by Timothy Dirte

Humankind is entering a new epoch – the epoch of the emergence of viable alternative forces against US economic and military hegemony. It is the beginning of the epoch of multipolarity. This new development in world history is objectively progressive for the international working class as another weapon against US economic and military hegemony over the world. Therefore, multipolarity must be backed by Communists.

The epoch of multipolarity was kicked off with the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) in the Ukraine, a response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization‘s (NATO‘s) historical campaign to encircle and Balkanize Russia. This campaign has proceeded for the last 30 years, despite former US Secretary of State James Baker‘s promise upon meeting Gorbachev in 1990, where Baker stated that NATO would not expand ―one inch eastward‖ from the boundaries it held at the time. The SMO was the first substantial fightback against Western imperialist hegemony in the post-Soviet era, and it opened the door to a new era of struggle against NATO and its proxy forces around the world.

The Russian Special Military Operation did not come out of the blue nor was it an act of Russian aggression. It was in response to the installation of a pro-fascist government in the Ukraine with aspirations to arm itself with nuclear weapons against Russia. This pro-fascist government was installed under the direction of the US State Department during the Euromaidan coup of 2014, which overthrew the legally elected pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych. Only seventy-three years earlier, the Soviet people, both Russian and Ukrainian, had fought together against the fascist menace during World War II.

The Special Military Operation occurred within the context of other geopolitical shifts, both gradual and sudden. People‘s China had already taken the lead through the Belt and Road initiative in developing countries which had been exploited and underdeveloped by Western imperialism. This reduced these initiative countries‘ dependence on trade agreements with the United States and its allies, thus bringing them out from under the thumb of NATO and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Belt and Road initiative was accompanied by the formation of substantial geopolitical alliances. Foremost among these alliances in the present era is BRICS, which is an acronym standing for the names of the countries which originally entered the alliance: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS alliance was first formed in 2009, and, despite any claims to the contrary, it has objectively worked to undermine US/NATO hegemony. The BRICS alliance fosters trade and economic cooperation among the antiimperialist countries of the world.

One of the objective outcomes of this cooperation is the gradual de-dollarization of the world economy. De-dollarization refers to the shift away from the US dollar as international the de currency facto of exchange. The historical use of the US dollar throughout the world has given the United States economic leverage over developing countries through fostering a dependence on the American financial system. Dedollarization is being achieved through a number of measures undertaken by BRICS, one of which is the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which was established by treaty during the Sixth BRICS Summit in Fortaleza and Brasilia in July of 2014. The CRA protects against US economic coercion which has in the past been enacted through measures such as sanctions and trade embargoes.

De-dollarization weakening of means the Western imperialism. Wherever the US dollar goes, there the American flag is planted. Historically, the Marshall Plan, which was purported to be the path to the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, was in fact a means by which the United States first expanded its economic domination to a worldwide extent. In reality, the Marshall Plan created more markets for the US to sell its goods. De-dollarization is part of the process that is ending the unipolar world which was inaugurated by the Marshall Plan.

In addition to taking the lead in the anti-imperialist economic system, People‘s China has also emerged as a leader in the geopolitical landscape through their brokering of international diplomacy without the involvement of the Western imperialist countries. This is exemplified through China‘s role in creating the agreement and rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, as well as the Declaration.

The Beijing Declaration was an agreement arranged by China involving 14 leading representative groups of the Palestinian people. It united these groups under the representation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to work together towards a solution of the Israel-Palestine crisis. This solution consists of the creation of an independent Palestinian state with United Nations representation.

There are certain sects who masquerade as Marxist-Leninists that oppose the development of multipolarity because it is not directly building socialism. They allege that those who see the strategic utility of multipolarity in fighting US imperialism are claiming that it will directly bring socialism. Their arguments create a ―straw-man which they then proceed to knock down. This position is disingenuous, since no principled Communists have ever stated that multipolarity will bring socialism.

Communists understand that the class struggle However, is primary. anti-imperialist struggles, such as those which have been brought into focus by the emergence of multipolarity, serve to set the stage for the victory of the working class. Multipolarity is a path for nations to re-assert their sovereignty against the puppet regimes which have been set up under the control of Western imperialist forces throughout the preceding decades.

The proponents of multipolarity are correct in concluding that a weakening of US economic leverage in world affairs will inevitably reduce proclivity towards the US‘ military interventionism. As Marxist-Leninist theory explains, bourgeois correctly foreign policy is fundamentally linked with the drive of capitalism for markets. With a reduced capacity to expand in foreign markets, imperialist countries can be expected to similarly lessen their military intervention. Thus, as a result of this reduced economic coercion and interventionism, military international uprisings are more likely to succeed and the road to socialism will become more accessible.

On the other hand, there seems to be a certain ideological tendency among those in the anti-imperialist movement who idolize non-Communist theocratic or bourgeois states that are in the forefront in fighting US imperialism. Our support of these countries in their fight against US economic and military hegemony does not preclude the Communist criticism of certain reactionary domestic policies they hold. It is worth noting that some of these theocratic and bourgeois states have a long history in physically attacking Communists and banning Communist parties in their respective countries. Furthermore, we recognize that, first and foremost, the loyalty of bourgeois states is to their own economic ruling class, not to their working class.

In conclusion, while multipolarity does not represent the direct path to the victory of the working class and the establishment of socialism, it is the first step in destroying the Western imperialist hegemony which has previously been unchallenged since the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. Thus, the correct dialectical view for Communists throughout the world is to support the development of multipolarity as another tool in the struggle of the international proletariat against monopoly capital.