Editorial: G20 Summit-U.S. has less leverage against imperialist rivals

The downward spiral of U.S. imperialism was exposed yet again at the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in New Delhi, India. European bosses, along with capitalist bosses from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, refused to back a statement blaming Russian imperialists for the war in Ukraine (Politico 9/14). Meanwhile, the Chinese and Russian heads of state snubbed the summit by sending junior officials in their place. They were busy recruiting more oil-rich, climate-hostile capitalist regimes into their BRICS alliance, a growing threat to U.S. dominance.

The G20, founded in 1999 in the wake of economic crises in Asia, is a working group of the most powerful capitalist economies. It’s dedicated to making the global profit system more stable for the capitalist class. But it was doomed to fail from the start, since any system driven by short-term maximum profit is intrinsically unstable. In a period of rising inter-imperialist rivalry and coming world war, “multilateral” coalitions like the G20 are useless for solving international crises, whether it’s Covid or climate or a proxy war in Ukraine. Workers everywhere must reject all imperialists. The only side our class can afford to take is the communist side!
G20 backslide on Russia is a blow to U.S.

In addressing the U.S.-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, the world leaders wound up with a soft call for “territorial integrity” and “peace and stability”--a big step back from last year’s G20, which “deplored” Russian “aggression” against Ukraine.

Ukraine’s bosses rejected the resolution outright
The reality is that the U.S. bosses no longer have the leverage to use the G20 to attack Russia (Le Monde, 9/10). As Ukraine’s military counteroffensive stalls, Russian bosses are out-maneuvering sanctions by trafficking oil to the international market across the Northern Sea. Placing oil profits over workers’ interests, they’re using non-ice class tankers in icy waters, increasing the risk of a pollution disaster (FT, 9/15).
Imperialists jockey for influence

In an effort to shore up world leaders' confidence in the U.S., India Prime Minister Narendra Modi was ushered in to present the U.S.-backed rail-and-port deal to connect India to the Middle East and from there to Europe. This Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor is a direct challenge to the Chinese bosses’ Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Economic Times, 9/12).

China’s ruling class, playing up its strength as the world’s second-largest economy, created the BRI to offer an alternative to Western debt traps for emerging capitalist economies. It provides direct investment in roads, ports, hospitals, industries, and other sectors. The debtor states’ bosses, driven by their own capitalist need for profit, are more interested in securing Chinese capital loans than completing infrastructure projects (The Print, 1/27). More than ten years in and after spending $240 billion in 22 countries, the BRI has saddled these economies with enormous debt and has yet to build a whole lot of “road” or “bridges.”

War and climate refugees
As the G20 trumpeted the inclusion of the African Union as a full member, thousands of workers were killed by massive flooding in Libya. In Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, there could be an additional 143 million climate migrants by 2050 (Brookings, 7/25/19). Capitalist corporations in cahoots with the G20 nations are responsible for 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But despite a summer filled with global climate disasters, the G20 killed a resolution for a more aggressive phaseout of fossil fuels (MSN, 9/11).

Kenya President William Ruto called out representatives of the world’s three largest emitters: China, the U.S., and the European Union. “Those who produce the garbage,” Ruto said, “refuse to pay their bills” (PBS, 9/5). But French President Emmanuel Macron punched back against “this rising state of mind” that “climate change is only the responsibility of the West” (TIME, 9/10). With the biggest emitters all addicted to short-term profits from fossil fuels, it’s clear that capitalism has no solution for global warming.

The devastation of climate change is felt most by Black, Latin, and Indigenous women, men, and children. Workers can’t wait for or survive on the bosses’ promises. The salvation of our class will never come from capitalist rulers, but from militant fightback and communist revolution.

Communist cooperation is the only alternative
To deal with climate change, imperialist forced displacement, and the host of issues bred by capitalist accumulation and competition, Progressive Labor Party must harness the one tool that can solve the centuries-old problems wrought by the profit system: the collective genius of the working class. Once the international working class has seized state power, first on our agenda will be abolishing money, the material basis for commodity production and racist and sexist inequality.

Communist global summits will make the “last first,” ensuring that regions of the world with abundant food stores and manufactured goods redistribute them to workers with less.  We will enlist countless doctors, nurses, engineers, and teachers from around the world into service–without pay–to help and empower workers in every corner of the globe, and to expand human potential for all ages, from infancy to the elderly. Our meetings, conferences, and discussions today are the seeds of these future summits for our class. Join us!