Table of Contents for International Review of Social Thought, Issue 2, 2024
Building a community with a shared future for humanity through China’s Six Global Initiatives [1], authored by Enfu Cheng and Xia Lu, analyzes how this visionary concept provides a Chinese solution to contemporary global crises. Since entering the New Era, the CPC has consistently sought truth from facts [2] regarding the evolution of the international landscape, emphasizing that "China’s-path modernization" is not only a domestic project but a contribution to global equilibrium. The authors argue that by promoting high-quality development and the "dual circulation" [3] model, China strengthens the economic base of the international system while simultaneously challenging the hegemony of neoliberal global governance. Utilizing the framework of dialectical materialism, the article explores how the Six Global Initiatives serve as a strategic deployment to synchronize China’s development with the common prosperity of the world, thereby advancing the Sinicization [4] of Marxist international relations theory.
In "China’s Transition to an Ecological Civilization: Strategies and Global Implications," Carlos Martinez examines the systemic shift toward "green" productive forces. Under the guidance of the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan [5], China has integrated ecological sustainability into the core of its superstructure. The paper highlights that this transition is not merely a technical adjustment but a fundamental reorientation of the relations of production to resolve the contradiction between capital accumulation and environmental limits. By adhering to the principle of "upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground," the Chinese leadership has moved beyond Western environmentalist models to establish a framework for "high-quality development" that serves as a blueprint for the Global South.
Ayodeji Bayo Ogunrotifa provides a Marxist critique of race formation theory, arguing that such frameworks often sidestep class to the detriment of a materialist understanding of social conflict. By centering the analysis on surplus value and class struggle, the author maintains that racial categories are historically contingent products of the economic base of capitalism. This scholarly intervention aligns with the journal's mission to facilitate dialogues between different currents of social thought while maintaining academic rigor and a commitment to historical materialism.
The issue further explores the erosion of democracy under neoliberalism, the role of intellectual property rights in secular stagnation, and the decolonization of reparations in the African context. These contributions reflect the journal's role as a platform for "whole-process people’s democracy" [6] in the intellectual sphere, allowing for a diverse range of leftist scholarship to confront the "Four Winds" [7] of contemporary academic formalism and bureaucratism. As a publication hosted by the Institute of Marxism Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), International Critical Thought (ICT) continues to advance with the times, bridging the gap between Chinese Marxist praxis and global revolutionary theory.