The Communist Indicator

Keywords: communist indicator; capitalism; capital; anticapitalism; imperialism; socialism; historical measurement; PPP GDP; balance of forces; comparative economic systems

JEL Codes: B51; P16; P21; P27; P51

Introduction

In the modern world, there exists a broad Marxist and anticapitalist movement. I do not claim that the article I am writing here will satisfy everyone in full, but I believe that what is presented in this work may still be useful to Marxists, communists, socialists, anticapitalists, anti-imperialists, anti-colonial thinkers, anti-Western forces, national liberation movements, revolutionary nationalists, Third Worldists, and, more generally, to all those who stand against the imperialist order in one form or another. The world is structured in such a way that it appears to be moving somewhere, perhaps toward communism. Communism here means a classless, stateless, moneyless, marketless, and even planless society: a world whole, a world of synthesis. The problem, however, is that we do not know how to measure this movement. How can we say whether we have actually come closer?

I believe I can offer an answer to this question. The problem, however, is that the basis from which I derive this indicator is not yet known to you. It is not known to you because the theoretical framework from which it emerges—Polar Marxism, or Polar Capitalism—remains unfamiliar to most readers. You do not yet fully know what it is, what it argues, or why this indicator follows from it and works in the way I claim it does. You may disagree with me, and you may dispute particular points. But in order to show that there is indeed a real movement, and that what I am saying has explanatory power, I must begin by presenting the result itself. Everything else will be shown later. In this sense, I begin from the end.

In this work, I present the so-called Communist Indicator. This indicator does two things, briefly speaking. First, it shows the balance of forces between the two poles of the world: the capitalist and the anticapitalist or, more briefly, what I simply call capital and anticapital, which are historically expressed in the way we will see later. Second, it shows how close we are to communism. Its logic is simple: it begins at zero and moves toward one. At the moment it reaches one, communism should arrive. In this article, $K = 1$ is treated as the theoretical threshold of parity between the two poles. But all of this will be explained later.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. In Section 2, I define the Communist Indicator as a concept. In Section 3, I clarify what is meant by capital and anticapital. In Section 4, I present the formal definition of the indicator. In Section 5, I explain the historical entities and units of analysis used in the study. In Section 6, I set out the rules of classification and marking. In Section 7, I describe the data, sources, and the construction of the dataset. In Section 8, I provide preliminary historical estimates of the indicator. Finally, in Sections 9 and 10, I interpret its movement, discuss its limits, and indicate directions for further development.

The Communist Indicator as a Concept

We will not examine here how we arrived at this concept, because this work is not about that. Its purpose is rather to approximately calculate the Communist Indicator and present it to the reader. What, then, is the Communist Indicator? At a given year $t$, the Communist Indicator is the ratio $K_t = A_t / C_t$, that is, the ratio of the power of anticapital to that of capital in year $t$. If we look at the world, it consists, as it were, of two poles.

The point is that these poles are distributed unevenly: one pole is stronger than the other, but over time the second pole tends to move closer to the first. It continues to catch up with it. This process of one pole catching up with the other is what, so to speak, constitutes the movement of the Communist Indicator toward one. The closer the power of one pole is to that of the other, the closer the Communist Indicator is to one.

Why, then, is this indicator an indicator of movement toward communism, and why is its limit one? I will give a simple explanation. The point is that as soon as one pole is able to catch up with the other, the world will become levelled in terms of the difference between them. This will lead to a situation in which the capitalist part of the world, capital, will no longer be able to reproduce itself, because it will simply become uncompetitive. It will no longer be able to compete, and for that reason it will no longer be able to exist. In my view, capital requires a periphery; without it, capital neither exists nor reproduces itself.

Accordingly, at the moment when the second, anticapitalist pole, which encompasses the periphery, reaches the same level of development as the capitalist pole itself, capital can no longer remain competitive, and all the laws of capital will automatically wither away. This will also lead to the disappearance of the second pole, because the second pole is the opposite of the first and appears precisely as a response to it. It will wither away together with it. This equality will be reached at the moment when the productive forces of human society attain a communist level. The world will continue to develop, and, whether in twenty, thirty, or fifty years, it may reach a point at which development becomes sufficient for the transition to a post-class society.

The indicator reaches one because, in essence, $K_t$ is the ratio $A_t / C_t$, that is, the ratio of the force of anticapital to that of capital in year $t$. As long as anticapital remains weaker than capital, it will stay below one. But the closer it comes in strength to capital, the closer it comes to one. At the moment when it becomes equal to one, the two poles will have reached parity, and from that point the transition to communism will occur. I call this transition a revolution of the second type. But that lies further ahead. Here, we are concerned only with the Communist Indicator itself.

Capital and Anticapital: Definitions

We must now clarify what is meant by capital and anticapital, because one might think that when I speak of capital, I mean the market, the accumulation of money, and things of that sort, although such things may also exist in countries of anticapital. And what, then, is anticapital itself? For that is an even less clear category.

By capital, I mean the totality of the developed Western world and everything subordinated to it, everything that belongs to its sphere of influence. Capital can be described in different ways so that an intuitive sense of it may emerge. We may describe it as the United States, Europe, the developed world, the so-called golden billion, the West, imperialism and, so to speak, its colonies and dependent territories. It is the West and all those who stand with the West; it is imperialism and all those who stand with imperialism, and so on. I intentionally do not provide an exact definition here, because that itself would require a more precise discussion later. For the purposes of this work, however, such a definition is sufficient.

What, then, is anticapital? Anticapital is precisely that which stands in opposition to capital. It is everything socialist, anticapitalist, anti-Western, anti-imperialist, and so on. It moves against it. It is everything that does not support the West, everything that stands against it, and this is something we can observe historically. It may take different forms. It may be the Soviet Union, it may be China, it may be anticolonial movements in particular countries in the past, and so on. It may be many different things. In other words, these are countries and forces that stand against the West. Thus, the world is divided into two poles: one is pro-Western, and this is capital; the other is anti-Western, and this is anticapital. It is the power of these two poles that we will measure, because countries often pass from one camp to another, and they constantly fluctuate. This makes the calculation difficult, and in some cases it may be controversial. But in general, these are the two sides of the world that constitute the Communist Indicator.

Formal Definition of the Indicator

Defining the Communist Indicator more formally, we may write it in the following way. Since it is a yearly ratio, it can be expressed by the following formulas:

$$K_t = \frac{A_t}{C_t}$$ $$A_t = \sum_{i \in \text{anticapital}} GDP^{PPP}_{i,t}$$ $$C_t = \sum_{i \in \text{capital}} GDP^{PPP}_{i,t}$$

where $K_t$ denotes the Communist Indicator in year $t$, $A_t$ denotes the total GDP at purchasing power parity of all entities classified as anticapital in year $t$, and $C_t$ denotes the total GDP at purchasing power parity of all entities classified as capital in year $t$.

In truth, I am not entirely certain which exact measure should be preferred in the final sense, but in this work, and for the time being, I use GDP PPP because it is among the easiest to calculate, broadly adequate, and genuinely expressive of objective power, real productivity, reproductive capacity, and so on. It captures the extent to which this GDP can be transformed into anything else, whether military power, science, or other forms of material capacity. Accordingly, it is best to use GDP at purchasing power parity, because it most fully expresses the real power of states, countries, and regions. As I have said, it is not the most perfect measure, but it is the best one we can use at present, and it is the one I will use here.

Historical Entities and Units of Analysis

The Communist Indicator will be calculated not only for the present moment, but over a long historical period, beginning with the time of the First World War. I state immediately that before the First World War the Communist Indicator is equal to zero, because there was no anticapitalist movement as such. What existed then was so-called pure capitalism, which had reached its highest form of development, so to speak. This was ultimately expressed in war, but that does not concern us here.

The point is that we will calculate the indicator from that period onward, but since the world changed constantly, countries disappeared and emerged, some countries passed from one camp into another, and so on, and the world as a whole moved, conditionally speaking, toward liberation under the action of anticapitalist forces, the world itself was constantly changing. For this reason, we will not simply take modern countries as they are now, but historical entities, and we will examine them year by year, calculating their GDP and then, on that basis, calculating the indicator itself.

By a historical entity, we simply mean a concrete political form existing on a given territory in a given year. For example, if in 1990 there was the Soviet Union, then we call it the Soviet Union, taking into account all of its territories. If in 1999 there was the Russian Federation, together with other separate states, then we take them separately, and so on. This does not change the basic logic, because in any case we will later assign them to one of the two poles: either the pole of capital or the pole of anticapital. The main point is that in each year we take the actually existing map, that is, what is concretely present on the map at that moment.

Rules of Classification and Marking

In this chapter I will make one final methodological remark. When I classify historical entities, as I have already said, I will look primarily at whether a given entity is pro-Western or anti-Western, broadly speaking, and classify it accordingly. Once again, as I have said, this may often be controversial, but at present this is a sufficiently effective heuristic approach. At the present stage, this classification is used as a working heuristic that is sufficiently consistent for the purposes of the indicator. There are other criteria by which anticapitalism may be defined, and so on. The point, however, is that the world is complex, but the division into these two parts, and the corresponding assignment of entities to them, is sufficiently accurate for the purposes of this work and for the calculation of the Communist Indicator, even though I do not claim that it is a final or absolutely complete solution.

In operational terms, the present classification relies on a core bibliography for the main blocs used in the article. The socialist core and the East European socialist bloc are treated on the basis of the standard historical literature on the socialist camp.¹ The Arab anti-imperialist and Ba’athist cases are treated through the corresponding historical literature on Nasserism, Ba’athism, and related anti-imperialist state formations.² The post-1979 Iranian case is treated separately as part of the broader anti-Western and anti-imperialist pole.³ Anti-colonial and revolutionary regimes in Africa and adjacent zones are treated through the relevant country histories.⁴ Anti-imperialist and Bolivarian currents in Latin America are treated through the corresponding historical literature.⁵ The contemporary BRICS-centered pole is treated through both official BRICS materials and the recent academic literature on BRICS as a potentially counter-hegemonic bloc.⁶

At the same time, trade or the market does not matter here. If we take some country, for example the contemporary Russian Federation, which may appear to be a market democracy, but in fact has a very large share of state companies in its economy and a clear anticapitalist orientation, then even if it trades with the West or with Europe, this does not in itself make it capitalist. It may still remain anticapitalist, depending on the period. The point is that trade, the market, and the typical way in which people imagine socialism or anticapitalist countries—for example as purely planned systems or something of that kind—differs somewhat from the way I understand these categories in my own framework.

Data, Sources, and Dataset Construction

The empirical basis of this study is the Maddison Project historical GDP dataset, which provides the yearly series used for the construction of the indicator.⁷ The unit of observation is the country or historical entity in a given year.

Former composite entities such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia are handled through explicit historical rules. The full classification tables and supplementary tabulations are collected in Appendix A. For each year, every entity is assigned to one of two poles: capital or anticapital.

The force of each pole is measured through GDP at purchasing power parity, and the yearly totals are aggregated into the Communist Indicator.

A small number of technical adjustments were introduced where the source data produced artificial gaps, most notably for the wartime USSR interval.

The final output is a yearly series of the Communist Indicator for 1914–2022 together with its classification structure.

Preliminary Historical Estimates

The final yearly series covers the period from 1914 to 2022.

In the early period, the indicator remains at or near zero. It then begins to rise with the emergence and expansion of the anticapitalist pole. The postwar period produces a much stronger increase. The 1990s produce a major decline. The 2000s and 2010s produce a new rise. In the most recent period, the indicator continues to grow and reaches its current high point.

Recent values of the Communist Indicator, 2013–2022

Year	A	C	K	K percent
2013	34,135,709,250	72,086,092,082	0.47	47.35
2014	36,067,992,133	73,733,899,320	0.49	48.92
2015	37,619,324,392	75,562,548,083	0.50	49.79
2016	39,516,219,705	77,257,496,854	0.51	51.15
2017	41,578,748,509	79,485,930,040	0.52	52.31
2018	43,813,416,100	81,707,689,866	0.54	53.62
2019	45,692,594,438	83,402,619,133	0.55	54.79
2020	45,197,186,289	80,140,415,317	0.56	56.40
2021	48,678,917,333	84,451,742,437	0.58	57.64
2022	50,361,102,635	86,739,231,031	0.58	58.06

The final working estimate for 2022 is $K_{2022} = 0.581$, or 58.1%.

Interpreting the Movement of the Indicator

The historical movement of the indicator reflects the changing balance of force between capital and anticapital. Its first major rise follows the emergence of the Soviet center and the expansion of the socialist camp. Its second major rise follows the consolidation of the broader anti-Western pole in the postwar world.

Selected benchmark years for the Communist Indicator

Year	A	C	K	K percent
1914	0	3,092,014,836	0.00	0.00
1920	141,774,619	3,423,211,103	0.04	4.14
1930	402,081,296	5,055,977,644	0.08	7.95
1940	669,629,490	5,364,024,525	0.12	12.48
1945	553,455,832	5,516,514,526	0.10	10.03
1950	1,542,445,001	7,224,779,010	0.21	21.35
1960	2,667,491,227	11,357,876,229	0.23	23.49
1970	4,398,788,264	18,872,315,471	0.23	23.31
1980	6,615,721,218	28,489,589,495	0.23	23.22
1990	8,002,461,137	38,712,695,758	0.21	20.67
2000	12,955,700,160	49,840,355,256	0.26	25.99
2010	29,122,142,863	66,317,169,918	0.44	43.91
2020	45,197,186,289	80,140,415,317	0.56	56.40
2021	48,678,917,333	84,451,742,437	0.58	57.64
2022	50,361,102,635	86,739,231,031	0.58	58.06

Its major decline follows the destruction of the Soviet center and the restructuring of the world order in the 1990s. Its new rise in the twenty-first century reflects the growth of the contemporary anti-Western bloc, above all the BRICS-centered pole.⁶

In this sense, the indicator does not move randomly, but follows the historical reconfiguration of the two world poles. The final value for 2022 suggests that the anticapitalist pole has already reached a substantial share of world material force.

Development, Periphery, and the Author’s Theoretical Position

What matters for my theory is not who declares himself communist, who speaks in the name of justice, or who claims to stand for all that is good. What matters is development itself and the real structure of the world process behind appearances.

The world is structured through the relation between center and periphery, or, more precisely, through imperialism and its periphery. This division is not digital or mechanically binary, but continuous and historical. Yet one principle remains decisive: pure capitalism cannot develop the periphery. It necessarily reproduces unevenness, dependence, and poverty at the edge of the system. For this reason, the very fact that the periphery develops in the modern world is already a good in itself.

This is the key point. The fact that the periphery catches up with the center, the fact that we speak of catch-up development, and the fact that formerly subordinate countries rise materially are already historically significant. Even if someone were to prove that China, BRICS, or the broader non-Western bloc are merely another form of capitalism, that would not change my basic position: development remains a good.

At the same time, my argument is that this development is not generated by pure capitalism itself. It is generated by the historical struggle against it. The people of the periphery did not rise because of abstract inequality alone, but because they lived badly, because they were constrained, subordinated, and blocked from development. In this sense, inequality must not be understood in a merely formal way, but in an absolute historical way: as degradation, non-development, and enforced inferiority in relation to the center.

I will further argue that the modern world, including BRICS, is deeply anti-capitalist in structure, and that the key to understanding this modern anti-capitalism is China. Only then does appearance give way to reality. What seems at first glance to be one thing may in fact be its opposite. This is simply a return to materialism: behind appearance stands reality, and that reality, I will argue, is anti-capitalist.

My basic position, however, does not depend entirely on whether others accept this conclusion. Even if one insisted that the present world is still entirely capitalist, the central fact would remain that the world is developing, and that this development is good. My further claim is that the development of the world after the end of pure capitalism has been tied to an anti-capitalist system whose center, in historical terms, has been socialism: first the Soviet Union, now China, and in the future perhaps some other center.

Imperialism cannot exist without a periphery. It necessarily produces one. But the periphery rises, turns into anti-capitalism, and gathers around a center. This anti-capitalist periphery, together with its center, struggles against imperialism, and through that struggle it develops. In this way, the non-Western pole catches up with the West. While the West continues to move forward, the East, or the Global South more broadly, catches up at an accelerated pace.

For this reason, modern catch-up development, the rise of developing countries, and the material advance of the periphery must be understood as effects of anti-capitalism rather than of capitalism itself. Pure capitalism cannot produce this outcome.

From this follows the final conclusion: if capitalism reaches the point where it no longer has a periphery — that is, if anti-capitalism develops the periphery to the point where the Communist Indicator reaches one — then capitalism will lose the condition of its own reproduction. Capital requires a periphery. Without it, it cannot reproduce itself.

At that point, imperialism would collapse because firms located in the former periphery would be able to do everything the Western firm does, only better and more cheaply, and on a general scale. Western firms would cease to be competitive. The result would be bankruptcy and systemic collapse. This is a simple thought, but it can be developed theoretically, and it should be developed further.

Limits of the Measure and Further Development

The measure is limited by the structure and coverage of the historical GDP data on which it is built.⁷

Some historical entities are affected by incomplete or uneven source coverage. Former composite entities such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia also require explicit historical handling. A small number of technical adjustments were therefore necessary in order to remove artificial gaps from the yearly series.

The classification itself also remains theory-dependent, since the boundary between capital and anticapital is defined within a specific historical framework. For this reason, the indicator should be understood as a reproducible first model. Its further development may include finer country classification, improved historical reconstruction, and additional decomposition of the forces driving its movement.

Related Measures and the Position of the Communist Indicator

There are already measures that capture particular sides of the same historical movement measured here by the Communist Indicator:

1. UN voting measures capture the foreign-policy position of states in relation to the US-led liberal order, and in this sense they register the political side of anti-Western alignment.⁸

2. The BRICS Convergence Index captures the degree of policy convergence inside BRICS, and in this sense it measures the consolidation of a contemporary counter-hegemonic bloc.⁹

3. World-systems measures of core and periphery capture the structure of global hierarchy, the persistence of asymmetry, and the limited but real upward movement of some non-core states.¹⁰

4. Capability measures such as CINC capture the material balance of force through a wider set of power variables, but they still aim at the same general question of how much force is concentrated on one side of the world system and how much on the other.¹¹

For this reason, these measures are not identical to the Communist Indicator, but they are clearly related to it. Each of them measures one aspect of the same process that the Communist Indicator attempts to grasp in a more unified form:

1. UN voting measures the political orientation of states.⁸

2. The BRICS index measures counter-hegemonic convergence.⁹

3. World-systems measures track structural inequality and the movement of the global hierarchy.¹⁰

4. Capability indices measure the balance of material strength.¹¹

Thus, if we look at these measures, and if we examine them carefully, we can see that in essence they show almost the same underlying reality, but from different sides. They themselves may not fully understand that they are speaking about one and the same process. When we speak of the growth of non-Western forces, for me this is precisely anticapitalism, the approach to communism, or something of that kind. When we speak of the growth of anti-Western sentiment, this is directly connected to the growth of anti-Western forces as a whole. Material growth is connected with ideological growth. The more we see the development of these countries, the more we also see criticism of the West. These things are interconnected, because they are all part of one and the same anticapitalist process.

The point, then, is that although the Communist Indicator, as calculated in this chapter, is not perfect, its essence is fundamental. The Communist Indicator itself, in substance, conveys exactly this process that we observe when we look at the different indicators. All of those different indicators merely reveal particular aspects of the wider world-historical process that is taking place.

What is striking is that the practical description of the contemporary world is already visible to everyone, even if it is rarely named directly. There is an alternative to the West. In the past, that alternative was represented above all by the Soviet Union. Today the world has changed, and the rhetoric has changed with it, but the basic structure has not changed. There is still an alternative to the West. The center has shifted, but it remains the same broader historical process of the non-Western world, above all of the periphery resisting Western domination.

Of course, smaller countries may shift from one side to another, and borderline cases may remain debatable. But this does not alter the essence of the indicator. Reassigning minor states would not change the general result in any serious way. To move a major country such as China, India, or Russia into the Western camp would require a historically implausible reinterpretation. Such countries do not simply become Western in any meaningful historical sense. They could collapse, be subordinated, or be turned into a more direct object of Western extraction, but that is a different matter. As such, it is not realistic to treat them as naturally belonging to the Western pole.

This is precisely what the Communist Indicator helps reveal. Since the emergence of the Soviet Union, colonialism has steadily weakened. This decline of colonial domination is not accidental. It is directly connected to the growth of anticapitalist forces. The reduction of colonialism, the rise of non-Western power, and the movement toward a more equal world are all aspects of the same underlying historical process. In my terms, that process is the movement toward communism.

Conclusion

In concluding this work, I have shown that it is in fact possible to construct an objective indicator that genuinely helps to calculate how close we are to communism. Some aspects may remain controversial, even within my own framework. Particular countries, for example, may be assigned to one pole or the other. But, in general, this does not matter too much, because even if some assignments were rearranged, this would not alter the basic substance of the Communist Indicator, namely that it rises overall. One could even speak here of a certain law, a law of communism, so to speak. The point is that we are moving toward it.

Why is this so? Because the world develops and becomes levelled at the same time. This development and equalization of the world is, in essence, what the Communist Indicator expresses, and this at the same time signifies movement toward communism.

At the same time, it must be stressed that even if my interpretation of the Communist Indicator remains controversial, the very fact of calculating the balance of forces between two poles still has significance. This remains true even if different scholars interpret those poles differently. Some may say that this was truly capitalism and the socialist bloc; others may say that it is capitalism and another capitalism, only an authoritarian one, conditionally speaking. Interpret it as you wish. The point is that such a ratio still has analytical meaning even independently of my own conclusions.

Returning to the results themselves, what I specifically did was calculate the Communist Indicator for the historical period from 1914 to 2022, because this is the period that I was able to obtain from Maddison in an adequate form. As a result, for the year 2022 I obtain this indicator at the level of 58.1%. Again, this precise figure may itself be disputable, but the value lies within some range around it. It may, of course, in the future be specified differently, but the main point is that it is already rather high in comparison with the past.

At the same time, 58% does not mean that communism has been achieved in some particular country or place. No. What it means, in essence, is that the world as a whole has developed to 58% of the communist level, so to speak, and has reached equality between countries and regions to 58% of the communist level. Once it reaches 100%, both development and equality will have attained the level that gives rise to the revolution of the second type.

It should also be noted that the indicator does not move chaotically, but in a fully historical way. First of all, it is connected with the rise of the Soviet center. Once it appeared, it became the center of this anticapitalist world and, in general, gave birth to it. In other words, the anticapitalist movement across the world as a whole began with the Soviet Union.

There were, of course, moments when it declined, for example during the Second World War or after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in general it always rises. It is only such world-historical events as major wars or the collapse of previous centers that seriously shake it. The new center, incidentally, is China. These events may disturb the movement of the indicator, and there may be other processes that also cause fluctuations, but in most cases it moves upward.

Although this work does not claim to settle the question definitively, it is correct to say that it offers a very strong formulation of the problem and a clear indication of further research. Nevertheless, the main value of this work lies in the fact that it introduces, for the first time, a measure of proximity to communism. It is a first model for measuring the historical movement toward communism, that is, for measuring whether we are in fact approaching it. This constitutes both its novelty and its principal strength, and I hope that readers will recognize it as such.

Appendix A

Supplementary Tables

This appendix collects the detailed tables used in the construction of the Communist Indicator and the supplementary tabulations referenced in the main text.

Wartime segment of the Communist Indicator, 1938–1946

Year	A	C	K	K percent
1938	645,982,646	5,623,666,723	0.11	11.49
1939	686,023,514	5,257,126,227	0.13	13.05
1940	669,629,490	5,364,024,525	0.12	12.48
1941	646,394,758	5,616,296,627	0.12	11.51
1942	623,160,027	5,685,375,445	0.11	10.96
1943	599,925,295	5,848,654,829	0.10	10.26
1944	576,690,563	5,921,553,828	0.10	9.74
1945	553,455,832	5,516,514,526	0.10	10.03
1946	530,221,100	5,234,774,799	0.10	10.13

The full anticapitalist-period table and final classification-rule table are provided in the attached PDF version of the work.

Footnotes

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “China: Establishment of the People’s Republic,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Cuba: The Republic of Cuba,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “History of North Korea,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “History of Vietnam,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Laos: The Lao People’s Democratic Republic,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “History of Mongolia,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Yugoslavia,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Czechoslovak History: Stalinism in Czechoslovakia,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Poland: Communist Poland,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “History of Hungary: Hungary in the Soviet Orbit,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Bulgaria: The Early Communist Era,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Romania: Communist Romania,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “History of Albania: Socialist Albania,” 2026. Accessed 2026-04-22. ↩

2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Egypt: The Revolution and the Republic,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Ba’ath Party,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Iraq: The Republic of Iraq,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Libya Facts and Figures,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “National Liberation Front,” 2026. Accessed 2026-04-22. ↩

3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Iranian Revolution,” 2026. Accessed 2026-04-22. ↩

4. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “History of Angola,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Frelimo,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Ethiopia: Socialist Ethiopia (1974–91),” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Afghanistan: Civil War, Communist Phase (1978–92),” 2026. Accessed 2026-04-22. ↩

5. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sandinista,” 2026; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hugo Chavez,” 2026. Accessed 2026-04-22. ↩

6. BRICS Brasil, “Brazilian Presidency,” 2025, accessed 2026-04-22; Mihaela Papa, Zhen Han, and Frank O’Donnell, “The Dynamics of Informal Institutions and Counter-Hegemony: Introducing a BRICS Convergence Index,” European Journal of International Relations 29, no. 4, 2023, 960–989. ↩ ↩²

7. Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Maddison-Style Estimates of the Evolution of the World Economy: A New 2023 Update,” Journal of Economic Surveys 39, no. 2, 2025, 631–671; Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Maddison Project Database 2023, DataverseNL, 2024. ↩ ↩²

8. Michael A. Bailey, Anton Strezhnev, and Erik Voeten, “Estimating Dynamic State Preferences from United Nations Voting Data,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 2, 2017, 430–456. ↩ ↩²

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