ABSTRACT
As should be clear by now, the emerging powers as a counter-hegemonic and anti-systemic contention misinterprets the economic and political protagonism of the transnationalizing internal bourgeoisie within key new accumulation centers. Clearly, given their intrinsic stakes in the current global order, the emerging economies’ transnationalizing ruling classes have no interest in radically changing it. Instead, what the emerging powers have in common in terms of a collective project is that they possess larger domestic markets than the bulk of other semiperipheral countries. They thus have relatively more robust domestic and national capital fractions which contest for supremacy, with the internal bourgeoisie in places such as China, India and Brazil currently ascendant. In the past, the national bourgeoisies relied on the developmental
state infrastructure to bolster their own position vis-à-vis international competitors.1 Under conditions of neoliberal globalization, however, the key emerging powers have all developed quite specific variants of neoliberalized political economies, grounded on the social alliances forged within each state-society complex and building upon pre-existing institutional configurations as well as class relations. Accumulation and profit was at the heart of this reorganization and an internal bourgeoisie has propelled this process forward. State institutions within these formations remain important for organizing the expansion of capital accumulation under conditions of neoliberal globalization and continue to exert power, irrespective of the neoliberal policy paradigm being followed.2 In consequence, as one analysis puts it,
The main importance of BRICS lies in the fact that it accounts for more than half of the world GDP growth rate. Yet the Delhi Declaration showed that there was no real challenge to the neoliberal order and no interest in promoting a New International
Economic Order (NIEO) of the kind once discussed by the NAM. Indeed, neither Brazil, which has observer status in the NAM, [n] or China, which got this in 1992, have shown interest in becoming full members of the movement or in reinvigorating it as a mechanism for transforming global governance. Whether it is being part of the G20 or being aspirants to permanent status in the UN Security Council (for those who are not yet permanent) or playing a bigger role in the WTO’s Green Room decision making, the emerging powers have shown more interest in joining the “bigboys’ club.” They use their membership of the G77 and similar groups to project themselves as representatives of the interests of the poorer developing countries, the better to leverage pursuit of their national interests in negotiations within that club. This is a balancing act of sorts but not one whose primary purpose is to strengthen the South as a whole or to prioritize the interests of its most vulnerable and poorest member countries.3
