Have your views about our environmental situation changed? It is more difficult to deny environmental damage in the face of all kinds of climate chaos occurring globally.
Did you know the U.S. Military emits more carbon dioxide than many nations?
This leads to an existential paradox. If we are ever going to begin to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, we must end military operations. Could this be a path to peace? Or will imperialism continue to feed increasing environmental devastation?
The new document described below, “Eight Contradictions in the Imperialist ‘Rules-Based Order’” identifies conflicts between imperialist nations and the rest of the world.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has now moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to the symbolic time of the annihilation of humanity and the Earth since 1947. This is alarming, which is why leaders in the Global South have been making the case to halt the warmongering over Ukraine and against China. As Namibia’s Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said, ‘We are promoting a peaceful resolution of that conflict so that the entire world and all the resources of the world can be focused on improving the conditions of people around the world instead of being spent on acquiring weapons, killing people, and actually creating hostilities’.
In line with the alarm from the Doomsday Clock and assertions from people such as Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, the rest of this newsletter features a new text called Eight Contradictions in the Imperialist ‘Rules-Based Order’ (which you can download as a PDF here). It was drafted by Kyeretwie Opoku (the convenor of the Socialist Movement of Ghana), Manuel Bertoldi (Patria Grande /Federación Rural para la producción y el arraigo), Deby Veneziale (senior fellow, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), and me, with inputs from senior political leaders and intellectuals from across the world. We are offering this text as an invitation to a dialogue. We hope that you will read, circulate, and discuss it.
We are now entering a qualitatively new phase of world history. Significant global changes have emerged in the years since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. This can be seen in a new phase of imperialism and changes in the particularities of eight contradictions.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE IMPERIALIST ‘RULES-BASED ORDER’ by Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute For Social Research, March 10, 2023
Eight Contradictions in the Imperialist ‘Rules-Based Order’
- The contradiction between moribund imperialism and an emerging successful socialism led by China.
- The contradiction between the ruling classes of the narrow band of imperialist G7 countries and the political and economic elite of capitalist countries in the Global South.
- The contradiction between the broad urban and rural working class and sections of the lower petty bourgeoisie (collectively known as the popular classes) of the Global South versus the US-led imperial power elite.
- The contradiction between advanced rent-seeking finance capital versus the needs of the popular classes, and even some sections of capital in non-socialist countries, regarding the organisation of societies’ requirements for investment in industry, environmentally sustainable agriculture, employment, and development.
- The contradiction between the popular classes of the Global South and their domestic political and economic power elites.
- The contradiction between US-led imperialism versus nations strongly defending national sovereignty.
- The contradiction between the millions of discarded working-class poor in the Global North versus the bourgeoisie who dominate these countries.
- The contradiction between Western capitalism versus the planet and human life.
In my mind, Indigenous nations, Indigenous homespaces, Indigenous homelessness must be engaged in a radical and complete overturning of the nation-state’s political formations and a refusal of racial capitalism. My vision to create Nishnaabeg futures and presences must structurally refuse and reject the structures, processes and practices that end Indigenous life, Black life and result in environmental desecration. This requires societies that function without policing, prisons, and property.
Nishnaabeg formations of nationhood mean a radical overturning of the current conditions and configurations within which we live—an absolute refusal of capitalism.
Maynard, Robyn; Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Rehearsals for Living (Abolitionist Papers) (p. 125). Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition.
Quakers and Religious Socialism 
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