The first gaps that arise in the unipolar form of world organization

First of all, let me extend my warm welcome to everybody and special thanks for the invitation to take part in such an important event.

My name is Gabriela Cultelli, I am from Uruguay. I am the coordinator of this section. I am a member of the initiative of the Intellectuals and Artists Network in Defense of Humanity (Red de Intelectuales y Artistas en Defensa de la Humanidad), and director of the Mate Amargo newspaper.

The topic that we are raising today has forced us to rethink several key aspects of the current situation and make a historical hindsight in order to try to imagine what the foreseeable future will be like.

The unipolar world system was created and actually originated simultaneously with the onset of the imperialism stage within the capitalist system framework.

Thus, from different empires with their influence spheres and 5-6 world domination and accumulation axes, we have moved to this unilateral format where the USA is a justice of the peace and a world gendarme.

This process began for Latin America at the time of independent states formation, after the collapse of the Spanish Empire and the subsequent decline of the British Empire, and it ended in the 30s of the last century. The next key milestone in world history was 1971. The end of dollar conversion was announced in this year. This happened after Europe and the world became flooded with this currency. Next, we faced the “lost decade” (the name of the period of the 1980s, known for the severe crisis in Latin America, translator’s note), and the whole world already in 1992 was experiencing the consequences of the collapse of the socialist camp and the USSR.

It is these long-term non-linear processes that have influenced the world for more than half a century. During this time, the world has experienced many wars, two of which were world wars. The world was destroyed and rebuilt again.

Perhaps now we see the beginning of a new stage or phase of history, but what is certain is that the system of hegemony or the unipolar world under which we have lived so far is in deep crisis caused by the American empire’s decline. Yet it is still too early to talk about a possible result.

Secondly, we would like to talk about the characteristics of business cycles or of the crises’ cycle. As for the crisis, let’s remember that at the dawn of the twentieth century there was an acute crisis that accompanied the aforementioned transition to a new phase, and let’s also remember the deepest crisis of the twentieth century -- the crisis of 1929-1933, which was the preamble to a new division of the world after World War II.

Today, crises have sharp and ever shorter cycles. Let’s take, for example, the crises of 2008, 2014, and 2019. The latter is called the “pandemic crisis”, while in reality it is a crisis of the main capitalist countries’ level that broke out already in 2019, and the health crisis caused by the pandemic only exacerbated it.

At present, the beginning of 2023 can already be spoken of as the next cycle completion. Some argue that the previous phase is continuing and we have not managed to get out of the “pandemic crisis” yet. In fact, the world economy has recovered and grown, although not as much as expected. There was none of the dramatic growth foreseen by the neo-liberals.

Cycles of all-encompassing economic crises entail climate, food, energy, demographic and social consequences. Ultimately, these are systemic crises.

Perhaps the rapidity and abruptness of the cycles change also allows us to see the first gaps that arise in this unipolar form of world organization.

Earlier we mentioned another element that we would like to discuss as well, namely the process resulting from the replacement of the gold standard by the dollar one. But the dollar model today seems to be showing weakness for the first time, and this is not the least important in the matter of the unipolar system’s crisis.

The recent events in Argentina could be a good example. Payment of Chinese bills in the currency of this country is encouraged. Argentina’s imports from China account for over a fifth of the total imports. Let’s add here the imports from Brazil, its main trading partner, which also gets paid in local currency since the payment is supported by mutually beneficial exchange rates. All together this amounts to almost half the value of Argentine imports of goods and services, which will subsequently have to be sold in currencies other than the dollar. We see the same thing in relations with Russia, the MIR payment system, etc.

It seems that the first steps have been taken to move away from the dollar system. With the expansion of such measures, it will suffer even more damage.

A multilateral world with developed regionalism is still a long way off, but its image is already beginning to emerge.

Advances in trade and the subsequent transformations in the sphere of currency circulation have not yet had any effect on unipolarity. The US major power still has a lot of leverage left. Not only due to the geopolitical location of the transnational corporations’ management, but also due to the preservation of military dominance. We also talk about the cultural aspects of dominance, reinforced by the unique dynamism of digital and, in particular, communication capital. On the example of the capital’s forms, one can observe a tendency towards a change in the accumulation axis. The hegemony that Gramsci spoke of seems to be growing stronger through a never-before-seen intertwining of political, economic, and communicational forces.

However, a revision of the boundaries apparently is going on at the same time. In conclusion, we can mention three things that cannot be doubted:

• First: the onset of the unipolar world’s crisis is connected with the fall of Yankee imperialism.
• Second (dialectically related to the first): there is a shift in the axes of power to other spaces, such as the territory of the BRICS countries, which have already more than 10 countries among them.
• Third: the second wave of progressivism is underway in this region; although this wave appears to be weaker than the first, it can claim to break the bonds of dependency because, as we have said, “the necessity forces to” and decolonization processes can contribute to this if the capitalist elites do not take any action.

I would like to end the speech with the words of Vijay Prashad from his recent interview for Mate Amargo paper:

“Concepts of regionalism and multilateralism dominate discussions in the Global South, not new hegemony or multipolarity matters. Neither China nor Russia have shown any interest in a new consensus in Beijing or Moscow, nor do they seek to create a world order under the rule of “one master” 1 (the latter expression is a paraphrase of Putin’s words).

Many thanks once again!