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SAMIR AMIN ON THE THEORY OF MULTIPOLARITY  
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Monthly Review Editors, Orinoco Tribune.
November 12, 2024
Popular Resistance - Strategize!
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_ For Amin, the struggle against imperialism required a delinking
from the law of value on the world level centered in Washington,
London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, and its replacement by a more
“polycentric” or “multipolar” world order... _

Brics Summit, Associated Press

 

It is almost universally recognized today that we are living in a
multipolar world, symbolized by the continuing decline of U.S.
hegemony; the economic stagnation of the imperial triad of the United
States, Europe, and Japan; and the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and South Africa). But the historical and theoretical
significance of this is in dispute. The foremost theorist of
multipolarity was Samir Amin, through his concept of “delinking,”
which he developed throughout his career. For Amin, the struggle
against imperialism required a delinking from the law of value on the
world level centered in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo,
and its replacement by a more “polycentric” or “multipolar”
world order, in which nations in the periphery of the system could
reorient their economies toward their own nation-based value systems,
thereby meeting their own internal developmental needs. This would
then allow them to move away from the current “disarticulated”
development under imperialism toward a more “autocentric,” or
self-directed, development (Samir Amin, _Delinking: Towards a
Polycentric World_ , 62–67; Samir Amin, _Obsolescent Capitalism_ ,
131; Samir Amin, _The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism_ [New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2013], 143).

Amin’s notion of delinking has often been misconstrued as an
argument for economic autarky, something he strongly rejected. Rather,
delinking is conceived in his analysis as a relational category
directed at a complex and changing historical reality. It does not
mean withdrawal from the world economy, which he said would be like
moving “to the moon,” but rather finding a way to sever
connections with the main mechanisms of imperial dominance. This takes
on complementary meanings at different levels. At the level of the
nation, particularly in the periphery of the capitalist world-system,
it stands for the “unavoidable” struggle to subordinate “outside
relations to the logic of internal development,” requiring a break
with the imperialist system, and, for its full development, a
revolutionary movement toward socialism. At the regional level, it
means building on elements of shared geography, history, culture, and
trade in order to form “regional unions.” At the worldwide level,
it signifies the creation of a new set of rules and institutions to
guide the world economy and to replace those of imperial hegemony
(Samir Amin, _Capitalism in the Age of Globalization_ , 40; Samir Amin
interviewed by the Tricontinental Institute, “Globalization and Its
Alternative: An Interview with Samir Amin [Part 3],” _Socialist
Economist_, February 2019, socialisteconomist.com
[[link removed]]).

“The challenges with which the construction of a real multipolar
world is confronted,” Amin wrote in _Monthly Review_ in 2006, “are
more serious than many ‘alterglobalists’ think. In the short term,
it is a matter of derailing Washington’s military plan. This is the
condition that must be addressed in order to provide the degree of
freedom necessary and without which any social and democratic progress
and any advance in the construction of a multipolar system will remain
extremely vulnerable.” At the center of the system, the United
States/NATO has utilized its overwhelming destructive power to
intervene militarily with the aim of carrying out regime change in all
states seriously engaged at any level in delinking, viewing “even
the slightest desire to open up some margin of autonomy in the
system” as “anathema.” The struggle over delinking and the
creation of a polycentric world, according to Amin, is essentially one
over the “five monopolies” of the imperial triad with respect to
military, finance, natural resources, technology, and communications
(Samir Amin, “Beyond Liberal Globalization,” _Monthly Review_ 58,
no. 7 [December 2006]: 48; Samir Amin, _Russia and the Long Transition
from Capitalism to Socialism_ [New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016],
107; Amin, _Capitalism in the Age of Globalization_, 4–5).

The world struggle to delink from core capital also has a key class
dimension for Amin. In the Global South, this takes the form of a
popular revolution against compradorization of their societies, in
which ruling elements are aligned with multinational capital. In the
Global North, it means a revolt against the authoritarian rule of
monopoly capital over their own societies (Amin, _The Long Revolution
of the Global South_ [New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019], 401–2).

Following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United
States/NATO sought to create a unipolar military order dominating the
world, accelerating the use of force in a series of wars and military
interventions, while coupling this with economic sanctions based on
its financial power. Nevertheless, the continuing economic weakening
of the triad, which is mired in long-term economic stagnation,
destabilizing financialization, and deindustrialization, has meant
that the United States and its allies have been unable to prevent a
more polycentric world from emerging. Most threatening of all to
Washington is the challenge of Beijing and the emerging economies of
the Global South to the U.S.-dominated rules-based imperial order: the
set of hegemonic international organizations, trade agreements, and
military alliances represented by such institutions as the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade
Organization (although the WTO has now been effectively undermined by
Washington in response to its loss of control), and U.S.-dominated
military blocs and alliances. Key in this respect is the growing
potential threat that the BRICS represent to the hegemony of the
dollar, the source of Washington’s global financial power.

The actual process of delinking and the emergence of a multipolar
world order has been anything but smooth or free of contradictions.
Amin wrote separate analyses of the conditions of delinking in China,
Russia, the Arab world, and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as examining
the possibilities of Europe delinking from its U.S. overlord. In the
case of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), delinking grew out of
the Chinese Revolution in 1949, and the U.S. counterrevolution against
it. Even with the opening up of the Chinese economy to the world
market and the privatization of much of its economy, the PRC remained
in control of its financial institutions, communications, technology,
natural resources, and agriculture (with the land still collectively
owned by village communities). It has retained a large state sector,
giving it considerable autonomy over the strategic aspects of economy
and society. These conditions allowed it to pursue, almost uniquely in
our time, as Amin stated, its own “sovereign project” (Aijaz
Ahmad, introduction to Samir Amin, _Only People Make Their Own
History_ [New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019], 27–28; Samir Amin,
“China 2013,” _Monthly Review_ 64, no. 10 [March 2013], 14–33).

Other countries have delinked partially and not always effectively
from what Amin called the “collective imperialism of the triad”
under varying conditions. Ironically, some were pushed further in that
direction by sanctions imposed by Washington aimed at regime change.
In some cases, such as Cuba and Venezuela, this was part of a
socialist-oriented break with the system. Post-Soviet Russia, ruled by
a capitalist oligarchy, was compelled to delink due to NATO’s
aggressive eastward expansion aimed at regime change in Moscow,
manifested in the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. In Iran,
delinking was the result of an Islamic Revolution of 1979, which
overthrew the dictatorship of the Shah imposed by Washington (Amin,
_The Long Revolution of the Global South_, 202–3, 409).

Without exception, all nations that have sought autonomy from the
imperial system, regardless of the form this took, have been
designated as enemies of the triad and targeted for regime change.
Nevertheless, the erosion of the imperialist world-system is
accelerating. Today’s BRICS grouping, now expanded under BRICS+ to
include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates, is
certainly not anticapitalist, or even progressive in terms of national
politics or class relations. But it represents a powerful economic
bloc emanating from the Global South, unified by the common desire to
achieve a degree of independence and nonalignment in relation to the
imperialist core of the world economy. Such struggles for
autonomy—insofar as they are genuine—are everywhere rooted in
popular forces and aspirations.

From this brief sketch, it should be clear that Amin’s theory of
delinking anticipated many of the parameters of the emerging
multipolar world. However, his reading of the struggle against
imperialism in this respect has been disputed recently by thinkers on
the left for whom “imperialism” is increasingly portrayed in terms
of interimperialist conflict between competing capitalist powers, as
represented by the United States, Europe, and Japan, on the one hand,
and China, Russia, and “subimperialist” powers, on the other. An
example of this is a recent article in _Spectre_ by Promise Li, a
frequent contributor to _The Nation_ and a member of the virulently
anti-PRC Lausan Collective, titled “Against Multipolar
Imperialism.” Li’s article strongly criticizes “Amin and other
left-wing advocates of multipolarity.” Declaring that the
“left-wing defense of multipolarity has become the implicitly
political framework for most Western antiwar organizations,” Li goes
on to contend that “the refusal to actively resist the authoritarian
tendencies of regimes like China, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua,
and Iran, structurally prohibits us [the left] from organizing against
imperialism as a global system.” Consequently, “the mainstays of
the antiwar left are forced into a position” of being “unable to
offer positive support to democratic movements in other regimes as
they grow closer to capitalist economic integration.” Li quotes a
1979 critique of Amin by Iraqi leftist Muhammed Ja’far, which
stated: “It is only possible to understand national formation as the
social counterpart of the capitalist mode of economic production”
(Promise Li, “Against Multipolar Imperialism,” _Spectre_, January
6, 2023, spectrejournal.com [[link removed]]; Mohammad
Ja’far, “National Formation in the Arab Region: A Critique of
Samir Amin [1979],” Libcom, October 27, 2013, libcom.org).

In Li’s argument, democracy, authoritarianism, and development are
to be judged primarily in terms of the dominant Western ideology.
Democracy is directly, even exclusively, associated with “capitalist
economic integration,” and all “national formations” have their
origins in and develop through capitalism. This is in sharp conflict
with Amin’s analysis in his now classic book, _Eurocentrism_. Li
concludes his criticism of Amin and of the notion of a polycentric
world by stating there is a need for the left to “resist this new
instantiation of multipolar imperialism,” the theoretical basis of
which he identifies directly with Amin himself (Samir Amin,
_Eurocentrism_ [New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989, 2009]).

Despite such criticisms, Amin’s concept of delinking is
inescapable—if we are to understand the forces currently generating
a multipolar world order. Resistance to imperialism takes many forms,
which can be seen today in the irrepressible struggles by the
Palestinian people to survive by any means necessary in the face of
Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. Tel Aviv’s
unending atrocities are backed up at every point by the imperial White
House in Washington, which has hurried to provide Israel with the
necessary weapons of extermination for its war on the people of Gaza.
In the face of such extreme levels of oppression, there can be no
question that anti-imperialism and the building of a polycentric world
constitutes, as Amin never tired of observing, the only possible path
to a universal socialism of the peoples.

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* BRICS; Multipolar World; Imperialism;
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