ABSTRACT

The International Manifesto Group launched its manifesto, “Through Pluripolarity to Socialism” on 5 September 2021. Then, the world’s attention was riveted to the US’s ignominious exit from Afghanistan. The following speeches, delivered at the webinar to mark the first anniversary of the event, reflect on the tumultuous events of the year since, dominated by the US-led war on Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, its wider international reverberations which have underlined as well as accelerated the US’s decline and declining international influence and by the very real prospect that a similar US-led war is being planned against China using Taiwan region as a proxy. The speeches below find that, though the Manifesto’s text was finalised before anyone could have imagined such wars, its general line pointing to the decline of capitalism and imperialism and the imperative for humanity to progress through pluripolarity—a world of variety of national economic formations that will inevitably result as efforts to build productive and egalitarian societies are undertaken—to socialism as capitalism’s ability to deliver anything remotely similar is manifestly exhausted, has been vindicated.

KEYWORDS: Socialism; communism; anti-imperialism; China; the United States

From: International Critical Thought 2023 13 (2)

Editor: Wang Yi