BRICS Behind the Curtain

Dear Young Comrades,

Look closely at this curtain.

In New Delhi, a few days before the summit, a blue-and-white curtain three metres high was drawn in front of the neighbourhood called Coolie Camp. Who lives in the neighbourhood? Cleaners, day labourers, people who haul loads by handcart. Once the curtain was up the neighbourhood's ways in and out were reduced; the handcarts could not pass; the workers earned no money that week. The neighbourhood's open sewer and uncollected rubbish stayed as they were behind the curtain. A resident told a journalist: "The government found the money to put up the curtain; it could not find the will to solve the problems behind it."

What is on the other side of the curtain? The leaders of eleven states representing half the world's population and 40 percent of global output. Thirty thousand security staff. Schools shut, the Supreme Court shut, roads shut. And a declaration of 140 paragraphs: "the voice of the Global South."

In this piece I will first tell you what BRICS is, then what was discussed in New Delhi, what was gained, what was not. But keep this curtain in mind throughout the piece. Because the shortest way to understand BRICS is to look at who is standing on the two sides of the curtain.

Three Questions

Whose organisation is BRICS? The states', capital's, or the peoples'?
What does a "multipolar world" mean for the worker? When the number of poles increases, does exploitation decrease?
Why does Turkey's joining BRICS, or not joining, concern us?

Do not go to the answers in haste. First let us set out the facts.

What BRICS Is: An Investment Banker's Abbreviation

Young comrades, knowing where this organisation's name comes from is half of understanding what it is.

The letters "BRIC" were invented in 2001 by Jim O'Neill, Goldman Sachs's chief economist. Not as a political programme, as an investment tip. Looking at the growth rates of Brazil, Russia, India and China, it was the abbreviation of telling Wall Street clients "put your money here." That is, BRICS, at birth, is the name not of a people's movement or a national-liberation front, but of an investment bank's report.

These four states held their first summit in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia; in 2010 South Africa joined and the letter "S" was added. For a long time it remained a five. In 2024 Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined; in 2025 Indonesia. Saudi Arabia was invited, but has still not formally completed its membership; it attended New Delhi as well as a kind of "invitee." Today there are eleven members and ten "partner countries": Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

Its institutions are these: the New Development Bank (NDB), founded in 2015, which as of May 2026 had lent 42.9 billion dollars to 139 projects; the 100-billion-dollar Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), also founded in 2015, a small copy of the IMF; and a Payments Task Force aiming to make cross-border payments independent of the dollar.

The figures look large. Let us give the scale: the World Bank Group alone commits more than a hundred billion dollars in a single fiscal year. The total credit the NDB has given in eleven years is about five months of the World Bank Group's work. This does not mean BRICS is unimportant; it shows the gap between its claim and its institutional power. We will come back to that gap.

Class reading: States or capitals?

The bourgeois press tells BRICS as a "club of states"; the liberal press as an "axis of authoritarian regimes." Neither sees class.

BRICS is a coordination platform of the ruling classes of eleven countries. Sitting at the table are India's Adani–Ambani capital, China's state and private monopolies, Russia's energy oligarchy, the Gulf's oil monarchies, Brazil's agribusiness and mining capital. Two thousand delegates attended the Business Forum held the day before the summit; more than six hundred bilateral business meetings were held. Modi's slogan is "10-100-1000": remove the ten largest trade barriers, support a hundred start-ups a year, found a thousand new business partnerships a year.

Search the declaration for the word "worker." In 140 paragraphs labour appears only as "family farmers, small producers and youth," in the agriculture paragraph. The summit's name is "the voice of the Global South"; the great majority of the Global South's population are people who work for a wage or without security; and these people's name is not in the declaration.

Comrade, grasp the movement here well. A document says in whose name it is written by whose name it does not write. The absence of the people in a text presented as "the voice of the peoples" is not a gap, it is a datum.

What Happened in New Delhi: The Facts

Date and place. 12–13 September 2026, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. The theme of India's chairmanship: "Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, Sustainability." The declaration was adopted on 12 September.

Who came. Putin, Xi Jinping (his first visit to India in seven years, with about four hundred officials), Iran's President Pezeshkian, Ramaphosa from South Africa, Sisi from Egypt, Prabowo from Indonesia, Abiy Ahmed from Ethiopia. The UAE was represented by Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohamed. From the partner countries: Lukashenko, Tokayev, Mirziyoyev, Díaz-Canel, Tinubu, Anwar Ibrahim.

Who did not come. Brazil's President Lula did not come, citing the "domestic agenda"; Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira attended in his place. The leader of one of the five founding members was not at the table. Saudi Arabia sat not as a member but as an invitee. Xi Jinping attended the summit but did not come to Modi's evening dinner; it was said he was "resting at the hotel." The Abu Dhabi Crown Prince also left before the dinner. Bangladesh declined the invitation to represent BIMSTEC.

The declaration. Full title: "BRICS New Delhi Declaration: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability." How many pages, how many paragraphs? The sources do not agree here: Wikipedia says 140 paragraphs, the summary of the text on the Indian Prime Minister's site 107, the Asia Times analysis "more than 130"; the figures 40 and 45 circulate for the page count. We are not hiding this contradiction; that a document whose paragraph count is itself unclear is presented as "historic" is in itself an indicator.

What was said. Modi: "BRICS is against no one"; the Global South must be "a rule-maker, not a rule-taker." Putin: some powers are trying to stop their rising rivals "with customs duties, sanctions and brute force." Xi: the war in Iran "does not serve common interests." Al Jazeera compiled these.

Background. Two wars and a tariff wall. On 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel attacked Iran; Iran in response struck the Gulf countries, including the UAE and Qatar; the Strait of Hormuz was blocked for months; the ceasefire in June was declared "over" by Trump in July (Britannica). The Ukraine war is in its fifth year. In August 2025 Trump had put an extra 25 percent tariff on India for buying Russian oil; in February 2026 this was lifted, the "reciprocal" tax cut to 18 percent. Three days after the summit, on 15 September, the US House of Representatives passed, 214 to 211 on a procedural vote, a bill opening the way to a 100 percent tariff on countries that continue to buy Russian energy.

Those are the facts. Now let us look at what was gained.

What Was Gained: The Plus Column of the Balance Sheet

Let us give it its due; it would not be right to say that nothing was done inside this bloc. The concrete results taken in New Delhi are these:

Unanimity. Iran and the UAE, while on opposite sides of the same war, signed the same paper. At the foreign ministers' meeting in May even a joint statement had not come out; in September it did. This is a diplomatic success, and it is India's work.

Palestine. The declaration is "firmly opposed" to forced displacement from Gaza, and supports Palestine's full UN membership, a state with East Jerusalem as capital on the 1967 borders, and UNRWA's work. These sentences are not in any Western summit declaration.

Objection to the tariff wall. "Unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures" and sanctions without UN Security Council approval were declared "contrary to international law." The United States was not named; but what is meant is clear.

Payments infrastructure. The Payments Task Force was given the task of building a "fast, low-cost, transparent and secure" cross-border payment system (SCMP). Trade in local currencies was "encouraged."

Fifty-odd mechanisms. A Grain Exchange proposal, the 2026–2030 Global Value Chain Action Plan, a Multilateral Guarantee Mechanism, a customs-cooperation agreement (approval in principle), a Start-up Fund, an Incubation Network, a Smart Grid Centre of Excellence, a submarine-cable feasibility study, implementation of the Leaders' Statement on AI Governance, a critical-minerals supply chain. A Russia-focused analysis site counted more than fifty outcomes.

The Modi–Xi meeting. The border, the trade imbalance, market access were discussed; the Financial Times and the Guardian read this as a "cautious thaw." For the first time since the 2020 Galwan clash the two countries' leaders stood side by side on Indian soil.

China's 2027 agenda. The chairmanship passed to China; the 19th summit will be in Beijing. Xi announced five priorities: a BRICS open-source artificial-intelligence zone, a special-economic-zone partnership, a digital-ecosystem cloud platform, an alliance for training engineers, an exchange of young scientists. We will come back to the first of these below; because it is directly related to the fight we described in the distillation piece.

The trade figure. Intra-BRICS merchandise trade was 84 billion dollars in 2003, 1.2 trillion dollars in 2024. This figure is real and shows the bloc's material basis: these countries are doing more and more business with one another.

What Was Not Gained: The Disappointments

Now the other column of the balance sheet. In order.

No common currency. The "BRICS currency" talked about for years was formally taken off the agenda at this summit. The sentence of India's foreign secretary: "As of now there is no proposal for a BRICS currency in BRICS." The declaration says there is "no one-size-fits-all solution" for trade in local currencies. That is, there is nothing to replace the dollar; there are a few bridges beside the dollar.

The United States is not named. In a declaration that criticises tariffs the name of the country that imposed the tariff does not appear. India wanted this consciously: "BRICS is not anti-Western." C. Raja Mohan's summary in the Indian Express: "no fire and brimstone."

Ukraine is not there. The war in its fifth year is not named in the declaration; there is "dialogue, consultation and diplomacy." Egypt and Indonesia had voted at the UN for a call for Russia to withdraw; at the table this division was covered over.

The struck member is not named. This is the most striking. One member of the bloc, Iran, was struck by the United States and Israel in February. Another member of the bloc, the UAE, was struck by Iran. The declaration names neither the US–Israeli attack nor Iran's attack on the Gulf; it calls for "maximum restraint" (EnterpriseAM). That a bloc whose own member was bombed cannot name the bomber tells better than anything what the bloc is.

Lula is not there, Xi is not at dinner, Saudi Arabia is uncertain. The leader of one of the founding members did not come. China's leader came to the summit, did not come to the host's dinner. The world's largest oil exporter has for two years been neither clearly a member nor not. These are not details of protocol; they are the outward expression of the bloc's inner hierarchy.

Nothing binding. In Asia Times Golam Rasul counted the language of the declaration: "we welcome," "we note," "we encourage," "we look forward to." There are fourteen science-and-technology working groups, seven industrial-cooperation working groups; none has a monitoring or accountability mechanism. The great majority of the fifty-odd outcomes are "voluntary, non-binding platforms."

Turkey is not there. This joins the third question of this piece; we will treat it in a separate section.

There is a curtain. And the neighbourhood's name is not in the declaration.

What Does "Multipolarity" Mean for the Worker?

Now we come to our second question. In Turkey the BRICS debate is stuck in two moulds. The nationalist and Eurasianist camp sees BRICS as a "front against imperialism"; the liberal camp as a "club of authoritarian regimes." Both make the same mistake: they do not see class, they do not ask about property. We wrote this in the Acemoğlu debate; the great majority of interpretations in Turkey are nationalist, liberal or geopolitical-statist; none asks "whose is this economy." The BRICS debate is another symptom of the same illness.

Our frame is clear. Lenin defined imperialism not as one country's ill will but as a stage of monopoly capitalism: the concentration of capital, the fusion of bank and industrial capital, the export of capital, the division of the world among monopolies and competition for redivision. In this definition imperialism is singular, imperialist powers are plural. A hundred years ago Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Japan, Russia were a "multipolar world." The name of that multipolarity was the First World War.

"Multipolarity" today is the demand that the world market be redivided among several blocs of capital instead of a single hegemon. The subject of this demand is the capitals that want a share of US hegemony: India's, China's, Russia's, the Gulf's. These capitals' relation to their own workers is not different in kind from Wall Street's relation to its own workers.

Let us make it concrete. The United States put an extra 25 percent tax on India's purchase of Russian oil; BRICS condemned this as a "unilateral coercive measure." Correct. But who buys that oil, who refines it, who sells it to Europe and takes the profit? Reliance Industries; Mukesh Ambani's company. Ambani's fortune and the cleaner's wage in Coolie Camp are two poles in the same economy. Trump's tariff hits Ambani's profit; no one was protecting the worker's wage anyway. The words "sovereignty" and "strategic autonomy" are the curtain that covers the difference between these two poles.

Another example. The declaration wants "reliable, responsible, diversified, resilient, fair, sustainable and equitable supply chains" in critical minerals; it emphasises "the right of sovereignty over resources." Cobalt, lithium, nickel: who extracts these? Miners in Congo, Indonesia, Bolivia; some of them children. "Sovereignty" says whether the mine belongs to the state or the company; it does not say the miner's lung.

Class reading: The number of poles does not reduce exploitation

Inside the Marxist tradition this debate has a name: sub-imperialism. The Brazilian Marxist Ruy Mauro Marini defined Brazil this way in the 1970s: a power dependent on the centre but exporting capital in its own region, exploiting its own periphery. Today India's position in South Asia, China's in Africa, Russia's in Central Asia, the Gulf's in the Horn of Africa can be read with this concept. BRICS is the bargaining table of sub-imperialist powers among themselves and with the hegemon.

This is not to say "BRICS = the United States." The erosion of US hegemony is a real fact and can open new possibilities for the world working class; in a world with a single hegemon the room for manoeuvre is narrower. But who will use the possibility is determined not by the blocs themselves but by the class struggle inside the blocs. That is why our question must be not "which bloc" but "which class."

Multipolarity is a debate inside capital. The working class's debate is not the number of poles, it is the property of the poles.

A concrete proof of this is also the relation of the states at the table to their own workers. In India the four labour laws Modi's government passed in 2020 are the most comprehensive flexibilisation the unions have resisted for decades; the November 2020 general strike, by the unions' count, was joined by 250 million workers. In Egypt independent unionism is in practice forbidden. In the Gulf migrant workers work under the kafala system. In Russia the war economy has suspended the right to strike. In China there is no independent union. In Indonesia Prabowo's past is known. This is not a moral list; it is an inventory of the bloc's class character. "The voice of the Global South" is not the voice of these countries' workers, it is the voice of their rulers.

Artificial Intelligence and the Monopolies: China's "Open-Source Zone"

I want to draw particular attention to one subject, because it cuts directly across the artificial-intelligence line we have been carrying on this blog.

Xi's first priority announced for 2027 is a "BRICS open-source artificial-intelligence zone." The declaration also declares commitment to implementing the "Leaders' Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence" and to "safe, inclusive and accessible" artificial intelligence for the Global South.

Set this in its context. On 8 September US institutions accused six Chinese companies of model distillation; in that piece we read this as "the second expropriation of the general intellect": learning from everyone's labour is "fair use," learning from the monopoly's output is "theft." The same week Amodei's call for "tempo," Musk and Altman's approval; it was the cartel naming itself. Now China is offering its own artificial-intelligence model to BRICS under the flag of "open source."

Two blocs of capital are competing, over the same expropriated general intellect, one in the language of "security," the other of "openness." China's open-weight models really are more accessible than the US monopolies' closed models; this is an advantage for the working class, and to ignore it would be stupidity. But an "open-source zone" does not ask who produced the data the model was trained on and who owns it; it is the name of selling the cloud of China's state monopolies to the Global South. What we said in the Socialist Artificial Intelligence Manifesto holds here as well: we are not obliged to choose one of the two blocs; we demand the restitution of the general intellect from both.

There is also the matter of the cable. The declaration wants a feasibility study for a "high-speed submarine cable network." Submarine cables carry more than 95 percent of intercontinental data traffic, and a growing share of newly laid cables is the property of US monopolies (Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft). That BRICS wants its own cable is understandable; but if the owner of the cable is again a monopoly, what changes for the worker is the language of the cable, not its property.

Turkey: Waiting Outside the Curtain

Our third question. Where is Turkey in BRICS?

The short answer: nowhere. The long answer contains a lesson.

Turkey applied for full membership in September 2024; in October in Kazan Erdoğan met Putin; BRICS offered Turkey, together with twelve countries, "partner country" status. Turkey neither formally accepted this status nor declared that it accepted or rejected it. Mustafa Karaalioğlu of Karar wrote in October 2024: "I suppose we became candidates and I suppose we were not accepted." Two years have passed; the "I suppose" is still in place.

Turkey is not on the list of ten partner countries in New Delhi. We could not find a single record in the mainstream international press of who from Turkey attended the summit, in what capacity. A Turkish news site writes that Foreign Minister Fidan attended as a "partner country" and asked for a "roadmap for full membership"; but we could not confirm this with the Foreign Ministry's statements, with AA, or with any international source. Therefore we are not giving this as a fact in this piece. That even whether a country is in one of the world's largest blocs is unclear is a measure of how transparent that country's foreign policy is. In the KVKK piece we said "the absence of the data is also a datum"; it is the same here.

So why this unclarity? Because Turkey's ruling class lives in a house with two doors. Its capital is tied to Europe: more than 40 percent of exports go to the EU, the customs union has been in force since 1996, NATO membership since 1952. Its energy and tourism are tied to Russia: Rosatom is building the Akkuyu nuclear plant, most of the natural gas comes from Russia, millions of Russian tourists every year. Its trade is increasingly tied to China. This capital wants both the West's customs-union update and BRICS's market; it does not want to choose one of the two. The slogan "neither East nor West, both" is not a principle, it is a balance sheet.

For us the form of the question is different. If Turkey joins BRICS the owner of Akkuyu does not change; if the customs union is lifted the wage of the textile worker working for Europe does not rise. Whichever bloc it leans on, Turkish capital's relation to the worker stays the same: low wages, insecurity, de-unionisation, workplace murders. That 77 percent of the deaths we counted in the İHD report are workplace murders does not change with joining BRICS or not joining.

Blocs are capital's question. Our question, whichever bloc we are in, is whose the factory is.

This is not to say we should not concern ourselves with geopolitics. On the contrary: NATO drawing Turkey into a war, Russia tying Turkey to itself with an energy plant, the United States lining Turkey up with a tariff, all of these concern the worker directly. But we read them not with the question "which bloc is good" but with the question "whichever bloc capital leans on, what does it gain, what do we lose."

Official Narrative / Class Reading

Official narrative	Class reading
"The voice of the Global South"	A coordination platform of the ruling classes of eleven countries; the word worker is not in the declaration
"A multipolar world order"	The redivision of the world market between the hegemon and sub-imperialist powers; the number of poles does not change the rate of exploitation
"BRICS is against no one"	Indian capital's need not to lose the US market; the name of the one who imposed the tariff is not in the declaration
"A call for maximum restraint"	That a bloc whose own member was bombed cannot name the bomber; the UAE signing the same paper as Iran was counted as enough
"A payments infrastructure alternative to the dollar"	No common currency; "no one-size-fits-all solution" for trade in local currencies; a bridge beside the dollar, not in its place
"More than fifty concrete outcomes"	The great majority voluntary and non-binding platforms; no monitoring mechanism
"An open-source artificial-intelligence zone"	The sale of Chinese monopolies' cloud to the Global South; ownership of the data is not asked
"Strategic autonomy" (Turkey)	The calculation of a capital living in a house with two doors not to lose either; for the worker the owner of Akkuyu does not change
"World leaders at Bharat Mandapam"	A three-metre curtain in front of Coolie Camp; thirty thousand police; schools shut

What Is Being Covered Over?

The curtain is not only in front of Coolie Camp. There is a curtain over the debate as well; it covers three things.

First, the host's own agenda. The declaration condemns by name the April 2025 Pahalgam attack; "double standards" in terrorism are rejected. India will use this as a diplomatic gain against Pakistan. That is, "the common voice of the Global South" is a tool in the host's quarrel with its neighbour. Every chair does this: in Kazan Russia brought in Ukraine, in Rio Brazil the Amazon, in Delhi India Kashmir. The bloc is a wrapping in which members package their own interests as "common."

Second, the inner hierarchy. In BRICS China's economy is larger than the other ten members combined. China's need of BRICS is less than BRICS's need of China. This means the bloc is not a "club of equals" but a centre–periphery relation; a small-scale copy of the centre–periphery relation in the West. India's wanting a "bridge role" against China, Brazil's having hosted a summit Xi did not come to, Russia's energy dependence on China: all are images of this hierarchy.

Third, the worker. Not in the declaration; not in the summit reports; not in the BRICS debate in Turkey. The one who put up the curtain is a worker, and the one who remains behind it; but the name appears neither in the declaration nor in the debate. This is not an accident; it is a division of labour. The summit is capital's work; the worker's work is to put up the curtain and then wait behind it.

How Was the Summit Spoken of in Turkey?

Briefly. The greater part of the Turkish press covered the summit with agency copy: "The New Delhi Declaration was published, a multipolar world was emphasised." AA published an analysis by Marcus Vinicius de Freitas of China Foreign Affairs University: "BRICS's real test is in managing contradictions." A correct observation; but it never enters the class content of the contradictions. Murat Yetkin read the summit, through the visits Fidan made in the same week, on the axis of geopolitical balance. On nationalist channels "we must join BRICS" was repeated, on liberal channels "let us not break with the West."

The common point: in none of them is the question "what is this bloc's class character, what does it mean for the Turkish worker." What we called "classless interpretation" when we assessed Evrim Ağacı's opposition video and in the Amodei piece is the same in geopolitics. The subject is "Turkey"; who is inside Turkey is not asked.

Concrete Tasks

A diagnosis is not a programme. Let us be concrete.

Tell the origin of the abbreviation. When someone around you defines BRICS as a "front against imperialism," say that Goldman Sachs gave it the name. This single fact moves the ground of the debate from feeling to property.
Look for the worker in the declaration. Open the text, search for the words "worker," "labour," "trade union." You will not find them. Use this as evidence in the debate on "the bloc's class character."
Turn the "which bloc" question into a "which class" question. When you enter a geopolitical debate, talk not of the blocs themselves but of the capital–labour relation inside the blocs. In the matter of India's buying Russian oil, name Ambani.
Document the curtain. At every large summit the host city hides its poor: the 2023 G20 in Delhi, the 2016 Rio Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Collect this pattern in a list; this list is the most visible proof of the class character of summits.
Ask Turkey's status. Ask the Foreign Ministry, the MP, the journalist: "Is Turkey a BRICS partner country, or not? Who went to New Delhi, in what capacity?" If no answer comes, write the unansweredness itself.
Learn workers' solidarity across the blocs. Read the 2024 general strike in India, the China Labour Bulletin databases of workers' actions in China, the statements of Brazil's CUT and South Africa's COSATU on BRICS. Do not talk about BRICS without knowing what the workers of the BRICS countries are saying to their own governments.
Join the artificial-intelligence line. When you see the news of an "open-source artificial-intelligence zone," read it together with the distillation case and the tempo agreement. Two blocs are competing over the same expropriated general intellect; ask both the same question: who produced the data, whose is the model?
If you are a computing worker, take on the technical load. Gather the BRICS declarations (eighteen texts from 2009 to today) in a single searchable data set; extract the frequency by year of the words "worker," "union," "wage," "strike." This graph will tell more than a thousand-page analysis.
Learn the concept of "sub-imperialism." Read Marini, Bond, the Marxist literature that discusses this concept in Turkey. If the concept is missing the debate is missing as well.
Learn to say no to both blocs, but not to surrender. The erosion of US hegemony is real; do not belittle it. But who the erosion will be in favour of is determined not by the blocs but by the class struggle inside the blocs. Your place is not beside a bloc; it is inside the factory, the office, the warehouse in your own country.
Organise. The common fear of every state that comes to the summits is the organising of its own workers; this fear is the same in Washington, in Beijing, in Delhi, in Ankara. This is the only real "pole" between the blocs.

Dear Young Comrades,

Remember the curtain. The curtain in front of Coolie Camp will be taken down as soon as the summit ends. The neighbourhood will remain as it is, with its open sewer and uncollected rubbish. The declaration will go up on the shelves with the verbs "welcome" and "encourage." In 2027 a new declaration will be written in Beijing; in that one too the word worker will not appear.

The meaning of BRICS is not in the member states' claim, it is in who is standing on the two sides of the curtain. On one side the ruling classes of eleven countries are discussing the redivision of the world market. On the other those countries' workers, behind the curtain, are not being discussed. "A multipolar world" is the question of one side of this curtain. Our question is of the other side.