Rise of Asia

Gustave Massiah
10-02-2022

1.

Sectoral assessment and perspectives

We are living in a time of great uncertainty and strong contradictions. It is a period of change and rupture. It is marked by the conjunction of two major crises. A financial, economic and social crisis, and an ecological and healthcare crisis.

The financial crisis of 2008 was a first warning. It is a systemic crisis, that of the dominant mode of production. While the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 seemed to announce the victory of the capitalist system and the hegemony of the new phase of capitalism, neoliberalism, which was imposed in 1980, after having been experienced in Chile since 1973. The financial crisis of 2008 marks the structural crisis of neoliberalism. This crisis is reflected in a new series of conflicts and insurrections from 2011, with the Arab springs, in Tunisia and Egypt, the indignados, the occupy.  In more than fifty countries popular movements demonstrated against inequalities and corruption. The reaction from 2013 - 2015 is represented by authoritarian and repressive regimes. And also by the rise of far-right ideologies

From 2019, a new pandemic, the coronavirus, disrupts the world. Very quickly, it is clear that this pandemic is linked to the ecological crisis and cannot be understood if we do not take it into account. This is not the first time that the pandemic and the climate have burst into history. In a prescient book in 2017, Kyle Harper published a book in London about the fall of the Roman Empire. He underlines the conjunction of a pandemic (the pest) and a glaciation accompanied by a volcanic episode. He indicates that the pest took the roads of the first globalization of the Roman Empire, and that the conjunction of the pandemic and the climate explains in part the loss of resilience of the Roman Empire. It raises the question of the loss of resilience of the current international system.

We must admit that the current crisis is considerable. It is economic and social, ecological, democratic, cultural and geopolitical. How can we analyze the changes and the perspectives?

To do this, I suggest that we refer to the proposal of Gramcsi, who wrote in prison, shortly before his death in 1937, in a period of profound upheaval: the old world is dying, the new world is slow to appear, and in this chiaroscuro monsters are emerging. The monsters are here and prepare dictatorships and wars. How to evaluate the new world. The hypothesis is to identify fields in which the old world is in crisis and in which new possibilities are emerging. Fields in which contradictions are at work, in which new avenues emerge and in which the confrontation between the old and the new happens, in which several paths to the future coexist and confront each other.

Gender and womens issues; Ecology; Biotechnology; Digital transformation; Demography; Decolonization

We heard introductions and developments from :

- Ariemi Arimbi DIA on gender and women's issues

- Devon DUBLIN on ecology

- Joel COLLOC on biotechnology

- Elena VEDUTA on digital technologies

- Paolo MOTTA on demography

- Isaac BAZIE on decolonization

In the following, I will insist on the way in which the partition between the old and the new, the relations of the new world, the contradiction between the new forms of domination and emancipation is constructed in each of these fields.

2.

Gender and women issues

The question of feminist emancipation has taken a major place. It is a new stage in the long struggle of women for their liberation. It is a major disruption in societies, which calls into question the relations between the sexes and gender relations. It challenges patriarchy and male domination and questions the forms of vulnerability. The depth of the questioning translates into forms of panic and arouses extremely violent reactions from certain men. It is a radical revolution that is spreading in all countries and religious or national cultures.

The panic in social relations is translated into a panic in theory. The affirmation of the necessity to take into account gender relations and relations to racism in order to understand class relations provokes a very violent reaction. Some people read in it a questioning of class relations rather than a necessity to deepen the understanding of their reality. But the reality is the opposite, as Angela Davis so well demonstrates. Intersectionality is presented as a choice for minorities in relation to the understanding of class relations. Afrofeminism, in the countries where it manifests itself, shows the close link between the working classes, feminist demands and "racialized" groups.

The question of racism is, with the feminist question, the object of reactions of great violence. The two most radical movements today in the United States, and in reference in a large part of the world, are #MeToo and Black Live Matters. The question of racism in connection with the question of migration refers to the unfinished nature of decolonization.

3.

Ecology

The ecological question has emerged as a central issue, particularly through the consideration of changes linked to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Awareness of the ecological emergency has been long in coming. The observations and warnings concerning the climate began in the seventies. They were not listened to and until recent years have received little attention. Although the fossil fuel extractivist companies got wind of the research early on, they have sought for decades to cover up their responsibility and sow doubt. As a result, no serious action was taken. Awareness of the importance of the necessary measures is beginning to grow. It begins with measures to correct the greenhouse gas emissions of energy policies. It calls into question the logic of the policies implemented and the questioning of the development model. The very notion of development, and its subordination to productivist growth, is now fundamentally criticised. The issue has become civilisational.

The emergency is one of the subjects put forward by the populations and this concern is reflected in the movements of opinion because the consequences are increasingly visible. The authorities claim to take this into account. Not without contradiction, when at the same time they continue to develop the same policies. But in certain areas, in the debate on energy policies and urban policies for example, ecology is a concern that often translates into the search for technological solutions that would not jeopardise the dynamics of economic growth. A global debate from now on.

Ecology is becoming a key factor in understanding the evolution of global geopolitical relations, but also in a more anthropological dimension. The climate, biodiversity and the cohabitation of the species all raise questions about the relationship between the human species and nature. It is a philosophical questioning, the end of the infinite time that always postpones solutions to tomorrow, and of the infinite space that always discovers new territories to exploit. We have clearly entered what Geneviève Azam calls the time of the finite world, which translates into the emergence of an emergency to defend the possibility of a decent life for everyone on this planet.

4.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology combines the science of the living world with technology. It broadens our knowledge of living beings. It questions the limits of the human body. Since the 1990s, the discovery of DNA and RNA has led to the development of biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, and is now being extended to the study of genomes, proteins, nanotechnologies, transgenesis and genetic engineering.

Biotechnology is enabling revolutionary applications in health, the environment, agriculture, hydraulics, energy, etc. Biotechnology has enabled impressive scientific advancements.

In the 2000s, micro-organisms, possibly genetically modified, and many enzymes used in many sectors of the economy have enabled many applications, but they have also raised health and safety issues.

Genetic modification has generated important and often conflicting ethical, political and economic debates on the licensing of life forms. The development of biotechnologies in agriculture, first in the experimental phase and then in the field (1990-2000), in particular through GMOs, has given rise to numerous controversies and resistance from farmers, particularly from Via Campesina, which is opposing peasant agriculture and biological agriculture.

Environmental and safety regulations favour start-ups and venture capitalists to the detriment of public research. Since the end of the 1990s, several biotechnology leaders have experienced a stock market bubble without equivalent in history, which ended in a financial crash and maintained the public's mistrust of a sector that is difficult to understand.

The use of biotechnology in the health sector is resulting in a lack of understanding for large parts of the population, leading to great fear and distrust, as we have seen with vaccines and the use of bacteria. Science is seen as esoteric and controlled by the powers of money, leading to a growing distrust and mistrust of politics and corporations. The extraordinary possibilities opened up by biotechnologies divide societies between the knowledgeable and the sceptical

5.

The digital transformation

What are the profound changes that are building the new world and prefiguring the contradictions of the future? Digital technology is not the only revolution taking place. Digital technology is renewing language and writing,

There are several transformations in progress, unfinished and uncertain revolutions. There is no guarantee that they will not be smashed, deviated or recuperated. But there is also no guarantee that they will not be. They are shaking up the world; they are also bringing hope and are already marking the future and the present. For the moment, they are provoking rejection and great violence.

The digital is a technological revolution that has strong interactions with social change without overdetermining it. Social movement activists have played a role in the development of the digital, even if their contributions have been confiscated and diverted by GAFAM. There are also opponents within the digital world, who form a specific social movement that converges with and can strengthen social movements.

Digital activists have a role to play as a social movement

They can play a leading role in the fight against GAFAM and against the exorbitant impunity and power of digital multinationals. They can play a role in the development of participatory verification tools that are essential to oppose the counter-attack of the authorities on the very field of digital and information (mass surveillance, disinformation, infox,...).

They can contribute to providing movements with the digital tools that will strengthen the first phases of mobilization, that will enable them to resist the authorities' counter-attacks, that will enable them to resist hegemonic platforms, that will help to avoid tactical paralysis, that will facilitate the movements' narratives, that will inscribe the movements in the determination of strategies

6.

Demography

The demographic question is linked to the ecological question and the limits of the planet. But ecology is not just about demography, it is the growth model, that of productivist capitalism, that is in question. Since the sixties, the debate has linked environment and development. The report to the Club of Rome, known as the Meadows report, published in 1972, addressed the ecological consequences of economic growth and linked the limitation of resources to demographic change. The reasons for environmental degradation are diverse, for some it is the devastating effects of new agricultural and industrial technologies, for others it is a consequence of wealth inequalities. China was one of the first countries to address the issue of population growth with its one-child policy.  

Other forecasts estimate that China's population will fall to 754 million by 2100 (estimates given in Empty Planet).

We must return to the demographic question. Two Canadian demographers, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, in a recent book, The Empty Planet, analyse the shock of global demographic decline. They question the United Nations' predictions that the world's population will rise from 7 to 11 billion by the end of the century before stabilising. They estimate that the peak will be 9 billion between 2040 and 2060. And that the population will be decreasing in about thirty countries in 2050 (compared to about twenty today). Fertility rates are not astronomical in developing countries. Many are at or below replacement level. The reason for this is the emancipation of women and the move towards a rate of 1.7 children per woman. Globally, social ageing is becoming a key issue.

This demographic issue will determine a central issue today, the issue of migration. Migration has accompanied the history of mankind since its beginnings, starting with Neanderthal man and Homo sapiens. At each period, migrations adapt and take on new characteristics. Today, with the phase of neo-liberalism as a phase of capitalist globalisation, migrations take three forms: economic migrations which prolong and modify the labour migrations marked by the industrial evolution of the 20th century, political migrations linked to situations of war and repression; environmental migrations which are going to take on major importance. However, what characterises migration today, in terms of the mobilisation of migrants and also in terms of those who make it the cause of all evils, are the references to slavery and colonisation. This is because decolonisation is not over and the imagination links the situation with the first colonisation, that of colonial empires and imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. The struggles against racism and discrimination refer to decolonisation and extend it.

Several new elements will modify the question of migration in the next period. The crisis of demographic decline in many countries, particularly in the most industrialised countries, and the ecological crisis have already been mentioned. Another factor is the reduction in the agricultural population in many countries, it is declining from the majority of the population to about 5% of the population. This evolution may modify the relationship between nomadic and sedentary populations, which has been significant since the invention of agriculture in Mesopotamia. Other changes will accompany the evolving characteristics of nation-states that have defined the forms of border management over the past three centuries.

7.

A new phase of decolonization

In Bandung, in 1955, the conference of the heads of state of the first independent states of Africa and Asia took place. Chou en Lai, who represented China, declared: the states want their independence, the nations their liberation, the peoples their revolution. He will use this formula in his speech to the United Nations.

The independence of the states is more or less complete. We can measure its scope, but we can also see its limits. Especially since, from the 1980s - the dominant countries, the United States, Europe and Japan, took control of globalization by imposing neoliberalism. They put an end to the attempts of the countries of the South to equilibrate international trade by imposing on them debt and austerity programs known as structural adjustment programs. The second phase of decolonization is beginning, that of the liberation of nations and peoples. It calls into question the form of nation-states, as can be seen in the demands for plurinational states on the one hand and the evolution of forms of globalization on the other. It also questions the role that large geo-cultural zones could play in the evolution of the international system.

As we said it begore, the question of racism and decolonization is, along with the feminist question, the subject of very violent reactions. The two most radical movements today, starting from the United States, and in a large part of the world, are #MeToo and Black Live Matters. The issue of racism in connection with the issue of migration refers to the unfinished nature of decolonization.

The fight against racism is part of an unfinished decolonization. Thus, on the question of migration, while the forms of migration today concern work, wars or the environment, what we see resurfacing in cultural and ideological debates are the relationships between migration, colonization and slavery. Decolonization remains on the agenda because of the inequalities in the world system and also because of the actuality of the long history of forms of domination.

8.

In provisional conclusion

We are living in a contradictory period: on the one hand, the rise of extreme right-wing and reactionary ideas; on the other, the radicality of new ideas carried by very offensive movements

(feminist, anti-racist, ecological, indigenous peoples, peasants, workers, migrants).

As Gramsci said, the battle for cultural hegemony is intensive. On the one hand, it opposes identitarianism and securitarianism; on the other, equality and solidarity. The debate is about the conception of freedom: individual and libertarian for the right, individual and collective for the left.

This is what social movements can contribute by redefining their strategy in relation to the evolution of the situation and the ruptures that are occurring. They can fight against ideas of security and identity, on the one hand, and on the other hand promote equality and solidarity, especially international solidarity.