BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique
BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique
Editors: Patrick Bond & Ana Garcia
Publisher: Pluto Press
Publication Year: 2015
ISBN: 978-0745335779
About the Book
BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique presents a bold and comprehensive analysis of the rise of the BRICS bloc — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — as one of the defining formations of the modern global economy. While these nations are often celebrated for their rapid growth and perceived challenge to Western hegemony, the book adopts a radically different lens, arguing that the BRICS do not represent an alternative to global capitalism but rather a reconfiguration of its most exploitative and exclusionary features.
Through contributions from an impressive group of leading critical scholars — including Immanuel Wallerstein, Leo Panitch, William Robinson, Elmar Altvater, and Vijay Prashad — this edited volume scrutinizes the political economy and social contradictions of BRICS-led development. From China’s oil geopolitics to Brazil’s destructive “mega-events,” the essays uncover the inequalities, environmental costs, and social tensions that underpin the bloc’s rise.
The editors, Patrick Bond and Ana Garcia, frame BRICS as both a symptom and an instrument of global neoliberalism — advancing the interests of local elites while maintaining dependency on extractive and financialized economic systems. The collection exposes the myth of BRICS as a progressive force for global justice, showing instead how its leaders often reproduce patterns of political repression and corporate domination in alliance with Western powers.
More than a critique, the book is a call to rethink global solidarity from the Global South and to build alternatives beyond the logic of profit, accumulation, and exploitation. It has become one of the most important works for scholars, activists, and policymakers seeking to understand the contradictions and limitations of BRICS in the 21st-century world order.
“A uniquely valuable resource written by a stellar group of authors. They pierce through every aspect of the discourse around the BRICS, showing the reality beneath the politically engineered triumphalism.”
— Alfredo Saad-Filho, Professor of Political Economy, SOAS, University of London
“The most significant work yet published to examine BRICS through a critical lens. It provides a useful and comprehensive overview of the current state of debate on the topic.”
— James Parisot, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
List of Contributors
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction – Ana Garcia and Patrick Bond
Part I: Sub-Imperial, Inter-Imperial or Capitalist-Imperial?
2. BRICS and the Sub-Imperial Location – Patrick Bond
3. Sub-Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Dependent Capitalism – Mathias Luce
4. BRICS, Capitalist-Imperialism and New Contradictions – Virginia Fontes
5. BRICS, the G20 and the American Empire – Leo Panitch
6. Capitalist Mutations in Emerging, Intermediate and Peripheral Neoliberalism – Claudio Katz
Part II: BRICS ‘Develop’ Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe
7. BRICS Corporate Snapshots during African Extractivism – Baruti Amisi, Patrick Bond, Richard Kamidza, Farai Maguwu and Bobby Peek
8. The Story of the Hunter or the Hunted?: Brazil’s Role in Angola and Mozambique – Ana Garcia and Karina Kato
9. China’s Geopolitical Oil Strategy in the Andean region – Omar Bonilla Martinez
10. The Transnationalisation of Brazilian Construction Companies – Pedro Henrique Campos
11. Behind the Image of South-South Solidarity at Brazil’s Vale – Judith Marshall
12. Rio’s Ruinous Mega-Events – Einar Braathen, Gilmar Mascarenhas and Celina Sørbøe
13. Modern Russia as Semi-Peripheral, Dependent Capitalism – Ruslan Dzarasov
14. Russia’s Neoliberal Imperialism and the Eurasian Challenge – Gonzalo Pozo
Part III: BRICS within Global Capitalism
15. BRICS and Transnational Capitalism – William Robinson
16. BRICS at the Brink of the Fossil Bonanza – Elmar Altvater
17. Scramble, Resistance and a New Non-Alignment Strategy – Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros
18. The BRICS’ Dangerous Endorsement of ‘Financial Inclusion’ – Susanne Soederberg
19. China and the Lingering Pax Americana – Ho-fung Hung
20. The Future Trajectory of BRICS – Achin Vanaik
21. Does the South Have a Possible History? – Vijay Prashad
22. Whose Interests are Served by the BRICS? – Immanuel Wallerstein
23. BRICS after the Durban and Fortaleza Summits – Niall Reddy
24. Building BRICS from Below? – Ana Garcia
25. Co-dependent BRICS from above, Co-opted BRICS from the Middle and Confrontational BRICS from Below – Patrick Bond
Index
