Global South Struggles for Socialism and the Workers' Side of Marxism

Chris Gilbert

Any theory should be adjusted when it conflicts with or diverges from salient features of reality, and Marxism is no exception. Among the best-known problems of this kind for the Marxist tradition is how the theory (at least in its initial formulation) seemed to indicate that socialist revolutions should happen mostly in the core countries of the capitalist system, but over the past century and a half they have happened almost exclusively in the periphery. In the first location—call it the Global North—one finds a sizeable industrial proletariat and highly developed productive forces. These are the key material conditions that the theory holds to be conducive to socialist revolution. However, the class struggle has tended to be less fierce there, and workers’ horizons generally have not included abolishing the existing capitalist order and moving toward socialism. In fact, the theory and practice of social democracy has most often been the limit of worker consciousness in the Northern context. By contrast, in the periphery of the system, or the Global South, where there did not appear to exist the conditions for socialism—neither a sizeable industrial proletariat nor highly developed productive forces—socialist ideas have often been embraced by the masses. Moreover, the class struggle has repeatedly exploded into dramatic revolutions and rebellions that, even if their first goal is the overthrowing of imperial-colonial domination, also take on a socialistcharacter and, in most cases have communism as a strategic goal. These include the revolutions in China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, and Venezuela, to name only the best-known ones. Even the Russian Revolution of October 1917 took place far from the world’s capitalist centers at that time and was coeval with a process of national liberation.

This fact has generated a paradoxical situation that should lead us to re-examine our theoretical apparatus for missing mediations that would explain both the nature and the possibility of the socialist-oriented projects. It is one thing that peoples of the Global South have continually rebelled against the imperialist and colonial order, which systematically denies them both sovereignty and dignity. Yet it is another matter—one that also needs accounting for—that they have frequently taken steps toward socialism, that is, collective, all-round emancipation from capitalist exploitation.

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