The Unequal Exchange Podcast

The following is an essay written by Arghiri Emmanuel for "Socialist Thought and Practice: A Yugoslav Monthly" (1976). It is a summary of many of his positions on outlook on the Periphery's movement towards development and socialism, and the inability of capitalism to solve underdevelopment.

For the full essay, see here: https://anti-imperialist.net/blog/2018/07/30/the-socialist-project-in-a-disintegrated-capitalist-world/

Torkil's review of Zak Cope's book "The Wealth of (Some) Nations": Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer.

Torkil's review of Zak Cope's book "The Wealth of (Some) Nations": Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer.

Here, Rachel reads Emmanuel's preface to his second major work and classic "Profit and Crises", detailing the major contradictions in market economies which lead to Crisis.

Thanks to @FuknSlammer on Twitter for the thumbnail design.

Why are we supporting the PCCO (Congolese Communist Party)'s call for solidarity with Professor Giscard Loando? Watch here to learn more about the details about this neocolonial attack on communists in the Congo. This is part of our ongoing solidarity work with the Communist resistance in the Congo.

To read more: https://pcco.info/accueil/aux-amis-de-professeur-giscard-loando-bakombo

To contribute, click here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-congolese-professor-giscard-loando?qid=304abafe65ff7ddcb1ca12b8cdc23711

The Global South countries face extremely unfair trade when engaging with the Global North, because the West charges high prices for their products and the rest of the world is left with low remuneration due to their low wages. This creates an unequal exchange and low terms of trade for the Global South. This situation has attempted to be reversed by many proposals from the Non-Aligned Movement and New International Economic Order, but one unique solution has been proposed by Arghiri Emmanuel: a tax on exports. This could bring the equilibrium price of the Global South's products up, and lower the costs for their products. It's a solution worth exploring to address the inequality the Global South faces.

Here, we offer an audio reading of Arghiri Emmanuel's Preface to "Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism", by the Manifest-Communist Working Group of Denmark (Manifest–Kommunistisk Arbejdsgruppe) from 1986. Emmanuel discusses his perspective on the prospects of a proletarian revolution in the age of the labor aristocracy.

To find a digital version of this text from "Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism", visit here: https://anti-imperialist.net/2019/11/13/unequal-exchange-and-the-prospects-of-socialism/

Here's an audio version of the text, "What Should Communists In the Imperialist Countries Do?", written by the Manifest–Kommunistisk Arbejdsgruppe (Manifest Communist Working Group of Denmark), with the English translation published in 1986.

To find a digital version of this text from "Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism", visit here: https://anti-imperialist.net/2019/11/13/unequal-exchange-and-the-prospects-of-socialism/

Originally published by our friends at Negation Liberation Front here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZajc6Y0TRxpdOvjcIqRKbyaUVPl38zNL&si=7KkCkakl_AsBFJHG

https://anti-imperialist.net/blog/2019/11/13/unequal-exchange-and-the-prospects-of-socialism/
In November 1969, Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, published an exchange between Arghiri Emmanuel and Charles Bettelheim, in which the two Marxian economists debated the possibility of international solidarity between the working classes of the imperialist countries and those of the semi- or neo-colonies. Emmanuel held deep reservations about such alliances, while Bettelheim maintained that they were both feasible and necessary. In the decades since, Bettelheim’s position has become the majority opinion within many progressive and revolutionary movements. Recent years, however, have seen a renewed interest in Emmanuel’s arguments. The collection Turning Money into Rebellion tells the dramatic and little-known story of a particularly committed contingent of Western European revolutionaries deeply influenced by Emmanuel’s ideas.
As the debate was playing out in the pages of Le Monde, a small group of Danish Maoists took the unusual step of breaking relations with the Communist Party of China over these very questions. In 1970, they formed an underground organization of highly disciplined cadres who would implement what they saw as the political implications of Emmanuel’s position: to forego the fight for socialism in the immediate future in Denmark, and turn instead toward the third world. From 1972 on, they devoted their efforts to political solidarity work through a legal charity that they founded, Clothes to Africa, and a criminal cell—unknown to most members of either the group or the charity—that carried out bank robberies to help fund progressive forces fighting for revolution in Palestine, South Africa, and elsewhere.
Over the next twenty years, the robbers, calling themselves the Manifest–Communist Working Group (M-KA), channeled millions of dollars to such movements around the world. They never tried to justify any given robbery in political terms, through statements or communiqués, preferring that police believe it was the work of ordinary thieves. This extreme expression of solidarity derived from the group’s analysis of Danish society, and their belief that the Danish working class as a whole was too complacent to take any interest in international solidarity with the revolutionary proletariat in the neo- and semi-colonies, because they had been “bribed” by imperialist super-profits. Following their arrest in 1989, they became known as the Blekinge Street Gang, after the site of their hideout in Copenhagen.
Today it might seem that only specialist scholars and activists would take any interest in an organization like the M-KA, never mind read an anthology of essays, interviews, and documents detailing their ideology and activities. After all, such ultraleft groupuscules abounded in Europe and North America in the 1970s, and despite the sensational headlines they generated, their real influence was, in the main, negligible. The M-KA never had more than fifteen members; its predecessor, the Communist Working Circle (KAK), had twenty-five. What makes them historically noteworthy, and Turning Money into Rebellion a riveting read, is their unusual fusion of academic theories of unequal exchange with a revolutionary praxis of armed expropriations, used to fund revolutionary movements across the neo- and semi-colonies.
monthlyreview(dot)org/2017/09/01/theorists-and-thieves/

Originally published by our friends at Negation Liberation Front here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZajc6Y0TRxpdOvjcIqRKbyaUVPl38zNL&si=7KkCkakl_AsBFJHG

https://anti-imperialist.net/blog/2019/11/13/unequal-exchange-and-the-prospects-of-socialism/
In November 1969, Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, published an exchange between Arghiri Emmanuel and Charles Bettelheim, in which the two Marxian economists debated the possibility of international solidarity between the working classes of the imperialist countries and those of the semi- or neo-colonies. Emmanuel held deep reservations about such alliances, while Bettelheim maintained that they were both feasible and necessary. In the decades since, Bettelheim’s position has become the majority opinion within many progressive and revolutionary movements. Recent years, however, have seen a renewed interest in Emmanuel’s arguments. The collection Turning Money into Rebellion tells the dramatic and little-known story of a particularly committed contingent of Western European revolutionaries deeply influenced by Emmanuel’s ideas.
As the debate was playing out in the pages of Le Monde, a small group of Danish Maoists took the unusual step of breaking relations with the Communist Party of China over these very questions. In 1970, they formed an underground organization of highly disciplined cadres who would implement what they saw as the political implications of Emmanuel’s position: to forego the fight for socialism in the immediate future in Denmark, and turn instead toward the third world. From 1972 on, they devoted their efforts to political solidarity work through a legal charity that they founded, Clothes to Africa, and a criminal cell—unknown to most members of either the group or the charity—that carried out bank robberies to help fund progressive forces fighting for revolution in Palestine, South Africa, and elsewhere.
Over the next twenty years, the robbers, calling themselves the Manifest–Communist Working Group (M-KA), channeled millions of dollars to such movements around the world. They never tried to justify any given robbery in political terms, through statements or communiqués, preferring that police believe it was the work of ordinary thieves. This extreme expression of solidarity derived from the group’s analysis of Danish society, and their belief that the Danish working class as a whole was too complacent to take any interest in international solidarity with the revolutionary proletariat in the neo- and semi-colonies, because they had been “bribed” by imperialist super-profits. Following their arrest in 1989, they became known as the Blekinge Street Gang, after the site of their hideout in Copenhagen.
Today it might seem that only specialist scholars and activists would take any interest in an organization like the M-KA, never mind read an anthology of essays, interviews, and documents detailing their ideology and activities. After all, such ultraleft groupuscules abounded in Europe and North America in the 1970s, and despite the sensational headlines they generated, their real influence was, in the main, negligible. The M-KA never had more than fifteen members; its predecessor, the Communist Working Circle (KAK), had twenty-five. What makes them historically noteworthy, and Turning Money into Rebellion a riveting read, is their unusual fusion of academic theories of unequal exchange with a revolutionary praxis of armed expropriations, used to fund revolutionary movements across the neo- and semi-colonies.
monthlyreview(dot)org/2017/09/01/theorists-and-thieves/