Struggles for Bread, Peace and Social Justice in a Multi-Polar World: Ten Major Changes Ushering in a New Era

The setting

Since the electoral changes in the United States in November 2024 and the inauguration of the Republican President on January 20, 2025, many have been seeking to understand the meaning of these political changes for humanity.

In my correspondence with friends and comrades in all parts of the planet, I remind them that focusing on individuals will not shed light on where we are, nor clarify the political and ideological tasks ahead.

I am reminded of the moment thirty-three years ago after the fall of the planned economies in 1991, the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) of the George H Bush Administration stated that the “U.S. should aim to prevent the emergence of any potential global competitor”. This posture of the United States remaining the sole superpower had been restated in every subsequent National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States, as published in 2002 and restated in 2006 as: 

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power." ^[i].

The posture of the United States as a global superpower in a unipolar world was emphasized in these statements as reflecting the hubris of the ruling elements in the stages of the planned war against the people of Iraq. The 2002 NSS advocated for preemptive strikes to counter emerging threats, similar to the DPG's emphasis on preventing the rise of any potential global competitor.

The wars against the peoples of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Palestine were components of this strategy to prevent the rise of any potential global competitor. Despite sinking trillions of dollars in these wars, the 2022 National Security Strategy ^[ii] of the United States repeated the same doctrine under the Biden/Harris Administration: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States".

By the time of the National Security Strategy of 2022, the world had changed from a unipolar world to a multi polar world^[iii], meaning that since the defeat of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, the COVID pandemic and the emergence of the enlarged BRICS formation, the world is now one in which multiple countries or regions hold significant power and influence on the global stage. This is a new international situation despite the overwhelming military expenditures of the United States. The U.S. has the highest military expenditure in the world. In 2023, the US spent approximately $916 billion on its military, which accounted for about 37% of global military spending. These figures did not include the expenditure on the intelligence agencies and that on nuclear weapons that came out of the expenditure for the Department of Energy. The boast of US officials of the so-called military strength of the United States reminded humans everywhere of the statement by Napoleon Bonaparte who stated: "You can do anything with bayonets, except sit on them." This quote highlighted the idea that while military force can achieve many things, it cannot decide the future of global class and economic struggles, especially in the case where the struggles for self-determination inspire humans to fight for a world free from imperial domination. Fifty years after the Vietnamese defeated the US military, we are reminded, in 2025, that despite its superior military technology the United States could not determine the force of the anti-imperialist forces that are speeding the multipolar world.

Fifty years after the victory of the Vietnamese struggles and 30 years after the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, there are ten forces shaping the current drive toward multi polarity.

1. Global warming and the disruptions of weather patterns with attendant social dislocations – Hurricanes, cyclones, forest fires, and impact on human settlements
2. Disruptions of ecological systems and new viruses. (note how the Departure of the new Trump Administration from the World Health Organization (WHO) will affect the monitoring of viruses and pandemics)
3. The rapid spread of such viruses along with embedded ideas of white supremacy leading to vaccine apartheid.^[iv]
4. The concentration of power in the hands of "Big Tech" who dominate the Artificial intelligence, technology and finance spaces (with the attendant upheavals from global competition).
5. Dead end of the dollar supremacy and weaponization of everything (especially finance and trade) by the USA, coupled with the search for alternatives
6. Efforts to strengthen global capitalism by removing rules and regulations relating to wages, hours of work, safety and conditions of work. (rolling back essential policies of the international Labor Organization (ILO)
7. Hubris of the global billionaire’s class and support for neo fascist ideas across the planet (consolidation of former pro-apartheid billionaires, Musk, Thiel, Sacks, Botha etc).
8. Peak of US imperialism and the impossibility of the military management of the international system.
9. Challenges for new formations such as global anti racist forces, BRICS, ASEAN and their internal contradictions. There is then the effort for the anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-imperialist forces to coalesce.
10. The reemergence of the white supremacists to political ascendancy in North America.

Conjunctural crisis of US capitalism.

It is essential to examine the present global conjuncture without a simple knee-jerk reaction to the current Executive Orders of the US President.

These executive orders reflect the “America First" agenda, aiming to bring back the position of the USA as the sole superpower while the United States withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. The Executive Orders are a response to the global class struggles that reflect the decline of the USA and the sharpening of international class and racial struggles. This is as it should be since the contradictions of capitalism are independent of the whims of any one individual or any one class.

Let us draw some lessons from the previous conjunctural crises. Before the Civil War in the United States in 1861, the southern planter class believed in their inherent superiority of whites over Blacks. This hubris led them to believe that despite their industrial weakness and lower numbers, they could win the war because they were superior. The objective conditions of the industrialization of the Northern states were weakened by the subjective factor of how the ideas of white supremacy prolonged the Civil War until the Black masses forced the question of emancipation.

It is not well known that it was the critical intervention of the Black rebellion and formerly enslaved that changed the course of US history. The ideas of America First being promoted by the current Republican leaders in the USA seek to bring back the policies of racial segregation that denied the basic rights to Black people while seeking the complete genocide of the First Nation Peoples.

These same ideas of supremacy fueled the hubris of the Nazis in Germany when Germany was no longer the leading financial and industrial center in western Europe. The German capitalist classes sought to impose militarily what they lacked financially by instituting military Keynesianism. The German fascists mobilized all the resources of German capitalism to seek to crush the working-class movement in Europe while at the same time unleashing a war on the USSR. Instead, the forces of anti-fascism triumphed while at the same time the anti-imperialist forces fighting against colonialism in India, China, Africa and the Caribbean registered major victories.

The decline of British capitalism is perhaps the most salient lesson for understanding the present conjuncture of US imperialism. The peak of the British dominance, the pound, the Stock Market and the London Metal exchange looked to the British capitalists as if Britannia would rule forever. The anti-colonial struggles in India, Malaysia, Africa and the Caribbean did not release the British worker from the clutches of the imperial mindset. Britain was caught in a spiral of decline after the independence of India, Kenya, Malaysia, Ghana, Jamaica and other former colonies. 

Hence, Britain could not confront the internal social problems. The US anti-communist crusade gave the British ruling class something to hang their sails onto. But after the Suez Crisis of 1956, the US had to take over the global financial payment system and the dollar-carrying forward the elements of Anglo-American financial dominance. White racism and white supremacy blinded Britain to the changes that were at work.

The United States is caught in the midst of the same contradictions that faced Britain. The development of the productive forces in the US is far higher than it was in Germany or Britain. The class, racial and military contradictions are sharper. The big difference is that the Black and brown working peoples have a wealth of experience of resistance and organizing.

Now the challenge is to grasp new internationalism, socializing the means of production so that there is a new global push to mitigate global warming and unleash the technologies to fight the new viruses. The challenges of building a new society and reorganizing global finance will emerge in this short-term interregnum. The threats of the US ruling elements to secure control over strategic regions like Greenland, the Panama Canal, while tightening sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela reflect part of a wider strategy to make up for economic decline by deploying unrestrained military force and military threats to sustain US dominance. There has been a spate of commentaries from the Left in the USA on the weaponization of trade (see for example: Michael Hudson in Counterpunch ^[v]). One limitation of this body of left writing on multipolarity is that the analysis diminishes the role of African peoples globally and the importance of anti-racist struggles.

For Africa, the counter revolutionary impulse will strengthen the allies of the conservatives and the Zionist entity. Already, in Rwanda the regime in power has signaled to the US, the UAE, and Israel that it will be a negative force. The reconfiguration of the global power map will be severely affected by the outcome of the current struggles for economic and political independence in the Alliance of Sahelian States. In the short term, the conservative forces who oppose self-determination in Palestine will cooperate with the US. In the medium term, those who want peace, social justice, bread and the unification of Africa will prevail.

End Notes