C. J. Polychroniou On Socialism, Left Internationalism, And The Climate Crisis
05-29-2025 ~ The return of Left internationalism inspired by the vision of socialism needs a dramatic turnaround on the global ideological and political landscape.
Has neoliberal globalization run its course? Should the Left be on the side of tariffs or protectionism? Can Left internationalism be revived? Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou tackles these questions in an interview with the independent French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri.
Alexandra Boutri: In a recently published essay, you argue that the Left should endorse a new vision of globalization and fight accordingly for a new world order. Can you briefly spell out the pitfalls of neoliberal globalization and why the current world order is a failure?
C. J. Polychroniou: The first thing that stands out about neoliberal globalization is that it has led to an extremely high degree of economic inequality by altering patterns of income distribution and resource allocation while at the same time undermining economic and social rights. As Miatta Fahnbulleh put it a few years back in an essay that appeared in Foreign Affairs, the system “is not working in the interest of the majority of people.” The actual record of neoliberal globalization on economic growth has also been quite dismal, with postwar “managed capitalism” outperforming the neoliberal model on every count. On top of that, under the form of globalization prescribed by neoliberalism “the average global temperature has risen relentlessly,” as Robert Pollin has pointed out. Neoliberal globalization has been bad for people and the environment alike.
As far as the current world order is concerned, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. We have a world in permanent crisis literally since the end of the Second World War, with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over humanity’s head. The Doomsday Clock is now closer than ever to midnight. The current war in Ukraine, the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and the seizing of land in the occupied West Bank by violent religious extremists under the protection of the Israeli army speak volumes of the dramatic failure of the United Nations and the so-called international community. There is no lawful world order. International law only applies when it suits the strong.
Alexandra Boutri: Has neoliberalism’s model of globalization run its course?
C. J. Polychroniou: The current system has been in a terminal state since the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The resurgence of right-wing nationalism across the globe is interrelated to the profound contradictions built specifically into the neoliberal version of globalization. The backlash against globalism by the likes of U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA faction needs to be understood in connection with the changes that are occurring in the world economy. Trump is using protectionism as a means of altering the global supply chain in favor of U.S. production and imposing tariffs to reduce the U.S. trade deficit but is simultaneously unleashing the most vicious form of neoliberalism inside the country. He is attending to the mythology of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny by trying to reassert the dominance of the United States in the world economy while destroying functioning government as part of a plan to axe safety-net programs and letting corporations run roughshod over labor. Trump’s domestic agenda is the most neoliberal since the onset of neoliberalism. It constitutes an open war against working people and social rights, against the poor and the environment. It’s all about making the rich richer and the poor poorer. It’s a domestic agenda based on the politics of astonishing greed and shocking cruelty. Trump’s election therefore does not mean the end of neoliberalism or of globalism.
Alexandra Boutri: Free trade or protectionism? Is this an actual choice for the Left?
C. J. Polychroniou: It depends on what one means by the “left.” You have left-wing liberals, social democrats, left-wing socialists, communists, and anarchists. Left with capital L tends in some circles to refer to the anti-capitalist, socialist-communist-anarchist camp. Personally, I don’t consider the Democrats in the United States or the Social Democrats in Europe as part of the Left. Their loyalty is to capitalism. Hence, they are not agents of transformational change. They want to maintain the existing socioeconomic system but with some modifications in place to make it less disagreeable. The social democratic tale was about capitalism with a human face. It was a popular political program for the first few decades after the end of the Second World War, and it was of course an improvement over laisses faire capitalism and a bourgeois state that catered exclusively to the interests of the capitalist class. Nonetheless, we should be reminded of an old radical dictum: There cannot be democracy, social justice, and equality as long as power belongs to capital. Read more
The Left Needs A New Globalization Vision To Counter The Far-Right Surge
C.J. Polychroniou
05-24-2025 ~ The way out of neoliberal globalization is by developing a new globalization that is democratic and free from the destructive tendencies of capitalist accumulation.
The left is in shambles everywhere while hard-right and far-right parties are riding high in polls across the world. I contend that globalization is at the heart of these developments, and thus it is critical that the left comes to terms with what has gone wrong with its approach to neoliberal globalization and develops in turn an alternative vision of world order.
Globalization came to be a dominant force in our lives sometime around the 1980s. It coincided with the rise of neoliberalism, although globalization is not a 20th-century phenomenon. The 19th century contained a huge burst of globalization. In fact, between 1850 and 1913, the world economy was probably as open as it became in the late 20th century. Tariffs fell, free trade agreements proliferated, trade flows skyrocketed, information flows accelerated, and migrants flowed to all corners of the globe. Neither Europe nor the U.S. had any restrictions on migration. In the U.S., no visas or passports were even needed to enter the country.
That wave of globalization was interrupted because of World War I, and the next wave of globalization did not occur until the early 1980s. In many ways, the new wave of capitalist globalization was more intense than the one that had preceded it as it was characterized by massive financial deregulation and the acceleration of capital flows while trade integration became more rapid than ever. By the 1990s, the new wave of globalization had reached such heights that the world was increasingly becoming a global village. Let’s call it the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave.
However, there was one huge qualitative difference between the 19th-century and the late 20th-century waves of globalization. While capital movements exploded during the late 20th-century wave of globalization and multinationals moved across the world in search of cheaper labor, labor migration was severely restricted. In contrast, migration became truly globalized in the late 19th century. And the late 20th-century wave of globalization, which was supposed to produce unrivaled benefits for all, also had another dark side: While it was not openly imperialistic as the 19th-century wave of globalization, it was based nonetheless on highly exploitative structures that were not much different from those of colonialism. After all, capitalism has always nurtured dependence, inequality, and exploitation.
Under the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave, the Global North took advantage of the weakness of the Global South by trapping millions of its workers in a relentless cycle of exploitation while offshoring had dramatic impacts on the standard of living of average citizens back in the Global North as well-paid industrial jobs became few and far in between, wages stagnated, and the social safety net was torn apart, partly because of less government revenues due to neoliberal tax cuts for corporations and the rich and partly on account of simple ideological reasoning. Austerity for the masses but subsidies, tax breaks, and bailouts for industry and the financial sector is a central aspect of the ideological agenda of neoliberalism. And while some developing nations did benefit from the great connectivity in the global economy that has been unleashed since the early 1980s, it is primarily the elites in the Global South, as much as it is in the Global North, that gained the most from the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave. Read more
Understanding Inequality In China: An Interview With Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
05-24-2025 ~ Economic inequality is a global phenomenon. And while the data suggests that inequality between countries has fallen, inequality within countries has risen. China, for instance, a country with very low levels of inequality just a few decades ago, now features inequality levels that are comparable to those in the US.
What are the structural mechanisms generating inequality in China since the transition was made from state socialism to market reforms, and what were the sources of equalization during the Mao years? Is China equipped to weather the storm of US tariffs? Political economist Vamsi Vakulabharanam sheds light on these questions in the interview that follows. Vakulabharanam is Associate Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Asian Political Economy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of the recently published book Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950-2010
C. J. Polychroniou: Inequality has been on the rise across the globe for several decades although it manifests itself in different ways in different societies and its causes are quite complex. In the United States, however, it is widely acknowledged that economic inequality has risen sharply since the 1980s and that this is largely due to the promotion of neoliberal economic policies. But what about China, which has experienced rapid growth over the past several decades? Inequality has also increased sharply in China even though it is believed that its leadership rejected the neoliberal prescriptions for economic reform. What are the causes underlying the rise of inequality in China?
Vamsi Vakulabharanam: Global economic inequality (focusing on economic inequality among all the individuals in the world) has two components – economic inequality within countries and economic inequality between countries. Since the 1980s, after neoliberal economic reforms were introduced across the world, there has been a consistent increase in within-country inequality, barring very few exceptions for brief periods (e.g. the pink tide in Latin America). Economic inequality between countries has tended to decrease marginally because of the fast-paced growth in populous countries like China and India. Both these countries have witnessed rapid economic growth between the 1980s and 2010s, even as they have become more unequal internally. What this has done is to catapult a small proportion of the Chinese and Indian elites (capitalists, professional classes and political elites) into the global middle and upper classes during the same period, where these select groups have witnessed significant convergence with their counterparts in the developed capitalist world.
In China, the economic reforms initiated after 1978 tended to reduce inequality until the mid-1980s. This is because the initial reforms were focused on agriculture and in creating special economic zones (e.g., Shenzhen) that led to rapid economic growth in sectors and regions that had witnessed slower growth in the previous three decades. At the same time, the rural non-agricultural sector (e.g., Township and Village Enterprises) grew rapidly and contributed significantly to a spurt in exports from China during the 1980s. After 1985, when the coastal development strategy was initiated, within-country inequality began to rise in China. This increase in inequality had two major sources. The coastal region (and river delta regions) tended to grow faster compared to the central and western regions, thereby creating a trend of rising regional inequality. At the same time, as the urban sector started growing faster than its rural counterpart, there was a rapid growth in the gap between urban and rural areas. These two processes started by the early 1990s to push up the inequality rates up in China. Read more
Trump Is Trying To Reverse The New Deal
Richard D. Wolff
05-20-2025 ~ After the end of World War II, the U.S. employer class—the capitalists—faced overlapping threats, both domestic and foreign. On the domestic side, a coalition of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), two socialist parties, and a communist party had grown large and powerful during the 1930s Great Depression. Together, they pushed hard and successfully for domestic policies collectively known as the New Deal.
These policies included the establishment of the Social Security system, the unemployment compensation system, the nation’s first minimum wage, and a federal jobs program that employed millions. Along with several other programs, the New Deal represented a leftward shift of state priorities. For the employer class, worse than those spending shifts were the corresponding changes in federal revenue sources.
Sharply raised taxes on (and borrowing from) corporations and the rich funded the New Deal’s massive program for the employees. This reallocated the nation’s income and wealth from the top to the middle and bottom. As against the dominant trickle-down economic policies that were in place before and soon after it, the New Deal represented an experiment in trickle-up economic policies. Once World War II was over, the employer class wanted nothing more than to undo the New Deal, and to bring back trickle-down polices.
A second domestic problem threatened the U.S. economy after 1945: the risk of backsliding into depression. Five years of huge wartime deficit finance finally lifted the U.S. economy out of the 1930s depression. When 1945 put demobilization of troops and redeployment of resources to peacetime production on the agenda, it also provoked fears of a reversion to depression. Leading U.S. politicians and academics, more or less influenced by Keynes’s work, looked urgently to government interventions to prevent that.
The U.S. employer class also perceived foreign threats. Chief among these was the USSR, the wartime ally of the United States. In service to the U.S. employer class, President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) transformed perceptions about the USSR from a close wartime ally into a fearsome enemy bent on “overthrowing the U.S. by force and violence.” Despite having suffered enormous wartime destruction, the USSR was quickly rebranded by U.S. mainstream politicians, media, business, and academic leaders as an extreme danger. Communists and their “fellow travelers” were notoriously purged by what has ever since been called McCarthyism.
Western European leaders also feared and turned against the USSR as Europe’s eastern countries became the USSR’s postwar socialist allies. These countries also became closer to the USSR as it supported and assisted successful revolutions against an already weakened European colonialism. At the same time, Europe’s employer classes acutely feared their domestic communist parties that were by then strongly entrenched in their anti-Nazi resistance movements and organized labor movements. The 1930s depression strengthened them all (as it had in the United States).
In Europe, labor movements, communist and socialist parties, and many of their supporters mobilized, trained, equipped, funded, and coordinated several anti-fascist resistances. By 1945, that resistance work led to the immense popularity of these parties and movements. Western European employers in each country feared the economic demands their domestic socialists, communists, and labor unions would make. Those demands would be backed by their workers’ domestic political power and gain more support due to the USSR’s geopolitical proximity. Read more
A Fraction Of What We Pay In Fossil Fuel Subsidies Could Fund A Just Transition
Prof.dr. Robert Pollin
05-20-2025 ~ Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies must be tied to new subsidies that raise living standards for working and poor people.
The bad news on climate change is plentiful. For one, there is no sign of a decline in global carbon dioxide emissions and the Earth is getting hotter faster than ever before, despite constant pledges of government action. And now, of course, the second Trump administration is implementing policies that represent the biggest attack on nature, climate and people ever.
Yet, as world-renowned progressive political economist Robert Pollin shows in this exclusive interview with Truthout, there are also hopeful signs on the climate front. There is indeed an energy transition underway. Pollin also tackles the challenge that fracking represents, which is still widespread across the U.S. energy landscape, and the problem with the persistence of fossil fuel subsidies. In this context, he advances a concrete green transition program for phasing out fracking operations in the state of Pennsylvania and proposes alternative measures of support for working people and the poor to meet their energy needs.
Pollin is Distinguished University Professor of Economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of scores of books and academic articles, and was selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the “100 Leading Global Thinkers for 2013.” The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
C.J. Polychroniou: Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have increased by nearly 70 percent since 1990 and hit a record high of 37 billion tons in 2023. And now the Trump White House wants to increase oil and gas production, which is a further blow to the urgent task of rapidly reducing the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. Considering this, is it realistic to expect that CO2 emissions can be reduced by 45 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050?
Robert Pollin: The goals of reducing global CO2 emissions by 45 percent relative to the 2010 level of about 33 billion tons and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 was first advanced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a 2018 report called “Global Warming of 1.50C.” The IPCC is a UN agency focused on advancing credible research on all aspects of climate change, including, in particular, what we need to accomplish to stop the ever-deepening calamities resulting from rising average global temperatures, such as what we saw only a few months ago with the devastating fires that devoured major sections of Los Angeles. In this 2018 report initially, and in several subsequent studies, the IPCC has been making the case that achieving their 2030 and 2050 CO2 emission reduction targets was necessary to prevent the average global temperature from rising by more than 1.50 Celsius than the global average between 1850 and 1900 — i.e., the pre-industrial level.
Given that global CO2 emissions have not fallen at all since the 2018 IPCC report came out, it is clear that the world will not succeed in bringing emissions down from the current level of 37 billion to about 18 billion tons in the next 4.5 years. This was obvious even before Donald Trump returned to the White House in January and launched his campaign, as promised, to obliterate any and all policies, regulations or even any words in any federal government documents that in any way gesture toward a U.S. climate stabilization program. Thus, in February, The Guardian reported that, “The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: ‘climate.’” As just one follow-up in March, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, pronounced that, “Yesterday was the most consequential day of deregulation in American history. …Today marks the death of the Green New Scam.”
And yet, even in the face of these assaults from Trump and company, we can still point to some positive developments on which we build. Read more
The Rise Of AI Warfare: How Autonomous Weapons And Cognitive Warfare Are Reshaping Global Military Strategy
Leslie Alan Horvitz
Photo: lesliehorvitz.com
05-15-2025 ~ The future of warfare may be decided by AI, but will humans have a role to play?
In the 1983 film War Games, a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response) is about to provoke a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, but because of the ingenuity of a teenager (played by Matthew Broderick), catastrophe is averted. In the first Terminator film, which was released a year later, a supercomputer called “Skynet” decides to exterminate humanity because it’s perceived as a threat to its existence rather than to protect American nuclear weapons.
Although these films offered audiences grim scenarios of intelligent machines running amok, they were also prophetic. Artificial intelligence (AI) is so commonplace that it’s routinely applied during a simple Google search. That it is also being integrated into military strategies is hardly any surprise. It’s just that we have little understanding of the capacity of these high-tech weapons (those that are now ready for use and those in development). Nor are we prepared for systems that have the capacity to transform warfare forever.
Throughout history, it is human intelligence that uses the technology, not the technology itself, which has won or lost wars. That may change in the future when human intelligence is focused instead on creating systems that are more capable on the battlefield than those of the adversary.
An “Exponential, Insurmountable Surprise”
Artificial intelligence isn’t a technology that can be easily detected, monitored, or banned, as Amir Husain, the founder and CEO of an AI company, SparkCognition, pointed out in an essay for Media News. Integrating AI elements—visual recognition, language analysis, simulation-based prediction, and advanced forms of search—with existing technologies and platforms “can rapidly yield entirely new and unforeseen capabilities.” The result “can create exponential, insurmountable surprise,” Hussain writes.
Advanced technology in warfare is already widespread. The use of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs)—commonly known as drones—in military settings has set off warnings about “killer robots.” What happens when drones are no longer controlled by humans and can execute military missions on their own? These drones aren’t limited to the air; they can operate on the ground or underwater as well. The introduction of AI, effectively giving these weapons the capacity for autonomy, isn’t far off.
Moreover, they’re cheap to produce and cheap to purchase. The Russians are buying drones from Iran for use in their war in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have been putting together a cottage industry constructing drones of their own against the Russians. The relative ease with which a commercial drone can be converted into one with a military application also blurs the line between commercial and military enterprises. At this point, though, humans are still in charge.
A similar problem can be seen in information-gathering systems that have dual uses, including satellites, manned and unmanned aircraft, ground and undersea radars, and sensors, all of which have both commercial and military applications. AI can process vast amounts of data from all these systems and then discern meaningful patterns, identifying changes that humans might never notice. American forces were stymied to some degree in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they could not process large amounts of data. Even now, remotely piloted UAVs are using AI for autonomous takeoff, landing, and routine flight. All that’s left for human operators to do is concentrate on tactical decisions, such as selecting attack targets and executing attacks.
AI also allows these systems to operate rapidly, determining actions at speeds that are seldom possible if humans are part of the decision-making process. Until now, decision-making speed has been the most important aspect of warfare. If, however, AI systems go head-to-head against humans, AI will invariably come out ahead. However, the possibility that AI systems eliminate the human factor terrifies people who don’t want to see an apocalyptic scenario on celluloid come to pass in reality. Read more