One thing that I feel like has been missing from leftist discourse the past few years are issues around globalization. Today’s global left is deeply on the defensive, and when I read posts people make about this stuff, I tend to not see all the pieces be connected. Every US backed coup over the last 30 years has been about this as opposed to being explicitly anti socialist (i.e. you’re allowed to be socialist so long as you meld your version of socialism into the DC consensus model).

I I definitely long for the days where the top issues of the global left we’re the total destruction of the world trade organization as well as all other transnational liberal legal institutions (an issue that is increasingly being appropriated by the populist right for very sinister purposes). These organizations totally blur the imperialism happening before our eyes to the point where people totally forget that it is still in fact imperialism (although it is better described as transnational shareholder imperialism rather than say 19th or 20th century nationalist/mercantilist imperialism).

Now what made Hugo Chavez the most monumental early 21st century socialist leader is that his efforts are credited for why there isn’t a singular pro capital markets free trade block between all of north and south america. The military coup in Bolivia, the soft coup in Ecuador, the judicial coup in Brazil (Lula wasn’t even as deeply imbedded in this, but petrobras under his leadership did a ton of technology sharing with Bolivarian governments), the recent coup attempts in Nicaragua and Venezuela, they all go back to this.

The block Chavez started to oppose those efforts then created telesur which is arguably the media company most challenging of DC consensus orthodoxy on home turf, and still enables balanced trade that allows it’s countries to benefit from larger economies of scale and share technology without destroying jobs in any of these said countries.

Asian socialist countries on the other hand (less DPRK, although they have other problems as they aren’t even on the same page on alter globalism as some of these other states) have hardly done anything to challenge this sort of orthodoxy, if anything, it’s the various countries affiliated with baathism (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya) that have done more to challenge this sort of stuff. Gaddafi had made multiple attempts to do in Africa exactly what Chavez did in parts of Latin America (this isn’t to say these nation’s are all good, but their alter-globalist economic views are certainly favorable from the perspective of what the global left needs).

While the reasons why this is case are certainly complicated, I am unable to not be disappointed by it. Chinese efforts around the BRI are starting to make up for some of this, but it’s too early to really tell if their investments will help these countries move up the value chain, especially given that these countries will still continue to operate under the rules of the expansionist WTO/IMF based neoliberal world order. Vietnam and Laos have totally bent the knee to this world order and have engaged in substantial privatization of their state owned enterprises (this isn’t to say they are or aren’t socialist, but they aren’t opposing western economic hegemony in the way others are and have). Hell, your people are almost certainly better off in the short term not opposing this hegemony, look at what’s happened to literally every country that has tried to oppose it, it’s a tremendous risk where in the end you still may end up as a part of it after the US kills off your government.

But ultimately it is this exact new world order that began brewing in the 80s and was totally solidified in the 1990s that destroyed farming and mining communities all over the developing world while also destroying manufacturing in developed countries, there absolutely has to be a better way forward. And given the rise of anti globalist sentiment on the right, the left needs to shore up it’s support and policy goals around a renewed alternative globalization movement (where this is especially pressing given the looming issue of climate disaster).

I also tend to believe that a renewed focus on this issue will totally dispell the whole “why are tankies defending dictators” thing, given that such viewpoints always stems from inherent allegences to western nations. Frame global south struggles as x group of leaders are taking on the the globalist new world order, rather than as being the battle between individual nations, say NATO or WTO or IMF hegemony rather than cite a particular nation. Don’t blame economic collapse of such nation’s on individual sanctions, but on a world order where any country remotely interested in forging their own path with new models of sustainable development as being totally illegal under our supranational judicial system.