By MARCOS HONORIO*

What will be the ideological marker of the group of countries included in what has been conventionally called the “Global South”?

At this point, it is safe to say that the disintegration of the relative peace under which humanity has been based in recent decades is an event that is waiting for us. There is no mistake in the statement that North American hegemony is being challenged by the actions of countries that are emerging as regional powers. These new opponents have come together and created means of coordinating actions aimed at mitigating the massive influence of the US-European Union bloc in the international system.

However, it is important to make an in-depth analysis of this group that, as some would argue, has assumed the historical responsibility of confronting the interests of imperialist countries – the most meritorious of intentions, considering that imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, is directly responsible for the crushing of oppressed peoples around the world. What will be the ideological marker of the group of countries encompassed in what has been conventionally called the “Global South”?

It is difficult to point out a single characteristic common to all the countries included in this classification. Apparently, this name arose to group together the countries on the periphery of capitalism, the countries that occupy the most deteriorated positions in the international division of labor. Now, we already had some options for this (“dependent capitalist countries”, “peripheral capitalist countries”, etc.). What gave rise to the need to typify this new group?

When we hear about the “Global South,” we usually hear people mentioning the prospects of changing the world order, multipolar aspirations, and the overthrow of US supremacy by countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela, among others. This classification also seems to indicate, on the part of those who use it, a belief in cooperation between these countries.

I believe that only historical developments will reveal to us the agents of the dispute to which I referred previously. We are in the middle of a preparatory moment in which the parties to the conflict are maturing, and perhaps this panel will not be something as simple as the US-European Union versus China-Russia-Iran. Some contradictions will have to be resolved within the first bloc and many others will need to be resolved within the second.

However, what can be inferred in advance are the colors of this competition: this will be a dispute between the side of the imperialist chain headed by the United States and the side guided by the social-chauvinist doctrine, fueled by the accelerated economic growth of countries like China and the discontent of countries like Russia for occupying such tiny places in the system of capitalist expropriation and in the international division of labor.

On the windward side, the aim will be to maintain the profit rates of the central capitalist countries, their consumer markets and the dynamics of obtaining and supplying raw materials; on the leeward side, the aim will be to seek better conditions for competition within the imperialist system, without breaking with it. The working classes of all the countries involved in the dispute will be squeezed within the inter-imperialist and inter-capitalist violence.

The arbitrariness involved in the idealization of a “Global South” is a strategy to legitimize war. “Multipolarity” is an apology for war and the co-optation of workers for class collaboration. Sotavento will use an appeal to the morality of the people against the barbarities committed by its rival windward. This appeal is a valuable asset in times when many horrors are committed by windward. The representative emptiness of the left allows it to be possible to plunder these relegated assets, which, together with an ineffective differentiation strategy, will feed the social-chauvinist bloc.

The imperialists on the leeward side will accept as a strategy in this vast battlefield the instrumentalization of the critique of Western decadence and the “moral decline of the West”. However, since social chauvinism is an essentially reactionary ideology, this critique will be based on assumptions rooted in prejudices and mystifications. The moral fallibility of the West is apparent, for example, in the apathetic stance of these societies in relation to the Palestinian genocide, and not in the fight against gender or racial oppression, as some try to disguise.

I recognize little tactical wisdom even in the most specific concessions to the social-chauvinist bloc. As I have explained, I believe we are in the wake of a generalized global conflict, of a total war unfolding from the crisis of capitalism-imperialism. It is extremely dangerous – perhaps the price of this sin is unpayable – to confuse the class in the imminence of this dispute, attributing to it the task of supporting the social-chauvinist bloc in the name of a supposed anti-imperialism.

This is not happening in isolation in our times. The virtually progressive bourgeoisies try to deceive the workers' movement, attributing to it tactical setbacks (which are, in fact, strategic, while they conceal the tasks of the revolution) at decisive moments in its struggle for emancipation. The novelty in the strategy of the bourgeoisies on the leeward side is that now national ideology will not be the only tool used to mystify the people and bargain for the workers' support in the inter-imperialist war: in addition to making moralizing appeals, the social-chauvinists will use other and more varied forms of stigmatization.

Anything goes to scratch the hegemon

The consequences for parties that are willing to try to convince the working class that their support for the social-chauvinist bloc is vital to the success of an anti-imperialist movement will be the same as those imposed on the pro-war parties of the Second International. This means that, sooner or later, the social-chauvinists will find their positions demoralized by the workers' movement and will have their actions delegitimized by the people convinced to fight in wars that will perpetuate their own situations of oppression.

However, it is crucial that my ideal interlocutors – that is, those willing to wage a consistent struggle against all facets of the imperialist chain – begin, from now on, to denounce the tendencies already manifest in the present; that they establish the idea that “it is not up to socialists to help the youngest and strongest [oxygenated] bandit to rob the oldest and most satiated [decadent and decadent] bandits”;¹ that they reinvigorate the determinations of the Basel Manifesto, which called on workers to oppose “capitalist imperialism with the force of the international solidarity of the proletariat”.

The advent of a consistent opposition to imperialist barbarity at the hands of the communists could bequeath to the revolutionary movements of all countries an immense growth that would lift them out of the resignation to which they have been relegated in recent decades – this is because, at the same time that the social-chauvinists would weaken during the period of unbridled inter-imperialist aggression, the communists, by opposing the war, would draw from this political fact the support of the masses horrified by the conflict, as has been done historically.

For this outcome to become viable, it is necessary to formulate a proposition that operates in the affirmative (the revolutionary construction of a socialist society) while abandoning the negative (being “against” imperialism, always taken as a conceptual abstraction). Beneath the strict negation, what exists is the legitimization of opportunist strategies and lines (social-chauvinism, multipolarism, broad-based front). This is a decisive moment. Depending on the communists’ stance on it, it will be possible to energize Marxism or bury it.

*Marcos Honorio is a student and political activist.

Note

¹ “Socialism and War”, VI Lenin. Available at Chapter I – The Principles of Socialism and the War of 1914-1915 (marxists.org)