I read it and I don’t have anything smart or rational to say, other than how tired I am of this one particular assumption palpable in the way many Western lefties think (including this piece, I feel): “y’all in the third world need to catch up with us — that is, become Western/modern AND THEN, ONLY THEN can we start building solidarity to takedown capitalism.” It seems really difficult for many on the Western left (whatever that definition is) to imagine solidarity NOT on the terms of their Eurocentric history and experiences. /rant.

BRICS+ is not a new Non-Aligned Movement seeking to redistribute global wealth but an alliance of aspiring hegemons.

Honestly, it’s kinda both, especially as ghoulish countries like Saudi Arabia join. It also happens to be the best shot of destabilizing the global hegemon, and so we critically support it in its quest for multipolarity (which communists will hopefully then exploit).

…

BRICS+, a grouping of countries led by the aspirant hegemon, challenges the established world order, but ultimately their animating spirit is the same: capital accumulation. Their struggle is with who rules the roost, and not with the pecking order itself. It is no surprise that debt forgiveness is nowhere on its agenda, given that China is the world’s biggest creditor nation. Even Vijay Prashad, one of its principal cheerleaders, concedes that, “BRICS does not seek to circumvent established global trade and development institutions such as the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF … [but] reaffirmed the importance of the rules-based multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core.”

Oh, the China debt trap thing. It’s gonna be downhill from here.

In Prashad’s vision, the Chinese-led bid to usurp the West’s grip will rely on commercial power, but also on a dominant position in the production and trade of fossil fuels, and control of strategic locations, such as Suez and the Strait of Hormuz. BRICS+, he writes, has created “a formidable energy group” comprising of coal-producing China, India and South Africa alongside oil giants Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Russia, as well as Egypt — Africa’s fifth-largest oil producer. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, he adds, has been constructing “a web of oil and natural gas platforms around the Global South,” while the invoicing of Iraqi and Russian oil in renminbi, and perhaps of China-bound Saudi oil too, is “undermining the petrodollar system.” That Prashad glories in the envisioned drilling of colossal quantities of oil into the distant future, with silence on the environmental consequences, tells a troubling story.

The fossil fuel industry will not disappear overnight, nor a decade from now, no matter how much we may want or need it to be for the sake of the climate. If it can be ripped away from America then that’s a good thing. Also, most manufacturing of renewables is done in China anyway.

Is it good to see U.S. hegemony challenged? Yes, but by a new Beijing-led bloc? No. Should one prefer, then, a reassertion of Western hegemony? No also.

The classic western leftist manuever: putting yourself into a position where you don’t support any side, leaving your ideology untainted by the difficulties of things like “having to make difficult decisions” or “having an impact on the world at all”.

This democracy vs. autocracy framework is refuted by even a cursory look at Washington’s consistent support for authoritarian regimes, crowned by Biden’s fêting of Narendra Modi, a fascist whose support for lynchings and pogroms against Muslims and Dalits is now becoming institutionalized in law. If one adds in the recent treatment of refugees by European countries (including the mass murder of those aboard the Adriana), the gerrymandering of voting districts in the U.S., or the continued brutality of the U.S. state apparatus toward Black people, the democratic bloc loses its shine.

This, however, does not mean the charge of authoritarianism against BRICS+ members ought to be rejected. It should be of serious concern to the left and to all human rights activists that the world’s most tyrannical and repressive regimes are seeking to collaborate and to bolster their power. Scenes of police brutality on the streets of Ferguson or the borders of Europe have their mirrors on the streets of Delhi as bulldozers crush Muslim homes; in Tehran, as authorities fire on women protesters; in the horrors that Vladimir Putin has unleashed in Ukraine; or in the so-called Uyghur re-education camps in Xinjiang province. The U.S. allies in BRICS+ — Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia — are similarly no slackers when it comes to repression of their own citizens and deplorable treatment of incomers.

Who created the situation in Iran? Who put Putin in power? Who contributed to the Middle East becoming infested with terrorist groups (not to diminish China’s foreign policy errors)? And who is supplying weaponry to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and supported them for decades?

The real problem of leftists subscribing to Washington’s democracy vs. autocracy framework is not in the charge of autocracy, but in the solution implicit in the charge. Washington and its allies want a reassertion of their global hegemony by any means necessary, whether through trade wars, proxy wars or threats of regime change. Any left worth its salt should challenge authoritarianism not by cheerleading other capitalist powers but by building solidarity movements from below.

Sure, let’s do that, and build a-- ah, fuck, my leader just got assassinated by a CIA agent. Okay, this time, let’s run a socialist party to take power and then— SHIT! A right-wing general sponsored by the USA just overthrew me! I know when to take my Ls, and one of the Ls of the communist movement over the last century has been its inability to do exactly what these two authors are describing, both in the West (where it’s been abject failure) and in rest of the world (repeatedly overthrown by, you guessed it, the United fucking States!) We have occasional successes, but as big as my great big foam hand is with “Kim Jong Un #1!!!” is, it pales in comparison to the power of the West.

BRICS+, however, has several roadblocks to overcome before it can evolve as a firm and coherent alliance, let alone a harmonious one. The challenges will not be due necessarily to the hierarchy within the BRICS+ — for example China’s neo-colonialism and racism in Africa. After all, the Netherlands and Britain and the U.S. all demonstrated that colonialism and neo-colonialism are necessary to, rather than undermining of, hegemony. Yet successful hegemony, in the age of nation states, requires firm allies as well as vassals.

I read this, and then I remember the people on the streets of Niger waving Russian flags. I remember China building hospitals and railways in Africa.