Guerrilla History - A Polycentric World & the 'Sixth Great Power' w/ Paris Yeros

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on the fantastic and vitally important Paris Yeros to discuss his fabulous article A Polycentric World Will Only Be Possible by the Intervention of the ‘Sixth Great Power’, which was published by the Agrarian South Network.  Paris himself and the Agrarian South Network more generally are both some of the best resources out there today, and we hope that you will engage with more of their work. We hope that this conversation similarly will be of great use to you! Paris Yeros is the a Professor at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil, and is on the Editorial Board of the Agrarian South Network.  The edited book he worked on, which is mentioned in the conversation, Gender in Agrarian Transitions: Liberation Perspectives from the South, is now available.  We also recommend you keep up to date by checking out Paris's website and following him on twitter @parisyeros Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki,

unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is a historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, as he had other commitments that he had to attend to at the time of this recording. We definitely look forward to having him back for the next episode though. Before I introduce our excellent guests on the really fascinating article that we're going to be discussing today, I would just like to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making more episodes like this by supporting us at patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. Any amount that you are able to contribute as small as $3 a month really goes a long

way to making sure that we can pay for platform fees and just basically keep. the lights on of the show. You can also keep up to date with everything that we're putting out individually as well as collectively by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod. So as I mentioned, we have an absolutely fantastic guest, somebody who I've been a fan of his work for several years at this point, and unfortunately it was only just connected to recently, but I'm very happy that I have the opportunity to interview today, Professor Paris Yaros, who is a professor at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil. Hello, Professor.

It's nice to have you on the program. Hello, Henry. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you on your wonderful show. Absolutely. It really is an honor and a pleasure. As I said, I've been a fan of yours for quite some time. I should also mention that Professor Yeros is a member of the editorial board of Agrarian South Journal for Political Economy,

which in my book is one of the most important. valuable resources that we have out there today on the revolutionary left in terms of rigorous academic journals that we can use. So I highly recommend everybody check out Agrarian South Journal for Political Economy. The article that we're going to be talking about today is actually from Agrarian South. It's titled, A Polycentric World will only be possible by the intervention of the sixth great power, which the professor recently put out through the journal. And it's a really, really, a really fantastic piece that's going to give us a lot of ground for discussion. But before we get into the kind of the nuances of the piece, I think that we probably should do

some groundwork here in terms of laying the groundwork for a lot of the listeners to understand some of these concepts that we're going to be talking about throughout the episode, because while we have talked about Samiram in the past on the show, and we've talked about polycentricism in the past and delinking and we've talked about semi-proletarianization and proletarianization. We have a catalog of about 170 episodes at this point, and so I wouldn't expect all of the listeners to have heard every episode. So let's do some of this groundwork, professor, if you don't mind. And can you tell us a little bit about Samiraman's notion of polycentricism? Because that really is the basis for this article, a polycentric world.

Okay, yes, Henry, this term, it's actually a question that requires some reflection and some interpretation. I will take on a bit of this. Samir's own trajectory was very much engaged with the experiences of delinking in the 20th century. So his notion of changed transformation from capitalism to a socialist system, his notion of change was very much linked to this concept. And the concept itself was very much a product of his analysis of, on the one hand, the Soviet experience and on the other, the Chinese experience. in both cases he first he saw differences very important differences in the two

experiences but also he saw delinking in both that is a type of not entirely an exit from the system but a type of affirmation of sovereignty which

subordinated the external relations to internal requirements. These both experiences ended up being quite for quite a long time. In each case, they became quite autonomous and autarkic, even almost given that sanctions and so forth were placed on these countries. But they both maintain relations one way or another with the world economy, yeah, but on their own terms. Yeah. So that is the basis, you know, he, there was an analysis linked to that about periodism and other development, yeah. And in that analysis, there was a view that the centers of the system had a, a notto, what he called a enatocentric development, while the peripheries had a dependent, you know, development.

And the question was how to make the peripheries, how to take the peripheries into this type of delinking so that they can have their own auto-centric development, like the Soviets and the Chinese hand. So that was the basis of the conceptual construction of auto, this polycentric world. It was a system where there would be space for the peripheries to develop on their own terms. That is basically the notion of apollicentric world. The question of the law of value, there's quite a lot of, there was a lot of thinking of how that would play out, whether it would be suppressed, whether it would be managed differently, whether, you know, whether what the power relationship being that in a natuocentric and a polycentric. that took world. But these are all questions that also evolved in his mind. But the basis was

that, that only centristism had to involve the formation of centers, not in a sense merely of having military capacity, but more than that, you know, because for that, obviously, there was very important. But there was, for that, it also meant a popular type of development, yeah, that the law value would either be suppressed in the interest of the workers and peasants or would be, or they would learn to manage it in their own interest. Yeah. So that was basically the basis of that thinking. Yeah.

Yeah, great. And now that we've had that kind of introduction to the mode of Samira Minstatt that we're going to be delving into within this article, we have to go even further back then to the next conceptual frame, back to Marx, which is, as you put in early on in the article, you talk about the five great powers that Marx had written about, and then the sixth great power that he was hypothesizing about, or I guess not really hypothesizing, but rather formulating as an expression of reality, right? Something that actually was there but hadn't really been speculated on, and the role of it hadn't been really speculated on until his writing. So can you talk about

going back to Marx's writings. Of course, we have to remember that this was taking place, what, 170 years ago at this point? Who were the five great powers that he was writing about at this point in Europe? And then what, you know, a collective who was this sixth great power and what role did Marx see for this sixth great power at that point? Yeah, see, the idea of great power politics goes further back, yeah? the the scientific pseudo-scientific

approach to the great power politics theory it got traction in the 20th century in the hands of the cold warriors in the U.S. But conventionally there was already some kind of great power politics going

practice, conventional diplomatic practice that goes back to the century to the 19th century even before that actually you can even go back to the 17th century where that starts to take form in a more consolidated way in terms of practice and in fact there were

the system congealed around five great powers there would be some substitution between them but that was the conventional going into the 19th century That was the power play that had consolidated itself. So that was the context in which Marx was writing. The Crimean situation had already exploded, in fact, when he was writing.

He wrote after that, I believe. So his approach was, you know, he was analyzing how these great powers, even though they had their differences, they all agreed that the people should be kept down. So this is, you know, after 1848, the revolutionary wave that sweat through Europe. And, you know, the whole first half of the 19th century was a very turbulent half century for Europe in general.

So the great powers were in a period of peace in between them, yeah. But there was war on the inside everywhere. So it was kind of a, it was a condominium of great powers who made war against their own populations, which were demanding rights, whether they were for the working classes or the national rights, depending on the place. So that was the context in which he was writing,

and the war against the internal forces that were trying to break through at that time and the great powers that were trying to balance against each other, each one tried to get an edge on the other, but at the same time agreeing that they had to collectively suppress the emerging working classes and the peasantries. So then turning to the sixth great power, the sixth great power being the revolutionary proletariat. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how Marx theorized the role of the

revolutionary proletariat in this kind of conflict of great powers, the sixth great power, the one that the five great powers always feared, as you put it in the article. And then I guess shifting to today, getting a little bit away from this kind of conceptual grounding, we are going to be talking about how Marx was thinking about the sixth great power being the revolutionary proletariat of Europe. But then I'm wondering if you can talk about what this sixth great power would look like today with regard to the way that imperialism

promulgates itself in the world system today and between the global north and the global south particularly. Okay, so big questions there. As far as for the Marx himself, they were heavily invested, of course, in Marx and Engels, heavily invested in the emerging proletariat in Europe,

which they saw as the engine of change. They developed their views as the situation in itself evolved throughout the 19th century and were the leaders of the first main international of the time, which brought together various work. working-class organizations in Europe, especially. So that was their big challenge to organize on an international basis their emerging proletariat so that it could provide an answer to a capitalist system

which itself was international. So they understood that whatever else happens, the proletariat must be united. It has to have an emphasis on unity on an international level to be able to fight a system which itself was international. So that was the, you know, in a nutshell, the position, yeah,

as it evolved throughout the century. This, the revolutionary proletariat, the thinking around it made a further leap in the hands of the Bolsheviks where the Leninist position structured it in a new manner through a political party with its own structures, its own professional revolutionaries

and its own thinking about a whole series of questions including the agrarian question, the national question, imperialism. became a robust, yeah, analysis of the Revolutionary Politariat in the hands of the Bolsheviks soon after. So that is the great heritage that we have until today, yeah, there was the technology that was handed down to us as far as the formation of political workers parties, the political agency for revolution, yeah, is all, was all born, yeah, with the Bolsheviks and influenced everything that came after that, including the national liberation movements in the third

world. Today there is, which is your question, and you know, what is the, what is the question today? There is, as far as the international unity is concerned, well, there has been a real problem for a very long time. Decolonization was already in itself. A very contested terrain within international. The communist movement, there was a need to break away from the northern, the European parties of the left

and forge ahead through the liberation movement. movements forge ahead with independence and affirmation of sovereignty, given that it was not possible any other way to move towards revolution. So that was one of the key moments in the last century where the new foundations were created for international solidarity on the basis of independent nations across the ex-colonial territories and peoples, yeah. So that is still the basis today, yeah, of whatever unity we wish to have, we can imagine or envisage.

And the problems are still with us today. Now, the unity is hard to consolidate on an international level, now. There are moments where, especially when the wars break out, that the European metropolis managed to at some point react, yeah, and get down to the streets and demonstrate that whether it was in, you know, the early 2000s against the war in Iraq or whether it's today, a new anti-war movement that is really coming out strong, yeah, in the northern capitals against the genocidal war in Palestine. Having said that, the conditions are very different north and south

and the southern social formations, as I have already argued here in this paper that you mentioned in other papers before that, the southern formations have their own configuration of working classes. So there are

still peasantries that are demographically very important and also politically and every other sense, economically, very important and there are working classes which themselves are in some places they have their industrial working classes but in most places today even the the countries that

had achieved some kind of industrialization went went through a phase of deindustrialization such that today we have working classes proletariates which are have either which in any case are very small, yeah, in proportional terms, within their national context and regional contexts, either they're small and or have one foot in other types of economic activities, whether it's in the countryside or whether it's in a type of own-account labor, even in their urban areas. So it's a different type of social formation which has emerged today. It has taken a form which was perhaps unexpected, but it's very different than what you will find in the north, which is where humanitarian labor prevails very strongly in the northern

social formations. So the interest between north and south, in this sense, the structurally speaking, are different, and it is difficult to have unity in a more consolidated way. Yeah, over the little longer term. Yeah, I want to put aside the questions of proletarianization, semi-proletarianization, and reserve labor for just a bit. And we will return to those because those are really big topics within this article and really big topics for people to be thinking about more generally. But I want to go back and think historically for a second and look at, again, the systemic,

that's the word I'm looking for, systemic structures that are in place. So you talk about the system of collective imperialism, and one of the things that comes up fairly early in this article is the two great anti-imperialist movements of the 20th century, that being national liberation and socialist revolution. I'm wondering if you can talk about how you analyze these two anti-imperialist movements, how they, in their kind of unique ways, but in overlapping ways, in some senses are the great hopes for anti-imperialist movements when we look historically in the 20th century, how they linked up with one another, and specifically in the case of the Soviet Union, and how we can use that thinking about how we can look at national liberation movements and countries that have gone through a socialist revolution to then look at the contemporary day, now that we're out of the original Cold War,

the one between the Soviet Union and the West, the collective imperialist west. And now we're talking about China. And of course, as you point out, China has achieved amazing things after its socialist revolution. And the way in which they will link up with, you know, these national liberation movements and countries that have achieved national liberation is going to be critical to continued success as they continue to have to face the imperialism. of the collectively imperialist West, which of course is led by the United States, but as we talked about in a recent conversation,

listeners, you'll have been able to hear that in a recent conversation. It was Pavel Vorghum. While the United States right now is in its hegemonic imperialist capacity and a lot of Europeans think, well, you know, we're just subservient to the United States. And if we were able to achieve some more independence

from the United States, everything would be great. Well, no, if Europe had a little bit more freedom to operate out from under the hegemonic control of the United States, it's just likely that they would pick back up that imperialist mantle that they had set aside while the United States was taking its hegemonic role. Anyway, that's an aside. The question, I guess, is how do we view historically national liberation movements and countries that have gone through socialist revolutions and how these two things kind of marry with one another in their stance against imperialism? And how do we have, how do we analyze that history between

the Soviet Union and countries that have gone through national liberation movements and take that analysis and apply it to today when looking at China and its role and relations to countries that have achieved national liberation and ongoing national liberation movements? Yeah, the two events, great events of the 20th century were, as you have noted, their socialist revolution in Russia and the countries that came after Russia and the national liberation movements which dovetailed, you know, they had a synergy with the communist experience in Russia. So these two events were unprecedented. Capitalism had almost a 500-year history

for that time, 400-some years, and throughout this long half-millanum almost, there was never a challenge of this type to capitalism. All the revolutions that took place during this time were bourgeois revolutions, in essence. Some of them were anti-colonial, anti-slave, Yeah, but they were all, which already presented some kind of challenge, but at the end, they were very much within the framework of a bourgeois relationship. Now, the two great events of the 20th century for the first time challenged the foundation, you know, the foundation.

of the capitalist and imperialist system. The socialist revolution of the Bolsheviks aimed to go beyond capitalism. The first time, we had a successful socialist revolution that had as its goal to go beyond, make a transition to socialism, never before had happened. So that is the first time that happened. And the national liberation movements,

they gain momentum in the interwar years and they spread all across the South and they mature politically whether through

political means or armed struggle to the point of bringing to an end the colonial system in a generalized way so of course there were

anti-colonial experiences before but this was the final and generalized decolonization that occurred in mid-century, last in the 20th century. And then this put an end to the colonial system that was so necessary for the capitalist system to grow. Never had, again, the capitalist system had any experience with dealing with a world without colonies. This was not in its DNA. Its DNA was a very colonial system. So when this comes crumbling down,

the capitalism itself has to adjust and has to find ways, has to react. But it is a new world. It is definitely, the death now of the capitalist system. It's a long transition. But these two events of the 20th century marked the end of the capital.

system. It is the beginning of the end. Yeah, we're in the middle of it. This is our whole lives will be marked by this. Yeah, we will, yeah, we are witnessing it. And this is what it looks like, yeah, the end of the capitalist system. Hopefully our children and our grandchildren or even ourselves will see, you know, breakthroughs in our own lifetime. But this is the, its origins lie in these two great events of the, of the 20th century. And so then turning the analysis onto China today, and as you talk about the importance of China, maintaining relations with these countries that have gone through national liberation movements, I think if you can address that a little bit, that will be very important.

But then also then moving on out of that analysis of China, one of the things that you say, you said that this is a movement to a new system. One of the things that you said in the article, and I'm just going to quote you verbatim here, and this will move us from China onto the next point after you address China. You say the polycentric transition will not depend on China alone, just as national liberation did not depend on the Soviet Union. Such an assessment has once again been confirmed by recent events that have accelerated the systemic transition, namely the outbreak of war in Europe and the insurrection and genocide in Palestine. So if you can talk a little bit about how we should analyze China using that

historical lens that you laid out in terms of thinking about socialist revolution in Russia and then the countries that are near Russia to become the Soviet Union, as well as these national liberation struggles in the 20th century, how we can apply that to China, but then talk about how the polycentric transition is not going to depend on China alone and how national liberation did not depend on the Soviet Union. I think that those two things are related, obviously, but will move us nicely in the conversation onwards. Yeah, okay, so let me

go back to your previous question and add an element, which is that the Bolshevik revolution also changed the standards of revolutionary change. It also changed the standards of sovereignty. So whatever anti-colonial movement

existed before, in the 19th century, it lacked, you know, that economic dimension, that great leap, yeah, that was part of the Bolshevik revolution. Sovereignty from that point forward meant economic sovereignty meant delinking in Samir's words from the imperialist system meant, you know, implanting within. national territories, all the elements and phases of the second industrial revolution, it meant, yeah, making a leap forward within a generation generation. So all the national liberation movements of the 20th century now incorporated that new

standard which the Soviet Union had introduced and established. So that's the basic synergy. The other, of course, synergy I had mentioned is the technology of revolution, which was the revolutionary party. So these two elements came together, yeah, and this came together in the Chinese revolution, which was the next great event, a massive revolution, which was unexpected on the part of the Americans. It was a huge defeat for U.S. foreign policy, losing China.

It was unthinkable that they would lose China like this, and they didn't lose it. and China went forward with its own experience. This itself is a long trajectory, some 70, almost 75 years now. Yeah, 75 years. But it is quite an uninterrupted development path in a substantially autocentric, manner. Of course, there's moments

and changes and transformations and changes in strategies, but overall, China has never lost its way. And even when it had great convulsions occurring alongside these great transformations, and it seemed as if it would somehow lose its way, it would always come back to find its balance and move forward. find its own way once again.

So we are talking about a very unique experience under the control of a Communist Party. This experience, the phases of this experience, Samir had his own views on it, but what we can say is that definitely the Chinese have sought a new relationship with capitalism on a sustained basis. The idea of socialism with a market economy and the way that the Chinese have put it implies a long-term relationship with capitalism, not just a moment of or a phase,

a quick phase of socialist primitive accumulation. Nonetheless, it is, that is the the essence of it because at the end of the day it's not capitalism in China that, in my view, it holds the upper hand. It's still the Chinese Communist Party

which maintains control over capitalism, even if it has relied on a private capital and foreign capital for its own development. The question then is, yeah,

how far with this goal, one of the key issues is that these phases also have an international dimension. The international dimension today is changing, and we cannot, in any case, project forward

and imagine that China or any other country will have a linear type of development. There is an international conjecture which is very dangerous today, and its purpose is really to smother China.

China, the technological field, especially, and its capacity to continue in its own path. One of the novelties of this situation is that China's socialist trajectory has involved the whole world, very differently from the Soviet trajectory, way by the Chinese trajectory of the 1950s and 60s. China's socialist trajectory has trade and investment relations with all, the whole world, and the majority of countries, especially in the South, but also in the North, have in China their main trade partner, their principal trade partner. So it is really an awkward situation that it was not foreseen in this sense. if you had said this 30 years ago, no one would have believed that this could be possible,

but it is the situation today, and this creates a new dynamic between China and the third world. The way this relationship will evolve will determine the future of the third world and also the future of China. China can, and going back to your question very precisely, China has undermined the structures of a neo-colonial rule, which are the structures that were built up after the transition to independence,

imperialism was able to control the transition in its own reactive manner, but it did establish a neo-colonial framework for administration of the Third World and through its debts and so forth. China has been able to underdermine that. So these neocolonial structures are in a process of weakening. If we look at multilateral organizations, WTO, they're been paralyzed, the World Bank, the IMF, you know, China has a very strong relationship with all these other countries in the third world and able to invest in them, have trade relations with them, provide

the resources outside the framework of the IMF and the world back. So in that sense, these relationships, neocolonial relationship are becoming loosened. Yes, it doesn't mean they're not there, but they are loosened. And the question then is, yeah, how far can China go in creating space for a polycentric world? China, and my argument is that China, as the Soviet Union before, China is not, China is not the salvation for a national liberation product. China, it's an ally, but we cannot expect China to solve our problems. This is quite a strong, I say this, because it's quite a stronger feeling going around in this country here.

but in other places as well, that China will, you know, will save us. But it's not like that, yeah. We have our own homework to do. We have to, we have a national question of our own to resolve. Yeah.

And like everyone, it has. And China has to be, is a factor to mobilize in one's favor. Yeah. As these efforts are made to, to reach a new stage. of delinking and this

the world. But China is not something that can solve or save the third world. Just as the Soviet Union before was a mechanism, which is solidarity or even when it was not actually aiding

it was a counterweight systemically, to use your own word, it was systematically a counterweight which opened up a space for maneuver. So this is the space for maneuver which now has to be taken advantage of. And it's not like China can do more than what it's doing, actually. Yeah, one, or I guess two brief asides before the next question. One is that, you know, you talked a little bit about Chinese history.

Just to mention listeners, this episode will be coming out around the time of our final installment of the history of modern China miniseries that we did along. alongside Ken Hammond, four-part series. So if you haven't listened to that mini-series yet, and you're interested in learning about China from the Century of Humiliation to today, we have a four-part series, which is about six hours of content that should be, like I said, just about wrapped up by the time this episode comes out. So you should find at least three of the four parts, if not all four parts on your feed, if you're listening to this. The second thing is that when you mention that some people like to think of China as like the savior,

I've seen this narrative many times, Paris, and I have a lot of issues with this beyond the obvious. But it's particularly the case when we have people from the United States who see either one that the United States has to be the leader of the world revolution without focusing on the fact that it's the imperialism, that is led by the United States and the neo-colonial relations between the United States and other countries that inhibit the development of the potential for many revolutionary activities in the global South in the first place.

You know, if you're going to focus entirely on the United States fomenting world revolution, you're ignoring the fact that you have to also deal with the fact that there are bourgeois elements in other countries, right? And if you're only focusing on the United States, you're ignoring that aspect of things. But then also, if you're in the United States and you're viewing China as the savior and saying that, well, you know, right now there is no potential in the United States. Let's wait for China to do it. That's also flawed, right?

You know, that's saying, okay, well, we have no agency here, despite being in the belly of the hegemonic imperialist country, you have a role to play. China, as you said, it plays a role in terms of creating possibility, in terms of creating space for revolutionary activity globally to take place. But in either case, saying that the revolution will originate in the United States or that China is our savior, both of these are very undialectical views to take. And it's something that, sadly, I see far too much of it in terms of rhetoric from people from places like the United States, that either it has to be the United States or it has to be

China. This is just, you know, great powers theory again, getting back to the beginning of our conversation. So, you know, feel free to add anything in on that if you want to, but I do want to turn a little bit to, as you mentioned in the article, the neocolonial phase of imperialism causing growth in labor reserves, particularly in the peripheries of the system. them, before we talk about how these labor reserves are developing today, I think that we have to ask one more conceptual question first to lay the groundwork, which is the processes of proletarianization and semi-proletarianization. I know that we've talked about proletarianization and semi-proletarianization in an episode

that we did with Ali Kadri on his book, Proletarianization of the West Bank, which listeners, you should go back and listen to, a great conversation with a great comrade. But in case you haven't heard it yet, Professor, can you just explain briefly what these processes of proletarianization and semi-proletarianization are and how these then lay the basis for, in addition to the neo-colonial relations, creating this global labor reserve, particularly within the peripheries. Yeah, my views have evolved on this. We had over

20 years ago written about this. The neo-colonial phase as itself moving. Constantly, you know, being in itself a long period, yeah. If in the

60s and 70s, there was an emergence of the South in the collective way, this was controlled, yeah, The initiative was retaken again by the North, the World Bank at that time, the MF and all the creditors. The debt crisis was resolved by the managers of the debt. And this laid the foundation for another 40 years, Africa, 80s, 90s, until today, another 40 years of the new colonial period, which has to have consequences for these social formations.

We had noticed this a long time ago, 20 years ago, that the countryside, the rural areas, even though they were undergoing, you know, urban migration and accelerated rural exodus to the urban areas, the rural areas themselves were not becoming more silent, yeah, or more pacified. They were themselves escalating a fight. And in the late 90s, early 2000s, we saw all kinds of rural movements, taking the lead across the south in the national arenas. And this needed to be understood, well, how is it, yeah,

that, for example, in Brazil, countries are very highly urbanized. How is it, you know, it's around 85, or about 80, depending on the data has changed a bit, but from 75 to 80% urbanized, okay? In this type of modernity, you would expect, yeah, very urban, political forces being in the lead, but, you know, the MST and the rural areas are some of the biggest,

in fact, arguably the MST being the most, the biggest social movement, yeah? That's part of the reality of Brazilian modernity. It's a contradiction. But it's not a contradiction in a sense that it's actually shared across the south. The countryside has reacted and everywhere there has been some kind of political formation. And we had pinpointed the agency, the social base of this type of. political agency, yeah, which was a semi-proletariat.

That is how we had termed it. This was 20 years ago in a book called Reclaiming the Land. It was published in 2005. So we actually said there's some kind of agency here. Yeah, there needs to be understood. It's shared across, it is really affirming itself in all kinds of organizations, political organizations, which themselves are quite the first, from the human rights type of organizations to the war to the armed struggles you know at that time in

Colombia and so forth there were several you know beacon there's a patistas and there were several organizations that were in an armed trajectory so they were very diverse but we said something is shared here so after that there was a lot of criticism there was a lot of also silence about this kind of argument but there was a But this kind of evolved because the situation, the neo-colonial situation itself evolved, and it became clear to me at least that there was really a generalized situation of semi-prilaternization, which needed to be understood on a very rarest or macro-national macro-level. It's not a matter of certain pockets or certain layers here and there of,

semi-proletarians, but it's actually a structural phenomenon, yeah, and we need to understand the social formations as new social formations, whose characteristic is a semi-proletarianized situation, yeah, and that is defined, in my view, as a situation which over a generation, because it's not from one year to the next, we're talking about now social formations over time, in a durable way, over a generation, over a 20, 30 years there is a situation which they work

the working people don't come to rely on salaried labor exclusively for their reproduction yeah so they they combine salary labor

with own account labor urban rural peasant production and also a lot of them a large part finds itself outside, and I'm talking about the even the economically active population above 15 years old to 65 years old. This population also gets expelled completely from the

workforce. So we have a situation with huge social formations are really becoming semi-proletarianism that says they cannot reproduce themselves by one source of income. Yeah? And they cannot definitely, as a social formation, reproduce themselves on the basis of wage labor. So the social reproduction are these social formations is itself a question. How is it? Of course, they're degraded populations, very degraded and socially degraded a population. It's getting worse. And this is the basis of this.

The social reproduction is not based on salary. So all there has been a rural exodus. We don't have a type of linear proletarianization. We don't have a situation where Exodus translates into a proletariat that lives off a wage. We have a situation where Exodus leads to this other semi-proletary situationation, which takes place in urban and rural areas and straddles both. Families, in fact, can straddle both urban and rural areas and internationally, in fact. So that is the

I think that's the point that I'm trying to make that we need to understand these social formations now as social formations that are distinct there has never been such a social formation

in the past that they're unprecedented the the height of volunteerization probably was reached in the 20th century yeah

and several countries in the south themselves became industrialized and produced industrial labor, wage labor. But since then, we have a long period of de-industrialization and semi-prolitarianization. And I knew, you know, we are in this final phase of decay. So the end of capitalism, you know, we can, after 500 years, this is what capitalism has produced. Massive populations that have a very periodic, sporadic, irregular relationship with,

wage labor. And the data that I have produced with colleagues who like Praveed Jha who has been the main

thinker behind some of these particularities of this labor reserves but also with Sam Moyer before and Archina Prasad his other colleague in India we've been

kind of trying to put these things together, yeah? So that's the, we have social formations which really don't have any precedent. And in this phase of capitalism, there's no way capitalism will absorb. On the contrary, if this is what the situation is today, it's going to only get worse unless there is some kind of transition to a polycentric world in the terms that we discussed earlier, where autocentric development can't take place in the interest of these working people. It is brilliant.

I'm going to get us on to reserve labor in just a second. But one thing you said kind of reminded me of something. So this is one of my famous tangents where I get off the main topic and just rant for a little bit and then get back on at the end. But, you know, talking about urbanization and talking about what, you know, it's happening with the agrarian question within the country and social formations. It reminds me of a book that I read by my best friend who is also a close collaborator and somebody who I'm sure the listeners will be very familiar with Salvatore Engel de Mauro, who I co-translated the Stalin book with and has other excellent books like Socialist States and the Environment.

He's been on the show multiple times. But he has another book which we haven't talked about on the show before, which is called Urban Food Production for Eco-Socialism, which he was surprised that I read. But, you know, I'm a good friend. I say. The point is, is that when I read this book, one of the things that struck me, and it's one of the main points of the book, so it's not like I'm, you know, gleaning something that nobody else is able to. But one of the things that he talks about is that when we're talking about urban food production, we're not talking about producing enough food in order to sustain,

you know, calorically the population of the city. And that in itself, the fact that food can be produced in an urban environment. It is not the grounds for building eco-socialism inherently. However, it is grounds for generating social formations and for generating organizations of people that can operate together, as well as fight against the mass consolidation of the agricultural sector in these rapidly urbanizing countries. I think it's an interesting concept It's an interesting book. I tease him because I can, reading that book, which came out, I don't know, a decade ago at this point, versus knowing him now, I can see that his ideology has changed slightly between then and now, which I tease him about. I know he's going to listen to this episode, which is why I'm teasing him a little bit now, too.

But it is really interesting to think about urban food production, not as a mode of trying to feed the populace, but is a mode for which we can try to develop structures and formations and relationships and organizations. between people in order to, you know, fight against capitalism. That's an aside. Getting back to the actual point of the last answer that you had, Professor, which, again, was quite brilliant, talking about labor reserves. In the article, talk about some of the dynamics of the generation of labor reserves today globally. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how those dynamics live.

book for the listeners who haven't read the article and looked at the graphs that are in the article, what are the dynamics of the generation of global labor reserves? And then how do we think about the individuals within these labor reserves in relation to the fight for continuing this systemic transition away from capitalism? You see, just pulling one more element from the previous question. You see, even the emergence of China has not changed the principal contradiction between imperialism and working people. So it's not like we already made a leap into a different way we can understand contradictions in a different way. Basically, yeah, of course, we need to analyze all these changes going, all these aspects and these contradictions.

but basically imperialism has itself evolved and even though it is in crisis has been in Christ for a long time it continues to evolve through these

globalized value systems whereby the big monopolies organized and reorganized to their tentacles all across the globe production processes which they link up, yeah, in various stages of production until the final consumption, yeah. So this is the type of globalized, which we call value system, you know, that has emerged. And capitalism is very much

in control of all this, even if production is today exported, there is a stronger trade relationship with China, yeah, in every sense. The actual production with monopolies in the way. The, the actual production with monopolies in the West, it's still a massive reality. So this is really, yeah, and of course the financial sector behind it. We speak of a globalized value systems, and this is a work with a colleague

that I mentioned earlier, Pravin Jha, that we prefer the term value systems because in terms of our chain, instead of chains, because a system is a more robust, a set of elements, which includes finance. So the financial sector is very much involved in this globalization of production. So this is the essence, yeah, of the capitalist system today.

Marks had predicted it in some way, yeah, predicted it, yeah. It was there. I mean, the general law of capitalist accumulation is there in Chapter 23, yeah, in Volume 1. He was right, you know, that this overall, this system systemically will produce massive labor reserves. It produces wage labor, produces new jobs and so forth. But more than that, it produces labor reserves. So you had his own way of analyzing these labor reserves in terms of the floating population, the latent population, and so forth, the popularized population. And that is all very useful.

We can even apply these terms again. you know, we can also go further and to understand these labor reserves of the social formation, yeah. So that's the, the, it is capitalism in this late phase of neocolonialism where imperialism is still in charge, that is producing massive labor reserves in the peripheries constituted in the peripheries of the system. And if we look at some of the numbers, you know, in Africa and South Asia, numbers are quite similar

less than 20% of the working age population is dependent entirely on wage labor on wages that's very proportionate in proportionate

that's very low and this is centuries after capitalism it's just in its most mature phase this is the result so this is the type of capitalism that we have today. And it's going nowhere in the sense, in absorbing. It's not changing what Marx

has predicted. The general law of capitalist accumulation is this. It's going to produce the reserves and these are going to grow and grow and grow. And this is what the data has shown. And then as an addendum to that, can you talk a little bit about the case of women specifically in these peripheral formations in terms of how they are being affected by the generation of these peripheral formations and then also how you see the role of them in systemic change or transition i should say yes the this um we also have a book that's coming out this month uh with two colleagues professor zodzikato and archelae person who had mentioned earlier on a gender in aggrand transitions yeah so we're trying to capture all this in them

with a group uh it's an edited book so there's a lot of um There's a lot there in terms of analysis. So definitely one thing, on this macro level, the data does show that women experience this labor reserve formation in different ways, apart from it in a different way, in terms of how they position themselves in the labor market. First of all, the numbers are even less in terms of wage labor. than men. There's less women generally employed in wage labor and also

the numbers that I did in the other data that we know anyway from other analysis is that women are also occupying the lower ranks of these labor forces where wage labor does is the situation. Generally there is another massive

dimension to all this because the social reproduction all the time and the energy put into reproducing these populations is preponderantly very much on the shoulders

of women. So whether it's an own-account labor, whether it's outside the workforce, this is, formally speaking, social reproduction is very much preponderantly, I have thought

almost exclusively on the hands of women. Because this is the question emerges. If capitalism is not if wages or other incomes

are not the source of social reproduction if they're not covering the cost, who is covering these costs? What kind of labor is covering these

is playing this role of reproducing the youth the workers and the old So it is a very much a situation where capitalism is actually mobilized these cleavages, is mobilizing with female labor, alongside male labor,

for the purpose of dislocated the cost of social reproduction onto these semi-proletarianist populations where women are the main agents in terms of economic activity of social reproduction. Brilliant. I'm really looking forward to that work as. well, that new book that you mentioned. Hopefully we'll be able to bring you and perhaps some of your co-editors back on the show to discuss it when her schedule opens up a little bit more. I want to close this conversation out by quoting the way that you close the article and asking for your reflections on that. So you say, and I quote, it remains the case that polycentricism

can only be obtained by means of central planning and a new mix of property relations and the productive base of the peripheries, the erosion of the global infrastructure of late neo-colonialism, which is underway today, will not be enough for the type of transition that is necessary. The popular factor will thus remain determinant in the changing fortunes of working people in the third world and the planning systems that are required. The sixth great power, as Marx reminds us, is the only source, the only measure, and the only guarantee of the transition to polycentricism. Any final reflections that you have? have on.

Yeah, it's the only source. Yes, it's the only source. It's because, as I said, the transition is not an automatic pilot. China will do whatever it's, you know, it has already eroded the neocolonial system in the last 20 years. This is very evident. But in itself, the system is not going to be transformed. transformed by China. It's the people, the working people who are going to transform it themselves.

So the popular factor is fundamental. This is the source of change everywhere. It is also the measure of change. Because we can theoretically imagine a situation where no powers get some kind of expanded autonomy but with no economic policy to follow that

sufficient to absorb these working classes all over the world in a dignified life and dignified labor and so forth. So this, we need to have a measure of what this policy said. We can't just use banal

terms, you know, or fetishized terms of multiple or this and that. You know, we are talking about a measure that is, that is based on these, and the requirements of these social formations. For whom will this polycentric or multipolar world be at the end of the day? Yeah. And so it's a source of the measure and the only guarantee.

Yeah, it's the only thing that will guarantee is when working people themselves, take control. And that could take control means political power, organized political power. It means centralized planning systems. It means a new mix of property rights

through state collective cooperativist. Everyone would have to find their own mix and make it evolve over time. There's no single model. But the states definitely will have to be hugely involved, as Lenin himself and the Bolsheviks had had envisaged a hundred years ago. So that is it.

It's working people at the source, the measure, and the guarantee of this politicistic transition. Terrific. Again, listeners, our guest was Professor Peresiero's professor at Federal University of ABC and a member of the editorial board of a Gurian South Journal. political economy. Professor, it was a great pleasure having you on the show. Can you tell the listeners how they can find you and more of your work if they would be interested in reading more of it?

Yes, well, I do have a webpage. I'm struggling to keep it up to date. But you can also visit our Grand South Journal, our webpage there. There's work that we try to put out to these web pages and the journal itself. We have a Twitter account, you know, Facebook and so forth. But you can find us, yeah? Just Google it and somehow these things will come up.

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, we'll link to the article that we were discussing today as well as the Agrarian Health Journal more generally as well as your, you know, your page. As I said at the top of the conversation, the Agrarian South Journal is one of the most important resources that we have today. I know it's not something that too many people know about yet, but I have hope that more people will come to knowledge of the Agrarian South Journal because I really, really appreciate the work that you and all of your fellow co-editors, including listeners, I know we haven't mentioned him yet on the show yet, but Max Isle is very heavily involved in Agrarian South. And I know all of you listeners love Max as much as I do. So, you know, you can also find Max's work. there as well. But everybody needs to check out the Agrarian South Journal, and it will be linked in the show notes. As for my co-host, who was unable to make it today, you should also follow

Adnan on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N. Follow his other podcast, the Mudgellis, which is a look at the Arab World, the Muslim Diaspora, that's M-A-J-L-I-S. Don't follow the Radio Free Central Asia version of the Mudge list. That is certainly not him. It's the one from the Muslim Society's Global Perspective Project at Queens University. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. You can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this at Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that we do individually as well as collectively

by following the show on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A. underscore pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.