Events in recent years, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza, signify a qualitative change in the US-dominated world order. Imperialism has begun its transformation to a new stage: Hyper-Imperialism. This is imperialism conducted in an exaggerated and kinetic way, whilst also subject to the constraints that the declining empire has foisted on itself. The spasmodic quality of its exertion is felt by the millions of Congolese, Palestinians, Somalis, Syrians, and Yemeni – whose heads instinctively jerk for cover at sudden sounds of the over US$ 2 trillion dollar military spending of the US-led Military Bloc.

Over the past century, there have been major shifts in the debates and theories concerning the question of development. In the post-war era, this evolution can be divided into four eras: the era of modernisation theory, the era of the New International Economic Order, the era of neoliberal globalisation, and the current transitional era following the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This dossier examines the historical and current thinking on development and offers an outline for a new socialist development theory.

ചൈനയിൽ അതിദാരിദ്ര്യം നിർമാർജനം ചെയ്യപ്പെട്ടിരിക്കുന്നതായി ചൈനീസ് സർക്കാർ പ്രഖ്യാപിച്ചത് 2021 ഫെബ്രുവരി 25-നാണ്. 141 കോടി ജനങ്ങളുള്ള ഒരു രാജ്യം കൈവരിച്ച ഈ ചരിത്രവിജയം, 1949-ലെ ചൈനീസ് വിപ്ലവം മുതൽ ഏഴു ദശകക്കാലം നീണ്ട പ്രക്രിയയുടെ ഫലമാണ്. സോഷ്യലിസം കെട്ടിപ്പടുക്കുന്നതിന്റെ അടിസ്ഥാനപരമായ ഒരു ഘട്ടം എന്ന നിലയിൽ ചൈന അതിദാരിദ്ര്യം ഇല്ലാതാക്കിയ പ്രക്രിയയെ വിശകലനം ചെയ്യുകയാണ് ഈ പഠനം.

Short-term pain, long-term gain defines the dangerous escalation by the United States and its Western allies against Russia and China. What is striking about the US’s agenda is that it seeks to prevent an inevitable historical process – Eurasian integration. The historical fact of Eurasian integration threatens the economic and political hegemony of the US and Northern Atlantic elites. These threats drive the New Cold War and dangerous attempts to use any means to ‘weaken’ both Russia and China.

We are witnessing a dangerous political, economic, and military escalation by the United States and its Western allies against Russia and China. The United States seeks to prevent a historical process that seems inevitable, the process of Eurasian integration, which threatens the primacy of the Euro-Atlantic elites. To secure global hegemony, the United States is committed to the pursuit of global nuclear primacy and is willing to use any means to ‘weaken’ both Russia and China – even at the risk of destroying the planet.

As part of its policy to dominate the American hemisphere, the United States organised the 9th Summit of the Americas, excluding Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Although Washington tirelessly seeks to impose a Global Monroe Doctrine on the planet, the summit was a fiasco. Down the road, however, the People’s Summit for Democracy flourished; here, thousands of people celebrated the democratic spirit which emerges from the struggles of peasants, workers, students, feminists, and all the people excluded from the gaze of the powerful.

The decline of the US empire, a geopolitical transition already in full swing, and the shaping of a multipolar world open up a new series of possibilities and discussions for Latin America and the Caribbean about the region’s possibility for autonomy in a transition away from dependence on capitalist countries that accounts for the needs of the majority.

It is perhaps fitting that US President Joe Biden arrived in Glasgow for COP26 on the climate catastrophe with 85 cars in tow. Tragically, the COP26 process has been swept into the matrix of dangerous geopolitical tensions, driven largely by the US in its quest to prevent China’s scientific and technological advancement. The debate driven by the West has been to malign developing countries and blame them for the climate catastrophe rather than focus on the necessary energy transition. Given the improbability of a serious discussion about climate finance taking place, it is likely that COP26 will be a failure.

On 25 February 2021, the Chinese government announced that extreme poverty had been abolished in China, a country of 1.4 billion people. This historic victory is a culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949. This study looks into the process through which China was able to eradicate extreme poverty as a fundamental step in constructing socialism.

As the second anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war nears, public support for the war has reached an all-time low. Nonetheless, NATO is escalating tensions along Russia’s border with a four-month military exercise involving 90,000 troops from 32 countries. For the Global North, it is not the Ukrainian people’s wellbeing that matters but the geostrategic necessity to ‘weaken’ Russia and China. In reality, there will be no military triumph in Ukraine, which is why the war must end and negotiations commenced.

This February marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, when Hugo Chávez took office in 1999. In 2024, Venezuela will hold its sixth general election since that time. Already the US has begun to delegitimise the vote and destabilise the country with the reimposition of sanctions. Such measures are illegal as they are imposed unilaterally, in contravention of the UN Charter. As one US official recently stated, Washington believes it is ‘the police of the world’.

Tectonic changes are taking place in the world, accelerated by the war in Ukraine and the rapidly escalating genocide in Palestine. These changes are shaped, on the one hand, by the Global North’s loss of economic power alongside its increasing militarisation and, on the other, by the Global South’s growing political demand for sovereignty and economic development. To understand these changes and the Global North’s bewilderment about the new mood in the Global South, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research produced dossier no. 72, The Churning of the Global Order, based on original research carried out with Global South Insights.

On 11–12 January, the International Court of Justice held public hearings on whether Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The case was initiated by South Africa, which filed an 84-page complaint alleging that Israel violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention of 1948. Several Global South states have supported South Africa’s initiative, while the Global North’s political class has doubled down on its support for Israel. The world awaits the court’s verdict.

After the end of the Cold War, socialism suffered significant global setbacks. Despite this, a new wave of socialism has gradually emerged. Through decades of reform and opening up, China has incorporated a market economy into its socialist system. China’s rise has generated tremendous interest in the country’s path of development and the socialist market economy. As capitalism faces its most severe crisis in a century, there are opportunities for a new wave of socialist development.

Israeli armed forces have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, with Gaza City besieged, residents fleeing, and resources being made incredibly scarce. The US is blocking all calls for ceasefire in Gaza, much like it blocks Cuba from sovereign development, refusing to end its criminal economic embargo. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish asked Israeli soldiers of humanity, if they are capable of seeing the Palestinian as human.

The inequality that capitalism inevitably produces has created a world in which the richest 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the population on the planet. These twin trends have been going on for years, indeed for decades, woven together by the laws of capitalism in crisis. The task of explaining the crisis and understanding its fundamental laws is necessary to go beyond superficial manifestations and discover the essence of the entire process.

A period of high growth rates for African countries from 2000–2014 led to the emergence of an ‘Africa Rising’ narrative in Western media. However, the growth rate of manufacturing has consistently lagged – in short, Africa has experienced growth without industrialisation.

The workers’ struggle of 1953 in Mattancherry in Kochi is an important, and yet relatively less documented, saga in the history of the working class movement in Kerala. The 75-day strike that the workers of Cochin Port waged culminated in police firing and the martyrdom of three workers. But the ruling powers ultimately could not prevent the workers from winning their demands.

Dossier no. 68 presents an analysis of the 1973 coup against Chile and its effects on the Third World and non-aligned countries. It was the Allende government’s policies to nationalise copper that spurred the coup, but the policy to nationalise copper was part of a broader conversation in the Third World to create a New International Economic Order which would restructure the neocolonial international economic system along democratic lines and give weight to the ideas and peoples of the Third World. In that sense, the US-driven coup against Chile was precisely a coup against the Third World.

This dossier analyses the role of Marxist dependency theory today as an important scientific tool to understand the processes of development and underdevelopment, the current anti-democratic and fascist trends, and emancipation processes in the Global South.