So here is my response to this Off Guardian piece: "The 'they're all in it together' rebuttal canard (Multipolarity is a crock)" by Iain David, offered by an anonymous commenter in the comments section at this post. (From time to time I might, for all I know, provide quotes from Purple library guy's response to the article that he left in that same comments section.)
I have bittersweet memories of The Guardian. I remember when they used to provide an excellent antitode to the bush II regime's garbage about Iraq WMD's and NATO "winning" in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, sadly, they continue to disgrace themselves with Ukraine, with Syria, with Assange, and I wasn't keen to read them anymore.
And then I developed my bittersweet memories of Off Guardian. At first they provided well-written pieces criticizing the propaganda system of the international political-economic order. Then, in 2020, they started writing pandemic denialism. I know from personal experience that pandemic denialism is garbage. And Off Guardian's increasingly unhinged denial of reality caused me to unsubscribe from their newsfeed and I hardly read them now.
Anyhoooo ... on with the article:I am among a relatively small group of independent researchers and journalists who question the proposed multipolar world order.
One of the objections often thrown my (and our) way—by those who presumably support a new world order led by the BRICS+ group of nations—is that we critics of multipolarity are claiming, with regard to national governments, that “they’re all in it together.”
Having never once made that argument, constantly refuting it is very annoying. So let me outline why the “they’re all in it together” rebuttal is a canard.
Hmmm. Personally I don't support a new world order led by BRICS+ , but some of his critics might. I see BRICS+ as an organization of increasingly powerful countries that had formerly been forced to accede to the dictates of a world order dominated by the USA, Western Europe, and Japan who are now economically important enough to insist on a level of equal treatment in the world capitalist order. The two countries that I think reflect this are Brazil and India. Two other members of BRICS+ are Russia and China. Russia was once a superpower which, post-USSR, tried to join the US-led family of capitalist nations, but which was then still treated as a dangerous rival needing further weakening and perhaps dissolution before it would be truly welcomed. (To which Russia said "Fuck that.") And China had exited the capitalist world in 1949 and developed (after a fashion) autonomously until the 1980's, when it began to integrate with the international capitalist economy, but on its own terms. It has done so, by most standards, with spectacular success, to the extent that the US leadership now sees it as their biggest threat.
This says something about the US leadership. For the most part, international capitalists voluntarily relocated their factories to China to take advantage of cheap labour and lax regulations (as well as cheap oil which made shipping everything across oceans from China feasible). It was no secret what would happen if you developed Chinese industry and granted Chinese firms access to your technology in return for exploiting their labour. Now they all act like this was some inscrutable Asian plot.
I've already read Iain Davis's piece (a few days ago) but I don't quite recall what comes next.
Essentially the “all in it together” response runs something like this:
By only highlighting all the areas of agreement between East and West you are overlooking the very real geopolitical differences and conflicts between the two. You are claiming Putin is a WEF stooge and that Xi is a puppet of the White House. We only need to look at their statements and foreign policy commitments to know this isn’t true. Yours is a ridiculous argument, you stupid “they’re all in it together” proponent. Obviously you couldn’t be more wrong.
While making this riposte suggests the defenders of multipolarity haven’t read anything we’ve written—or have deliberately misinterpreted it—it is a not a cogent argument in any event. It needs to be exposed.
So Davis and his likeminded writers do NOT believe that Putin and Xi are Western puppets. But his critics aren't making a cogent argument when they say that there are real geopolitical differences and conflicts and antagonistic foreign policy commitments that identify a genuine rivalry between the US-led order and the Russia/China-involved BRICS+.
At this point I have no idea what's going on.
The multipolar world order (MWO) is touted as a potential antidote to the current, claimed, international rules based order or system (IRBO). The IRBO emerged as the Western-led consensus on international relations under the “unipolar world order,” headed by the US / NATO alliance of nations states. The IRBO and unipolarity dominated geopolitics following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The IRBO—and the unipolar world order—is predatory and serves the economic and geopolitical interests of Western developed nations, at the cost of everyone else. It has allowed the West to instigate, sponsor and engage in conflicts all over the world. The IRBO aligned nation states pillaged resources, installed puppet governments and exploited weaker nations as they liked. The IRBO is little more than a neocolonialist project of a public-private empire. There are no actual rules beyond “might is right.”
On this we can all agree. There’s nothing worth defending with regard to the IRBO.
Agreed.
The problems begin when you start pointing out that the MWO is not, in fact, an antidote to the IRBO. It is the evolution of the IRBO. Multipolarity is virtually an enabling act for a new system of global oppression and the transition to a new global economic model.
Yeah. It is intended to be a capitalist world order based on the equality of member states as exists in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) where the vote of Malta or the Marshall Islands counts as much as the vote of the USA or China. A world where international law is applied on the basis of equality under said law, instead of power. In short, a realization of the sovereignty of all states idealized in the Westphalian System.
The is flatly denied by MWO advocates. The argument between MWO backers and opponents appears to be rooted in a dispute over the nature of oligarchy.
Hitherto, the numerous attempts by a global oligarchy to construct a “new world order” (NWO) were fiercely criticised by almost the entire Western “independent media.” The “global” reach of oligarchs—who care little for nation states—was consistently exposed and reported. Thoroughly researched historical evidence was published, and frequently cited, demonstrating that global power networks, combining both public and private institutions, existed above and beyond national government control.
To effectively evaluate this would require that I go and read more Off Guardian articles about the international oligarchy as well as those of their unnamed critics. But I'm not going to do that. If Davis is claiming that US-American oligarchs, or Japanese oligarchs have absolutely no nationalistic tendencies, or that Chinese, Indian or Argentinian or Nigerian or Indonesian (or whatever) oligarchs have no concerns specific to their countries of origin, and that it all "comes out in the wash" (perhaps from the way that global kleptocrats keep their money in New York or London and speculate against their own countries, requiring their populations to bail them out through the IMF when necessary) then I'd have to say he's exaggerating.
I believe Purple library guy had some comments:
So. The impetus towards a "multipolar" world order comes from various motivations that differ among the different countries, and some of them involve internationalist oligarchs while others do not and may even actively cut against the interests of international finance capital.
Meanwhile, I read tons of leftist and anti-US stuff, and I don't ever remember anyone saying the "multipolar" world order being pushed for by the BRICS would be fundamentally different in its orientation towards international capitalism. About the only thing anyone ever says would be good about it is, the basic idea of not having a single boss enforcing particular kinds of stuff would leave more wiggle room for everyone else, since the multi poles would all have to agree before they could make anything too terrible for a country doing its own thing. So the article presenting this supposed, and indeed supposedly dominant, camp claiming China et al's multipolar world would be this wonderful paradigm shift . . . far as I know, this camp they're reacting against, um, doesn't exist. Not on the left, anyway--maybe some of the pro-Russia alt-right are into that idea, but come on, you can't expect right wingers to have an analysis of capitalism.
...
Finally, the article seems to be claiming that while the unipolar approach was good enough before, now the international elites need a multipolar one to properly do all these supposed "pillar policies" . . . but since it is also saying that those policies are backed by ALL countries, including the backers of unipolarity, I don't see where this makes any sense, or why international oligarchs should have any reason to care whether the world order is a unipolar one (that does what they want) or a multipolar one (that does what they want).
Hopefully Davis can clear up some of my confusion:
Now, in the West, some segments of the so-called “independent media” are claiming that oligarchs do not manipulate “all” nation states. Certain countries, such as China, India, Iran and Russia, have allegedly brought their oligarchs to book to reestablish politician-led governmental authority over their respective polities.
Instead, the MWO pushers claim, we are witnessing the “return” of political realism. Apparently, that realism no longer includes analysis of oligarch influence.
I gotta say, I always find gratituitous attacks on the integrity of people who disagree with you (ie., "so-called 'independent media'") to be annoying. Is Davis stating that the people who believe in national oligarchies, or that BRICS+ is a different entity from the Washington-dominated "rules-based international order" are actually paid shills of the oligarchy?
Anyhow, Davis says that his critics claim that the governments of China, India, Iran and Russia have more control of their oligarchs than is supposedly the case in other countries like the USA, UK, France, Germany and Japan. At the same time he states that these Multipolar World Order pushers do not have an analysis of oligarch influence. Except for the fact that they argue that capitalist oligarchs are subservient to the political class in these countries, which IS an analysis. Whether it's correct or not is another matter, but it IS an analysis.
Does (for instance) Vladimir Putin dominate the Russian business class? Or is he their humble servant? Or is it something between those two poles? And whatever the case, is Putin's relationship with Russia's business class exactly the same as (say) Biden's with the US business class? And, within (say) the Russian business class, are their gradations of power and influence and wealth? If so, why? And we can ask the same question all down the line.
I'll quote Purple library guy again:
So, to start off with, BRICs is not a monolith; the countries in it are very different in both their politics and in their relationships with oligarchs.
India has no real power centre other than private sector oligarchs--even the whole Hindutva deal is basically their baby. They are fairly internationally oriented and are classic neoliberals, happy to cannibalize their country for more personal wealth. They're just in BRICs so they can be at the big kids table.
Russia does have a separate state power centre, and Putin has demonstrated its teeth. Russia's capitalist oligarchy has been globalist in its orientation from the start, and indeed many of them seem to be only loosely attached to Russia itself. Putin made a deal with them which was basically, quit the most egregious fouling of your own nests and I won't put you in jail. They remained powerful, internationalist, and fairly parasitic. But because of all the sanctions, the war economy, and the war patriotism, Russia may currently be having a shift from transnationally-oriented oligarchs to national bourgeoisie, with the oligarchs increasingly pushed into a choice between their national and international holdings--either they just leave Russia entirely and become international rich people, or they stay in Russia, lose access to a lot of their international holdings and markets, and orient inwards or towards trade with their allies who ignore the sanctions.
China obviously has a strong state sector. And, it also has a lot of really rich people, some of whom seem to have quite a bit of power. But it's really hard to figure out just how penetrated the state is by the hyperwealthy in China. Obviously somewhat, because how would it not be? Clearly not as completely as in the United States, because they regularly cut individual oligarchs down to size or in the case of serious crimes even execute them. If the Sacklers had lived in China, they would be dead right now. And when, I think it was the Ten-Cent guy, started talking neoliberal and criticizing the Chinese government's non-neoliberal ways, something happened and suddenly he apologized and then shut the hell up from there on, and his social network platform got hit with tough regulations. The Communist Party seems to have its own ideology which is not neoliberal and may not even be entirely capitalist, and it does not primarily draw the new talent from the corporate sector. Meanwhile, the hyperwealthy in China are not nearly as internationalist as the Russian or even the Indian ones. Maybe it has to do with China's rules against foreign ownership, maybe it has to do with the Chinese government controlling a lot of the finance, maybe it's about China's sheer size, but China seems to be the centre of their world.
South Africa is a pure corporate kleptocracy, its kleptocrats only restrained from being completely internationalist by their orientation towards gulping down goodies corruptly shoveled to them by the South African government, which they own. I cheer for their quite socialist trade union movement. Their version of "multipolar world order" would certainly be one dominated by international oligarchs.
Brazil is very complicated. It has class struggle, it has different factions of the bourgeoisie, it has fascist fundamentalist churches funded by the US, it has race issues, all kinds of stuff. Its international policies can swing wildly depending on which political side is currently in charge. I wish the Movimiento Sin Tierra could somehow take over.
Iran, who are in the BRICS club now, want a multipolar world order because they think it would get them out from under sanctions and because they don't much like the boss of the unipolar world order. Their oligarchs would probably be happy to be internationalist--they don't seem to have put a lot of effort into import substitution--and don't see much chance of that unless the world government isn't out to get their country.
PLG goes into more detail in his comment at the "Scumbags" link, but I think the point has been made.
Continuing with Davis:
The BRICS+ led nation states are opposing the rules of Western oligarchs. This supposedly explains why they want a MWO founded upon adherence to an allegedly real system of international law and multilateral decision making. The governments of these countries are no longer willing to suffer the tyranny of the Western oligarch-led IRBO.
Or so we are told.
Here, Davis appears to be saying that there is no such thing as international law at all. He appears to be imagining some bizarre world where nation-states are entirely fictional entities that an international oligarchy have created out of whole cloth. I suppose that there is no such thing as Africans who want to export their own brand of coffee to the wealthy countries but are blocked by tariffs. There is no effort to prevent Chinese entities from having access to the latest in microchip technology. European countries don't block North American food conglomerates products with GMO's. All of those things I just mentioned are some quaint pantomime designed to confuse us and make us think that international oligarchs are all united in being rich people fucking over poor people and being rewarded in proportion to their investment of US-dollars. Apparently there are no capitalists in Latin America or Africa or South Asia who want to develop their industries or to get the same access to world markets or to be able to protect sectors of their economies
Oh yes! And the recent use of sanctions and the seizure of foreign assets (Russian or Venezuelan for example) by US and UK banks and the switch by BRICs+ to trading increasingly in their own currencies, and Saudi Arabia's concommitant acceptance of other currencies (especially the Chinese yuan) for its oil, ... all of this is inconsequential. Meaningless fluff. Some sort of spectacle to fool the rubes into thinking that there is anything other than a monolithic international oligarchic order that persists eternally behind its veil of illusions.
Or that's just what this so-called independent analyst Iain Davis seems to be saying. If that is NOT what he means to be thought as saying, he should learn how to write so as to not create such an effect in his readers.
If Davis genuinely thinks that a global capitalist system in which all countries are bound by the same trade rules as every other country, ... a world in which the power of the G-7 is mitigated by Russia, China, India, Brazil, OPEC, ... would not be different in any important respects from the world as it existed in 2008, he is greatly mistaken.
It seems like a dwindling number of us in the “independent media” maintain that a “global public-private partnership” (G3P), controlled by a global network of oligarchs, still exists and is still intent upon establishing its NWO. We are Luddites because we keep banging on about the “fact” that certain policy commitments are common to all countries. No matter which side of the IRBO/MWO fence they sit.
All governments, in all major economies, are avid enthusiasts of SDGs, biosecurity, digitalisation, tokenisation, the censorship of “disinformation,” CBDC (digital money), population surveillance and, most crucially, global governance under the auspices of the United Nations (UN). We who criticise multipolarity, suggest these policy commitments can be viewed as the pillars of the modern NWO.
Yes. Well, capitalists are capitalists after all. And, as well, there ARE people on the Left who put more faith in the inherent virtues of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping (or whoever) and see them as genuine anti-imperialists. But Davis is talking about people who think multipolarity is important. And, to his argument, I wouldn't say that people like me who think multipolarity is important are saying that national capitalisms are the End of History. Here's what I said in my original "Scumbags" post:
When we see the USA's hegemony unravelling in the Middle East, with China brokering a truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran we should celebrate it. Because the Sunni-Shia rivalry has been ruinous for ordinary Muslims (and ordinary non-Muslims) in that part of the world. Because the USA is exploiting this rivalry to punish Iran for its revolution in 1979 which expelled US influence from the country and humiliated the USA with the hostage crisis (the US leadership is inordinately thin-skinned and holds grudges seemingly forever).
The weaker the international hegemony of the USA, the more possible it is for there to be openings for ordinary people. Look at what the USA's ruling class does to its own people! Look at their incarceration rate! Look at their healthcare bankruptcies! Look at their infant mortality figures!
Through the orchestrated creation of a global oligarchic order (the seemingly as natural as the ocean currents process of "globalization") the USA has constructed an international order bent on exporting this rancid system to every corner of the globe. I submit that NATIONAL economies, controlled by NATIONAL capitalists, served by politicians beholden to those domestic capitalists, will be easier to confront and challenge than politicians and capitalists with the whole weight of the world behind them.
I also made reference to the greater hopes for world peace:
Furthermore, the weakening of the USA's global hegemony would make the world more peaceful. The USA couldn't have done something like the invasion of Iraq during the Cold War. Look at what a charnel house it has made of the Middle East since the 1990's.
[NOTE: I have no idea how I just made that ugly grey background disappear in that last quote.] I believe Purple library guy had some thoughts to add:
As to all these "pillar policies", being internationally co-ordinated . . . there are none. Governments like information about their people; the more authoritarian, the more they like it. Corporations like information about their customers and anyone they think might plausibly become a customer and anyone who might get in the way of people becoming customers . . . so, pretty much everyone. Given technological tools to get it, both will employ those tools and try to make them legal. And they all try to keep up with the Joneses--they see someone else using an effective surveillance tool, they'll want it too . . . and Palantir or whoever will be happy to sell it to them. Just because they're all nefarious doesn't mean they're all co-ordinated.
Finally, the article seems to be claiming that while the unipolar approach was good enough before, now the international elites need a multipolar one to properly do all these supposed "pillar policies" . . . but since it is also saying that those policies are backed by ALL countries, including the backers of unipolarity, I don't see where this makes any sense, or why international oligarchs should have any reason to care whether the world order is a unipolar one (that does what they want) or a multipolar one (that does what they want).
Exactly. There are some important differences between a unipolar world and a multipolar world. Multipolarity will not bring heaven on earth, but it might provide for a more equitable distribution of the world's wealth. It might produce a more peaceful world. It might make for a less arrogant and violent USA. And Davis's contention that THE international oligarchy is served just as well by either unipolarity or multipolarity begs the question as to who is behind any actual shift from one to the other.
I guess I can't think of much else to say in response to this essay. There was a bit in it about the United Nations, but, I'm old and I tire more easily with each passing year. I'll just copy n' paste what PLG typed:
Thinking of alt-right, there's one odd little detail that makes me wonder about this article: The insistence on the importance of the United Nations as some kind of marker of oppression. Really, what? That sounds like right wing conspiracy theory to me. The United Nations has a small budget which it does not control. It has very little power for the most part. The Security Council is deeply undemocratic, but to the extent it does anything it mostly acts as a brake on unilateral power exercises by any one major power. As for the rest of the UN apparatus, as far as I can tell it does more good than harm--not a lot of good, but not all that much harm either. Sometimes an agency will be used, usually by the US, to do some dirty, but a lot of the time they're just sort of plugging away with well meaning staff deploying their limited budgets and influence as best they can, and co-ordinating some stuff that needs to be co-ordinated. And I've never seen any, and I mean any, actual evidence that the UN is anything other than that. By and large, I think nearly all the countries of the world support the UN based on that understanding. China and Russia support it as a claim to legitimacy--they contrast the vague "rules-based" international order of NATO with their professed dedication to the actually written-down rules of international law and the United Nations. It gives them a ready-made thing to reach for that already has broad respect, where if they tried to invent their own thing it would inevitably seem self-serving.
So when I see someone talking about the UN like it's some kind of boogey man and as if China's reason for talking about the UN would be . . . being prompted by international think tanks?! I get leery. China is fairly capitalist, but it cares very little about the interests of international capital or international capitalist oligarchs, and the UN is . . . less swayed or controlled by international capital than one would expect given how much control international capital has in general. Still substantially, but the UN is not the WTO, say, much less the WEF. It is NOT the entity international oligarchs would choose for a stalking horse. People who spin conspiracy theories about the UN do so for two reasons: 1. Other people are already spinning such theories and they have been influenced by this, and 2. It sounds like some kind of world government, and that must be bad, right? It's stupid.
So yeah, I think that Off-Guardian article is bullshit. Sure, there are international oligarchs and yes, they control many things and have think tanks and so on. And, they may not lose much if a “multipolar” world order replaces the “unipolar ‘rules-based’” one; that’s not the point, was never the point, and hardly anyone ever claimed it was the point. But they will probably lose something, if only because China’s capitalism is quite nationalist and China’s finances are largely nationally controlled. It is certainly amazingly unlikely that a cabal of internationalist oligarchs have been scheming to replace the US-led world order, which has been amazingly good to them.
This is Thwap sayin' "May the good Lord take a like'n to ya, and blow you up REAL SOON!"
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