Guerrilla History - Archiving Arghiri Emmanuel's Works w/ The Arghiri Emmanuel Association

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

In this terrific Sources and Methods episode of Guerrilla History, we are joined by Torkil Lauesen, Nemanja Lukić from the Anti-Imperialist Network, Immanuel Ness, and Joseph Mullen (whom you may remember from our episode with The Cadre Journal, which has since merged with Anti-Imperialist Network), who are members of the newly formed Arghiri Emmanuel Association!  We discuss the life of the legendary theorist of Unequal Exchange, his theory, as well as the Association's efforts to archive his works.  A fantastic conversation on some incredibly important work being done!  Be sure to check out the Arghiri Emmanuel Digital Archive. Torkil Lauesen is a longtime anti-imperialist activist and writer living in Denmark. From 1970 to 1989, he was a full-time member of a communist anti-imperialist group, supporting Third World liberation movements by both legal and illegal means.  He has been a multiple time guest on Rev Left and Guerrilla History discussing his books The Principle Contradiction and Riding the Wave: Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist  World Order. Nemanja Lukić is a Yugoslav anti-imperialist activist who runs the Anti-Imperialist Network website. You can also follow Anti-Imp Net on twitter @antiimpnet. Immanuel Ness  is  Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg.  He is the author or editor of numerous works including Organizing Insurgency: Workers' Movements in the Global South, Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class, and The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism.  You can follow Manny on twitter @ImmanuelNess. Joseph Mullen is a student activist who was a member of the Cadre Journal, which has since been merged with Anti-Imperialist Network.  He runs unequalexchange.org/.  You can follow Anti-Imperialist Network  - North America on twitter @antiimpnetna. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You don't remember Dinn-Vinthamu? 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. Hello and welcome to guerrilla 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 Huckamacki, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Doing great, Henry. It's wonderful to be with you. Yeah, always nice to see you too. I know you and I recorded yesterday, but, you know, can never be soon enough to see you again. We are also joined, as usual by Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you. Nice to see you as always. Now, we have literally and figuratively a full house today with many,

many guests, but before we introduce the topic and the guests and what series of guerrilla history this will be going under, I just want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history with Gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that we put out as a show as well as the co-hocks put out individually by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod.

That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Sore pod. This episode is going to be part of our ongoing sources and methods kind of series that we have going within the show. And as usual, when we have Sources and Methods episodes, I'm going to turn it to Adnan briefly to remind the listeners of what this series is all about. Yeah, great. Sources and Methods for guerrilla historians, you know, this is a podcast dedicated to the resource of history for contemporary struggles for justice and against empire and against capitalism. So sometimes it's useful to give people more of a texture of how, to do history and what those resources are. So we started this series on sources where we look at source collections, archives, repositories of primary source documents, and how those can be used

to critique current historiography and to understand and study the texture of history from those who produced these documents, produced these records themselves, and methods, just the different kinds of approaches that we can take to history in doing research as communities, whether it's oral history or its methods of interpretation of history. And this episode, I think, wonderfully brings together both, as we'll see, once we get into our discussion, that we'll be looking at not only an archive of primary sources, but also documents and ideas that have a significant impact on how we interpret and understand modern history of capitalism, you know, in the world. So I'm very much looking forward to

this edition in the sources and method series. It's probably the fourth or the fifth in that series. And I think it'll be a very important one for listeners. Absolutely. And we're going to be talking today about the Argyri Emanuel Digital Archive. But before we open the discussion on the archive itself, I do want to introduce all of our excellent panelists that we have today and let them introduce themselves briefly. So long-time listeners of guerrilla history and Rev. Left will hear some very familiar voices as we're being joined by Torkel Lawson, Joseph Mullen, Immanuel Nassian, and Namanya Lukic. So in turn, hello everyone. Why don't you just let everyone know a little bit about each of you? So we can go Torkel,

Joseph, Manny, Nomania, I guess, in that order. Yes, my name is Torquil Lawson, and I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I have been anti-imperist, activist, and writer since the late 60s, actually. And in connection with this episode, I knew Emmanuel personally from the beginning of the 70s and until he passed away. Hello, I'm Joseph Mullen. I'm a student based out of New York. I'm a member of what was the Quadra Journal now,

anti-imperialist network, and I'm part of the archival team for the Argya Emanuel Association. Very excited to be with you all. Yes, and I'm Manuel Ness. Manny, you can call me. I'm a member of the faculty at CUNY, City University of New York

and I focus my work on issues of political economy of labor including imperialism and I've worked with everyone here Hello everyone Nehanya speaking here I'm one of the

founders of the anti-impleist network collective dedicated to theory of imperialism mainly from the standpoint of unequal exchange and world systems analysis is so happy to be here. Yeah, terrific.

And like I said, everyone here, except for Nomania, has been a guest on guerrilla history in the past, which is kind of funny because Namanya, you have been my personal friend, the longest out of everyone here. So it's funny that this is the first time that we've actually had you on the show since, you know, since we met each other all those years ago. But it's great to have everyone here. I'm going to open the conversation now by, I think that many of our listeners, have probably heard Aregi Emanuel's name come up in passing. We have mentioned him a few times on the show in the past. I know I think we mentioned him in our episode about world systems that we did with Ariel Salzman about a year and a half ago or so. But I also feel fairly confident that the vast majority of our listeners are not intimately aware with Emmanuel's

life and his thought, kind of is, you know, theory-based side of things. So Torkel, I'm going to turn to you as we open the conversation. Can you give a summary of Irrigi Immanuel's life as well as the thought that he put forth and the work that he was doing? Yes. Emmanuel's life actually reflects the 20th century in many ways. He was born in in Patras, on Peloponnese, in Greece,

in 1911. And in his childhood, Greece, which was on the semi-periphery or maybe even the periphery of the world system, there was a lot of wars going on in Greece inter-imperalist wars at the time.

There was the Balkan wars, and then they continued into the into the First World War and then after the First World War there was the Greek Turkish war so all his childhood was very much was very much

influenced on all these wars and these continued into the world economic crisis which had a very deep impact on Greece and led to a massive immigration from Greece

and also later on in the 30s fascism also came to Greece, the prime minister which was a fascist and anti-communist. He made a coup and established

a fascist regime in 36. and while all this was happening Emmanuel got his high school and went to Athens and get some education in economics and law and began to work in a small business in essence. But then his father died

and as the rule was he was the eldest son of the family and he had to finance the family's life and he couldn't do it with his job in essence so he also decided to immigrate and he in 37 he immigrated to Belkish Congo actually because uncle I believe have a small business there export, import of textiles and he went into this family business

business in 37. As you know, Belkish Congo was one of the most brutal colonial regime at the time. So he has this experience.

He was a young man. When he went there, he was 76 and it had a big impact on him. This experience of or Belkish Congo but then

the Second World War came to Greece and he decided to go back to Greece in I think it was in 42 and at that time

he had became radicalized and communist so he joined the communist resistance movement, but they advised him undercover to go into

the Greek forces which was gone into exile in Egypt, in Cairo during the war, the Navy and the King and Metaxa had moved to Cairo and established the government

in exile there. And Emmanuel joined the Navy there. at in the end of the war when the contradictions between the Greek government and the communist rebellion

was becoming heavy Emmanuel took part of a mutiny on the ship he was on in Alexandria I think it was and they made an uprising against the Greek

government and wanted to be part of the communist resistance. But the English army, which was allied with the Greek government, they defeated this mutiny and Emmanuel and the other officers were arrested and he was charred with high treason at a military court and was condemned actually to death by this court his defense speech

we hope to include in the archive very soon but then he was pardoned a year later

but was then sent to a prison camp by the English in Sudan actually in the Sudan desert and there

he stayed for a year more he was released, but he couldn't go back to Greece because he had been part of the communist rebellion, so there was not much job opportunities in Greece. So he went back to Congo, actually, in 47 and worked there. And in different kind of building and constructance business,

and he became acquainted with the growing liberation movement in Congo at the time, I think that Joseph will explain more about his connections with the liberation movement in Congo. But anyway, it ended very abruptly because he was kind of exodied by the Belgian settlers. They told him to pack his suitcase and they put him in a plane. and to Nairobi in Kenya, and there he ended up in in 57 or 58, I think,

and from there he went to Paris. I don't know why he went to Paris, but he went to Paris. And at that time, he was around 50 years old. And then he suddenly began to study, political economy again. Under Bethlehem, he had an institute for

socialist planning in Paris at the time. And I think he had this idea to study this, to go back to Congo and to assist the new government of

changing the economy. But of course we know that Lumombo was killed and so this was not an option anymore. But then I think he had this idea to this experience of his whole life have learned him a lot about the relations of colonialism and imperialism

and trade. So he has some ideas that he wanted to turn into a theory of imperialism, of a trade. And then already in 62 and 63, he began to formulate this theory of one equal exchange, which he

presented in 69, in this famous book which was later translated to a lot of language. So I think that his life very much

was the background. This experience of a lived life, he turned into conception and an understanding of the world system. That's very helpful as a sketch of a very interesting life that covers, as you said, Sorkill, a lot of ground and a lot of issues that really represent and portray key moments and processes of the 20th century. You know, may be worth at some point hearing a little bit more about, you know, what is the theory of unequal exchange and what he contributed to it. I don't know if now is the right time for it, but I am also very intrigued about the background to the Digital Archive Project and the allied and associated community and institutions

that are being built. I think that Namanya mentioned, so perhaps, you know, that he was. was behind the kind of website and the beginnings of this project. So perhaps Niemannia, you can tell us a little bit more about what is, you know, the archive, what's broadly speaking in it, the kinds of documents. How did this get started? And what is the purpose really for creating this community of scholars around preserving, extending and studying, you know, the documents.

of Argyri Immanuel's thought and so on. Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about the project side of this. Right. So that's, well, surprisingly complicated question. But okay, so step by step, how it came into being, right? I would say that we were all, let's say, a group of individuals who on their own during

past well years and maybe decades were looking for Emmanuel's materials they were not all available some are for example just the book that

Torquan mentioned unequal exchange currently if you want to buy in print it would cost around $200 so it was it was not easy to get it. And then over time, I guess that each one of us were slowly finding one another

in this search. And that's so I think it was approximately 2018 or 19 that they got in touch with Torquil, in fact. And he had in his possession some of the materials that were not published. So that's actually how the Antimperist Network website started. So it was The idea was simply to make it available to the mass, to the people. Eventually, I don't remember exactly the year, maybe 2020, 21. We actually took a hand documents that in his group originally planned to publish most likely in the 80s if I'm not mistaken

and actually they had them translated by the original translator of the manuals were Brian Pierce but actually they never got to get published and so he sent them to me

I scanned them, made them available and that's let's say the first step in this in creating the digital archive that caught attention of other people and most notably our friend and Vishnu who managed to get the contact and get in touch

with Claudia Adlitsky. Claudia was assistant with Emmanuel's while he was still teaching on the university and he ended up being a custodian of the archives after Emmanuel passed away And being, well, elderly person, he actually got intrigued by the whole idea, mainly because he wanted to make sure that the archive actually continues leaving and being available to the pig. So we set up our team, basically that's Torquil, Mann, Joseph and myself, and started actually one. We organized a trip to Paris.

Actually, two trips. The last one was in November last year. And that's how it all started moving. But over time, it evolved from the original. So original intention was mainly to scan it to make it available. but given the amount of work we actually first wanted to make sure it has a proper home, proper archive, and then to take it from there.

So this archive in particular contains a lot of material which has not been published yet. And in fact, some of the findings will be presented by Joseph O'Daron. So unknown parts of his life and details that shed a lot of light on who he was and why is this theory important. So from there we actually came to conclusion that it would be ideal to set up Argyrian Manuel Association that will serve to promote those ideas that will continue the research and investigation of. his materials and to give them, let's say, a new life. So it is, those are all ideas which are very relevant to the contemporary times and something

that deserves more investigation and further engagement from the, from the academic community. Luckily, there are academics that support us, that want to participate and that want to take this project further on. I want to hop in for a quick second, because while we have talked about Emmanuel's life and then the beginning of this archive project, we didn't really talk so much about his thought and why it was important for this project to come about, you know, like anybody could have a lot of work that hasn't been published, but that doesn't necessarily warrant making an archive and then pushing it to say, look, this is an important resource for

people on the far left to use in order to analyze the world in a specific way. We haven't really talked about that specific way. And again, we've mentioned the show in the past world systems and unequal exchange in passing, but it would be probably worth it right now to have any of you, really, to hop in and discuss a little bit about what was Emmanuel Stott, what were the theories that he was putting forth, and why these particular theories and the way. he formulated them at that time and in particular make it particularly important that this archive come together and kind of archive this work and make it accessible to people. Like why is it important based on the thought that he was putting forth?

So whoever wants to take that can hop in and a few of you can maybe add to what others are saying. I can give a little bit of the origins of his ideas and then try to summarize some of them in relation to how they were inspired, and then if we need more information, Torkel, or anyone else can fill them in, I would say that one thing that we've learned by doing this archive is that unlike a lot of other theorists,

perhaps, especially nowadays Emmanuel, didn't begin his life exclusively as a theorist. It was only in when he was 50 years old that he went to begin studying, political economy. So for the first, as Torkel was mentioning for the first 50 years of his life, he's very involved in the civil war in Greece. He's very involved with Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. And I think the discoveries that we've made about his time in the Congo in particular have revealed a lot about where his political thought came from. Many people identify Emmanuel as a

third worldist, as an anti-imperialist. And when you read his writing, in unequal exchange or in any of his articles, that's exactly the appraisal that you get, because he's explicitly putting himself on the side of decolonial movements of anti-imperial struggles, and he's very explicitly against Western Marxism and the labor aristocracy, which he often talks about. I find this quote that he has in an article that he wrote all about white settler colonialism, where he says, in talking about ideas that are common on the left, he says, instead of scientific analysis, we take tenacious myths that no facts, however brutal, will ever shake.

This makes for grave misunderstanding and prevents any true dialogue between revolutionary Marxism on the one hand and the decolonized peoples on the other. So this is kind of the, I would frame him in this way that his thought is an attempt to bridge that divide that often remains. between ideas of Marxism and the revolutionary anti-mperialist struggles in the third world at the time. And I say that because I think a part of understanding of Emmanuel's ideas could also be helped to better understand the ideas of Patrice Lumumba. And with that, many of the other very famous and inspirational leaders of the decolonization movement of the independent

struggles in the African continent that still remain as inspirational. today. If you were to try and synthesize something like a Lumumbaist ideology around his ideas in the Congo, it would be hard to separate that from the ideas that Emmanuel had when he was on the ground and participating in the struggle. Him and Patrice Lumumba met in the 1950s. They would have met in Stanleyville, which has been renamed to Kiss Sangani, which is in the eastern and part of the Congo. And that was Lumumba's base. It was his base of support in the Congo. And they met in circles which would have been discussing questions of the future of the Congo at this time where it wasn't clear if independence would ever be granted. And Lumumba was the leader of a trade union which was pressing Belgium for immediate independence.

But as Emmanuel analyzes, Lumumba also was not explicitly Marxist or he wasn't calling necessarily for revolution. He often was trying to balance between the need for the Congo to develop and be independent and be united, which is especially important, and the need for independence and a break. And what's interesting with Emmanuel's political thought is that he often will identify the settlers as the key enemy for the revolution. struggle. I think it's worth, you know, it's worth knowing that at this time he's writing Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, our chief concerns for the revolutionary struggles. They're still very common and he often warns that if a state like this were to exist, it would engage in genocide rather than just exploitation. That is the objective. And I think that that's very relevant today, considering that as part of this article, he talks about Israel and he

clearly identifies it as a settler colonial project far before many other Marxists would have. He clearly aligns himself with the Palestinian struggle and identifies Israel as a genocidal project. But that's part of his political analysis is to identify how settlers operate in a context of capitalism and gain a super wage, become a labor aristocracy, engage in genocidal projects, and all of that is to is for him to take the side of the, the, the, as he said, the decolonizing people. So as part of our archival work, we discovered a letter that Emmanuel most likely wrote after he had been deported in July of 1960.

And July of 1960 is also right at the moment as the Congo crisis is breaking out. Katanga, which is the province in Southeast Congo, has seceded. And the secession as he analyzes it isn't triggered by international imperialism. they take advantage of the situation to destabilize Lumumba, but it's especially triggered by the settler population, which was 100,000. And he says that their intention was to set up an apartheid-style state in the seceded province, no different than what he, you know, similarly analyzes as the United States of America and Canada, these genocidal white settler apartheid states. And it's interesting to, you know, to use the term apartheid, because often,

and people will describe on equal exchange as a system of economic apartheid at a global scale. So that's something that he's constantly trying to give us a better understanding of apartheid as a system. But this letter that we found, which is very important, and I think one of the biggest findings in our archive, clearly situates Emmanuel as a key advisor to the Lumumba's movement that's developing even after the execution and assassination of Patrice Lumumba. he's giving advice to, in this letter, which is written in 1961, after Lumumba has been killed, he's advising Antoine Gizenga, who was a deputy for Lumumba, and then as the Congo crisis is emerging, he moves Lumumba's government to Stanleyville, Kesangani, in the east, and attempts to set up what he calls the Free Republic of the Congo, which is meant to be a socialist or socialist-inspired government in the Congo.

And when you read this letter, Emmanuel is giving advice around how this project could develop and how it could set up socialism in the decolonized and in the African context. So he has a very unique blend of advice which includes both the need to ally the state and gain foreign aid from the Soviet Union and from other decolonized African. countries like Ghana or the Central African Republic. And then in addition to that, while developing the productive forces of the state, he also encourages the protection of, I guess, what you could call pre-colonial or anti-capitalist modes of organization that were in the Congo before colonialism occurred. So that's a very interesting letter to read to get a better idea of his political

thought, how it inspired his activism, and how I think a lot of, and in a lot of ways reading it now and trying to think about how it applies to the modern Congo today, which still suffers from the same problems as it had in the past, which is being undermined by imperialism, especially the undermining which prevents it from being united and being able to develop the productive forces, and is constantly promoting secessionist movements and destabilization. And in addition to that letter, we also discovered in the archive

a lot of things to confirm that activist side of him. So as Sorka was mentioning, Katrina, his daughter, revealed to us that there's documentation of him in the prison camp in Sudan. And there's also evidence that he escaped from there. And that while he was in the prison camp,

he wrote a textbook on dialectics for his fellow prison there's. that they all used together and would have been engaging in study circles and learning together. There's the letters between him and Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Anwar Abdel Malik. And as well, there's a letter from Patrice Lumumba, which his daughter has, where Patrice Lumumba writes to him and says, You're welcome back in the Congo. This is after he's been deported.

Patrice Lemova says, you're welcome back at any time. And we hope to continue our collaboration to develop the Congo together. Unfortunately, he was assassinated after writing that, and the manual was not able to return. He simply advised an exile. But to wrap up, I guess, by knowing the origin of Emmanuel's time in the Congo and his relationship with Lumumba, not only do we get to learn more about an equal exchange as a system, where we're discovering better observations that he would have made around the wage differentials between white settlers and Congolese in that context, we get to learn about his observations around

price differentials, the fact that commodities would be sold for more in Belgium than they were in the Congo, even if they had been produced in the Congo, which indicated to him that the wage was the independent variable for unequal exchange. He's making observations about the labor aristocracy, but very significantly for developing his thought further, he's making observations about how a decolonized country could move towards socialism, what the right elements of that development need, which is developing the productive forces while also keeping the anti-capitalist spirit and not integrating into capitalist ideology. So it's good to know that he, as an advocate, as he would be one of his most important dimensions of his

theory, he is an advocate for a globally socialist planned economy. but that began in the Congo when he is participating in this project to try and actually make that happen on the ground in a decolonized country, I think is important to see how his praxis informed his theory. Yeah, that's a really incredible deep dive and some fascinating revelations from this archive that have emerged, his work with, yeah, La Mumba, his vision for the Congo, yeah, all the stuff that you mentioned is absolutely fascinating. I'm going to move on to Manny's next question in the structure of this episode, but maybe after Mani answers this section, we can come back and maybe revisit some of these ideas, because you put a lot on the table, certainly. But, Manny, can you talk about sort of taking Emmanuel's thought and making an anti-Western Marxist and an anti-imperialist framework and kind of walk us through what those contributions are and fill out the relevance and the importance of this work for us and the Marxist and anti-imperialist left worldwide? Yes, I'd be happy to do.

So I'd like to first start by indicating that Emmanuel's work is now highly important amongst Marxists and Marxist scholars as well as practitioners because the relevance specifically of his work unequal exchange, but it goes beyond that. And so it has caused a proliferation of literature amongst people who are anti-imperialists to examine the differentials between the global north and the global south, or as I would prefer, the first world and the third world. And so, you know, we have ideas such as ecological unequal exchange. I've done some work on migration and unequal exchange. There are other areas with respect, especially to labor, as was intimidated by my colleagues, that increasingly production has moved to the south. And as a consequence of that, the level of unequal exchange has been expanded significantly and can be measured, actually, which has been conducted by a number of scholars. And so his work has also gained a lot of traction, and I think my colleagues can also discuss this,

amongst students throughout the United States and throughout the world, actually, to examine perhaps the most significant issue that faces the world. So, you know, when we discuss examples of economic growth and so forth that is necessary in the poorest countries of the world, it is impossible to conceive of that economic growth without industrialization, yet it's also impossible for that economic growth and industrialization to take place without significant damage to the world, and also especially the vast majority of the population of this planet, because most of the ecological damage takes place in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where there is a significant amount of extraction, but also labor.

So, you know, when we think of, just to give you one example, India and China, people, particularly with respect to China, talk about, well, you know, China represents a major threat to the world because of the production of industrial goods and so forth. But, you know, I would make the case, even though their economy has changed for the better in many ways with respect to the advancement of wages and so forth. Most mainstream and even left scholars say that China and the United States are the major polluters. But, you know, Emmanuel's work will show us that, in fact, the Chinese population, to a great extent, pollutes its own environment. as a consequence of the production for Western markets, the whole idea of commodities and the fact that China can do it more efficiently. And one part of efficiency in this context, although that hopefully will change, is the extraction of value from workers who are in China as well as, I would say, India.

So it has tremendous amount of relevance. So in this case, just to finish this point, people, we argue that the United States has 5% of the world's population or so, 4 to 5% yet creates 25% of the pollution. But they don't count the fact that the United States is a voracious consumer and it consumes foreign goods that are produced outside the United States. That's not discussed at all within the forums of the United Nations and elsewhere. So anyway, I would like to also point out that the issue of labor is the centerpiece, the touchstone of Emmanuel's work, because he's highly focused on the exploitation. of the global south vis-a-vis the north. And though I really think his work as an actor, this is important,

he is primarily significant because of his intellectual contribution to our understanding of politically economy today from a Marxist perspective. And by that, I'll try to be as brief as possible. his imperialism or his idea of Marxism is an anti-imperialist Marxism, as Joseph points out a few, and just did point it out, rather than a what many of us are considering a first-world Marxism in which most Marxists are, I would say, first-world Marxists or Western Marxists, as many would argue in this context, It's the Western Marxists who would say, well, we're concerned with advancing the interests of basically rich workers. I was just picking up on the discussion that Joseph made earlier.

And when we discussed the idea of the aristocracy of labor, there's no question about it that there is a significant difference in the labor that. between the different parts of the world. Of course, it's stratified in many ways, but one can say very clearly that production costs in the global south are a fraction of what they are in the north, writ large. And, you know, I can go into a number of other points, but I want to save time for the others, my other colleagues. Yeah, I wanted to ask Torkel, actually,

to come in on some of these remarks and respond perhaps with what you've been saying, Mani, about and perhaps also to elucidate a little bit more what components of Immanuel's thought are very relevant and important. And I noticed also that in the digital archive what Joseph was talking about, there are also correspondence with other analysts and theorists, which were very interesting with Samir Amin, with Emmanuel Wallerstein, with Anwar Abdul-Malik. And so perhaps it would be useful to have a better sense of what was at stake in these discussions and arguments. And why do you think Emmanuel's thought is so relevant, as Manny was just pointing out, you know, to the current conditions that we're facing and the need for an anti-imperialist?

kind of Marxism. Yes, I think one thing it's important to mention concerning his relevance today is that, well, the unequal exchange and the transfer of value was also the explanation

of while the world's system was a unity, but also it developed underdeveloped countries and overdeveloped countries. We have this polarizing process all through the 20th centuries between the first

world and the third world. And this Emmanuel's theory contributed to explain why this was happening. And therefore it's very significant that after many centuries of a

polarizing process we now see the rise of China for the first time in 200 years a semi-colonial country is going against this current in history and we see the development of the productive forces not only in China but in many other third world countries

and this halts the end of the capitalism because this polarized process and continued value transfer was the air

which capitalist breathed on. So when now this stops it will suffocate and therefore to understand why we have this

polarizing process and why it is beginning to change will give us some direction of why the end of capitalism is under the way and I think this is a very interesting questions

which we could talk a lot about but I think this is a very interesting issue Joseph do either you or Neimanja want to add in on this point Namania, I don't think you've talked on this point yet. So if you have anything to add,

we'll open the floor for you right now. Not really. I think our friends covered it to great extent. Not much to add. I can move us on slightly then

to say that we've been talking about this archive and we've talked about a few of the things that have been found, but for listeners who haven't yet clicked on the link in the show notes, which is going to take them, to the archive. What is the state of the archive as we speak? This will be coming out next week

at the time of recording. So in a week's time, what is the state of the archive? What are the kind of things that people will be able to find there? And what are the plans for how to move forward with this project? And what are the goals with this project? So the states of the archives in weeks time will be pretty much same as it is now, I would expect. I mean, it's, it's It's a work in progress that's surprisingly slow, but, you know, archives tend to keep their material for ages and ages, so they're not particularly in a rush to do things, sadly, sadly for us, but from what we know so far is we're talking with the ISG Institute in Holland that's interested in taking the archive and the host is together with documents of Samirameen,

André Gunder Frank and well, others of relevance. So actually I just read today that they also have unpublished material from Karl Marx at the Institute. So he will be in good

companies. Exactly. of his contemporaries and his well I wouldn't say idols but interestingly Emmanuel used to call himself a paleo-Marxist probably in the reference of being a fundamentalist when it comes to Karl Marx. By the way, if everything goes fine

and we expect it will then the one part of archive so the boxes will go to Holland, the one that we have identified and we know exactly what is about. I mean, we managed to identify a large portion of the documents,

what they are, their content and their importance, but there's still a portion which is, which has not been identified completely. So we're talking here about two kind of two separate processes, one

hosting the archive, which will include the archival process in terms of organizing the documents, categorizing them the way the archive does it and making it available to the public, and separately the effort of, well, investigating what's left. And that is probably the most interesting bit of this work. And I would like to take this opportunity and to invite everyone, who's interested in a manual's life work and theories to help us out. In particular, the part that we need help with is essentially identifying every document

that's in the archive, it means scanning and then reading it through probably translating because the major part is in French and then trying to figure out what is it really about. So this is in fact how we found the letters and the correspondence because they were just hidden in the

notes and then here we can expect to find some real gems and then on the other hand we can find irrelevant material that's basically of no importance. So

the outcome of this work would be of course the most relevant material would end up being in the archive in Holland together with the rest and of course the potential is to publish everything one way or another when I'm saying one way or another digitally on paper and so on. Well, so I just wanted to, for listeners, the IISG is the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. So this is where there will be a repository of many of these documents. I'm still very interested in two things. some of what Mani was just talking about about how one can and Torkel was also engaging with

how one can see the value of Emmanuel's thought for the direction of global you know capitalism and it's eventual hopefully sooner rather than later

demise. But also, so that's one thing. I think we should talk a little bit more about what are the other dimensions and implications of his thought for us in this contemporary time. And the other aspect, I don't know how much it comes in, but just as somebody who's interested in, you know, the history of Marxist thought and, you know, development theory is the fact that there are a lot of clearly highly theoretical discussions taking place in the correspondence. which is how some of these figures refine their ideas and it just would be fascinating to have the texture of, you know, what were the real nubs of debate between people like, you know, Emmanuel and, I mean, you know, there's a whole national question. We actually had a little bit before the start of the recording of the episode, a few comments about the interest of his correspondence, Manuel's correspondence with Anwar. Dilmalik and Egyptian and Francophone, you know, theorists who, you know, seem to have some sense of the importance of cultural differences, you know, in global Marxism. And, you know, how does one take the universalist position versus realities of history as it unfolds in development in the 20th century? And these kinds of discussions and debates still seem in some sense relevant to us. So I'm one. wondering if any of you have some remarks about, you know, where his idea is developed in a different direction and why those, you know, additional ways in which that might be important for us to think about in the contemporary context.

And just to add in a specific way in which that came up recently, listeners who are regular listeners of guerrilla history will know that Manning was recently on the show, a couple episodes again. go talking about his book Migration as economic imperialism and throughout the book a couple of points you mentioned Argyreemmanuel and his theory of unequal exchange with regards to migration.

So this kind of speaks to the I'm not making our relevance to the day and same print components. It's a really good example that we got in one of the conversations we had in the book. We didn't change again.

And X, can I recommend everybody to pick it up? But I just wanted to throw that in there as like, this isn't just a, we should be utilizing him. But that was a concretive example of you actually utilizing his thought in specifically the case of migration. Well, there is a lot of discussions in the archive between people from the dependency school. there's a long letter from Emmanuel to Amin and I think

it's comment to his manuscript of the accumulation on the global level or global accumulation or something one of them's main books which came out in 70

and there's a lot of comments from Emmanuel to that manuscript and a lot of discussions which are still going on. One main discussion is is there

a global value of commodities and labor or are values local or national? And this is a discussion which are still going on.

And there are many other interesting points of of the discussions in this material which is, and some under my I think is illuant, a long discussion which were in the times of when unequal exchange was published was that the reason for this different levels of wages

were differences in in productivity that were high productivity in the first world and low productivity in the third world and this was the reason for this difference in wage. I think this discussion is not so relevant anymore. Everyone who could look at the industry in China or in Mexico can see that the productivity in these countries

are no much difference that the productivity in the first world, they use the same equipment and suddenly the intensity of the labor is as high in Mexico and China as it is in America or in Denmark. So some of the discussions are maybe not so interesting anymore but there are still very interesting

discussions which the archive will contribute to. Also, I'll add that if Carl Marx were to write a fourth volume, he lived long enough, I think he would have dealt with the question of aristocracy of labor and the fact that the world is divided not on the basis of class and that the vast majority of the working class is in the global south, if not all of it. So I think that was said before by a number of people, and it's become sort of a point that if Marx were to write a fourth volume, it would be unequal exchange about the divisions on a global level. I think that another very important point we are working on, or starting to work out as the whole idea of

capitalism and imperialism and the point of analysis that where we take off is capitalism could not exist without imperialism. But in this current stage, perhaps over the last 50

to 100 years, when it exhausts itself in the first world, it must have the Global South, the third world, in order to extract profits. And I think that's where Immanuel remains

highly prescient for all of us. At the very point that capitalism can only exist with imperialism at the present stage. I think this follows from what Torkel said

a moment ago and we're starting to work on some kind of project hopefully we'll develop in the coming months and so forth. I would like to add that his position on labor aristocracy, I think made him very unpopular. We can see from his correspondence, and I can also see from my personal relation to him that he didn't have many friends.

He didn't have any political friends. He has a huge network of academics, which he did discuss with, and he have a very good academic. but you have very, very few political friends. And actually, after the publishing of unequal exchange, he had very, very difficulties with getting his other works translated from French into English. When he wanted to publish his second major book, Profit and Crisis, he had huge difficulty in finding an English publisher for the book, even if unequal exchange had sold enormously much books,

it was for political reasons very difficult for him to publish his work later on. Joseph, do you have a follow-up? Yeah, I just wanted to even, I guess, provide the perspective of why, as many alluded to why students and younger, anti-imperialists are finding Emmanuel's work so appealing and why even almost after this this lull between the period of

third worldism and the anti-imperial struggle and then now back to today why so many of us would be inspired by this and I think that for me I came to Emmanuel vis-a-vis reading about Torkel's group in turning money into rebellion and learning about their inspiration from him politically and theoretically

but that it was always about looking to that example of praxis and looking to where did anti-imperialism go and can it come back today and so for many of us when we were reading as students reading about Torkel's organization or looking to examples of activists in the global north who showed solidarity with the third world

and played a part in their struggle I think that's why many of us found Emmanuel so appealing. And then to reread him in the context of whether it's the continued and Palestinian struggle for liberation or as many was mentioning, the increasing fascist response to migration in the global north, which is, which as many writes about and Emmanuel talked about if the global north were to open the political restriction that imposes on labor, its standard of living. would collapse, these systems of social fascism that it has set up would collapse. So I guess that political dimension of it is why many of us who are looking for a new method kind of worked our way backwards to Emmanuel through the activists that we take inspiration from who've used him in the past. Yeah, very important.

And that migration issue is only going to become more and more relevant as the climate crisis in particular continues to ravage the global South first and foremost. As we sort of zoom in towards the end of this conversation, I would like to ask everybody or if any of you have thoughts on this for a specific work of his that you would like to recommend possibly as an intro text to people who've never engaged with his work or just as one of your personal favorites or the ones that you perhaps find amongst his most profound work.

I would love to hear some of your thoughts on that. If I may step in here, I would recommend actually talk of his speaking. So it might be a strange A strange recommendation But in general Emmanuel's work is Especially unequal exchange

Is very difficult to Understand a completely Unless you've had Or have a really substantial Background in economics However The book that Communist Working Group issued

in mid to late 80s unequate change in prospects of socialism is excellent introduction and background that you actually need to understand what's behind Emmanuel's work. So

it's kind of it's not terribly easy to read, but it's a lot more accessible, especially for activists and people without academic background. It's a good

good entering to Emmanuel's work. Just to follow up on that this group the Argyri Emanuel Foundation or association, forgive me, have worked

collectively with monthly review and we've arranged for a new addition to be published of unequal exchange with an introduction forward from Torkel

which will be very important since he knew him so well but it will also have a new introduction with John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark of Monthly Review and this hopefully will even expand the

knowledge and a number of people who know about that work and it won't be a part of a backlist or any anything like that, it'll be a major publication of monthly review. So that's just one of the projects that we're working on. I would like to mention Mani's new book on migration.

And also actually, the preface which Emmanuel was so nice to write to the book in the mania, mentioned which we published in the 80s because there he deals with the connection between Syria and practice. I would mention the article I was referencing that has a lot of information about Emmanuel's time in the Congo

and his political observations of his engagement with Lumumba. The title is white settler colonialism and the myth of investment imperialism as published by New Left Review and it's kind of a short article. I think it's a very different take on imperialism, decolonization, and settler colonialism. And it is incredible to read it, though I think it was published in the 70s and think

how oppression it was for later on. And then I find on the website, there's a text on the Anti-Imperialist Network and on the archive of believe by Claudio, who Namani. mentioned got us in touch and connected us with the archive. He wrote this tribute to Emmanuel, which kind of summarizes his life. It's very short. And he talks about him, but it has this quote that I think we all come back to, which is, Emmanuel was asked on, he died in 2001. So he was asked as the Americans after 9-11 were invading Afghanistan. And he reportedly said to Claudio that even if the Americans,

are right, he would still be opposed to them, which I think is a great quote to have from that short tribute. Well, that is an intriguing quote. And I just wonder if anybody would like to develop the point a little further about like, you know, what he meant and why he would say that. And I note, actually, in the letter exchange between himself and Anwar Abdul Malik, a different kind of sentiment was presented there, which was, and it's a much earlier, of course, correspondence than his remarks on, you know, the global war on terrorism. But, you know, in that exchange, he indicated that he would prefer the Pax Americana to kind of local socialist countries if they were also going to. going to just relate to one another through realpolitik, you know, like that if there was just a bunch of isolated national kind of movements for socialism that wasn't integrated into a kind of broader global system that he would prefer the Pax Americana. So, you know, that seems to be a bit

of a contradiction. I don't think it is. But maybe somebody can elucidate, you know, what's this standpoint here? And that is a wonderfully apropos. remark, even if the Americans are right, but in what sense might they be right? And why would one be against them, even if they were in some sense right? That's intriguing. Perhaps you have some comments or thoughts on that. I think that this comment was very much influenced by the question of the possibility of global nuclear war. And this was very much on Emmanuel's mind that this transition from from from capitalism to socialism has this danger and I think it's a very very also very very interesting for current times that this transition

for a dying capitalism into socialism has the danger of turning into a global nuclear war which would which would be much much better question than socialism or capitalism because it will be the end of the world as we know it. And he very much differentiates when he discussed about

the political struggle within a dominating capitalist world system or we are discussing the transition from capitalism to socialism. This is two very different discussions and I think that he was very

in that letter he also mentioned the danger that so many countries are now possessing nuclear weapons and just mathematically the more nations which have nuclear weapons the bigger the danger is for a global nuclear

war and what he meant was that if we have this real politics between a lot of nationalist, socialist countries struggling for each their socialism, it would be a very dangerous situation because we will have this global war. And then I think he imagined that then he would rather had a transition from capitalism to socialism through an uprising within Pax America. I think this is like in the way that Negri and Hart also had this idea

of a Pax America, a global capitalism. And I think we have seen now that we had this danger. We are going back to nationalism. We are not going through the Nekri. hard process of transition no we are going to back to a geopolitical transition

which and then the return the big return of this danger and this I think is the most dangerous thing with the I think the end of capitalism will be within this century and I think that the global south have

very strong position now because of the development of their productivity forces, much better than in the 70s, much, much better. In the 70s, they demanded a new world order at the moment they are building a new world order

in terms of finance, in terms of banking, in terms of industrial production and so on. So they are in the offensive. But we are also going back to this geopolitical struggle with the chances of a nuclear war

and we can see how the military is scaling at the moment. It's dangerous times, but interesting times. I agree completely. And I think that is one component that we have talked about is that, you know, with the breakup of, you know, U.S. or Western imperial hegemony in the globe and the rise of multipolarity, as people are talking about it, contestations in the system that, you know, while this has extremely positive opportunities and possibilities, it is also. very dangerous situation. And so our analysis has to keep up with, well, how will we support and in what ways we need to support a, you know, transition out of U.S. global capitalism, which has,

you know, failed to really become just absolutely totally dominant, which is its own good thing. But how do we make the most of those opportunities for actually, you know, liberatory socialism and not just You know, as you're pointing out, nationalisms that can create their own dangers, war, chaos, you know, in the world. May I just add quickly to that? Part of that letter that I like is when he's discussing the real politic of China in particular and saying, okay, even if the Maoist system is perfect and we all follow Mao Zedong thought, It doesn't satisfy me if then a Maoist intermediary shoots me in Angola. So I think he's making these references also to the Cold War conflicts that even though, even if there's supposedly this sort of perfect system, it always matters in relation to the rest of the global South, how all these countries are relating to one another. And I find that line just very interesting because it was a genuine criticism of,

the fact that the China was involved on the wrong side of the conflict in Angola or any other, you know, criticism you could leverage about the lack of this solidarity amongst all the third world countries. So like Toro said, I think that's one of the criticisms he's making. So that's all fantastic. And this was a really excellent conversation. And frankly, the archive is really excellent work, really noble project, one that I can't imagine how much work is going into. it because I've done some projects that are somewhat similar to it and every single time I get into something similar to archival work, it is just terrible. So, you know, kudos to all of you for dealing with that level of work that I can only envision that you're putting in to get

this archive up and going, the digital archive that is as well as collaborating with these other institutions on the physical side of things. I want to close this out by having you tell the listeners. One, where they can find some of your work. I know each of you have a lot of work that we would like to recommend, and we've recommended it on the show before, and we will continue to do so. Two, where they can find the digital archive. I don't think that we've mentioned the URL, but it will also be in the show notes for the listeners. And then three, if there's anything else that you would like the listeners to be aware of in terms of things that they can read, watch, to listen to

in order to more deeply understand the topics that we've talked about today beyond the archive and

the specific work of yours that you're going to bring up in those first two parts of

this final questions. So kind of the three prongs are where they can find your work,

where they can find the archive and anything else that you would like to recommend to them.

I think that many of my articles are on the website of the of the anti-imperalist net

which Niemannia boast and I have also written some of the articles on the Emmanuel website of the archive just my intention just to follow up on what Circle was saying

please visit anti-imperlist dot net and an equalexchange dot org and you'll find everything you need to know about a manual project

and the theory of imperialism. I'd just like to add to what Torkel was saying that

he has a new book coming out on the transition to socialism and that

book is under contract I believe right now with ISCRA press and it

should be out in Istra books which should be out in August I believe

isn't that right Torkel and I think I'm very excited about his publication and so forth,

which is the same publisher that you have, Henry, so this is also part of a series that developed with Jennifer Ponce de Leon and Gabriel Rockhill called Anti-Imperialist Marxism, and so we're very excited about this project. And just to add in briefly for the listeners, since you mentioned anti-imperialist Marxism, it's a series that I may have some role in as well, just in case the listeners are not tired of me at this point. There is potentially some work that'll be coming out from me tangentially anyway through that series,

which Manny, I know you are one of the leaders of as well. Joseph. Yeah, I'd second everything that Manja said, anti-imperialist on net, and unequalexchange.org we've been as I mentioned in the beginning the cadre journal has moved a lot of its stuff to anti-peerilist network and we're working more closely to develop an organization so even the podcast now is called unequal exchange podcasts and we do trying to you know make short videos to explain unequal exchange and make it more popularly accessible in addition to still doing interviews. And then we'd be also, in the future, hope to have conferences around this

with the Argyrian Manuel Association that people can participate in. And one last thing I would mention is that through our anti-imperialist network recently, we've been working in, and very much in the spirit of Emmanuel, we've been working with a communist activist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and trying to highlight what they're doing. And they're, they're organizing and struggle against imperialism and also hopefully with the archival material that is related to Lumumba and the Congo, maybe at some point bring that to an archive of Lumumba because so little of his material exists, so much of it was destroyed in addition to the fact that so much of his physical body was destroyed.

So hopefully this project can be in relation to that and connecting to that on the ground in the Congo. Thank you. Just a very quick addition. A lot of the work you can find also in the Journal of Labor and Society. If anyone has any interest, you can actually contact me, and I can probably get you the article if you don't have access to it. Mani.net.nes at gmail.com. Excellent. Of course, I highly recommend that. Highly recommend everybody check out the work of these terrific comrades that we have on the panel today. day and check out the archive and Adnan. They should check out your Twitter page and your other podcast. Can you tell the listening to how they can do that? Sure. And I just want to commend

all of our guests for the work that they're doing. And this is a wonderful project. And I hope it'll bear, you know, even more fruit. And it looks like there's so many interesting and exciting projects involved with the digital archive, publications and so on. So again, we thank you for coming to talk to us about it and we hope that our listeners and we can support it in every way that we can. If you're interested, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And you can also listen to my other podcast, The M-A-J-L-I-S. If you're interested in the Middle East Islamic World, Muslim diasporas, we've got a new episode that's a co-episode with guerrilla radio about the campus front for the struggle for free Palestine.

And we'll be having other episodes coming up very soon, a new book called Melancholy Acts about Arab culture, literature, and thought in the post-67 world. So do check us out. That's the M-A-J-L-I-S on all the usual platforms. Right. I hope and the listeners find you and your other excellent podcasts. Sure, yeah. Thank you all so much for coming today and sharing your knowledge with us.

And also, I'm very looking forward to Torkel's new book in August on the transition to socialism. We'll definitely have you on Rev. Left and Grill History. When that book comes out, sounds fascinating. As for me, you can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. Yeah, I think it goes without saying that when that book is started to come out, we'll have Torkel back on the show. And our friends at Instagram books will definitely be able to hook us up

with an early copy so that we can get the jump on the conversation before the book even comes out. So really looking forward to that. I echo the sentiments of both of my co-hosts. I just want to let the listeners know that in the very near future, we will have those collected works of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as well as the Popular Front in Palestine coming out from Iskra books, which we collaborated with and wrote one of the forwards too.

So keep your eyes peeled for that coming from Iskra. And I've got another work coming out through Iskra, hopefully sometime in the summer on the title is tentatively communism, the highest stage of ecology. So stay tuned for that. As for me, listeners, you can find me at Huck 1995 on Twitter, H-U-C-K-1-995. You can follow Gorilla-H-R-R-I-L-A-U-N-Square. And you can help support the show and allow us to keep making episodes like this. hopefully continue to expand what we're able to do by going and supporting us at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, with again, Gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you. Thank you.