2024 WAPE Forum Statement
The 17th World Association for Political Economy Forum was held at Pantieon
University in Athens, Greece, from 2 to 4 August 2024. The conference was
organized by Greek Association of Poltical Economy and Pantieon University
and attended by over 160 scholars from XX countries. Meeting with “Political
economy vs economics in a turbulent multipolar world” as the theme,
respectively discusses the modern Marxist economic methodology, theory and
policy, analysis of contemporary bourgeois economics, commemorating the
100th anniversary of the death of Lenin and study of Lenin’s works, analysis the
future of capitalism and socialism in the 21st century, against the new
imperialism and promote the construction of the community with a shared
future for mankind, the international economic order rationalization and
dollar, developing new quality productive forces and socialist production
relations and other important theoretical and practical issues.
The participants issued the following statement:
It is no exaggeration to say that the world now stands at its most dangerous
moment in human history. Already on at the tipping point of irreversible
climate change, it is now on the brink of a nuclear war between powers with
more than 10,000 nuclear weapons but also capable of breaking out elsewhere
and spreading fast.
This is not the result of some kind of general spread of militarism among the
earth’s many states. It is driven by the aggression, individual and collective, of
its most powerful capitalist imperial states, which were also historically the
imperial states, led by the United States. Unrelenting NATO expansion was the
primary cause of the current Ukraine conflict; the escalating tensions between
China and the USA’s allies is driven by these powers determination to stem
China’s peaceful rise by any means at their disposal – shattering all the ‘free
trade ’ rules which these same powers stridently proclaimed when they
believed their interests were served by it; and US determination to use Israel as
its Middle Eastern military outpost in order to obtain control over the region’s
oil reserves the true driver of the ongoing genocide in Gaza which threatens to
spill over into war with Iran and other powers in the region capable of resisting
this imperial drive. .
This aggression is impelled by the desperate desire of these countries to avert
their ongoing imperial decline, their decreasing ability to control what happens
on planet earth. It has not only brought the world to this sorry pass, it is also
making the diplomacy and international cooperation necessary to avert nuclear
war and climate change, not to mention the myriad other problems plaguing
the world, more remote and difficult, just as they had made dealing with COVID
19 more difficult and fraught.
Against them stands the World Majority driven to defend itself both
economically and militarily, both by their genuine community of interest
despite the diversity of their economic systems and by the common need to
defend their economic sovereignty and their military security both against
heightened new imperial aggression, and to develop their own economic
systems and livelihood through peaceful cooperation. Led by China and Russia,
the GDP of BRICS countries has slightly exceeded the Group of 7, and the Belt
and Road Initiative and Shanghai Cooperation Organization have played a
positive role. While the new imperialist camp spares no effort in trying to pry
away important members of the World Majority over to its side, so far these
efforts have not succeeded, not least because the declining imperialist camp has
little to offer.
And this is not all. This aggression is fundamentally irrational in two distinct
senses. First, it is being pursued relentlessly even though it is failing. The
imperialist countries are unable to win in the conflicts they are inciting and they
are unlikely to avert their decline. Indeed, pursing this course of action is
undermining them as economies, societies and polities. But it is also irrational
in another sense which makes it many times more dangerous. It has over the
past made decades mired the imperialist societies in economic decline and
skyrocketing inequality. Their result has been profound social division has it
now generated political conflict and enabled the emergence of far right forces
within them that is increasingly making them ungovernable. The desperation
of competing political forces to take and keep power is leading them to more
and more dangerous and delusional positions on foreign policy while making
their governments less and less accountable to the people.
The only way in which these states will be prevented from leading the world to
disaster is by the rise of socialist and anti-imperialist forces within them capable
of winning power and using it to reconstruct their unproductive, financialized
and unequal economies and their strife-torn and malingering societies and to
transform their foreign policies from ones of imperial aggression to one of
cooperation and respect for the world’s other nations, cultures and economies.
Economic reconstruction is particularly urgent given that their inevitable loss
of imperial control over the rest of the world means that their standards of living
will have to be maintained, like in all other countries, on the basis of their own
efforts, not on that imperial tribute in its variety of forms, from debt repayments
to the availability of artificially cheap goods.
Humanity faces a choice between socialism or barbarism as never before. In
light of this situation, the 17th World Association for Political Economy Forum
believes that we should continue to transcend hegemonism and narrow
nationalism in the international community, promote the building of a
community with a shared future for mankind and the new internationalism, as
well as to promote the adaptive development and innovation of Marxist
economics. Peace, human development, justice, security and preservation of
the planet required redoubled efforts of forces of international socialism and
anti-new imperialism, to unite the people of the world and progressive
countries, and work with comrades from other countries:
1. We should respect the development path and social system independently
chosen by the people of all countries, resolutely oppose all forms of new
hegemonism, new imperialism, new colonialism, new racism, new fascism, and
neoliberalism, oppose the cold War mentality, oppose interference in other
countries’ internal affairs, and oppose hypocritical double standard on
international affairs.
2. Prevent NATO from taking more military adventures and build up a stable
world economic, political and military security system.
3. Reform the United Nations, by reversing Western and corporate control that
have made the organization and its agencies ineffective tools of new
imperialism, and restore it to the original principles embodied in its Charter, so
that the global South can gradually get free from the economic and political
ruling by the new imperialist power either within and out from the global south.
4. Strive to end the ecological emergency of climate change, pollution and
biodiversity loss, and oppose biological laboratories and biological warfare that
endanger the lives and health of people around the world. Create institutions of
international economic governance that can foster development rather than
impose imperialist control.
5. Adapt to the change in the turbulent multipolar world, innovate Marxism and
its economic theories, to form an international academic community of
innovative Marxist economics, to eliminate the influence of neoliberal
economics and new Keynesian theories and policies. Let work together hand in
hand to promote world peace, development, justice, security, people’s
livelihood.