<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Orsan Senalp</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 2:54 AM<br>Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Bye, BRICS (Immanuel Wallerstein)<br>To: "<<a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>>" <<a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>><br><br><br><div dir="auto"><div><br><br>Begin forwarded message:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> Patrick Bond <<a href="mailto:pbond@mail.ngo.za" target="_blank">pbond@mail.ngo.za</a>><br><b>Date:</b> 1 Jan 2016 14:49:26 GMT+1<br><b>To:</b> DEBATE <<a href="mailto:debate-list@fahamu.org" target="_blank">debate-list@fahamu.org</a>>, <a href="mailto:progeconnetwork@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">progeconnetwork@googlegroups.com</a>, <a href="mailto:jubileesouth@yahoogroups.com" target="_blank">jubileesouth@yahoogroups.com</a>, "<a href="mailto:safis-solidarity-platform@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">safis-solidarity-platform@googlegroups.com</a>" <<a href="mailto:safis-solidarity-platform@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">safis-solidarity-platform@googlegroups.com</a>>, <a href="mailto:Campaign_DPE@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">Campaign_DPE@googlegroups.com</a><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[Debate-List] (Fwd) Bye, BRICS (Immanuel Wallerstein)</b><br><b>Reply-To:</b> <a href="mailto:pbond@mail.ngo.za" target="_blank">pbond@mail.ngo.za</a><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>
(More from Wallerstein in <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/thick-as-brics-an-illusory-alternative-to-neoliberalism/" target="_blank">this</a>
book, whose Indian edition from Aakar Books will be launched in New
Delhi at JNU on 18 January and in Mumbai at Tata Institute on 19
January.)<br>
<Bond Garcia BRICS front cover.jpg><br>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;line-height:normal" align="center"><font size="4"><span>Commentary No. 416, January
1, 2016</span><span></span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;line-height:normal" align="center"><font size="4"><span>"The BRICS - A Fable for
Our Time"<br>
</span></font><font size="4"><span>by
Immanuel Wallerstein</span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>The story of the BRICS is a
strange one. It starts
in 2001 when Jim O'Neill, at that time the chairman of the
Assets Management
division of Goldman Sachs, the giant investment house, wrote a
widely-commented
article about what we have come to call "emerging economies."
O'Neill
singled out four countries – Brazil, Russia, India, and China
– all of whom
were large enough in size and territory to have noticeable
weight in the world
market. He labeled them the BRICs.</span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>O'Neill argued that their
assets were growing at
such a pace that they were going to overtake collectively the
asset values held
by the G-7 countries, which had long been the list of the
wealthiest countries
in the world-system. O'Neill did not say exactly when this
would occur – by
2050 at the latest. But he saw the rise of the BRICs as more
or less
inevitable. Given his position at Goldman Sachs, he was
essentially telling the
clients of Goldman Sachs to shift significant parts of their
investments to
these four countries while their assets were still selling
cheaply.</span><span></span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>The argument caught on,
including in the four
countries themselves. The four BRICs decided to assume the
name and create
structures of annual meetings as of 2009 in order to transform
their emerging
economic strength into geopolitical strength. The tone of
their successive
collective statements was to assert the place of the South
against that of the
North, and especially that of the United States in the
world-system. They
talked of replacing the dollar as the reserve currency with a
new South-based
currency. They talked of creating a South-based development
bank to assume many
of the functions that were the purview of the International
Monetary Fund and
the World Bank. They talked of redirecting world trade flows,
so as to enhance
South-South exchanges.</span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>They talked of all these
things, but somehow they
never quite got around to implementing these proposals.
Instead, they
concentrated in the 2010's on enjoying the fruits of a high
level of commodity
prices, which allowed the governments of the four countries to
augment
significantly the income levels of their upper and middle
strata, and even to
increase some benefits to the lower strata.</span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>The times seemed good, and not
only for the BRICs.
In 2009, South Africa managed to convince the four BRICs to
admit it as a fifth
member of the group. The name was changed from BRICs to BRICS,
the final
capital S referring to South Africa. South Africa did not
really meet the economic
criteria O'Neill had specified, but in terms of geopolitics,
it enabled the
group to say it had an African member.</span><span></span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>Meanwhile, other countries
began to show economic
characteristics similar to those of the BRICS. Journalists
began to speak of
the MINT – Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey. Although
this group also
included ‘emerging’ economies, they never became a formal
structure. One other
country was an obvious member – South Korea. However, South
Korea had already
been admitted to the club of the wealthy – the Organization of
Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) – and thus saw no need to
enhance further
its geopolitical status.</span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>Then all of a sudden, the
economic strength of the
BRICS took a turn for the worse in the 2010s. It isn't that
the G-7 countries
were growing faster again, but that the BRICS were showing
lowered asset
figures. The swift rise of the BRICS seemed to be vanishing.</span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>What had happened? A look at
the world-economy of
the first decade of the twenty-first century shows that the
world economic boom
was largely driven by China's no-holds-barred construction and
industrialization drive. It had created an enormous demand for
inputs of all
sorts, which China got from the BRICS countries as well as
elsewhere. China's
boom had been built on some shaky and reckless loan policies
of the large
number of regional banks that had come into existence, aided
and abetted by
considerable corruption. When the Chinese government sought to
repair the
damage, its growth rate plummeted, although it still remained
relatively high.</span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>In addition, China's attempt to
assert her
geopolitical power over its neighbors in east and southeast
Asia has led to
accumulated tensions. Said to be part of China's rivalry with
the United
States, both China and the United States have been careful not
to let the
rivalry go so far that it threatens the longer-run
possibilities of a
partnership.</span><span></span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>China's adjustments were
immediately felt elsewhere,
and especially in the other BRICS countries, which turned out
to be economically
shaky and therefore politically vulnerable. The dramatic fall
of the world oil
prices took their toll. One after the other, the BRICS found
themselves in
trouble, each in its own form.</span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>Brazil's economic policies had
combined neoliberal
macroeconomic policies with important transfers to the poorest
third of the
population – the so-called <i>Fome Cero</i> or Zero Hunger no
longer worked.
The fluid and ever-changing political alliances in the
Brazilian legislature
became a turbulent scene, threatening political stability. At
the moment, the
two main sides are trying to impeach each other's leaders. And
the image of the
person who had constructed Brazil's previously successful
policies – Lula or
former President Luis Inácio Cruz de Silva – is badly
tarnished.</span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>Russia's policies of heavy
investment in the
military combined with state-aided economic redistribution
were strongly
threatened by the fall in gas and oil price. Its geopolitical
assertiveness in
Ukraine and the Middle East led to various kinds of boycotts
that hurt its
economic national income sharply.</span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>India's attempt to catch up,
not only with the West
but with China, resulted in massive ecological damage as well
as the diminution
of investments by its diaspora in North America and western
Europe. The current
government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is finding it
very difficult
to fulfill the promises that led to his landslide victory so
recently.</span><span></span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>In South Africa, the
overwhelming majority of the
African National Congress (ANC) is finally receding, as an
ever-larger
proportion of the electorate is too young to remember the
anti-apartheid
struggle. Instead, politics have become increasingly based on
ethnic politics.
And the ANC is threatened by an anti-White upsurge among
younger voters, so foreign
to the ANC’s historic non-racial policies. In addition, South
Africa's
neighbors are increasingly uneasy with South Africa's strong
hand in their
internal politics.</span></font><font size="4"><span> </span></font>
</p>
<font size="4"></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span>Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
What remains of the
geopolitical aspirations of the BRICS is anyone's guess.</span></font></p>
<font size="4">
</font><font size="4">
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><font size="4"><span><br><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></span></font><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><span></span></font></span></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<p></p>
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