• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays
 | Mereka Yang Terusir Dari Tanahnya Those Chased Away from Their Land 1960 Credit Amrus Natalsya a member of the Indonesian revolutionary cultural organisation Lekra | MR Online Mereka Yang Terusir Dari Tanahnya (Those Chased Away from Their Land), 1960. Credit: Amrus Natalsya, a member of the Indonesian revolutionary cultural organisation Lekra.

Our revolutions are for the survival and development of human civilization: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2024)

By Vijay Prashad (Posted Oct 25, 2024)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on October 24, 2024 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |
Culture, Human Rights, Movements, RevolutionsGlobalNewswireTricontinental Newsletter

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Next year is the seventieth anniversary of the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955 and attended by heads of government and state from twenty-nine African and Asian countries. Indonesia’s President Sukarno (1901—1970), who had led the freedom movement in Indonesia against Dutch colonialism, opened the conference with a speech entitled ‘Let a New Asia and a New Africa be Born!’, in which he lamented that, while human technical and scientific progress had advanced, the politics of the world remained in a state of disarray. In the seventy years since then (roughly the global average life expectancy), much has been lost and much gained of what was called the Bandung Spirit. Humans have yet to harness the immense power they have in their hands.

The Promethean fire wielded against the people of Africa and Asia in their anti-colonial struggles and against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had created fear. ‘The life of man’, Sukarno said, ‘is corroded and made bitter by fear. Fear of the future, fear of the hydrogen bomb, fear of ideologies’. This fear, Sukarno warned, is more dangerous than weaponry because it drives humans ‘to act foolishly, to act thoughtlessly, to act dangerously’. Yet, he continued, ‘we must not be guided by these fears, because fear is an acid which etches man’s actions into curious patterns. Be guided by hopes and determination, be guided by ideals, and yes, be guided by dreams!’.

I Made Djirna Indonesia Totem Totem 2021

I Made Djirna (Indonesia), Totem Totem, 2021.

The agenda that emerged from the Bandung Conference was clear:

  1. To end colonialism and to democratise the international political system, including the United Nations.
  2. To dismantle the neocolonial economic structure, which promoted the dependency of the formerly colonised world.
  3. To overhaul the social and cultural systems that promoted wretched hierarchies—especially racism—and to build a world society of mutual understanding and international solidarity.

From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, the Bandung Spirit defined the struggles of the Third World Project and made great gains, such as delegitimising colonialism and racism as well as attempting to build the New International Economic Order. But in the vortex of the debt crisis of the 1980s and with the eventual collapse of the USSR, that project died. This collapse can be dated to the International Meeting on Cooperation and Development, which was held in Cancún, Mexico, in October 1981 to discuss the Brandt Report. The meeting failed to produce any substantial commitments and was followed, in August 1982, by Mexico’s default on its external debts.

Third World Project

In 2005, fifty years after the Bandung Conference, representatives of eighty-nine countries gathered in Indonesia for the Asian-African Summit of 2005, where they drafted the Declaration of the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership, but the meeting did not gain much visibility, nor was it taken seriously by the ‘international community’. Indonesia had recently emerged out of a ghastly coup regime that ran the country from 1965 to 1998, and then from 1998 it floundered on the rocks of neoliberal policies, including a deepened relationship with the United States. The Indonesian government that hosted the 2005 conference included the forces that had participated in the bloody coup of 1965 against Sukarno. It was not a propitious way to commemorate the original conference, nor to imagine a new agenda for the Global South. Two years prior, the United States had entered a major, illegal war against Iraq, having already invaded Afghanistan, and it appeared at that time that U.S. unipolarity would remain unchallenged indefinitely. Indonesia and the other powers of the Global South were not prepared to challenge the United States. That is why the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership announced at the 2005 summit was merely a hollow echo of the principles of the original Bandung Project, without much emendation, and therefore without any enthusiasm.

Much has changed since both 1955 and 2005. In order to understand the character of these changes, we turn to one of China’s most important left intellectuals, Wang Hui, who is himself a product of the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Bandung Spirit. In our latest dossier, , Wang Hui reflects on the importance of reading the history of China and the Global South from their own dynamics, and not in relation to the West as the default point of reference. One hundred and seven years after the October Revolution in the Tsarist empire, seventy-five years after the Chinese Revolution, and nearly seventy years after Bandung, as China and other large states of the Global South position themselves as major powers in the world, Wang Hui’s analysis helps us dive beneath the surface level of events and produce an in-depth theoretical explanation for the rise of China and the Global South.

Wang Hui

Three points from Wang Hui’s theoretically rich text are of particular interest to this discussion of a world that seeks a new Bandung:

  1. Revolutions in the periphery. Wang Hui writes that the modern world emerged from two different class-oriented cycles of revolutions. The first, the bourgeois liberal revolutionary cycle, began in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, and the second, the proletarian, anti-colonial, socialist revolutionary cycle, was sparked by the Chinese Revolution of 1911. The second cycle, which drew inspiration more from the Paris Commune of 1871 than from the French Revolution, took place in peripheral areas, in colonised areas, and in the ‘realms of hunger’ (as Pier Paolo Pasolini put it in his 1964 poem ‘L’uomo di Bandung’ or ‘Bandung Man’). In these ‘realms of hunger’, the revolutions formed part of a long process of defeating feudal inheritances, building productive forces, and trying as rapidly as possible to birth a socialist society. Meanwhile, no revolutions took place in the realms of full bellies.
  2. New concepts for the periphery. Wang Hui looks carefully at the way words are used to describe the Chinese revolutionary process and finds that some that are ‘borrowed’ from the experiences of other countries (Europe’s political history, Marxism, the October Revolution, etc.) are nevertheless developed based on the historical unfolding of China’s own revolution. This is exactly what occurred in other revolutionary experiences, whether in Cuba or in Vietnam. Even those concepts that were borrowed, he points out, are not transplanted without being transformed; they go through, as Wang Hui notes, an act of ‘political displacement’. The Chinese revolutionary process borrowed terms such as ‘people’s war’ and ‘Soviet’, but the actual history of the Chinese people’s war and of the Jiangxi Soviet (1931—1934) is no mirror image of the events which those terms originally described. It is in these experiences, rooted in a different cultural world and sometimes in a different time, that the concepts can be enriched and metamorphosed.
  3. The post-metropolitan era. Wang Hui argues that we are not merely in a post-colonial period, but a post-metropolitan era. This post-metropolitan condition refers to the fact that the former ‘peasant nations’ are now slowly becoming the focal point of world development, growth, and culture. It is China and the Global South, Wang Hui notes, that are ‘the epochal forces that propelled’ this transition. Yet, the transition is incomplete. The West’s control over finance, resources, science, and technology has weakened, but its control over information and military power has not. That military force, a ghostly presence, threatens the world with great destruction to maintain the influence and power of the metropolitan or core countries.
Dia al Azzawi Iraq Sabra and Shatila Massacre 198283

Dia al-Azzawi (Iraq), Sabra and Shatila Massacre, 1982—83.

The journey to a new Bandung has already begun, but it will take time to germinate. Eventually, when we have properly understood the post-metropolitan world, we will be able to develop a new development theory and a new approach to international relations. The gun will not be the first instrument picked up to settle disputes.

In 2016, Hawa Gamodi, a Libyan poet and editor of a children’s magazine, wrote about what poetry can do in the place of carnage:

The world has become a graveyard
But the sun rises
The breeze caresses a girl’s cheek
The sea does not forsake its blue
The swallows tell me of my childhood
Hidden beneath their wings
And somewhere a boy foretastes a kiss from his lover’s lips

These are beautiful images of the other side of devastation, pictures painted in words by a poet who has seen the bombs fall and guns fire at ghosts but kill children. ‘I am writing you’, she continues, ‘my resistance to the ruin / I paint a glorious world / Illuminated by a poem / That they await’.

In some ways, that is the best way to describe these newsletters (of which we have published 348 since 1 March 2018): resistance to the ruin.

Warmly,

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Tricontinental Newsletter
Functioning as a U.S. proxy, Taiwan continues interference in politics of small Pacific Island Nation of Kiribati
John Bellamy Foster Book Launch: “The Dialectics of Ecology”
  • Also by Vijay Prashad

    • The Global North lives off intellectual rents: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad June 27, 2025
    • Despite the pain in the World, socialism is not a distant Utopia: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad June 20, 2025
    • The people want peace and progress, not war and waste: The Twenty-Fourth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad June 13, 2025
    • Hundreds of millions are dying of hunger: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 30, 2025
  • Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

    • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
    • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
    • Preface January 01, 2022
    • Introduction January 01, 2022
    • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
    • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
    • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

    Books By Vijay Prashad

    • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
    • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

    Monthly Review Essays

    • The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle
      Iker Suarez  | A banner at a memorial rally for victims of the 2014 massacre of migrants at Tarajal 2021 | MR Online

      Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone.[1] On June 2022, the border fence of Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, was witness to a massacre that killed or disappeared over a hundred African migrants.[2]  A recent BBC investigation revealed that Greek border guards systematically repeal immigrants already on Greek […]

    Lost & Found

    • Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the New Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution
      Hugo Chávez  | Mural of Chávez in Caracas Univision | MR Online

      On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

    Trending

    • The Tactical Failure of Israel/U.S. Attacks on Iran
      The tactical failure of Israel/U.S. attacks on Iran is leading both to a strategic disaster
    • Surveillance
      The United surveillance States of America
    • Paul Sweezy
      Harvard. Renewal of Faculty Instructorship. Case of Paul Sweezy, 1940
    • An East Asian man writes on a white board. To his right is a text bubble on the board that reads, in all capitals, "MACHINES WILL NEVER THINK AS HUMANS CAN."
      No, You Aren’t Hallucinating, the Corporate Plan for AI Is Dangerous
    • A 2010 advertisement for Blender, a concept store, created by advertising agency Rafineri
      The everyday horror of modern sexism
    • Brinda Karat in Sandeshkhali, West Bengal, 2015
      Intellectuals and neo-fascism
    • Grocery (Photo: Bruce Dupree)
      Is it time for a public option for groceries?
    • The Grim Arithmetic of 377, 000 Missing Palestinians
      The grim arithmetic of 377, 000 missing Palestinians
    • The Global North Lives Off Intellectual Rents
      The Global North lives off intellectual rents: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2025)
    • Karl Marx in America by Andrew Hartman. University of Chicago Press, 2025. 600 pages.
      Marx: The Fourth Boom

    Popular (last 30 days)

    • Airbus A330-243F cargo aircraft
      Russian and Chinese Military cargo planes shuttling weapons, missiles, supplies into Iran
    • Trump
      Mainstream media ignore Trump’s planned Office of Remigration, a term for ethnic cleansing
    • AP Photo / IRNA/ Mostafa Qotbi
      Iran now first line of defense of BRICS and the Global South
    • Plutonian Mac: December 2017
      Official: U.S.-Israeli deception gave Iran false security ahead of attack
    • New Pan-African Path
      Forging a new Pan-African path: Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, and the Land of the Upright People
    • Natanz, Iran
      Exclusive: Iran given advance notice as U.S. insisted attack on nuclear sites is ‘one-off’
    • Figure 2 – Credit: Matt Kenard / Declassified 2023
      The urgency of abolishing Britain’s colonial bases in Cyprus
    • A black and white photograph of Paulo Freire later in life. Freire is bald, bearded, and wears large eyeglasses.
      Pedagogy and Class Power: Reclaiming Freire in an Age of Reaction
    • A building damaged in an Israeli strike on Tehran, on 13 June 2025 (Atta Kenner/AFP)
      Exclusive: U.S. quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack
    • Activist Greta Thunberg stands near the stage during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Mannheim, Germany, on Dec. 6, 2024. Uwe Anspach | AP
      From media darling to persona non grata: Greta Thunberg’s journey

    RSS MR Press News

    • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) June 13, 2025
    • The legacy of a Sardinian original (Roses for Gramsci reviewed in ‘Counterpunch’) June 13, 2025
    • LISTEN: Gramsci’s lasting contributions (Andy Merrifield on ‘Against the Grain’) June 6, 2025
    • Why did Marxism fall into such deep crisis in the West? (Western Marxism reviewed in ‘Socialism and Democracy’) June 5, 2025
    • A remarkable personal journey WATCH: Andy Merrifield, author of Roses for Gramsci, at The Marxist Education Project June 4, 2025

    RSS Climate & Capitalism

    • Can carbon dioxide removal save the climate? June 29, 2025
    • Global heating isn’t just getting worse. It is getting worse faster. June 19, 2025
    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2025 June 17, 2025
    • 1.5 is dead: How hot will the Earth get? June 5, 2025
    • Carbon capture company emits more than it captures June 3, 2025

     

    RSS Monthly Review

    • June 2025 (Volume 77, Number 2) June 1, 2025 The Editors
    • The Trump Doctrine and the New MAGA Imperialism June 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
    • The War in Ukraine—A History: How the U.S. Exploited Fractures in the Post-Soviet Order June 1, 2025 Thomas I. Palley
    • Big Pharma and Monopoly Capital: Four Dynamics in the Decline of Innovation June 1, 2025 Jia Liu
    • What’s going on June 1, 2025 Marge Piercy

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Creative Commons License

    Monthly Review Foundation
    134 W 29TH ST STE 706
    New York NY 10001-5304

    Tel: 212-691-2555