Guerrilla History - US Imperialism and the Western Left w/ Immanuel Ness (IB Pt 1)

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Guerrilla History- Intelligence Briefings will be roughly a twice monthly series of shorter, more informal discussions between the hosts about topics of their choice.  Patrons at the Comrade tier and above will have access to all Intelligence Briefings. We have another fun Intelligence Briefing this time, with a special guest!  For this wide ranging conversation about, among other things, the irrelevance of the Western left and US imperialism, we bring back our good friend and comrade Professor Immanuel Ness.   Manny is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg.  His latest book is Organizing Insurgency: Workers' Movements in the Global South, which is available from Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343594/organizing-insurgency/.   You can follow him on twitter @ImmanuelNess. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea. Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod.  Your contributions make the show possible to continue and succeed!  Please encourage your comrades to join us, which will help our show grow. To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter at @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter at @Red_Menace_Pod.  You can find and support these shows by visiting https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/. Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.              

You don't 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. 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. This is a guerrilla history intelligence briefing for those of you who don't remember or are new to listening to the show. Intelligence briefings are roughly twice, monthly bonus episodes that go on Patreon. Roughly half of them are early release on Patreon like this episode will be. And then about the other half are Patreon exclusive episodes as a little Thank you for people that help to support the show and keep us going. So I'm your host, Henry Hukimacki, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada.

Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be with you. Yeah, it's always nice to see you. And I'm also joined, as always by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of The Red Menace Podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing this midday your time?

I'm doing great. Happy to be here. It's nice to see you. We're also joined by a special guest, similar to our intelligence briefing when we had Professor Alexander Avina with us. We have a guest with us for this intelligence briefing, and we're going to have a conversation with him. And this is a returning guest of the show, Professor Emmanuel Ness. Mani Ness is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg. He's author of a bunch of books, including the book that we covered last time with him, organizing insurgency workers' movements in the global south. So if that sounds interesting

to you, go back and find that episode in your podcast player right now. Hello, Manny. How are you doing? It's nice to actually see you this time. Yes, I'm doing very well. And it's nice to see you guys as well. and especially Brett who couldn't make it last time and thank you for having me on. Absolutely. We really enjoyed the conversation last time and we've been in touch since then and we just decided, you know,

why not have a little bonus conversation with you right here? So we have a lot of things that we want to cover today. So let's jump right into it. The first topic that we were kind of kicking around in our conversation that we were having is more or less the irrelevance of the Western left, and that's quote unquote left, and the importance of returning to scientific analytic constructs that have been kind of abandoned by certain subsets of the left in the global

north, which has kind of ingrained inequality and privilege for the global north and rich countries over the majority of the world's population. And this is something that I've been thinking about more and more frequently that as we see these nominative left-wing individuals in the global north, we really have this complete lack of analysis of economic imperialism, that side of thing. So, Mani, this was something that you wanted to bring up. Why don't I let you start off with this? Why did you want to talk about this with us? Well, I'm very much interested in the ideas historically of, you know,

economic development and political change over time. And that if we take a look at the broad history of the last three, four centuries, there is a sense that there's a greater level of democratization that has taken place that has improved conditions for the vast majority of the population. I think there are basically blinders

that Westerners have with the same, respect to the rest of the world in the sense that they have absolutely no conception of the products, the consumer goods, etc., that they are using, and also the benefits they have living in the global north. You know, there is this notion of the imperial mode of living, which I think is very important that is increasingly being advanced by scholars, developmental scholars with respect to countries and so forth. And, you know, recognizing that if we are to, in fact, create socialism for the world as a whole, it might actually lead to the end of the world if we were to have the standard of living in the

United, in India, as we have in the United States, that would cause so much pollution that would choke off the entire world, probably. At the same time, I'm very concerned with the fate of people who are in the global South or the third world in India, et cetera, who are living on, you know, really low wages, you know, a dollar a day would be a lot for some people. And the metrics that are used by social scientists as well as by leftists, I think are completely erroneous. So I think that we here in the West are, you know, asking for a Green New Deal and, you know, the development of new infrastructure. And I think there is absolutely no conception of what that would take in the sense that What is really necessary is a reduction in the utilization of resources, a reduction of the carbon footprint in the global north, which people really don't understand.

And through the development of these new devices that would probably be built in the global south, we would only create more pollution. I don't know if I can go on just very briefly. So, for instance, there was a recent report about China having more pollution than the United States. Well, you know, China produces for the United States to a large extent. They have their own internal market. There's no question about it. But it's basically a poor country with a GDP of around $10,000 a year compared to $65,000 plus in the United States. And, you know, American and Western Socialists, European Socialists and so forth, you know, they're asking for things which are really nice.

Of course, you know, they could probably allocate them, they absolutely should allocate them in a better way, such as, you know, universal health care and so forth. with respect to education, free education, so forth, I think we all support that. But at the same time, there's absolutely no notion that if we are to, in fact, reduce poverty and the carbon footprint on the planet that is drawing it to a bleak future as people like Lilric Brand and others have put forward, you know, we face, you know, an imminent kind of destruction of the planet and also growing poverty that won't be sustainable for the vast majority of the population on the planet. I'm going to jump in real quick because you mentioned that some sources have said that China

is the leading emitter of carbon dioxide these days, but as you pointed out, China is the producer for the world still in large parts. There was recently a graph that came up, which I had actually saved to my phone, so I have it available to me right now, which was looking at per capita emissions, but not only per capita emissions, it was also accounting for things like consumption. So if something was produced in China, the carbon that was emitted from that plant would be, at least in part, I haven't gone into the methodology of the study with a fine-tooth comb, But as I understand it, the emissions from that plant were attributed not solely to China,

but also from the consuming country of the products that were produced. And what did they find? The United States and Saudi Arabia were tied with the highest per capita emissions at 17.6 metric tons of CO2 per capita. That would be per year. China is all the way down at 6.4. So roughly a third, a little bit more than a third of what the U.S. is produced. But if you look at the countries that have the highest per capita emissions, we're looking at what you would expect.

Saudi Arabia, United States, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Russia, Iran, the UK. You don't see China until 15th place. And again, they're the ones who are doing much of the production. So it's a very interesting point. And also when you take into account historic emissions, where China has far less than for example, the United States or the United Kingdom, who industrialized far before China did. And that process of industrialization was a huge burden on the historic carbon debt of the

planet. China has only really started to produce such emissions recently. So it's a little bit hypocritical of countries like the United States to point the finger at China and say, look, their total amount of CO2 coming out of China today is more than the total amount of CO2 coming out of the United States, whereas on a per capita basis, if we take things like consumption into play, the United States is still way, way higher than China. And from a historic perspective, is way higher than China. Brent, you've been doing a lot on carbon emissions and environmental degradation, the climate crisis on Rev. Left recently. Do you have anything that you want to put out there for this conversation for us to kick around? Sure. I mean, I think

pointing out the tension that exists between this, you know, broad-based anti-China rhetoric coming out of the U.S. and some Western states along the political spectrum. I mean, there's left-right and centrist instantiations of this anti-Chinese rhetoric. That's in tension with the fact, as we've just pointed out, that we all materially benefit from China. And China is this sort of producer, this global producer for so many of the goods that Americans, you know, rely on and want. And, you know, that is also pushing up against our planetary capacity to maintain the levels of consumption is what we're basically talking about on some level that Americans in the Western world have gotten used to. So I guess just broadly speaking, I'm just interested, Mani and your take on the delusional belief among people in the West that we can basically maintain our consumption levels and continue with eternal economic. growth and somehow meaningfully address the climate crisis. What are your thoughts on that bundle of

issues? Well, first of all, that's impossible to do. And I think that there is a tendency that we see in academic literature of the left, a certain kind of type of leftist literature, that likes to blame the pollution on countries that are developing or poor countries, generally speaking. And so it seems to me that there's this kind of immediate response, sort of an automatic response that I've heard, I think, in the last seven to eight years, that it's all China's fault, that China is responsible for all the world's ills and so forth. They don't care about pollution themselves. They're polluting at, you know, vast levels.

Take a look at this coal plant that they've produced and so forth. And they're emitting so much carbon dioxide. Yet at the same time, they're producing increasingly more efficiently in terms of trying to reduce their coal consumption. And that much of that production is for, you know, the rich countries of the world. And I don't think, absolutely, I don't think that we can characterize China as a rich country. This is something that Samuel King in Australia has put forward and an increasing number of scholars leftists are positing that we're really looking at a country that is struggling for the most part. Yes, it does have a advanced, you know, it does have a capitalist class, which,

may be vulnerable to a very large communist party with over 95 million members. And so I think that, you know, just to answer your question, Brett, I think that there is this automatic attempt by Western leftists on the whole to blame China, to blame other countries for producing things that we use,

on a daily basis that, you know, obviously we don't really need at all. Whose geopolitical and economic interests are ultimately served by this saber-rattling against China across the political spectrum? Like what interests are behind it? Because we've really seen a push by the media specifically across the Western world, but specifically and most intensely in the United States, to demonize China really relatively recently. There's always been this fraught relationship historically. But it's really seemed to, to ramp up in the last several years. And I'm wondering if you have any insight

into the economic and geopolitical interests at the core of that. Well, I think it's pretty clear that China is at the center of a major, the major ecumen. The major ecumen is not the Mediterranean or North America. And China is in East and Southeast Asia. And we have close to four billion people in that region, where you have populations that are in need of real consumption goods

that will help them in terms of their standards of living, raise them above poverty levels and so forth. And so whose interests, I would argue without question, it is the Westerners' interests in this. I mean, if this could be revealed very clearly by looking at the U.S. military, I wouldn't call it a defense posture, I call it a war posture, where you have nuclear missiles that, but virtually every single segment of China, with the exception of the Russian Federation. So I think that that's pretty clear. I think we can say the question is, you know, whether we think this is a good idea or not. And, you know, I also would make a very strong case. that Western leftists have sort of jettisoned the whole idea of nuclear war as a threat to the planet.

In my view, it's not on their list. And when I say their lists, I'm referring to the, you know, the DSA or is, except, you know, obviously there are very good organizations within DSA or various types of caucuses that operate that do good work. There's no question about that. and I correspond with them. But no one is talking about the potential for nuclear war and killing half of old humanity as a consequence or more.

Why do you think that is, Manny? I mean, obviously, you know, you and I are both old enough to have, you know, experienced the Cold War era, you know, where mutually assured destruction was the sort of great fear. and, you know, anti-nuclear organizing was such a big part of, you know, activism during that period. You know, I mean, how do we think about why it has dropped off when, of course, the idea of weapons of mass destruction have continued to be used and part of the global war on terrorism as a fear that requires U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example, but also the access.

of evil, the whole Iran nuclear situation and tensions in the Middle East that have pitted, you know, that kind of U.S., Israel, you know, Arab kind of conservative alliance of Gulf states and places like Egypt vis-a-vis Iran and its kind of partners in confronting, you know, U.S. hegemony in the region and so on. Clearly the nuclear issue is really important. It has continued. You know, we had the whole South Korea issue as well. But you're right that it isn't something that the left really thinks about or organizes are on in the same way that it once was so paramount to our vision of peace in the world and requiring us to try and, you know, decommission these dangerous sorts of weapons. I mean, is there something about like

post-cold war and the, um, globalization that has convinced people that they think that if people's, you know, economic integration knits them together, that somehow it decreases the possibility of that kind of warfare. I, you know, I'm thinking, I don't know, Benjamin Barber and some of these political scientists who thought that, well, globalization would kind of create this sort of network, there would be resistance to it, but it would not be these states and major societies. They would be networked together and that kind of meant that if you had a McDonald's, you know, this ridiculous statistic that any country that had a McDonald's, you know, two countries that had McDonald's didn't

go to war with one another in the like post-World War II period. I've heard these sort of silly things. So anyway, I'm just thinking about that. Like, why has it dropped off? What do you think? And what's the implication of the fact that we're not thinking about it? Why do you think we should be thinking about it? Well, I think that increasingly the West believes in nuclear power. for their own energy needs. I think that nuclear power is one of the sources that Westerners see as an alternative to fossil fuels and so forth. And so, I mean, I'm just, you know, speculating.

And so I would imagine that they have no problem with the development of nuclear weapons, but also, you know, by simple fact that the United States, you know, has, you know, without question, I also looked at a statistic recently that show the United States has something like five times as much many nuclear-powered submarines as every, the rest of the world combined and so forth. Right. And so it does rain in countries like China. I mean, I would be worried if I were China and I were surrounded by nuclear weapons not only on land, but also within the seas and so forth. And I, you know, I'm going to go back for the moment to the default that I'll use, and that is that, well, we get our goods from China and Southeast Asia.

This is a strategic region. And that Americans, and that includes Americans writ large, but certainly corporations and so forth, that they play a major role, benefit from the nuclear posture the United States has because it helps rein in the power that China might have, you know, its Belt and Road initiative and so forth, which seem to be peaceful to virtually anyone that would expand trade for countries that are very poor and so forth.

And so, you know, I think that Americans support, I think, obviously, that there is something very wrong and I'm trying to use a better word than just crazy about, you know, Americans and Westerners that's been brought up just a few moments ago in terms of by Henry about their fetishized concern over China, you know, a country that's just developing and, and, you know, a country that's just developing and, you know, you know, wants to create, there are elements within the country that would like to create socialism and so forth. And I think that the United States, you know, just as in past centuries and decades, Europe and other countries and U.S. oppose socialism. You know, there was a huge war, Second World War, obviously, and beyond, you know, the wars up until the end of the Soviet Union and, effectively China, that were based on. on a fear of socialism.

And I think actually there might act, you know, people do talk about socialism in China as a possibility. We have to see where those possibilities lie, though. You know, I've got a couple of follow-ups. I guess I'll start with one of them, which is going to take us a little bit away from China, but let's not get too far away from it because I also have follow-ups on that. There were some other points that I wanted to kind of thread together. You mentioned that the United States has a much larger,

nuclear arsenal than anyone else. I remember some statistics. There was a congressional budget office report that came out, I think, 2015 or 2017, and then a second one in 2019 that found that the cost of just maintaining the nuclear arsenal in the United States cost over the next decade would cost between $400 to $500 billion. That's just for maintaining it and, you know, renovating it as the current plans. that were in place had shown the 2017, I think, one was estimated at 400 billion and then it

went up to 500 billion in the 2019 CBO report. But this talk about money also reminds me of we were talking about how people in the United States tend to think about how different things affect them. And even on the left, we have this issue in the United States of where how how is it affecting the United States rather than how is it affecting everyone, right? We don't have this very, you know, integrated view of how events are happening. So, and Adnan, I'm going to ask you to follow up on this because I know that you wanted to talk about Afghanistan during this conversation. Recently, within the last maybe two weeks or so, Brown University has updated their cost of war project to show that since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, over almost, a million people have died, and I believe just over $8 trillion have been spent on that war.

Now, I'm not faulting Brown University for this at all. Somebody has to do this accounting. But what's missing from this picture here? We have almost a million people dead and $8 trillion spent on the war, which of course doesn't account for the fact that that $8 trillion went to our military industrial complex, right? That $8 trillion doesn't account for any of the damage that was done to Afghanistan. That's just how much the United States spent on this. And this is a number that's been bandied about by Western leftists without any consideration of the impact on people in Afghanistan from either an economic standpoint, you know, complete lack of development that's been able to take place in Afghanistan since the 80s, really, but particularly since

2000, the country has been continuously under assault from the United States since then. It doesn't look at lack of foreign investment coming in. It doesn't look at how the individual people in Afghanistan have been affected on a day-to-day basis, how much money they're able to spend on commodities, the availability of commodities in their area to live a somewhat comfortable life. There's just not. So I think that this is something that ties into several of the threads that we were kind of alluding at, which is that Western leftists tend to think of, well, okay, $8 trillion on war, you know, imperialism, we get it. But without really considering how that's impacted people in Afghanistan,

which is the country that we've been assaulting for over two decades. Adnan, do you have anything that you want to say about that? Well, just to add, I mean, I do think you're right, Henry, that the full ramifications are not really accounted for. But, I mean, and I think there are estimates for several things are, you know, conservative by their own admission. They want to be very careful and don't want to be exposed to charges of exaggeration and so on. So they're documenting.

I mean, they do account for refugees created, for example. They do also talk, you know, that million death figure, of course, includes mostly people, you know, in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., all around the world where U.S. military power has been used in this global war on terrorism. But you're right that the economic question is not really posed in the proper, you know, understanding. And maybe it gets back to something, Manny was saying about, you know, was talking about before we started with, which is, you know, the implicit suggestion here is that if only we didn't spend that $8 trillion, you know, engaging in warfare and destroying, you know, other countries, we could have used that all for health care and infrastructure and so on. And this is, you know, on some level, of course, you know, there's spending choices that are made, but there isn't really an analysis, which I think you're encouraging us to think about,

Manny, is about, you know, what are the consequences of even these framing ways of characterizing social spending and so on in the global north that might still kind of maintain. the inequalities and the immiseration of the rest of the world. Like, that's something that we're not really thinking so much about. But you had said, like, I mean, I was very interested in the frame of this as the irrelevance of the Western left. And I was thinking, well, irrelevance to what? And it seems like there's a lot of ways of answering that, you know, irrelevant in quite a number of ways. And one is, you know, as you're pointing out, two, the real issues about global inequality.

that, you know, have to change if we're to actually have a sustainable system of world, you know, kind of socialism that gets rid of inequality and so on. But also, they're quite irrelevant even within, one could say, you know, even within the politics of the global north, potentially. I mean, that's maybe a controversial statement. I mean, a lot of people feel that in the last several years, there's been an upsurge in, you know, positive association between socialist you know, among younger generations, that there was a lot of enthusiasm for some of the social

democracy electoral movements in party politics and so on. So maybe it seems silly to say, oh, that they're irrelevant when you have, you know, conservative groups within these always using the threat inspector of, oh, things have gone so far to the left with the Bernie bros, with the, you know, Corbans and Corbinistas and so on. They use that to, talk about how, you know, they make it seem as if they're so, you know, incredibly relevant in it, but this is dangerous for, you know, actually winning elections and stopping the, you know, fascism of the right and so on, when in fact, actually, I mean, what really has been achieved or accomplished by this left at this point. So I just was thinking about that as well in terms

of the framework of the irrelevance of the left. There's a lot of things that we could pin to interesting phrase. I definitely agree with your point. I think that perhaps the only benefit or one of the few benefits of the rise of a social democratic left is a growing level of concern with what that actually means. I think a certain cohort or a detachment, if you will, of those leftists are saying, hey, look, this is, this is what you're calling left. It's not in my book, what I would refer to as leftism. You know, I don't believe that we should spend $8 trillion on benefits for the U.S. when you have people starving in other countries

or when Afghanistan is being destroyed and the country cannot develop. And that, you know, so I think. that that point is really very, very crucial to recognize the fact that, yes, there has been, you know, the vast majority of leftists are, you know, largely concerned with their own backyards and not with any other part of the world. And, you know, I think that's the only reason why there's a concern for climate change, migration, and health care and so forth. health care, you know, in the sense of the kinds of pandemics that we're seeing as being global phenomenon, they're concerned for themselves and their own countries.

Yet I do think that there is a segment of the left, and I imagine the audience of this show is concerned with that, that believes that we need to help advance the rights of people throughout the world. You know, the question of Afghanistan, I think, was very also highly apropos precisely because I've complained about the same thing for years that, you know, people said if we only didn't spend money on the military, well, then we would have this gigantic windfall of money that we could spend on social services like education, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, and on and on and on. And of course, that needs. never took place after the end of the Cold War.

And so I think they're really wrong about that. But they have absolutely no concern for the populations that have been devastated in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I mean, we're really looking at a US engagement. People say it was a debacle. I mean, there's a lot of writers that would say, okay, this was a terrible loss, and it was at the end.

But in some respects, it may have been a benefit for the United States in the long run, by radicalizing certain types of populations, by keeping Afghanistan at war, would also contribute to reining in China and Russia to some degree. By supporting, as we all know, the United States supported both sides,

in the Afghani war, you know, why? Why did they support both sides? You know, both sides had contempt for the Americans. I mean, there was really only one side in some respects. So the United States, in this way, through spending billions of dollars in this 20-year-old war, was able to continue to destabilize a country,

which was in the interest of the United States, a geostrategic country in Asia, Asia that U.S. imperial power requires. And so they, I think, I think this is a huge loss in that sense, but it was a positive, I hate to put it in that context. It helped the United States advance its aims for many years. And we'll, we should be very careful to see what happens next. I think that that begs a question that is sort of being talked about in the wake of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is this concept and this argument around the future of U.S. imperial hegemony. Some people look at the defeat and the humiliation that the U.S.

suffers in Iraq and Afghanistan and says, you know, the U.S. imperial empire is sort of in decline, while others will make the argument something like, hey, it made money for the military industrial apparatus and the huge, you know, corporate contractors, the people who were meant to get rich off war got rich. There was control over resources and minerals. It's not really a loss in any meaningful way for the ruling class itself, though certainly for the working classes of multiple different countries. So what is your just sort of take on the near and medium term future of U.S. imperialism? And, you know, you could, I mean, the the argument of China as a counter-hegemon might come in here because, you know, China does a lot of things. One of the things it does is

economic and financial transactions with countries that are under the boot of U.S. sanctions, for example. And that alleviates some pressure for those countries and I think builds up goodwill towards China in general. So I threw a lot at you, but any one of those threads you want to pick up and run with, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. I'm going to just tag on something to that real quick. That way we don't get too deep into China because this can also transition us to it, which is that as the United States imperial project continues, you know, it's not going to end just because we lost miserably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States still has to find justification for continuing these sort of interventions around the world. So we have,

we had things like the responsibility to protect. We have the increasing calls of femo-imperialism. So Afghanistan, you know, even from relatively liberal and some left-wing commentators, we have the issue of women's rights being called into question as a justification for continued United States imperialism in Afghanistan. I got in a fight with a professor who it refuses to come on the show because I got in a fight with her because I was asking her, how is your argument for people? continued United States intervention in Afghanistan because of, you know, feminist issues, anything other than femo-imperialism. You know, she was calling for the United States to still be engaged there from a left-wing perspective. This is femo-imperialism, and I wanted her to try to defend that position beyond just, you know, defending a femo-imperialist line, and she got mad at me. So that's not going to happen. But, you know, the United States,

has been having these kind of Western chauvinistic justifications for war for forever. Anytime that there's differences between the United States, culturally in another culture, we find a reason for us to invade and to keep those people under the boot of the U.S. Imperial apparatus globally. So there's not really a question there, but just a little bit of extra flavor to throw in as you, you know, jump in, Manny. Yeah, I would say it's a very important point with respect to women. and women's rights, I mean, I think we all know that a very small number of women in Afghanistan had the benefits to some degree of equal rights on the job and so forth, largely around

Kabul and the capital, whereas the vast majority of women throughout Afghanistan and many other countries as well were, you know, subjected to, you know, extreme forms of male domination and patriarchy. So I hope your friend recognizes that, you know, why Afghanistan would be the question? Why are you selecting Afghanistan as your... Well, and the other point, just to jump in again, Manny, is what's the end game? You know, the United States was never going to win that war. No matter how long we stayed there, we pulled out, the Taliban rolled in, very quickly took over, and, you know, women's rights issues, which of course, we all care about women's rights, We're all, you know, feminists.

There's no disputing that. Women's rights issues were been bandied about as justification for continued U.S. imperialism. What's the end game? Does the United States just stay there forever? Because no matter how long the United States was going to stay in Afghanistan, the outcome would have still been the same. So if you're using women's rights as a justification to stay there now, you're still going to

be using that justification another 20 years from now. because if you pull out, the Taliban is still going to come into power, and the same result is going to happen. So that was the main question I was asking, but she refused to address it. I think we should not over-exaggerate the degree to which governments around the world have, you know, abusive, well, I think it's very important to demonstrate that these countries around the world to have abusive systems and societies that subordinate and denigrate women and, in many cases, you know, kill them and so forth and so on. There's no question about that. And I think that in the case of Afghanistan, that's true too. But the question is, why Afghanistan? You know, it's, I would

argue that, yes, no side was going to win the war. And that was the American agenda to keep the war going, to keep it going as long as it could so that it could, in fact, ensure that geopolitically it had a role to play supporting both sides in the war. So, I mean, I don't know why feminists who are extremely concerned about Afghanistan would say, why is the United States supporting the Taliban too? I mean, there is a lot of evidence that the United States supported the Taliban and the government in power. But they left, and, you know, I think it does open up a very important question. You know, where next and so forth?

You know, Afghanistan does have a tremendous amount of mineral wealth. And I don't believe that the United States is actually going to necessarily leave in the same way. I mean, they're going to probably seek to maintain a presence, especially with, you know, when we talk about the green economy, the necessity to have. of lithium to power batteries and so forth is crucial. And Afghanistan apparently has greater levels of lithium than even Bolivia in the world. And I think the other point, another way

that the United States can rein in countries, which was brought up by Brett, is through sanctions regimes. I just finished a collection with Stuart Davis on sanctions as war, because sanctions are, in fact, a instrument of war, and they've been utilized throughout the world, and increasingly so, especially after the end of the Cold War. And so if we take a look at the number of sanctions before and post-Cold War,

and increasingly so over the course of the last decade. So, for instance, in my view, and I think anyone that looks at the question over the Magnitsky Act in Magnitsky sanctions, that's a hoax. I think most of you probably are aware of that. It might be a good idea to have human rights and rights, but are you saying that the U.S. Congress voted on the basis of a event that did not take place? So I think it's very important. It has been very important in the United States to apply sanctions,

and maybe because it is just one of the tools in their box. which includes, you know, military control as well. And, you know, since you don't want to just focus on China, I think you can probably go throughout the planet and find at least 20, 30 countries that are under U.S., European, or U.N. sanctions, et cetera, et cetera. So let's turn to China now. I know Brett, you had asked about how the United States

is using imperialism to counter China. Mani, do you have any thoughts on that? I just wanted to say this one thing, this last point around the left, and why I think it's very important to have positions that are principled and understand the implications of what you are arguing. So the perspective that is advanced by Trotskyists and others social Democrats as well, especially Trotskis, of combined and uneven development, by the very nature of that theoretical perspective, if you want to call it that, it's basically a way to subordinate the rest of the world by saying, we're going to have our revolutions here in the West. And you'll wait until you develop

as a country. Well, as we can see right now, these countries are not developing for the most part. And so that's never going to take place if we were to stick to the same concerns. And in some ways that is a brief response to the point about, you know, U.S. imperialism in China that maybe they don't want to see socialism in China because, you know, the early Marxists up until the 30s and 40s believed that, And even till the day, that you really require to develop country to have socialism. And that's, you know, that is verboten. And it must be stopped by Western capitalists and the West as a whole because it means and implies that we're going to have greater levels of equality.

And United States will have to, other countries will have to reduce its standards of living, which are, of course, unequal and so forth. So on China, then, I've got one other thing that I want to say on China, because you had alluded to it earlier. So we'll just start tackling some of these issues on China, which is that you mentioned, Manny, that socialism is still openly talked about in China. And I had just seen a piece from Niki, Niki Asia,

which is not a revolutionary or radical public. by any stretch of the imagination. But they looked at some of the new developments in China recently in terms of some investigations of a party, Chinese Communist Party secretaries for violations of various ethics rules regarding business ties. They looked at the rhetoric coming out from Xi Jinping, surrounding collective wealth,

and common prosperity, things like that. And the thesis of the piece is that China is taking a leftward turn right now and that we should, you know, they were writing this in kind of a bogeyman type way because Niki does not want that to happen, of course. But they were saying that the turn leftward by the Chinese Communist Party right now was for real and that we should keep our eye on it. Also, I had recently seen maybe within the last. last week or week and a half that the Democratic Republic of Congo had charged some Chinese-owned

mines as well as some domestic minds in the country with financial, you know, deceit as well as rights abuses, workers' rights abuses, human rights abuses at the minds that are present in the DRC. And surprisingly, when the DRC claimed that these Chinese-owned minds, were violating human and financial rights within the country, China pulled out of those mines. They told the companies that they could no longer operate there and that they were going to criminally investigate the owners of those mining companies within China, which was, I shouldn't be shocked by it. But if it was the United States that was operating these mines, or let's say Sweden operating these mines, because Sweden does have quite a few mines in Africa, if a country had

just claimed that that other country that was operating the mines was violating some sort of rights. I don't think that the United States or Sweden would be criminally prosecuting the mine owners, you know, that were running these mines in the DRC. So what do you think about this turn from China? Is it for real, Manny? Well, I think the critique of China from the very beginning was wrong. And it came out about 10, 12 years ago that China was investing throughout the world, building roads, building infrastructure, building schools and hospitals and other clinics and so forth for the people, and doing so for malicious reasons because their real objective was to ensure they get the mineral wealth. And as I say that somewhat facetiously, but if you take

a look at countries in Africa, Latin America, et cetera, China is, I think, is one of its most important foreign policy objectives, Belton Road objective, is investing in infrastructure at the same time as it is also mining. And I actually think the question of mining should not be disparaged necessarily because I think we're seeing probably, possibly, I should say, a shift taking place on the global scale. And this is where the United States might be most concerned with, that if we examine where the United States is engaged in extraction of natural resources, those countries are fewer and farther between. And that China does, and this is not the question of socialism,

but it does pose a challenge to the United States in the sense that their, policies, empowering local populations through education, health care, and so forth and so on, are far more popular than those that are advanced by European and North American companies, as well as Australia. And so as a consequence, you know, we might be seeing the beginning of a, you know, socialism is always on the horizon in different places. I think we really need to have a lot more data, and I'm trying to learn more about that.

But certainly we can say, as you're presenting with respect to the DRC, China does not want to be associated with rapacious capitalists. And at the same time, if China were to gain that posture on a global level to China and other global South countries, it would change the entire structure of the world in some respects, because mining is crucial to industrial capitalism, as we see in Bolivia and Afghanistan.

Can you talk a bit more about socialism in China, the prospect of it, the level of support it has within the country, and just issues surrounding that in general, because I'm really fascinated by that potentiality? I'm not an expert in China, but I've done some. research on the topic and speak to people from China about what's going on there. There's no question, you know, over the last several years, there has been movements primarily of the Young for a return to Maoism and to principles of Marxism and Leninism, which has have posed a challenge again to the Chinese authorities. And I think that is that the Chinese state is responding to some of these challenges

that are not just amongst the youth, but also amongst the working classes. So, you know, some US-supported NGOs monitor strikes that are taking place in China. Some of them are not necessarily good NGOs, but their monitoring of strikes is fairly accurate. And what we've seen is a mass expansion of industrial strike activity throughout China in the last five years, five to ten years, not just on the coastal littoral regions of the eastern China, but also in the secondary and tertiary cities. of the country, you know, with a population of 1.35 billion people and an industrial working class that's very large, you know, in the hundreds of millions, the state authorities, I don't know if they are up for the challenge, are responding. I think the response has been somewhat lackluster so far, but it's possible that, you know, I mean, I'm just speculating that it could

become far more intense than it would probably contribute to a leftward shift, not necessarily this government, but maybe a future government in China. So, for instance, pointing out that China is very much concerned with having control over mineral wealth, there's absolutely no question about that. And they do so in ways that are generally positive. There's a lot of research on that. But within the country itself, there is a mass movement. You know, we spoke about the question of spontaneity on the previous show and why spontaneity is something that we really have to, I would say, overcome,

but also take advantage of and move it, it turned into organization. And I think that the Chinese state is likely trying to preempt any kind of, you know, leftward drift. that would, you know, move toward, you know, a real more, a genuine form of communism or socialism. And so I pointed out at the outset, there's, you know, well, well over 90 million Chinese party members. So we're looking at a population, you know, people talk about democracy.

That's significant. That's a very significant number of people who, you know, make decisions based on their communities and so forth. and are interested in the fate of what is happening, you know, amongst their families and relatives. It's a country that's very concerned with their own communities and enhancing the education and housing and health care. Yes, there are commercial, or forgive me, consumer, there's a large consumer population in China, but I don't believe that they represent the majority. So I think that, again, this is reflecting what other people are saying, that Xi Jinping is probably operating from a position of fear, although I do believe that, you know, there might be some kind of residual Marxist beliefs that he has. But, you know, the other question when we talked about combined an uneven development, which I don't really have the answer to is,

does China need to develop into an advanced state so that they can have socialism? Which is an interesting point because they're moving in that way, you know, with GDP of something like 12,000 per person and, of course, many billionaires. Interesting. I just wanted to pick up on something that you mentioned has been a theme in the last couple of episodes. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on how you see. see it's significance of this question of spontaneity, so these emergence of, you know, workers' struggles or conflicts versus, you know, kind of more long-lasting, developed, organized

forms of bringing workers together to achieve socialist aims, you know, to achieve socialism. and just wondering what you think are the you know there was a period of time where there were a lot of academic studies that valorized these kinds of spontaneous emergence as something a lot more with having a lot more significance or potentiality in some ways than the old party politics and organizing you know so those kinds of modes of analysis went out of fashion. There was a lot of weapons of the week and, you know, resistance discussion that came in the forms of cultural resistance, levels of individual practice, and so on. It seems like we haven't developed a lot of new techniques for thinking about how we can organize and confront global capitalism. You know, I mean, we're bounded typically by a lot of our organizing within national contexts and clearly the problem is international but capital functions very comfortably and effectively internationally whereas you know the problem of organizing and creating

solidarity this is a key you know real problem that we've been struggling with and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or perspectives on this of how we can move away from just sort of valorizing and trying to be supportive of and thinking about spontaneous kinds of emergence and actually do something about contributing so that we're not just irrelevant, I suppose, but how do we contribute to some kind of meaningful forms of organization? Maybe it's not going to be our task, you know, as left us in the global north. you know, maybe we have a negative role to play, which has put the brakes on imperialism so that those organizations can actually emerge and develop without the repressive boot of U.S.

Imperial Wars or of compromised, you know, repressive governments in alliance with global capitalism that suppress them. But I'm just wondering about your thoughts on that. I mean, you brought up spontaneity. So what are you thinking about in terms of organization? Okay. I think we should probably distinguish between global north and global south. I think spontaneity is a result of the decline of organization, socialist organizations that were in power during the period or had power, not in power, had power during the period, you know, after the First World War until, especially after the Second World War until, you know, the 1970s and 80s, when there was a fierce attack by capital against the working classes of the North as well. And that, you know, so we see in places that are even, you know, obviously even in the North,

the development of spontaneous organizations where the confrontation is not against the big financial capitalists of the world, but the confrontation is between the very weakened working class who, you know, so for instance, if you're a teacher making, let's say, $100,000 a year, you're now making $20,000 a year. You form a new organization to represent those teachers making $20,000 a year or professors or whatever the case may be. So that the terrain of struggle is at a very far lower level than it was before. Now, that is a direct result.

I think, you know, most socialist, political economists, historians, and so forth, and sociologists and so forth and so on would argue that, you know, the heyday of socialism in the north was during the period of the ascendancy of communism in the east and parts of the south. That not to, yeah, well, in the south as well, China. So we're fighting, you know, so when we look at spontaneity, it seems to me that, you know, of course, the struggle is against an amorphous force that cannot be contained as a consequence of, you know, demands for nothing. Just as a side note, on Friday was the anniversary, this past Friday was the 10th year anniversary of Occupy. And if you were to go to, you know, the square where

Occupy was located, there was just a handful of people just milling about, talking about the same kinds of things, you know, how anarchism and how these demands that are not specified whatsoever were so good when, in fact, they led to, I think, a strengthening of financialization because that's something that we, and neoliberalism or neoliberalized capitalism, because we can't really see that in the same way. So you can say, okay, you have a streets, a neoliberalized capitalism is, you know, increasing its FDI and profits around the world and exploiting people in a profound manner. Yes, you're, you know, I mean, you know the literature extremely well done.

I think it's very clear that, well, those movements are, in my view, those political, sociological, political, cultural, et cetera, analyses are highly limited in terms of what they have done in a practical way. And they distort reality. They distort the truth. The truth, but in the sense, is that, no, the working classes are not expanding in their power, not in the north, nor in the south. something that should be you know i mean working classes are doing okay in the north there's no

question about it but you know in terms of their power uh there has been you know i think trump is a reflection of it a relative decline amongst you know in industrial communities or former industrial communities in the west no no one can deny that but spontaneity just essentially makes it very easy for capitalists to advance uh their their their objectives and their goals. And, you know, of course, the notion isn't even new in that sense because spontaneity was around, you know, in the 19th and 20th centuries, you know, where you would have these emergence of the big strike or one big union and so forth. You know, well, you know, I admire the industrial workers of the world, but they were not able to capture power because they didn't have a real

strong organization and they did not want to take power they did not want to negotiate which i think might have been a good idea but um but the corrupt imperialist trade unions took their place many of them of course were not corrupt but uh you know they became imperialist and corrupt to a large extent in the united states and elsewhere so i mean you know we can have a very interesting discussion about the theoreticians or the leaders of the spontaneous socialism or whatever movements that I think is crucial for listeners to recognize that spontaneity means an expression of power in some way that is directed at really nothing and they can be infiltrated as well. So, I mean, you know, in New York City, the mayor, at the time, Mayor Bloomberg in 2011 and others were not so much concerned about the fact that this protests were there or anything like that.

They could be anywhere. They were concerned with the fact that it was disrupting traffic flows. It was, you know, basically an urban camp that they wanted to get rid of. It was more of a kind of a, I hate to say, like, practical issue of how do we get rid of these people who are staying in the park? And I don't mean to diminish it because I think that, you know, a number of the people who participated, you know, really had very important goals and, you know, not the participants, like important goals in changing the world, but they didn't know where to go. So I would blame the leaders on that movement for the failure of moving forward in a more principled way. And we all know that it was an organized movement. That's the irony of it all, that it was organized by specific people and organizations in United States and Canada.

Yeah, and I think just bouncing off that really quickly, you know, occupy, such as it was, was if we can learn the negative lessons of its failures, that's actually useful. And then we can look back and say, Occupy was this necessary historical step for the U.S. left, etc. But if we continue to repeat those errors, like this fetishization of spontaneity and horizontalism and this leaderless leadership, you know, then we're going to continue to spin our wheels in the mud. But I want to shift towards this last question or topic before we let you go. We've really, you know, grateful for your time. I am interested and maybe we can talk about this in a future episode of the relative responsiveness to internal conflict between like the U.S. and China because we're talking about

this possible upsurge of more, you know, leftward wanting movements within China and the responsiveness by the state to it. There's certainly true that the Chinese, you know, Communist Party overall wants stability, wants to be able to plan out its steps and that could be complicated by an internal sort of leftward pressure movement. The U.S. seems pretty hell bent on just beating those movements over the head with a stick and hope they go away internally, but we'll see how that plays out. But I want to lay out a trajectory of how things could possibly go, and this might be fairly optimistic, but I'm just wondering your thoughts as like a final topic that we can discuss. So, you know, we're thinking about revolutionary movements in the

global south. We're thinking about the viability of socialism in the global north. the role of China as counter-hegemon, et cetera. So you have this conservative U.S. working class. You have this rising power, economic and geopolitical power in China. You have an intensifying climate crisis that, you know, one of its effects is resource scarcity, including water scarcity. And you have a U.S. imperial apparatus that while it's still able to do what it fundamentally needs to do, has sort of lost some legitimacy globally, like in the,

eyes of the global, so even its allies sort of look upon the U.S. with more suspicion than it did before Trump and its ability to carry out these projects. So all of these things combined, is it possible that you'll see a weakening of the U.S.'s ability to put out these socialist fires, as it were, around the world? More and more of these third world countries wanting to move in that direction, almost out of necessity based on the havoc of climate change and the necessity of controlling your own resources. You have China pushing back against U.S. you know, pressure in at least that hemisphere, if not more globally. Could you see a situation in which these socialist movements arise in the global South? The U.S. is unable to stop

them as it was over the last several decades to a century. You know, the U.S. has to sort of strategically retreat from certain areas, has to turn to its own working class, exploit it more to be able to garner the profit, you know, margins it was through super profit exploitation of the global south and that the U.S. and Western imperialist states will basically be confronted with the rising socialist movement, that it's no longer able to drown in blood. And that might also urge people within the U.S. and within the imperial core to rise up in their own way. Just one trajectory, there's a million different ways things could take in the next century. But I'm just wondering your general thoughts on that possibility, which I think is a relatively optimistic

possibility. I agree with you. I mean, this is something I may have said previously that it is inevitable that we are going to see socialism in hopefully our lifetimes. I mean, we see wars of national liberation that are rooted within socialism and equity and so forth. The question is, you know, the level of development in which those forces are advancing. I mean, the book that I wrote, you know, addresses the question of the Philippines, India, and South Africa, which I view as three countries that are right for socialism. India is a difficult one, but there are mass movements in India where you, I mean, we talked about China, but India is just as large and probably larger, even though they rank second.

They're probably larger. And, you know, factories are organized on a regular basis. The state is far more rapacious in every single way than the Chinese state. If you go on strike, not only will you lose your job, you're going to jail for months, maybe longer. I mean, I've studied the kinds of struggles that, you know, directly and gone into some of these jails, which is forbidden by foreigners, but and they're outdoor jails and so forth in the, you know, temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius or 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And, and, you know, there is this, you know, absolute yearning for a level of equality in India, you know, like I said, you know, with China,

the world's largest country that is, you know, incredibly right and people are open to ideas. The reason why I go there, people are open to ideas of, may I say Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and so forth, you have established parties which may have lost some power to the rising tide of fascism and identity politics, which is something that's a product of the West as far as I'm concerned, but those movements are still there. And I see the resuscitation of a number of those movements. And yet the struggle, just to go back to Adnan's point, is the one, do we go for spontaneity or do we go for power? Do we go for, do we want to take power or do we want to just have a spontaneous action? So in, you know, cities in the Punjab, I know a place where they

produce and manufacture clothing for the Western markets, there is, you know, the factories are controlled by the workers just to a large extent. They have power over management and are able to have higher wages because they have a committed trade union that's authentic and not in any way corrupt. And they have a Marxist-Leninist party and Maoist party that is behind it. and supporting it. And I see many of these, whenever you go to, if you go to India, you'll see that these movements are there. These are, these are not dirty words.

These are, it's probably one of the most right places. Of course, you have the problems that exist in India that are the social inequity on the basis of caste and on the basis of religion, which is very, very disturbing and bothers me a lot. So just to answer your question, I'm sorry if I'm a bit long-winded. I see it as inevitable. And, you know, I am, you know, starting off at, you know,

point one, I'm not a utopian. And I say it is a say that it's inevitable because, you know, no empire will stay forever. And, you know, I mean, socialist empires will, or socialist, large socialist countries have the possibility and potential to have an autark self-contained state, maybe a larger state than already exists and prosper without the necessity of Gucci bags or, you know, corvettes. I'm just, you know, giving an example, but

they don't need them. And so, you know, I'm sanguine about the possibility and, you know, so I'm not looking for utopian socialist. I don't think we should, we should look for it at all or we're going to lose. We should look for a grounded movement. And I know this podcast deals with those movements. I'm really impressed by the way you have engaged people like a comrade of mine, J.M. Cissan, on these kinds of questions. On that note, I think that we're going to wrap it up for today.

But, Manny, we have about twice as many questions. we actually got to today. And I know that I speak for all of us when I say I'd like to invite you back and maybe a month's time or so to continue the conversation, maybe a part two of this conversation. You up for that? Yeah, yes, I would love to come back. Okay.

I would love to come back. It would be an honor. I actually find guerrilla history to be a refreshing program where the people, who run it are intellectuals who understand reality and possibilities. You know, I go on a lot of shows where I'm just, you know, completely dumbfounded by some of the questions. And these are purported socialists who are asking those questions. Well, I'll keep that praise in there.

You know, I could have chopped it up, but we'll let the listeners hear that little bit of phrase before we back up. You want to clip that and use that. Yeah, that's our promotional material. But okay, Manny, we'll be talking with you again soon to set up a part two for this conversation. Guys, let's just do our sign-offs real quick. We'll start with Manny. Manny, how can the listeners find you, follow your work?

What do you want to point them to? Well, I wrote the book, Organizing Insurgency, Workers' Movement in the Global South. And I'm now, and I hope people will get a copy of it. I think it's a worthwhile read. It really reflects, I think, think what I seek to advance, which is a grounded form of socialism, and at the same time, it reflects kind of the inner projection of how that can transpire. So I'm very, like I said, I'm very sanguine about that possibility. And I think people who read the book might have

that same kind of, I would hope, result. Though certainly we're bringing back the term imperialism. And I And I think that's extremely important. It's not just myself, it's many, many others. And so I want to be a part of that. The name of the book is Organizing Insurgency. I'm now working on a book on development policy and remittances, migration, which is an area that I study extensively. And the new form of development for the Global South is now foreign workers living the prime

of their lives overseas. And we're talking about 250 million workers, not counting their families, so maybe one-eighth of the world, sending remittances home and never really getting a chance to see their families and not developing the countries either, actually, setting them back, because these are the brightest and the smartest people in the countries. There's a real tragedy that I'm trying to advance. And it's also counterintuitive because the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF, et cetera, are saying this is the way to the future remittances. Forget about foreign aid. You've got to work for us now. Interesting. Yeah.

So in other words, the global south is coming to the global north to work. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I'm looking forward to when that comes out. Brett, can you quickly tell the listeners how they can find you in the work that you're doing? Absolutely. You can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com and find all of our projects there. Great. Adnan, how the listeners can find you and your other podcasts that you do?

Well, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain-H-U-S-A-I-N and give a listen to the other podcast I'm involved with. The M-A-J-L-I-S. We had an interesting episode discussing Afghanistan. done and the situation there, so go check it out. And I just want to say, I do hope we will have you back on, Manning, to talk about this question of remittances. I've seen a lot of graduate students talking about foreign workers doing interesting research projects, and that is because it is so important economically, socially, to the structure of this global capitalism. So I'm looking forward very much to your work on that. So do come back on to talk to us about it.

And listeners, as for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck. 1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. As I said, at the top of this, this is an early release on Patreon. So if you're not following us on Patreon, you can help support the show by joining us at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. Until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know what I'm going to be.

Thank you.