russia.” Belarusians have been attending marches and protests organized by Ukrainians and helping with other cultural actions, such as readings, theatrical performances and exhibitions. Moreover, Belarusian activists in exile — including those in Ukraine — also preoccupied themselves with fundraising or volunteering. “Belarusians help Ukrainians despite their government’s stance,” Horton said. “We’re united in how we see the situation.”
Supporting resistance inside Russia and Belarus
In order to circumvent online repression, activists like Minyaylo and his team have leaned on tactics that allow Russians to take a stand without opening themselves up to prosecution and detention, such as sending antiwar appeals to local deputies. The first such appeal was launched in April 2022, urging deputies to accept a law that conscripts won’t be sent to the “special operation.” The second appeal, launched in July, was about helping refugees. They created a database of 6,000 regional deputies and more than 45,000 letters were sent through this platform. “We formulated the appeals in a way the police could not use them to start a criminal case,” Minyaylo said.
Similarly, Witts’s TVOR project also aims to maintain the links of communication with Russians inside the country. ”We received massive support from Russian people, who were delighted that we talk with the rest of the world on their behalf and kept this thread of communication for them,” Witts explained. She added that there are many artists who sent TVOR work to publish because they couldn’t do so back home, or many who approached them just to help with the project. “I want to hear from everyday people living with the shame of the war and need to protest. It’s important to support them and show them they’re not alone. I am proud of what we’ve done because someone somewhere will be able to say ‘When I felt forgotten I had this channel.’”
Meanwhile, Indigenous groups protesting within Russia have created a network of support with minority groups in exile. These organizations are a lifeline for Indigenous people at risk. Their activities involve educating people about their rights, spreading real time information about the war and mobilization for military conscription — such as how to avoid it or how to convince their close ones not to enlist. Some groups also help evacuate people in risk of conscription by providing logistical and financial support.
Spreading this information has been challenging due to media censorship, making it almost impossible for people in the Indigenous regions — known as the Republics — to read anything other than Kremlin-controlled news. Still, some use VPNs to access social media, which is one place where activists can try to get their attention. “Our priority is to inform as many people as possible. We circulate these materials not only because they can help someone in need but also to ring the alarm for those who avoid reality, thinking the war won’t affect them,” Tuyara said.
In Belarus, even Lukashenko supporters acknowledge the risks of sending their kids to war — and war, according to Horton, is one thing most Belarusians agree they don’t want. However, with Russian recruiters overpromising lucrative salaries or easy pathways to Russian citizenship, many were tempted to enlist. “For us, this situation is a new Afghanistan,” Horton explained. “The ‘80s Afghan war hit Belarus severely. I remember coffins coming in the neighborhood blocks and cemeteries filled with the bodies of young boys.” As a result, many Belarusian groups are waging an effort to prevent others from going to war, such as Our House, which started a campaign around denying forcible conscription called No Means No. There are also groups that help deserters or conscripts run away. “We do anything possible to make sure people who don’t want to go to war won’t go to war,” Horton said.
Another sustaining component of the antiwar movement in Russia and Belarus is the effort to support political prisoners. Both Horton and Tuyara gave accounts of Putin and Lukashenko going not only after activists but also their families, with the prison complex and judiciary being weaponized to suppress the movement. Groups such as the Yakutia Foundation and OVD-Info are invaluable resources for those detained due to their participation in antiwar activities. Russian Democratic Society also regularly fundraises for these groups, organizing letter-writing sessions for political prisoners in Russia and helping to raise awareness of their condition. At the same time, Horton and her community also organize public protests demanding freedom for political prisoners.
What is standing in the way?
Amid this oppressive reality, morale is low. According to Minyaylo, “The main problem is not that Russians are ‘blood-thirsty’ but that Russians do not believe they can change anything.” Witts also sees these tendencies in many Russians, even those who oppose the regime and the war. “They feel that nothing depends on them, and they succumb to this sentiment.”
While Horton also acknowledged this trend, she was quick to point out that “Belarusians were in a similar situation prior to 2020, so Russians might also wake up.”
Vladislava Petrova at one of the first Russian protests in front of Russian Embassy in London last April. (WNV/Vladislava Petrova)
One thing that isn’t helping is the loss of experienced activists — via imprisonment and exodus — who can guide younger activists within Russia and Belarus. Communication links are thinning out, leaving those inside the country with slimmer resources to pursue antiwar activities. Symbolically, one of the last major actions the Kremlin took before the war to was shut down Memorial, a prominent human rights organization that kept inquiring about Russia’s conduct during military operations abroad. Reflecting on the situation, Petrova said, “The generation born in the 2000s never knew anyone in power other than Putin or what it is like to live without a dictator.” Petrova, for example, was four when Putin was elected, and now she is 28. “It’s a really long time, and now young people don’t have anyone to guide them because everybody who was experienced is in jail or in exile.”
Similarly, polarization obstructs activists trying to concentrate their efforts as a group. Witts says she is pessimistic about the unification of the antiwar movement. “Russians have a lot to learn from the Belarusian and Ukrainian opposition managing to drop their differences for the sake of a united action.” She traces this issue to the lack of national unity, a byproduct of deep divisions within Russian society, embedded in social, economic, political and historical structures.
“To put it crudely, half of the country’s ancestors were gulag prisoners and the other half’s ancestors were the ones guarding them,” said Witts, who added that there has never been consensus on how to act even among democratic forces. Beyond activism, divisions are exacerbated by the people who are “inbetween,” as outside hostility has given Putin an opportunity to swing them to his side by instilling in them the notion that the West hates them.
Things are slowly changing thanks to efforts to bring people under one umbrella. “Younger generations start from grassroots movements, uniting on the basis of feminism, LGBTQ rights or democracy,” Witts said. “I think younger Russians show more ability to self-organize and come to terms with their differences. I hope they will push things further than my generation of the ‘90s did.”
Still, structural issues are enormous barriers to movement-builders operating from within Russia or Belarus. Petrova explained that while a lot of organizations have horizontal structures — meaning if one person gets detained the whole organization won’t cease to exist — the main problem is the need to be secretive because the Federal Security Service has insiders everywhere. “You can only achieve things when there is trust,” she said. “Those who were trust-worthy have mostly left Russia. The ones left behind can’t be sure about the next person. It’s hard to organize on a mass-scale when much energy and resources are spent on verifying those around you aren’t spying.”
In Belarus, activists also face structural paralysis over how to proceed in an environment of uncertainty. According to Horton, Lukashenko’s stance on the war is inconsistent and while he doesn’t want to be part of it, he is subservient to Putin and relies on him to stay in power. “We try to go toward elections even from exile, so we can form a group of elected reps,” Horton said. “We can’t make Lukashenko step down without having someone to replace him.” The uprising of 2020 continues despite repression, but according to Horton, Belarusians don’t communicate as much as they should — meaning those who move in political circles make different kinds of friends, and the movement remains divided with multiple different actions happening simultaneously.
Vera Horton marching against the war in London last year. (WNV/Vera Horton)
Broken glass too sharp to pick up
The war has tremendous consequences on how activist communities interact. People inside Russia have no contacts with the Ukrainian side because it is dangerous, according to Minyaylo. Many Ukrainian activists also consciously decided not to engage with Russians. Though understandable, Horton said, “It is difficult to get across the notion that there are people in Russia who oppose the war and stand with Ukraine.”
Outside of Russia, Witts said her community does experience examples of solidarity with some groups of the Belarusian and Ukrainian diaspora, which is surprising to them. “It is necessary to continue trying to approach Ukrainian people, carefully and with honesty,” she explained. “One must be prepared to hear certain unpleasant things or walk away when they’re asked to.”
As for Belarusians, dealing with Russians is complicated. “I’m personally happy they’re there despite how things stand at the moment,” Horton said, explaining that while many Belarusians disagree with Russian politics, they do think that somebody needs to influence the situation. “I believe we should encourage antiwar forces in Russia. We can teach them, because Russian activism, in terms of organizing, is two years behind us.”
However, like Ukrainians, Horton believes Belarusians will also go their separate way, and working with the Russian opposition will remain an undercover activity only few will be willing to do. “The war has awakened in us a ‘genetic memory,’” she said. “We’re uniting against Russia as our ancestors did. Russians — activists included — don’t understand why they’re treated as an ‘enemy’ because they don’t consider themselves one. They believe Putin is the enemy of the Russian people as well. They have a long way to go.”
Relations among Russian people aren’t much better than those described above. Petrova observed how the war has only widened gaps. “My friends hold the same views,” she said. “Yet, we had to cut ties with a part of my family in Russia because they believe in Kremlin propaganda, and we couldn’t convince them otherwise.” With many activists having similar experiences to share, Witts noted that Russians who condemn the war often do not want to even acknowledge those who support it. However, she explains for Russia to move on from these atrocities they should be considered. “Without understanding and working with these complexities we won’t find a way out.”
An ethnic Sakha protests the war in Ukraine in London. (Indigenous in London/Anita Berkhané)
Minority groups within Russia also saw relations altered in various ways. According to Tuyara, minorities see Russia as a multicultural state — even though many don’t share this view because they have never been in the Republics. “I believe the war started because of the Russian imperialist mindset,” she said. “Russia has a long history of colonization, but no one talks about it or knows the facts.” As a result, Indigenous groups must battle erroneous narratives about why Russia is fighting in Ukraine, with some seeking to blame ethnic minorities for war crimes committed. “They’re saying that we’re ‘uncivilized village-dwellers.’ They’re once again throwing our people under the bus.”
Yet, the war has also strengthened solidarity among Indigenous people and their sister nations in the post-Soviet bloc. “We believe in the values of community and helping each other,” Tuyara said. She acknowledged that Central Asian and Caucasus countries help Russians escaping conscription, even though in these countries there are still people who have memories of Russian repression. Nevertheless, they understand the position Russian minorities are in and unite across borders to support them.
Petrova also reiterated that there needs to be big structural change on how Russia deals with its colonial legacy. “Russia needs to acknowledge its mistakes,” she said. “Countries like Kazakhstan support us by letting in Russian people escaping conscription or persecution, and I am sad Russians haven’t returned this kindness. Decolonization is a generational project.”
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The legacy of this war will be a hefty burden, and with no end in sight, activists prepare for any scenario. According to Horton, many people are waking up from Russian propaganda, and the war reminded them why they must fight to break free. “This is a new beginning because the generations before us didn’t think that way. Belarusians needed time to recognize themselves as occupied people because if you have handcuffs on and you don’t move your hands, you don’t realize they’re there.”
This also means that Belarusians can flip the narrative against Russian propaganda. As Horton noted, there needs to be more discussions initiated by antiwar forces and communities of the post-USSR bloc since Putin has already gone to extraordinary lengths to set up his propaganda machine. “He has created this Russian narrative that completely overtook anything else. We should talk about how everyone in the Eastern bloc is now helping Ukraine.”
Many antiwar Russians themselves count on a Ukrainian victory. For Petrova, it’s the only way she can return to her home country “without risking detention.” Meanwhile, as Witts explained, “A Ukrainian victory is necessary for Ukraine and for Russia. Russia needs to go through that pain to be reborn and, believe me, I do not wish this lightly: Reparations must be paid.”
Despite oppressive pessimism, in a plea to people still in Russia, Horton urges them not to give up. “Despite the pressure, I hope none of the people I care for will have to compromise their conscience to stay alive and out of prison.” Importantly, Minyaylo believes that supporting the democratic forces of Russia is the only hope for peace. “People will fight harder for democracy if they see support,” he said. “Saying ‘all Russians are Putin’s accomplices’ slows down the efforts of those risking their freedom and lives to stop Putin. Any democratization efforts should happen from the inside, and this isn’t possible without constructive dialogue with Western and Ukrainian leaders.”
For Indigenous and ethnic minorities like Tuyara, supporting antiwar voices in Russia also becomes a matter of survival. “Ethnic minorities don’t have a voice, and no one is going to fight for justice on our behalf,” she explained. “Our local governments support Putin, contributing not only to the genocide of Ukrainians but also to the ethnic cleansing of native populations in Russia. If this doesn’t change, Russia will remain a threat for the world.”
Ultimately, in terms of ending the war, Witts concluded that “it’ll take years of selfless and methodical work,” and they will succeed only if “the antiwar forces can unite.” Along the way, people will also need to realize that small actions performed by many will make a difference. “It’ll mean we’ll have preserved our ability to resist and created a society that cares. Preserving humanity is the most important action one can take in impossible situations like this.”
Michael T. Klare
Chinese emissions represent at least as great a threat to US security as the multitude of weapons enumerated in the Pentagon’s 2022 report—so why was it not addressed?
Countries are pursuing new solutions to try to mitigate climate change. More trade fights are likely to come hand in hand.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a jaw-droppingly misleading graph that portrays China as spending more on its military than the U.S. In reality, the Pentagon’s budget is roughly three times larger.
The Ukraine conflict was caused by the U.S. backed right wing coup in 2014 and the duplicity of Europeans who claimed to be working for peace. Anyone who supports these actions but claims leftist credentials must be challenged.
Multipolar Imperialism
AS THE LATE Samir Amin wrote in 2006, “the challenges with which the construction of a real multipolar world is confronted are more serious than many ‘alterglobalists’ think.” Sixteen years later, Amin’s call for nations to “delink” from the Western-led economic order appears more ignored by state elites in the global South now than ever before. Earlier this year in a speech at Davos, Xi Jinping reaffirmed that “China will continue to let the market play a decisive role in resource allocation,” while “uphold[ing] the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its center.” And Russia’s assaults on Syria and Ukraine, financially supported by its plunders in regions like Sudan, serve as a reminder that the rise of national powers supposedly challenging US hegemony provides no guarantee that conditions will be more favorable to the international left. Thus, as Aziz Rana recently noted, the left needs an internationalist framework that “universally and effectively joins anti-imperial and anti-authoritarian ethics,” and refuses both “an old, broken Pax Americana” and “a new multipolar order dictated by competing capitalist authoritarianisms.”
But praxis can only emerge from a precise theoretical understanding of the objective conditions of imperialism today. What characterizes this new multipolar order and the nature of inter-capitalist competition? As a whole, this emerging multipolar world of bourgeois states does not create better conditions to challenge global imperialism, but merely preserves and even heightens these capitalist dynamics. Martín Arboleda cautions against “fetishizing” the role of the state in facilitating imperialism today at the expense of accounting for the role of international actors, and so conversely, we must also not overstate the capacity of the state—even developmentalist ones—in resisting imperialism.(1) The decline of US imperial power and the rise of multiple “poles” on the global stage only reshuffles which states are mediating the existing global relations of production, without reorganizing the latter differently, and without fundamentally empowering independent movements in each region. Identifying the most effective strategy for the global left to build power requires understanding how this new expression of imperialism works. Rather than seeing multipolarity as opening up space for revolutionary struggles against imperialism, I contend that contemporary multipolarity functions as a new stage of the global imperialist system, a departure from unipolar US hegemony without neatly falling back into the traditional mode of inter-imperialist rivalry as described by Vladimir Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin commenting on the last century.
Today’s multipolar imperialism represents an intensification of the world-system sketched out by Bukharin, which sees the internationalization of finance capital and the development of national capitalist groups as two aspects of the same process. While national economic blocs have been increasingly sidelined in favor of multinational institutions by neoliberal globalization, nonetheless we see the strengthening of the power of nation-states to help facilitate financial capital in further containing the working class. A Marxist theory of imperialism today must thus not overstate the dynamic of inter-imperialist rivalry without endorsing a perspective that capitalist states are now entering a stage of peaceful co-existence enabled by financial interdependence, or what Karl Kautsky called “ultra-imperialism.” This deeper intertwining of state and capital enables new and more complex dynamics between ruling elites. Even as value transfer from peripheries to core remains intact, we can now witness multiple geographies of inter-imperial relations, with different cycles and layers of collaboration and competition between different sectors of the ruling class. Now joined by an often invisible class of institutional investors, state elites draw from more sophisticated technologies of repression and control across geopolitical blocs, leading to an uneven development of global authoritarianisms to counter independent and popular movements. This widespread erosion of political democracy, as it takes diverse forms, is thus a central policy of imperialism today.
All this would not be surprising to Amin and other left-wing advocates of multipolarity. But we need conceptions of world revolution that creatively expand on what Amin calls “national, popular, democratic front[s].”(2) This entails leaving behind a conception of geopolitics that sees multipolarity as it exists as a necessary prerequisite for global decolonization and democratization. A genuinely democratic alternative to imperialism requires building new relationships among various anti-authoritarian movements that may not be readily seen as commensurable, from Indigenous struggles against transnational corporations to the left-wing of pro-democracy movements. Struggles from below must work toward institutionalization and international cooperation in some form, but we must also understand how a new “Bandung” of the 21st century must move beyond the limits of national liberation. Revolutionary socialist democracy can emerge from an organized plurality of different anti-authoritarian forces across regions that promotes democratic assembly and governance to force the global imperialist system to its limits—be it a unipolar or multipolar world of imperial states.
STATE CAPITALIST MULTIPOLARITY
Left-wing defense of multipolarity has become the implicit political framework for most Western anti-war organizations. Most are under no illusion that multipolarity in itself would produce the right conditions for global socialism. Rather, they believe that multipolarity would open up more space for independent struggles for sovereignty and self-determination. As Ignatz Maria describes it, “multipolarity has allowed for an intensified responsiveness to local conditions on the ground,” with multipolarity treated as a kind of “positive neutrality” allowing space for popular movements to blossom. This perspective tends to cite postwar decolonization movements as historical precedents for such a logic.
But there was never any guarantee that the progression of history toward a multipolar world necessarily expanded the room for struggle for democratic movements: most of the Third World states of the past have failed to endure, while modern-day multipolarity by and large fails to express the diversity that the anti-colonial states of the last century embodied. One cannot create simple parallels between the opportunities afforded to working-class movements from the latest pink tide in Latin America and the political developments within regimes across Asia championing anti-Western rhetoric. Some left-wing pundits uphold the likes of China and Vietnam as models for public health management in those regimes’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but the relatively successful management of the pandemic was by no means exclusive to members of an anti-Western coalition.
In fact, countries that have openly decried US unipolarity align far more with its global imperial order than any supposed multipolarity. States from different geopolitical blocs have designed policies modeled after the US-led “War on Terror.” Some countries are establishing relations of domination toward racialized minorities within the boundaries of the state, or what Pablo Gonzalez Casanova calls “internal colonialism.” Ethiopia, for one, has closely supported the US during its Iraq War operations, now rebranding “War on Terror” rhetoric in a genocidal offense against Tigrayans. It does so by peddling anti-Western rhetoric out of one corner of its mouth while demanding more debt restructuring from the World Bank from the other. Meanwhile, China is incorporating former Blackwater associates into Xinjiang security centers while adopting Israeli counter-insurgency methods to police Uyghur and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The technologies that emerged from China’s brand of “War on Terror” are also now used by the Malaysian government to surveil undocumented Muslim migrants.
These regimes are often seen as part of an anti-imperialist bloc opposed to the US, but as Salar Mohandesi remarks, “it is precisely because the state is so thoroughly riddled with contradictions that imperialism often takes such contradictory forms.” But while Mohandesi cautions against assuming that imperialism can be reducible to traditional forms of capital accumulation, his case may be overstated. Much more than ever, we see new, intertwining relationships between state and capital, which should call for us to update how and where we can locate expressions of imperialism in these new configurations. For one, China’s desire to entrench itself in the global neoliberal system drives the country closer to international multilateral institutions (a reality that Amin predicted), which comes into tension with China’s fiery rhetoric against the US and the West. Touted pro-global South programs like the New Development Bank co-finances most of its projects with the financial entities that it purports to challenge, while promoting corrupt loan deals while systematically neglecting to consult populations in need. The World Bank-led Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) has been one of China’s main solutions for African countries like Zambia and Angola that are heavily indebted to it since the pandemic: merely offering debt suspension, not relief. And while the debt relief China recently promised to African countries is welcome, the fundamental structure of financial extraction of African countries for global capital accumulation remains untouched. The details of Chinese loans have always been obscured as they often go toward funding developmental projects with minimal environmental or labor standards. As Beijing now courts such countries like Saudi Arabia to join BRICS, any coherent conceptions of progressive multipolarity – even by the lowest standards, as political economist Patrick Bond describes – threaten to crumble into “an ideological and functional member-mishmash beyond any logical comprehension.”
Not only has a more equitable multipolar world failed to emerge, but this new configuration of global imperialism is also innovating techniques centered on the managing power of “infrastructure-led development,” from China to various regional and mid-sized states. In other words, not only is the state form—including in the Third World—failing to serve as a vehicle to develop anti-colonial sovereignty of oppressed peoples, but is actively being pulled to facilitate new forces of global capital accumulation. As Ilias Alami, Adam Dixon, and Emma Mawdsley observe observe (building on what Daniela Gabor labels “the Wall Street Consensus”), the “global dynamics of capital accumulation” have pushed the state further “as promoter, supervisor, and owner of capital,” in the form of “modernising state-capital hybrids … that mimic the practices and organisational goals of comparable private-sector entities, adopt the techniques of liberal governance, and are broadly market-confirming.” This attempt to “preserve and further enshrine the centrality of market regulation in Development in an age of rising state capitalism and turbulent geopolitical reordering [require] the uneven and combined development of more muscular forms of statism and the expansion of state-capital hybrids.” And so, what we see is the increased role of sub-imperial actors in helping to bolster the functions of capital in the name of public-private partnerships and other developmental innovations.
Rather than reversing the global structures of inequality, these developments signal new technologies of exploitation to the working-class. Alami and Dixon note how what they term “uneven and combined state capitalist development” has become an increasingly preferred mode for nation-states to help expand the operations of capital. More precisely, many states are increasingly willing to assume financial risks to bolster the power of institutional investors directly within national development projects to manage and contain labor power. In recent years, the central levers of global capital accumulation have shifted from shareholders into a few asset managers, like Blackrock and Vanguard, the latter now being one of the largest shareholder blocs in both Exxon and the Chinese state-owned Sinopec. Not only do infrastructural development projects like the Belt and Road Initiative fail to challenge global imperialism, but they also represent new forms of financial capital that work hand in hand with various nation-states and their state banks (such as public-private partnerships). The even larger implication is that the left’s opposition to multipolar imperialism should not only address the role of the Great Powers, but also mid-sized and regional powers as key facilitators of global imperialism.
UNEVEN AUTHORITARIANISMS AND ANTI-AUTHORITARIANISMS
What Alami, Dixon, and Mawdsley see as growing but unevenly “muscular forms of statism” points to a fundamental motor of imperialism that Amin and many others have observed but failed to rigorously address: authoritarianism. While Amin recognizes democratization as fundamental for socialist multipolarity, his political recommendations focus purely on economic policy adjustments. However, he correctly notes that “authoritarian structures here favour comprador fractions whose interests are bound up with the expansion of global imperialist capitalism.”(3) Indeed, this perspective has been consistently downplayed in many contemporary Marxist discussions of imperialism, especially among those who are keen on maintaining the traditionally imperialist transfer of value from the peripheries to core. Instead, we must recognize how growing authoritarianisms around the world are a symptom of inter-imperialist competition between nation-states. In order to maintain their positions in an imperialist world-system, each of these nations are compelled to exploit workers, at times strengthen austerity measures, and contain their independent movements to benefit from the developing global dynamics of capital accumulation.
The refusal to actively resist the authoritarian tendencies of regimes like China, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran structurally prohibits us from organizing against imperialism as a global system. Focusing on only certain aspects of US influence at the expense of addressing the complicity of other states in the global economy—working alongside the US’s other aspects of dominance—only selectively critiques global imperialism. Indeed, the mainstays of the anti-war left are forced into a position that centers only on dismantling US militarism while unable to offer positive support to democratic movements in other regimes as they grow closer to capitalist economic integration. Holding onto an analysis of “delinking” from the global economy without an understanding of political democracy would fail to check the growing forces of authoritarianism that make it difficult to promote a more democratic multipolar world. For one, the autocratic Eritrean state, which had been militarily assisting Ethiopia’s genocidal campaign against Tigrayans, has received praise from some pro-state overseas Eritreans. “Anti-war” outlets like Black Agenda Report and Black Alliance for Peace praise Eritrea as one of the few African countries to reject the US and other forms of Western aid and influence, lauding its “anti-imperialist” stance. Their failure to account for the Eritrean regime’s gross autocratic excesses demonstrates the limits of such anti-imperialism that remains silent on this regime’s containment of independent working-class power.
Since, to cite Mohandesi again, imperial relations are “always conditioned and propelled by a plurality of other, often contradictory, forces,” and thus “many nation-states trying to free themselves from imperialism often found themselves exhibiting behavior that came dangerously close to the very imperialism they sought to abolish.” Such a regime is unsustainable as its political legitimacy derives solely from its head of state–in the case of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki. And with independent organizations and civil society nearly completely neutralized by the state, the likeliest political future for Eritrea after Afwerki’s reign would be the same neoliberal playbook dictated by the IMF and other global financial actors.
Our alternative is not subscribing to the Western establishment’s line of demarcating Western liberal “democracies” from the “authoritarian” regimes of the global South. Instead, we must recognize the uneven adoption and development of authoritarian strategies of governance across geopolitical milieus—much as the incorporation of “War on Terror” counter-insurgency across diverse national contexts shows. Recognizing this unevenness is important because different kinds of authoritarianism require different movements and strategies to combat them. Building on Alami, Dixon, and Mawdsley’s analysis of the development of statism in the global capitalist economy, a genuine anti-imperialist praxis should take into account how states learn from each other and develop their own repressive regimes of control. China’s wholesale attack on civil liberties structures the state’s relationship to capital in its own way that differs only in degree and method from the US’s targeted and unstable disenfranchisement of minorities. Both find a common denominator, to borrow from Trotsky, in “frustrat[ing] the independent crystallization of the proletariat.” This containment of mass movements from both sides helps stabilize global capitalism. However, each customizes its methods of control according to a complex confluence of factors at a given time: their particular relationship to global supply chains, the strength of domestic or local independent mass organizations, and the scale and expression of unrest among its people.
From this analysis of authoritarianism and imperialism, we can imagine what a genuinely socialist “multipolarity” can look like: assembling anti-authoritarian movements together to strengthen democratic institutions from the global to the local. This goal demands more than simply statist forms of sovereignty or relying on the reshuffling of power between nation-states against the backdrop of declining US hegemony. It is imperative to build alliances between movements struggling against different forms of rising authoritarianism. At the same time, we must understand that for movements acting within illiberal, authoritarian states, the latter becomes nearly impossible without the basic freedoms afforded by bourgeois democracy. In such cases, like in Russia or Hong Kong under the national security laws, those in the global North with more resources and freedoms can develop more meaningful forms of support with those movements beyond a gestural slogan or statement of solidarity.
And just as we do not hold onto a rigid definition of authoritarianism, such an assembly of anti-authoritarian movements should not be conceptualized in utopian terms. As Hong Kong’s anti-extradition bill protests, Myanmar’s anti-junta mass resistance, Ukraine’s military self-defense against Russia, and Sri Lanka’s movement against the Rajapaksas all reveal, ethnic tensions and political prejudices have plagued such movements from the start. Efforts by the US empire to assert influence, from NATO military support to National Endowment for Democracy grants, have continued unabated. How then do we locate independent forces to support? In such cases, we must define independence not as a zero-sum space (since none can exist in geopolitics), but as a spectrum. Where can we locate the freest site for the movements to act and expand their power and capacity—under the least coercive conditions—in each precise historical conjuncture? One cannot answer this question preemptively, especially when different reactionary forces are present on different sides of the conflict; and should instead critically discern relations of force on their own terms.
A brief survey of some more recent uprisings demonstrates that no one model of struggle can be generalized. Under the state apparatus controlled by the Myanmar military junta or Hong Kong government, there is minimal flexibility for movements to maneuver. Recent mass struggles in China and Iran compeled their regimes to entertain some reforms, but it remains difficult for such movements to be sustained in any legal or institutional level as key activists have been swiftly incapacitated. The current insurgency in Sudan has given rise to politically diverse resistance committees with the future of the movement still being determined. While some like the committees in Mayurnu advocate for building autonomous revolutionary governance outside of the state, others call for institutionalizing new democratic infrastructures by rebuilding the existing state. In all instances, the left should focus on cultivating forces as independent as possible from the political leadership of bourgeois or national liberation movements, differentiating between what Hal Draper calls “military support” from “political support” of movements with prominent bourgeois elements asserting control. At every turn, we must try to out-organize reactionary components of social movements, from right-wing national chauvinists to US imperialist affiliates, without abandoning the mass movement completely.
And thus, we must strengthen alliances between forces resisting authoritarian challenges to liberal democracies and those resisting authoritarian regimes from the outside. As described above, the current objective trend of global imperialism compels states across the board to further consolidate their anti-democratic power in service of financial capital. In addition, the last historical instantiation of the multipolarity of bourgeois states generated a landscape of inter-imperial rivalry that resulted in an extraordinary human cost. To advocate for similar conditions—even as a transitional stage—would only be intransigent accelerationism that would crush, not empower, what is left of independent movements in some regions. Positive developments for movements in select regions of Latin America do not signal a similar fate in other regions under this developing world of multipolarity, as struggling dissident movements in regions like China and Iran can bear witness. Even Amin admits that “necessary economic options and political instruments [for socialist multipolarity] will have to be developed in accordance with a coherent plan; they will not arise spontaneously within the current models influenced by capitalist, neoliberal dogma.”(4)
Furthermore, the development of new authoritarian state capitalisms should make us even more skeptical of uncritically relying on state-led development as an antidote to capitalism today. As Iraqi socialist Muhammed Ja’far writes in a critique of Amin in 1979, “it is only possible to understand national formation as the social counterpart of the capitalist mode of economic production.” Alami updates and nuances this analysis further, explaining that for the state to “secure its own reproduction as well as that of money, it is forced to … channel [financial] flows and manipulate their class content for the purpose of managing class relations … in ways compatible with global capital accumulation.”(5) This is not to rule out engagement within any states wholesale, but to recognize that in the last instance, the infrastructure of the nation-state today necessarily serves the interests of global capital accumulation. Even movements operating in the terrain of the state must understand that they are only present there because it contingently offers the most room to thrive only in very specific political conditions that can transform quickly. On the other hand, movements pushed outside of the state through authoritarian repression can find themselves in more favorable conditions vis à vis the state as quickly as they were isolated from it.
And thus, the way to resist this new instantiation of multipolar imperialism is to objectively analyze where and in what forms independent mass movements emerge today, and to find new ways to institutionalize solidarity beyond models that privilege state elites. For one, inter-imperial rivalry in the last century in itself did not determine the gains for independent movements for decolonization in a vacuum—we must not overlook the subjective role of the latter in changing the course of history. While some of those movements can serve as inspiration today, we must not be dogmatically nostalgic about their historical expressions. New forms of working-class and popular mass organization are required as the same imperialist division of global labor becomes mediated by different states—a change only in form, but not in content.
A NEW INTERNATIONALISM
A truly emancipatory form of multipolarity would provide an infrastructure to a highly variegated terrain of independent movements, with each developing to maximize its fullest power to act to democratize its capacity for self-determination. These movements can assume a number of forms, from resistance committees and trade unions to mass socialist parties. Each embodies different levels of political consciousness, but can be stimulated in different ways to militate against different aspects of the global capitalist system, though success or failure can never be pre-determined. In this sense, self-determination against global imperialism entails creating platforms for democratic assembly and deliberation for independent movements. These spaces can advance revolutionary demands that are incompatible with current regimes, but in the meantime, can build power by exposing the limits of the degenerate forms of governance today from bourgeois parliamentarism to illiberal authoritarianism. This difficult balancing act, as Devaka Gunawardena puts it, means both refusing to accept that bourgeois democracy is “sufficient” and being open to “draw on elements of actually existing socialist states to critique it—but that pushing the boundaries of democracy as it currently exists requires engaging seriously with its own internal contradictions and limitations.”
How does this exactly change our strategy around international solidarity as socialists? We must rethink what “the main enemy is at home” means in practice. Of course, this is not to abandon the struggle against imperialism in the West, but to expand our horizons to target sites where different states intersect with each other and international institutions. Here are some examples of opportunities for solidarity. Ukrainian socialists from Sotsialnyi Rukh’s demand the “democratisation of the international security order” to safeguard minority and oppressed peoples can be connected to other struggles against colonialism like in West Papua. BRICS from Below and other grassroots initiatives can continue to be strengthened with local movements to pressure against debt and financial institutions. The current situation in Ethiopia shows that rival countries from Iran to Israel work side by side to fund Ethiopia’s war on Tigrayans, calling for the need for globally-coordinated campaigns against “War on Terror” policies by different regimes. These can build from active campaigns for abolition by Black and Muslim organizers, like the work of Muslim Abolitionist Futures. We can also help bridge movements fighting the intersections of different national capitals, from the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples struggling against the Ecuadorian government and Chinese companies’ encroachment on their self-isolated existence to anti-gentrification struggles in Flushing, New York, where major US corporate developments are bankrolled with the aid of Chinese bank capital. Socialist parties and organizations can help to formalize these bridges while respecting the autonomous existence of each struggle, building power pluralistically without subsuming them all under the former’s ranks. More so than ever, reflecting on the socialist left’s failures in the 20th century should further vindicate Ernest Mandel’s principle today: that socialist vanguards should not “subordinate the interests of the class as a whole to the interests of any sect, any chapel, any separate organization.”
While Amin believed that “social forces and projects [must] first take shape at the national level as a vehicle for the necessary reforms,” the idea of distinct national levels of struggle and development becomes more and more difficult to isolate with imperialism’s shifting face.6 With the ever-increasing threat of climate disaster in the midst of a failing economic system that provides no solutions, we must continue to build mass organizations to fight for democratic institutions with programmatic clarity wherever possible. But placing our faith in the reshuffling of the US hegemon’s power to a multipolarity of national elites to unlock better conditions of struggle would be idealism in its own right. Revolutionary anti-imperialist struggles must remain vigilantly pluralist and anti-authoritarian, and see multipolarity without socialist democracy as merely another expression of imperialism, rather than its death knell.
Notes
Martín Arboleda, Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 2020), 27. back to text
Samir Amin, Beyond US Hegemony? Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World. Translated by Patrick Camiller (London: Zed Books, 2004), 106. back to text
Ilias Alami, Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets: Facing the Liquidity Tsunami (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 64 back to text
After a decade that produced a series of shocks, the European Union seems to have weathered its worst moment of crisis. Yet the EU still suffers a fundamental lack of democracy — and the Left should be in the forefront of demanding its reform.
European Parliament president Roberta Metsola (at the rostrum) speaks during the conference on the Future of Europe in the European Parliament on December 2, 2022 in Brussels, Belgium. (Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Today, the politics of the European Union don’t offer the Left much cause for hope. From the creation of the Eurozone at the end of the 1990s, to the failed ratification of a European Constitution, to the extortion of Greece by the so-called troika in 2015, being a left-winger in Europe has typically meant fighting against whatever has been implemented under the banner of “Europe.”
Yet the question remains as to how the Left should relate to EU institutions, whose decisions affect hundreds of millions of Europeans, or indeed to the European Parliament, which can meet and deliberate but not produce legislation. Should we reject and ignore the EU? Or should we avoid abandoning the field to neoliberals and the Right, and try to use the EU to give visibility to socialist alternatives?
Founded in 2004 and now home to more than twenty national parties, the Party of the European Left (EL) has opted for the latter approach — either from within governments, such as currently in Spain and Slovenia, or from parliamentary opposition or the streets.
Following an upswing in the wake of the financial crisis, the EL has suffered a number of setbacks in recent years and has parted ways with several member parties. But how is the EL doing today? And what does it see as its task in a time when the political right appears to be gaining steam?
Last month, the Austrian Marxist Walter Baier was elected EL president. Jacobin’s Adam Baltner spoke to him about the limits of EU democracy, opportunities for left-wing politics, and the problems posed by the war in Ukraine.
Adam Baltner
You were recently elected president of the Party of the European Left (EL). What is your analysis of the general state of the Left in Europe?
Walter Baier
First, it’s important to establish that the European left is more than the EL. Trade unions, social movements, ecological movements, feminist movements, artists, scholars — all of these are the Left in a broad sense. And regarding party politics, there are also parties outside of the EL that share some of our goals.
When describing the EL, I actually prefer to speak of the socialist left. After all, the term “Left” implies an identity somewhere on a spectrum ranging from left-liberal to radical left.
Adam Baltner
“Left” is a much vaguer term than “socialist.”
Walter Baier
Yes, and it’s also politically misleading. With the war, we’re now seeing how differences along the left spectrum are becoming more clearly delineated. But this is happening with other questions as well, such as how to approach Islamism and anti-Muslim racism, or whether to stand in solidarity with particular governments that stake a progressive claim.
My concern is the part of the Left that has the overcoming of capitalist relations of production at the center of its program. Right now, I think that the war and the urgency of confronting it sit atop all other questions. But the demands we make in confronting the war are of course dependent on our overall analysis.
The question isn’t whether we’re for or against a multipolar world order — this world is emerging either way.
My overall analysis is that the world is in the midst of an objective process of transformation. The question isn’t whether we’re for or against a multipolar world order — this world is emerging either way. This global process of transition forms the framework within which we have to deal with the ecological crisis. The ecological and social crisis — and above all, the opportunity gap between the Global North and South — are linked in a contemporary crisis of transformation overdetermined by competition between various imperial centers.
This is a very explosive combination. The most important task is to prevent these contradictions from erupting into a world war. This calls for the broadest possible alliances. The point — if you will — is to save the world without losing sight of the fact that another world is necessary and possible.
Adam Baltner
The EU is a notoriously antidemocratic and pro-capitalist institution. It has a variety of mechanisms to promote market liberalization and prevent nationalization. It can even force member states to implement austerity, as we saw most dramatically with the case of Greece in 2015. What might a productive socialist approach toward such an institution look like?
Walter Baier
I agree with what you’ve said. At the same time, the EU exists, and the transnationalization for which it provides a political framework is primarily an economic process from which we can’t simply exit.
The EU is closer to enlightened absolutism than parliamentary democracy.
The EU is neoliberal, just as its member states are neoliberal. And like these, it is just as much of a field of struggle where social, class-determined contradictions are played out. You’re right to point out that the institutional framework of the EU is undemocratic. Given how much more power the European Council has than the directly elected European Parliament, the EU is closer to enlightened absolutism than parliamentary democracy.
If the EU submitted an application for EU membership, it would have to be rejected due to how it allocates power between its institutions. This situation is proving increasingly dysfunctional in the current crisis. At meetings of the Council, nationalist egomaniacs come together and try to promote themselves to their national publics, which often causes resolutions — including useful and necessary ones — to be blocked.
For the EU to be democratic, I believe decisions within all policy areas under its purview would have to be made by a parliament elected on the basis of equal suffrage — one person, one vote. If this were the case, elections — and all other struggles over policy and power — would be contests between class-based programs rather than nations. In other words, we need to create the same framework that socialists have successfully fought for in nation-states.
I don’t really see any alternative to democratizing institutions. If it’s indeed the case that we’re currently in the midst of a great phase of transformation, then we need to acknowledge that it will require changes in property relations as well as in the way each and every person lives. Yet these changes will only happen if they achieve consensus. And consensus emerges from political struggle and ideological confrontation, and ultimately from democracy. The EU will either become democratic or crumble.
Adam Baltner
What will it take to democratize the EU? As the new president of the EL, do you have a specific strategy to push for democratization? And what kind of time frame does this strategy foresee?
Walter Baier
The main instrument of democratization has been and continues to be social movements. The point is to wage transnational European struggles. The current strikes among railworkers defending a standard of living objectively point beyond the borders of nation-states. Here, a movement to defend and expand public ownership is converging with the demands of ecological movements for another system of mobility. The task of the EL as a “connective party” is to forge links such as these, which transform a Europeanization of struggle “in itself” into a Europeanization “for itself.”
At our party congress in December, Marc Botenga, an EU parliamentarian for the Belgian Workers’ Party, said that 2023 has to be a year of campaigns. I agree. This year has to be a year of connecting the EL to social struggles. Of course, this is easier said than done, as the EL is a party of parties and can only act on a strategy that has consensus among all parties. But this is precisely my job as president: to moderate such a consensus.
The 2024 elections for the European Parliament will take place under the sign of confrontation between the socialist left and the radical right. The crisis of neoliberalism means frustration, abasement, and massive social deprivation for wide swathes of the population. In many countries, this is generating a national chauvinism and strengthening the radical right.
The nationalist, radical right, neofascist parties could form the largest group in the European Parliament, and it’s completely obvious that the liberals and conservatives aren’t able to stop them. Who besides the socialist left could become a pole around which forces on the left could regroup?
Adam Baltner
EU elections pose a danger particularly to the Left, given that the undemocratic nature of the institution makes it very difficult to bring about concrete changes on the EU level that improve people’s lives. As the Right wants to maintain the status quo against progressive change, it is not exposed to this danger. The risk that the Right won’t be able to keep campaign promises and will disappoint its voters is much lower. How should the Left deal with this danger immanent to EU politics?
Walter Baier
This is the danger of parliamentarianism in general. You stand for election and promise that a vote for your party will make everything change for the better. But the fact is that politics takes place on the basis of economic structures produced by capitalist relations. And that narrows the scope of action in both nation-states and the EU.
The crisis of neoliberalism means frustration, abasement, and massive social deprivation for wide swathes of the population.
To be honest, I don’t see the danger of the European left fostering unrealistic expectations toward the EU. First, the Greek government’s defeat in the 2015 conflict with the troika destroyed many illusions regarding the EU. Second, European Parliament elections are also national elections where parties run national campaigns. And third, I think that an electoral campaign, whether national or European, can only succeed if connected to social struggles. The rise of Podemos, for example, was immediately linked to an enormous social movement.
Adam Baltner
One of the few recent success stories for the Left in Europe is Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise, who has taken Eurosceptic positions in the past. In Italy, on the other hand, where the Democratic Party (PD) — the successor of a once-mighty Communist Party — is completely uncritical of the EU, a politician who comes from the country’s fascist tradition was just electedprime minister. Would it not be smart for the Left to oppose the EU for reasons of electoral tactics, especially if we want to undermine the radical right?
Walter Baier
La France Insoumise is a part of the EL and the Left in the European Parliament, whereas the PD is a member of the [center left] Party of European Socialists. That’s the difference.
Moreover, it seems to me that “for or against the EU” is the wrong question. That’s the dilemma that the dominant politics wants to make us face: accept the neoliberal, authoritarian management of the crisis, or the nationalists will come. We shouldn’t accept this. Rather, in view of current power relations and within the existing framework of EU institutions, we have to admit that we are operating on the defensive and in opposition to the mainstream. This is the reality, even though parties of the radical left are participating in governments in a few countries, and it doesn’t mean that in certain areas, reforms in the interests of wage earners can’t be achieved within the system. The Left in the European Parliament has provided some good examples of this.
I see the EL precisely as an oppositional force, on both human rights issues — the refugee politics of the EU are a moral disgrace — as well as, and above all, on socioeconomic issues. We demand the nationalization or socialization of major energy providers. We demand the abolition of the Stability and Growth Pact in order to be able to finance the ecological transformation. We oppose the armament programs that the EU is currently adopting. On the EU level, all these demands find their political expression in the EL.
Adam Baltner
In addition to being known as a former chairman of the Communist Party of Austria, you’re also known as a critic of NATO. I suspect we’re both of the opinion that NATO is an instrument of US imperialism. Every so often, the question of whether the EU should create its own army comes up in the media. What’s your stance on this issue? Should the Left support an EU army as a measure against US imperial hegemony?
Walter Baier
I think we have to pose this question concretely. Under current conditions, transforming the EU into a military union would simply create a second pillar of NATO. That would be in the interest of neither European security nor the European population.
Posing the question of NATO from the perspective of European security lets us say in general that collective security cannot develop on the basis of a military pact. Historical scholarship on peace shows that in the large majority of cases, military pacts lead not to security but war. A military pact means: I arm against someone else, this someone else arms against me, and at some point armament gives way to military confrontation. In the interests of the European population, we have to do exactly the opposite, namely, disarm.
In the interests of the European population, we have to disarm.
In my opinion, at the core of the precarious security situation are the nuclear weapons stationed in Europe. This can even be illustrated empirically, as the world looks different from the perspective of the United States than it does from the perspective of Europe. I was in New York two months ago and was struck by the fact that, unlike in Europe, the war in Ukraine plays a secondary role in the US media. It’s a war like in Afghanistan or Syria — it’s one of many US engagements. Yet from the perspective of Europe, where there are 108 nuclear power plants and three hundred major cities, we have a different security scenario and different security interests.
That’s why it’s necessary to decouple European security from the United States. And that means a politics aimed at nuclear disarmament, or using international law to implement nuclear-weapon-free zones such as already exist in Latin America and Africa. All this is impossible with NATO. But only on the basis of such a peace strategy could we begin to talk about whether an EU defense force should be created, and what its purview should be.
Adam Baltner
As president of the EL, you’ve mentioned your function as consensus builder. How should the party come to consensus positions on issues where there is disagreement between its different national parties? After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, some left-wing parties weakened or dropped their opposition to joining NATO.
Walter Baier
I will try to serve a dual function. On the one hand, I will moderate and build consensus. But I’ve also studied European integration and security policy for fifteen years, and I have my own opinions on the subject that I’ll put up for discussion. When it comes to finding consensus, I start with two considerations. The first is that differences of opinion on the Left are not primarily caused by ideological differences, but by different objective conditions that lead to different political judgments. For this reason, instead of lecturing each other, we should learn to understand each other’s interests through dialogue.
The second methodological principle stems from my previous political work: of course, politics is always about compromise. Yet sometimes, in order to achieve consensus, something else is needed: namely, a deepening of the analysis. Above all, we have to be forward thinking.
The war in Ukraine is a virtually textbook example of this. Sweden and Finland are in the process of joining NATO. In Finland, the Left Alliance, an observer party of the EL, is one of the governing parties. Now, of course we can go on about how regrettable this decision is. But life goes on, and so do politics. New questions arise, such as: Will nuclear weapons or nuclear-capable delivery systems be stationed in Sweden and Finland? Will these countries allow foreign troops to be stationed within them? Will they participate in NATO interventions?
All NATO member states today face these questions. And they are point of contention. Whether Kurds in Sweden will be deported to Turkey, is a point of contention. Joining NATO doesn’t answer any of these questions; rather, it gives rise to them.
In debates about the war in Ukraine and its consequences, I think it’s less relevant to talk about broken promises to Gorbachev, Russia’s intervention in Chechnya, or NATO’s eastward expansion. I have my interpretation here, but such interpretations are always controversial.
In my opinion, we have to discuss what present and future European security requires. Of course, the war in Ukraine has to be ended and the Russian troops withdrawn. A peace treaty has to account for both Ukrainian national self-determination and Russia’s interest in a secure border. From a pan-European perspective, there’s currently the issue of the agreement between Russia and the United States to not station new medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. From this perspective, Europe should be completely freed from nuclear weapons and the level of armaments reduced. However we view the prehistory of the war in Ukraine, we need to come up with common solutions to these questions.
The monetary order is already being challenged by de-dollarisation efforts and central bank digital currencies
It was good seeing CounterPunch publish an article on what is known as the “Powell Memo” by Brad Wolf. He rightfully notes, “Powell expressed his grave concern that American business and free enterprise were under full-scale attack from “leftists” and might altogether collapse unless drastic steps were taken.” However, far more was at stake. Lewis More
Anastasia Witts speaking at a protest in the U.K. (WNV/Anastasia Witts) 
Alexey Minyaylo 
Vera Horton at a Belarusian diaspora women’s protest in London last year. (WNV/Vera Horton) 
Vladislava Petrova at one of the first Russian protests in front of Russian Embassy in London last April. (WNV/Vladislava Petrova) 
Vera Horton marching against the war in London last year. (WNV/Vera Horton) 
An ethnic Sakha protests the war in Ukraine in London. (Indigenous in London/Anita Berkhané) 
