Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire: Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence As Recolonizati [1 ed.] 9789956764228, 9789956764099

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AFRICA IN THE COLONIAL AGES OF EMPIRE

Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond

Copyright © 2017. Langaa RPCIG. All rights reserved.

Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon

AFRICA IN THE COLONIAL AGES OF EMPIRE

TATAH MENTAN is an erudite Theodore Lentz Peace and Security Studies Fellow and Professor of Political Science with enormous contributions to knowledge in the global political economy of international relations.

Tatah Mentan

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is written from the perspective that the scholarly lives of academics researching on Africa are changing, constantly in flux and increasingly bound to the demands of Western colonial imperialism. This existential situation has forced the continent to morph into a tool in the hands of Colonial Empire. According to Tatah Mentan, the effects of this existential situation of Africa compel serious academic scrutiny. At the same time, inquiry into the African predicament has been changing and evolving within and against the rhythms of this “new normal” of Colonial Empire-Old or New. The author insists that the long and bloody history of imperial conquest that began with the dawn of capitalism needs critical scholarly examination. As Marx wrote in Capital: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moment of primitive accumulation.” Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is therefore a MUST-READ for faculty, students as well as policy makers alike in the changing dynamics of their profession, be it theoretically, methodologically, or structurally and materially.

Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond

Words like “colonialism” and “empire” were once frowned upon in the U.S. and other Western mainstream media as worn-out left-wing rhetoric that didn’t fit reality. Not anymore! Tatah Mentan observes that a growing chorus of right-wing ideologues, with close ties to the Western administrations’ war-making hawks in NATO, are encouraging Washington and the rest of Europe to take pride in the expansion of their power over people and nations around the globe.

Tatah Mentan

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire : Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence As Recolonizati, Langaa

AFRICA IN THE COLONIAL AGES OF EMPIRE

Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond.

Copyright © 2017. Langaa RPCIG. All rights reserved.

Tatah Mentan

Langaa Research & Publishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire : Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence As Recolonizati,

Publisher:

Langaa RPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [email protected] www.langaa-rpcig.net

Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [email protected] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-764-09-4 ISBN-13: 978-9956-764-09-9

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© Tatah Mentan 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire : Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence As Recolonizati,

Dedication

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The colonial encirclement of the world is an integral component of European history from the Early Modern Period to the phase of decolonization and beyond. Individual national and expansion histories referred to each other in varying degrees at different times but often also reinforced each other. Transfer processes within European Empires and in the colonies show that not only genuine colonial powers such as Spain and England, but also “latecomers” such as Germany participated in the historical process of colonial expansion with which Europe decisively shaped world history. In turn, this process also clearly shaped Europe itself. This book is therefore dedicated to African victims of this encircling process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of Colonial Empire expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of the African continent and its people for many centuries.

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire : Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence As Recolonizati,

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Table of Contents Part I: Prolegomena to the Colonial Ages of Empire-Old and New…………………………………… 1 Chapter One: Introduction and Summary………..…………… 3 Chapter Two: On Colonial Empire: Theoretical Situatedness……………………………………… 33 Part II: Africa in the Old Colonial Age of Empire………… 81 Chapter Three: The Cotton Empire of Slavery, Racism and Resistance………………..……………… 83 Chapter Four: Africa in the Old Empire Of Territorial Colonization…………………………………… 119 Chapter Five: Africa: Legacies of Old Colonial Age of Empire……………………………………… 177

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Part III: Africa in the New Colonial Age of Empire…………………..…………………………… 229 Chapter Six: Africa between Independence and Neocolonial Age of Empire…………….………………… 231 Chapter Seven: Africa in the Neoliberal Colonial Age of Empire……………….……………………… 291 Chapter Eight: Africa in the Colonial Age of Globalization Empire………….……………………… 353

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Part IV: Back to the Future and Exiting the Colonial Ages of Empire……………...………………… 411 Chapter Nine: Reprise, Summary, and Conclusion…….……… 413

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Chapter Ten: Which Way Africa-Towards Africa-Exit from Colonial Empire? …………...……………… 443

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Acknowledgements Researching and writing this book was much harder than it appeared to me at first. I had unfathomable help along the way. First, I want to extend a warm and deeply appreciative thank you to Professor Rose Brewer for inspiring me to dig deep into Africa’s historical trajectory in American and world history. She gave me an inspiring opportunity to give a talk to her students in April 2001 on the African Predicament. The challenging questions her students raised for our discussion during the talk compelled me to seek to understand what happened that Africa and Africans became objects of scorn, enslavement, spoliation, colonization, and exploitative enclosures in world capitalist imperial history. Being in this land, I realized that virtually no part of the modern United States as well as the capitalist world system—the economy, education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature, economics, even protest movements—can be understood without first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its foundation. To that end, I opted to dig deeply into Europe’s colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus’s arrival until the Civil War, some tens of million Africans and some 5 million Native Americans were forced to build and cultivate a society extolling “liberty and justice for all.” The seventeenth century was an era when the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism became inextricably tangled into a complex history involving war and revolts in Europe, England’s conquest of the Scots and Irish, the development of formidable new weaponry able to ensure Europe’s colonial dominance, the rebel merchants of North America who created “these United States,” and the hordes of Europeans whose newfound opportunities in this “free” land amounted to “combat pay” for their efforts as “white” settlers. Centering this book on Africa in the Colonial ages of Empire, I attempt to provide a deeply researched, harrowing account of the apocalyptic loss and misery of Africa and its people that likely has no parallel in human history. Such an effort could not succeed without tremendous help from other scholars. These scholars range vii

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from theoreticians of imperialism to historical chroniclers of historical events on both sides of the ideological spectrum. These scholars are so numerous that making a laundry list of their names will fill a whole book. Hence, I simply say: A Big Thank You to those academic forebears. Finally, I recognize that none of my writing would take place without the patient support and encouragement of my family. We discuss the ideas found in this book frequently, why the historical events happened and how to say them better.

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Abbreviations and Acronyms CAS CPIA CSO DNA DPL FY GATT IBRD

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IDA IMF LDP LIC MDG MOU MIC PAF OED OP OPCS PRS PRSC PRSP UNCTAD UNICEF WB

Country Assistance Strategy Country Policy and Institutional Assessment Civil society organization DeoxyriboNucleic Acid Development policy lending Fiscal year General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade International Bank for Reconstruction and Development International Development Association International Monetary Fund Letter of Development Policy Low-income country Millennium Development Goal Memorandum of Understanding Middle-income country Performance assessment framework Operations Evaluation Department Operational Policy (statement) Operations Policy and Country Services Poverty reduction strategy Poverty reduction support credit Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund World Bank

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Part I Prolegomena to the Colonial Ages of EmpireOld and New

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Preview Colonial Empire is a complex, intricate constellation or web of interrelations between the powerful colonizer and marginalized colonized people, characterized by uneven power relations but constantly negotiated and aimed at the submission of those on the periphery and who are often in distant settings, by taking over and controlling minds, land and resources. Colonial Empire is a historically dynamic thing subject to change as predominant notions of what the empire represents as a subject are themselves transformed. To make this argument, this paper borrows from two different critiques of the colonial empires. Attraction of colonial empire entails more than tolerating propaganda, the ideological image of political stability and peace, and economic security and progress (= control) as the benefits of colonial empire – whether through empire’s self-portrayal or the perceptions generated by its direct, implicated and indirect beneficiaries. Attraction of empire is about its appeal, its perceived ‘rationality’, including normality, properness and order. All of life is integrated in what can be called an imperial framework project, and no effort, forceful, persuasive or otherwise, is spared to prove the framework as rational and beneficial to all. Problems show up when it is challenged, or when the power source or material means that maintains it collapses, or when the majority of people are no longer convinced that it is indeed a proper and rational framework. Investigations of Colonial Empire beyond socio-historical, descriptive and similar investigations could include: how groups and communities struggled to deal with the imperial pull and push of conquest, spoliation, assimilation, and resultant dangers; efforts to maintain a certain identity and/or tradition in the face of imperial imposition; and, to understand the efforts to move towards the rewriting of a group’s identity completely, in contradistinction from imperial influence and impact.

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Chapter 1 Introduction and Summary Overview

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European colonial empires began with a race of exploration between the then most advanced maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, during the 15th century. The initial impulse behind these dispersed maritime empires and those that followed was trade, driven by the new ideas and the capitalism that grew out of the European Renaissance. Agreements were also made to divide the world up between them in 1479, 1493, and 1494. European imperialism was born out of competition between European Christians and Ottoman Muslims, the latter of which rose up quickly in the 14th century and forced the Spanish and Portuguese to seek new trade routes to China. To understand the impact of European empires on Africa, any worthy study must focus on four patterns that shed light on the ethics of outside interventions: (1) the epidemiological and bodily harms caused by conquest, cultural genocide, and economic underdevelopment; (2) the uneven and inadequate infrastructures established during the colonial era, including certain politically iatrogenic consequences; (3) the ethical ambiguities and transgressions of colonial research and campaigns; and (4) the concerted and inadvertent efforts to undermine African socio-cultural and political practices, which were not always commensurable with introduced European techniques. This kind of historical analysis helps us home in on different kinds of ethical problems that have grown out of past asymmetries of power-between people, professions, states, and institutions-that shape the nature of international political systems to this day in Africa. Introduction Empire is currently the overarching concept in all discussions of imperialism and colonialism. An empire can be defined minimally as a relationship “of political control imposed by some political societies over the effective sovereignty of other political societies” (Doyle 1986, p. 19). Yet, this definition does not appeal to some scholars. For example, Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri’s Empire has as its main premise that the era of “Imperialism” is over and that we are now living in an era of the so-called “Empire.” Negri is “the leading advocate of a theory that claims that the age of imperialism is dead.” Really! It 3

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is correct to say, as Negri himself does, that modern society is a truly “globalized” society, that capitalism has reached such a level of expansion that it is able to extend its tentacles into every nook and cranny of the planet. However, at the same time, the limits imposed by the nation state, which are the expression of the various national capitalist classes, cannot be overcome within the capitalist economy itself and represent a massive fetter on the future development of humankind. Today, more than ever before, such a contradiction can only be resolved by the destruction of capitalism, thus creating the conditions for putting an end to borders and the nation-state, and for building the union of workers of all nationalities into a world socialist federation. But, departing from the perspectives of Hardt and Negri in Empire, Panitch and Gindin’s book is one with a clear center. In The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2012), there is a fundamental thesis which structures the book. The thesis is that to understand the emergence of contemporary global colonial capitalism, it is necessary to consider first and foremost the role played by the states in its construction. Taking issue with various “globo-philic” ideas, the premise is that, far from being the result of economic determinants that operate “automatically,” global capitalism has depended on the capacity of the state to create mechanisms suitable for the internationalization of capital: primarily, the capacity for the US state to function as guarantor of the accumulation of capital on a world scale (Mentan, 2013). This book is therefore about imperial capitalist globalization and the state. It shows that far from being an inevitable outcome of inherently expansionist economic tendencies, the spread of capitalist markets, values and social relationships around the world has depended on the agency of states throughout the Old and New Colonial Empires, particularly in Africa. The reason is that in the capitalist world, there has never been, and probably never will be, a situation in which a world power engages in military conflict only to give up its share of the spoils to the imaginary ‘Empire’ to which it allegedly belongs. An empire usually involves a core polity governing peripheral spaces and populations; peripheries are typically subjected to different legal and administrative practices than the core. As Suny (Suny 2001, p. 25) writes, an empire is “a particular form of domination or control between two units set apart in a hierarchical, inequitable relationship, more precisely a composite state in which a metropole dominates a periphery to the disadvantage of the periphery.” What has empire got to do with Africa in the 21st century, when African countries (Mentan, 2010) are flying national flags and singing national anthems?

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Historically, Empires have been the main form of large-scale political organization for at least two millennia in Africa, in contrast to modern bureaucratic states, which have existed for just a few centuries. Empires and colonies have been analyzed by sociologists for as long as sociology has existed as an intellectual field, starting with Auguste Comte in the early 19th century and the founders of the academic discipline in the late 19th century in Europe and the United States, and continuing into the present. Between the 1970s and the end of the 20th century, empires receded in the sociological imagination, but they have reemerged powerfully since then as part of the closely linked domains of “empire studies,” “colonial studies,” and “postcolonial studies” (Achebe, 1988). This resurgent interest in empires corresponds in part to events in the real world, including the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reappearance of a fortified “American empire” and US military interventions overseas, especially in Africa. Furthermore, the imperial and colonial turn in scholarship has been inspired by trends inside academe, including revisionist histories of the British and French colonial empires in Africa and Nazi Germany, the emergence of global history, and theoretical developments such as postcolonial theory and subaltern studies. Although scholars are always eager to announce that rival schools and turns are passé or that they were never more than mere fashion, such gestures have been unable to stop the growth of imperial and colonial studies. This unabated enthusiasm corresponds to the power of the empirical and analytical work and to the real-world importance of the objects of analysis. The concept of empire encompasses colonialism and imperialism. Empires are political organizations that are expansive, militarized, and multinational, and that place limits on the sovereignty of the polities in their periphery. In colonialism, the conquered polities or populations are not just ruled over by foreign conquerors but are configured as inferior to their occupiers—inferior in legal, administrative, social, and cultural terms. Imperialism involves political control over foreign lands without the annexation of land or sovereignty. The sociological study of empires overlaps with the study of the state, political domination, geopolitics/political geography, international relations, indigenous peoples, and the historiography of specific empires and colonies. It overlaps with disciplines like anthropology, political science, and cultural studies. The topic of empire is central to several schools of social and cultural analysis, including world-system theory and postcolonial theory. Sociological work on empires can be found in several disciplinary subfields (see Sociology of Culture, Comparative Historical Sociology, Economic Sociology; Marxist Sociology Political Sociology; World-Systems Analysis. This essay focuses on (1) definitions of empire, colonialism, and related terms; (2) the different types

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of imperial practice or configurations of empire; and (3) theories and research concerning the origins, development, effects, and aftermaths of empire. This resurgent interest in empires corresponds in part to events in the real world, including the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reappearance of a fortified “American empire” and US military interventions overseas. The imperial and colonial turn in scholarship has also been inspired by trends inside academe, including revisionist histories of the British and French colonial empires and Nazi Germany, the emergence of global history, and theoretical developments such as postcolonial theory and subaltern studies (Zeleza,1999). Although scholars are always eager to announce that rival schools and turns are passé or that they were never more than mere fashion, such gestures have been unable to stop the growth of imperial and colonial studies. This unabated enthusiasm corresponds to the power of the empirical and analytical work and to the real-world importance of the objects of analysis. The concept of empire encompasses colonialism and imperialism. Empires are political organizations that are expansive, militarized, and multinational, and that place limits on the sovereignty of the polities in their periphery. In colonialism, the conquered polities or populations are not just ruled over by foreign conquerors but are configured as inferior to their occupiers—inferior in legal, administrative, social, and cultural terms. Imperialism involves political control over foreign lands without the annexation of land or sovereignty. The sociological study of empires overlaps with the study of the state, political domination, geopolitics/political geography, international relations, indigenous peoples, and the historiography of specific empires and colonies. It overlaps with disciplines like anthropology, political science, and cultural studies. The topic of empire is central to several schools of social and cultural analysis, including world-system theory and postcolonial theory. Sociological work on empires can be found in several disciplinary subfields (see Sociology of Culture, Comparative Historical Sociology, Economic Sociology; Marxist Sociology Political Sociology; World-Systems Analysis). Methodology for our social science research Why do we need a methodology for our research? The social world is indefinitely complex and multi-stranded—thus eluding explanation through simple observation. In other words, the social world as a domain of phenomena is fundamentally different from the natural world, in the respect of its degree of law-governedness (Little, 1993). So neither the methods of ordinary commonsense nor the methods of the natural sciences will suffice to lead us to an ability to recognize the systems, structures, and causal processes that are 6

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embodied in the social world. The social world proceeds through the activities of billions of men and women. It embodies institutions, organizations, and structures that propel and constrain individual action, and these social entities give rise to processes that are neither law-governed nor random. The social world gives rise to relations of power, domination, exploitation, and resistance. It produces outcomes that advantage some and disadvantage others. It is the result of complex exchanges between agents and structures, and each pole of this conjunction influences the other. The social world, in short, is complex. The challenge of understanding social phenomena is both important and difficult. This is true in 2017; but it was not less true in 1830, when Engels took up residence in Birmingham and undertook to describe and comprehend the confusion of factories, slums, mansions, hunger, and turmoil that Birmingham represented. The Conditions of the Working Class in England is his result (Engels, 1958); and Capital is Marx’s (Marx, 1977). What is involved in having a philosophy and methodology for social science? It is to have answers to several different domains of questions— • inquiry—how to make use of a variety of tools of research to arrive at hypotheses and theories about a domain of empirical phenomena; • epistemology—how to employ empirical and theoretical considerations to provide justification for the hypotheses and theories that we put forward; • metaphysics—an account of the types of entities and processes of which the domain of phenomena are composed; and, • a theory of the structure of social science knowledge—a conception of the purpose of social science inquiry and a schematic notion of what social science results ought to look like. (Theories? Bodies of empirical findings? Statistical laws? Narrative interpretations of important social processes? Groups of causal hypotheses?) Marx’s methodological thinking, and that of many Marxist social scientists who followed, provide tentative answers to each of these questions. And, as we should expect, these answers add up to something less than a finished and consistent methodology (any more than Weber’s work constitutes a tidy theory of social science knowledge and inquiry; (Ringer, 1997)). The root cause of this eclectic nature of the best social research approach we have chosen lies in the nature of social phenomena themselves in history. The social world is not well ordered. It is not a law-governed system of cause and effect. Instead, it is a sum of many different and cross-cutting processes, structures and institutions, mediated by the purposive meaningful actions of persons, within given cultural and material institutions that bear contingent and sometimes accidental relations to each other. And Marxist thinking, appropriately eclectically construed, has much to offer as we try to make sense 7

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of that plural world of the colonial ages of Empire. The logical approach in this book is therefore to use the dialectical method of analysis of material facts of history. The reason for this choice is that the dialectical method consists in going beyond the recognition of this or that instance of inequality and injustice in capitalism. Cataloguing and describing the multitude of different kinds of oppression and injustice in our colonial world of Empire is important, but it’s not necessary to be a Marxist or a dialectician to do so. A dialectical approach to oppression explains how such oppression is part and parcel of a larger social whole, rather than a static and unchanging fact independent of other social factors. A dialectical inquiry into oppression reveals how systems of oppression are connected to the antagonistic and opposed interests of competing social forces—and are both built up and resisted, in a contest between those who try to impose oppression and those who challenge it. And the dialectical method describes how oppression and the ideas that sustain it interact in turn with the rest of the moving parts of capitalist society as a whole, including not just the economy, but also the media, the family, the criminal justice system and so on. Yet as this example illustrates, a dialectical approach is not necessarily a Marxist one. Many mainstream social scientists working in the fields of sociology, philosophy, anthropology and so on attempt to analyze the world as a social whole. But most social science doesn’t have any notion of how the parts of the social whole stand in relation to the others, beyond a nondescript notion that “a multiplicity of historical factors” are at work simultaneously. Put another way, everything affects everything. Karl Marx brought together dialectics and materialism to understand the world as a totality. This totality is driven by inherent change, conflict and contradictions rooted in the material world, where human activity, including the ideas generated by humans about the world, can also react back on and in turn transform the material underpinnings of societybe it old or new colonial society. This scientific method is intended to enables us to understand Colonial Empire history, not as a series of unconnected and unforeseen incidents, but rather as part of a clearly understood and interrelated process. It is a series of actions and reactions which cover politics, economics and the whole spectrum of social development. To lay bare the complex dialectical relationship between all these phenomena is the task of historical materialism. The fact of the matter is that humankind constantly changes nature through labor, and in so doing, changes itself.

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European Colonial Encounters with Africa and Asia Colonization, the ruling or displacing of indigenous populations by settler colonies claiming sovereignty beyond their national borders, usually refers to European imperialism, though colonization as a phenomenon is not limited to Europe. In the case of European colonization, though, most adventures into other continents were motivated by exploration and expanded by greed and a paternalistic belief in the superiority of white Europeans. This is especially true in the case of African colonization. European colonization of Africa began in the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese discovered a new trade route to India. Despite attempts to colonize the Indian and East Asian mainland, European interests only succeeded in controlling the ports—and that alone took two centuries. This was not the case in Africa. Missionaries came to the continent, in ever-increasing numbers beginning in the early 1800s, hoping to convert pagan, Muslim, and non-religious indigenous peoples to Christianity. Explorers came next, seeking raw materials and new industries. The largely unknown continent, with its vast tracts of unspoiled land, proved a gold mine for foreign investors. Before long, advancements in technology and industrialization spurred further exploration and land grabs by Europeans. Beginning in the 1880s, a so-called “Scramble for Africa” was on. Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, and Spain fought each other over African land and natural resources that they had stolen from the African people. Colonization led to the destruction of indigenous cultural traditions, the weakening of family ties, and the enforcement of alien systems of law and economy.

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European Colonization of Asia as template In the fifteenth century, when Portugal discovered a new trade route to India, the Portuguese became zealous about seizing the most lucrative ports of East Africa, the Persian Gulf, and certain regions of India. The once-free ports were now controlled by the Europeans, who sought to eliminate any rivals. They attempted to enforce a monopoly in the spice trade by forcing local traders to pay customs duties in exchange for safe passage, but Asian maritime powers challenged the Europeans, ensuring the difficulty of a Western monopoly. Centuries later, Dutch, French, and English traders began competing with the Portuguese for control over trade routes, textiles, and factory ownership. But India maintained political control over its interests by demanding gold and silver from the Europeans. As hard as they tried to expand their interests into the Indian mainland, the Europeans were overpowered by the might and organization of the Asians. When the Mughal Empire began to disintegrate, that 9

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might and organization was lost and the Europeans saw an opportunity to finally control Indian Ocean trade. By the 1870s, Britain had won the battle to become ruler of India, a position it held until August 15, 1947, when India won its independence. The first foreign colonies in Africa were formally established in Sierra Leone in 1787. After 1870, European intervention in Africa began its steady and rapid increase. King Leopold II of Belgium (1839-1909) began the accelerated race for African land and resource control in 1876. He organized the International Africa Association, which was supposedly created to serve humanitarian and scientific purposes. In reality, the association served as a cover for him to make bogus treaties with several African chiefs and snatch nine hundred thousand square miles of territory for himself. To squelch any further such land grabs, Germany called a conference in 1884, and twelve European nations and representatives from the Ottoman Empire and the United States attended. The African people were allowed no representation. Many rules were made during the conference, but few were followed. Instead, European colonizers continued to deceive African natives out of their land by forming treaties with chiefs who could not read or understand them. Europeans gave the Africans alcohol, fancy costumes, and trinkets in exchange for tribal lands. By 1914, Ethiopia was the only African empire to remain independent from colonial rule.

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Eugenics Eugenics, the scientific and social movement that promotes racial “fitness” through selective breeding, gained widespread attention after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859. The book and its findings inspired biologists to seek out the mechanisms of human heredity. Before long, the term “eugenics” was coined to describe the heritability of intelligence, and eugenicists, after years of research, determined that genes determined behavior. Further, they believed that mental and moral behavior was different among racial and ethnic groups. Eugenicists, then, took issue with Social Darwinism, the popular philosophy that applied Darwin’s principles of evolutionary struggle and survival to human life. They argued that social policy initiatives inspired by Social Darwinism could not possibly benefit the poor or socially “unfit” if genes determined behavior. In discussing the ideological interrelationship between Social Darwinism and British imperialistic thought during the period 1870-1900, there is often presumed a close association based upon their common attribute, the “might is right” principle. For example, after expounding on the dominant “power 10

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politics” principle in late nineteenth century Europe, C. J. H. Hayes (1941: 12) writes in A Generation of Materialism, “the timelessness of Darwinism . . . established it ., . as the chief conditioning philosophy of Europe in the 1870’s.” He expects the reader to see a logical association between Social Darwinism and the mainstream of British imperialistic thought of the late nineteenth century. Social Darwinism was thus a sociological theory popular in late nineteenthcentury Europe and the United States. It merged Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Herbert Spencer’s (1880) sociological theories to justify imperialism, racism, and laissez-faire (i.e. conservative) social and economic policies. Social Darwinists argued that individuals and groups, just like plants and animals, competed with one another for success in life. They used this assertion to justify the status quo by claiming that the individuals or groups of individuals at the top of social, economic, or political hierarchies belonged there, as they had competed against others and had proven themselves best adapted. Any social or political intervention that weakened the existing hierarchy, they argued, would undermine the natural order. In an attempt to gain scientific legitimacy, eugenicists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries espoused a two-pronged program to preserve the most “fit” of the species. The first prong, “negative eugenics”, would prevent reproduction among unfit stocks, while the second prong, “positive eugenics”, would encourage breeding among morally and mentally superior stocks, which would, they believed, remove the threat of deleterious human traits from the race. “Racial hygiene”, as the program was often called, was a response to increased waves of immigration into the United States during the early twentieth century. By 1912, the year of the first International Eugenics Congress, eugenic ideas had become socially accepted on a global scale. In 1907, Indiana became the first American state to enact a sterilization law. This opened the door to the formation of the Eugenics Records Office, which promoted aggressive negative eugenics campaigns championing sterilization measures and published extensive reports on the mental deficiencies of poor people, criminals, and various racial and ethnic groups. By 1911, the idea that disparities in health were genetically ordered, not influenced by environmental or socioeconomic factors, was widely accepted. After World War I, studies relating IQ to race came into vogue, which shifted the focus of eugenics to define a genetic basis for intelligence. In 1927, the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case gave further legitimacy to negative eugenics when it ordered compulsory sterilization of mentally handicapped citizens. This prompted the sterilization of thousands of people across the country. Popular and scientific skepticism of eugenic studies arose when news of experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II became widespread. 11

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Anthropologists and biologists, armed with new data regarding genetic variation that challenged eugenics’s rigid biological representations of race, bolstered the case against the movement.

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Colonialism and the expansion of Empires European colonial period was the period 1500-1900 in most of the European powers to colonize Africa, America and Asia. Designed to boost the bottom of the first region of the national economy at the expense of rivals, the colonies are usually allowed to deal only with the mother nation. By mid-19th century, the great British Empire as trade restrictions mercantilism and established the principle of free trade, the conditions of the restrictions or charges. Colonialism as a form of capitalism, imposed racism, exploitation and social variation on colonized African societies. Working within the capitalist world system, the uneven development of colonialism was closely related. A file corruption and large-scale development and system-dependent economic distortions, psychological and social chaos, poverty and the great dependence of neo-colonialism was the harvest of colonialism. Raw materials and looking for new investment opportunities was the result of the accumulation of capital, competition between capitalist countries. In fact, declining margins caused by the economic crisis cannot be resolved through regional expansion. Group of capitalism forced to expand in seeking to transcend national boundaries, conquer new markets and resources. Imperialism and colonialism led to the same logic, leading to economic development and modernization in the surrounding areas of Europe (Brook-Smith, 1987, Collins, Robert O., ed., 1970). The transatlantic slave trade was only one part of a process of wider European global imperial colonization. Before establishing a foothold in the Americas, European powers including the Portuguese, Dutch and the British had been actively trading throughout Asia. There were important trade routes especially for silk and spices across India, Indonesia and into China. The East India Company was both Britain’s trading and political control in India and East Asia from 1600-1874. The competition between European countries for trade, power and profit led to the conquest of new lands. The colonization of the Caribbean and North and South America and the development of the transatlantic slave trade was an indication of this with the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British all establishing strong footholds. Different countries abolished slavery in the Americas at different times. Denmark was the first to abolish slavery in its American colonies in 1803; and the Portuguese were the last in 1869. The British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and finally slavery itself in 1838, actually stimulated the growth of the 12

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British Empire and development of other trade links. Britain looked for legitimate trade links to retain its profit and power while at the same time maintaining its moral high ground as it persuaded other European countries to abolish slavery. Palm oil and cocoa became important commercial crops in the trade with Africa. However, after abolition in 1838 the British needed another supply of labor in their Caribbean colonies to replace the freed enslaved Africans. They turned to their colonies in Asia and imported thousands of poor indentured laborers from south Asia into Africa and the Americas to labor in conditions that were little better than the enslaved Africans before them. After slavery, Europeans continued their exploitation of overseas colonies, most notably in the ‘scramble for Africa’. Between the 1880s and the First World War European powers desperate for access to African natural resources divided up much of the continent between them – literally with a ruler hence the straight lines of many African borders. The British looting of Benin (1897) shows the inequalities and the damage done to African countries in the process of colonization. The inequalities and exploitation of the colonial past remain in global trade today, hence the attempts to introduce ‘fair trade’. In sum, through the process of decolonization that began, in most African territories, at the close of World War II, African leaders gained greater political power under European rule. In the decades that followed independence, they worked to shape the cultural, political, and economic character of the postcolonial state. Some worked against the challenges of continued European cultural and political hegemony, while others worked with European powers in order to protect their interests and maintain control over economic and political resources. Decolonization, then, was a process as well as a historical period. Yet the nations and regions of Africa experienced it with varying degrees of success. By 1990, formal European political control had given way to African self-rule—except in South Africa. Culturally and politically, however, the legacy of European dominance remained evident in the national borders, political infrastructures, education systems, national languages, economies, and trade networks of each nation. Ultimately, decolonization produced moments of inspiration and promise, yet failed to transform African economies and political structures to bring about true autonomy and development. Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 The national liberation movements of the late 1950s and 1960s brought tremendous hope and renewed aspirations to colonized peoples around the world, as illustrated by Patrice Lumumba’s speech upon the recognition of the 13

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independence of the Congo (1). The UN played a significant role in the decolonization process (2) but neither that body nor the colonial powers liberated “dependent” territories; independence was hard won by colonized peoples, and reluctantly acknowledged by their colonizers (3). As Argentine journalist Adolfo Gilly observed in his 1965 introduction to political philosopher Frantz Fanon’s Studies in a Dying Colonialism: “The whole of humanity has erupted violently, tumultuously onto the state of history, taking its own destiny in its hands. . . . Liberation does not come as a gift from anybody” (4). The “tears, fire, and blood” were a price worth paying to bequeath genuine self-determination to coming generations. Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. There was no one process of decolonization. In some areas, it was peaceful, and orderly. In many others, independence was achieved only after a protracted revolution. A few newly independent countries acquired stable governments almost immediately; others were ruled by dictators or military juntas for decades, or endured long civil wars. Some European governments welcomed a new relationship with their former colonies; others contested decolonization militarily. The process of decolonization coincided with the new Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and with the early development of the new United Nations. Decolonization was often affected by superpower competition, and had a definite impact on the evolution of that competition. It also significantly changed the pattern of international relations in a more general sense. The creation of so many new countries, some of which occupied strategic locations, others of which possessed significant natural resources, and most of which were desperately poor, altered the composition of the United Nations and political complexity of every region of the globe. In the mid to late 19th century, the European powers colonized much of Africa and Southeast Asia. During the decades of imperialism, the industrializing powers of Europe viewed the African and Asian continents as reservoirs of raw materials, labor, and territory for future settlement. In most cases, however, significant development and European settlement in these colonies was sporadic. However, the colonies were exploited, sometimes brutally, for natural and labor resources, and sometimes even for military conscripts. In addition, the introduction of colonial rule drew arbitrary natural boundaries where none had existed before, dividing ethnic and linguistic groups and natural features, and laying the foundation for the creation of numerous states lacking geographic, linguistic, ethnic, or political affinity.

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During World War II Japan, itself a significant imperial power, drove the European powers out of Asia. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, local nationalist movements in the former Asian colonies campaigned for independence rather than a return to European colonial rule. In many cases, as in Indonesia and French Indochina, these nationalists had been guerrillas fighting the Japanese after European surrenders, or were former members of colonial military establishments. These independence movements often appealed to the United States Government for support. While the United States generally supported the concept of national selfdetermination, it also had strong ties to its European allies, who had imperial claims on their former colonies. The Cold War only served to complicate the U.S. position, as U.S. support for decolonization was offset by American concern over communist expansion and Soviet strategic ambitions in Europe. Several of the NATO allies asserted that their colonial possessions provided them with economic and military strength that would otherwise be lost to the alliance. Nearly all of the United States’ European allies believed that after their recovery from World War II their colonies would finally provide the combination of raw materials and protected markets for finished goods that would cement the colonies to Europe. Whether or not this was the case, the alternative of allowing the colonies to slip away, perhaps into the United States’ economic sphere or that of another power, was unappealing to every European government interested in postwar stability. Although the U.S. Government did not force the issue, it encouraged the European imperial powers to negotiate an early withdrawal from their overseas colonies. The United States granted independence to the Philippines in 1946. However, as the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union came to dominate U.S. foreign policy concerns in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations grew increasingly concerned that as the European powers lost their colonies or granted them independence, Sovietsupported communist parties might achieve power in the new states. This might serve to shift the international balance of power in favor of the Soviet Union and remove access to economic resources from U.S. allies. Events such as the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Netherlands (1945–50), the Vietnamese war against France (1945–54), and the nationalist and professed socialist takeovers of Egypt (1952) and Iran (1951) served to reinforce such fears, even if new governments did not directly link themselves to the Soviet Union. Thus, the United States used aid packages, technical assistance and sometimes even military intervention to encourage newly independent nations in the Third World to adopt governments that aligned with the West. The Soviet Union deployed similar tactics in an effort to encourage new nations to join the 15

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communist bloc, and attempted to convince newly decolonized countries that communism was an intrinsically non-imperialist economic and political ideology. Many of the new nations resisted the pressure to be drawn into the Cold War, joined in the “nonaligned movement,” which formed after the Bandung conference of 1955, and focused on internal development. The newly independent nations that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s became an important factor in changing the balance of power within the United Nations. In 1946, there were 35 member states in the United Nations; as the newly independent nations of the “third world” joined the organization, by 1970 membership had swelled to 127. These new member states had a few characteristics in common; they were non-white, with developing economies, facing internal problems that were the result of their colonial past, which sometimes put them at odds with European countries and made them suspicious of European-style governmental structures, political ideas, and economic institutions. These countries also became vocal advocates of continuing decolonization, with the result that the UN Assembly was often ahead of the Security Council on issues of self-governance and decolonization. The new nations pushed the UN toward accepting resolutions for independence for colonial states and creating a special committee on colonialism, demonstrating that even though some nations continued to struggle for independence, in the eyes of the international community, the colonial era was ending. Indeed, and as a consequence of decolonization, between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. There was no one process of decolonization. In some areas, it was peaceful, and orderly. In many others, independence was achieved only after a protracted revolution. A few newly independent countries acquired stable governments almost immediately; others were ruled by dictators or military juntas for decades, or endured long civil wars. Some European governments welcomed a new relationship with their former colonies; others contested decolonization militarily. The process of decolonization coincided with the new Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and with the early development of the new United Nations. Decolonization was often affected by superpower competition, and had a definite impact on the evolution of that competition. It also significantly changed the pattern of international relations in a more general sense (Springhall, 2001). The creation of so many new countries, some of which occupied strategic locations, others of which possessed significant natural resources, and most of which were desperately poor, altered the composition of the United Nations 16

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and political complexity of every region of the globe. In the mid to late 19th century, the European powers colonized much of Africa and Southeast Asia. During the decades of imperialism, the industrializing powers of Europe viewed the African and Asian continents as reservoirs of raw materials, labor, and territory for future settlement. In most cases, however, significant development and European settlement in these colonies was sporadic. However, the colonies were exploited, sometimes brutally, for natural and labor resources, and sometimes even for military conscripts. In addition, the introduction of colonial rule drew arbitrary natural boundaries where none had existed before, dividing ethnic and linguistic groups and natural features, and laying the foundation for the creation of numerous states lacking geographic, linguistic, ethnic, or political affinity (Fanon, 1964). During World War II Japan, itself a significant imperial power, drove the European powers out of Asia. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, local nationalist movements in the former Asian colonies campaigned for independence rather than a return to European colonial rule. In many cases, as in Indonesia and French Indochina, these nationalists had been guerrillas fighting the Japanese after European surrenders, or were former members of colonial military establishments. These independence movements often appealed to the United States Government for support. While the United States generally supported the concept of national selfdetermination, it also had strong ties to its European allies, who had imperial claims on their former colonies. The Cold War only served to complicate the U.S. position, as U.S. support for decolonization was offset by American concern over communist expansion and Soviet strategic ambitions in Europe. Several of the NATO allies asserted that their colonial possessions provided them with economic and military strength that would otherwise be lost to the alliance. Nearly all of the United States’ European allies believed that after their recovery from World War II their colonies would finally provide the combination of raw materials and protected markets for finished goods that would cement the colonies to Europe. Whether or not this was the case, the alternative of allowing the colonies to slip away, perhaps into the United States’ economic sphere or that of another power, was unappealing to every European government interested in postwar stability. Although the U.S. Government did not force the issue, it encouraged the European imperial powers to negotiate an early withdrawal from their overseas colonies. The United States granted independence to the Philippines in 1946. However, as the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union came to dominate U.S. foreign policy concerns in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations grew increasingly concerned that as the 17

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire : Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence As Recolonizati, Langaa RPCIG,

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European powers lost their colonies or granted them independence, Sovietsupported communist parties might achieve power in the new states. This might serve to shift the international balance of power in favor of the Soviet Union and remove access to economic resources from U.S. allies. Events such as the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Netherlands (1945–50), the Vietnamese war against France (1945–54), and the nationalist and professed socialist takeovers of Egypt (1952) and Iran (1951) served to reinforce such fears, even if new governments did not directly link themselves to the Soviet Union. Thus, the United States used aid packages, technical assistance and sometimes even military intervention to encourage newly independent nations in the Third World to adopt governments that aligned with the West. The Soviet Union deployed similar tactics in an effort to encourage new nations to join the communist bloc, and attempted to convince newly decolonized countries that communism was an intrinsically non-imperialist economic and political ideology. Many of the new nations resisted the pressure to be drawn into the Cold War, joined in the “nonaligned movement,” which formed after the Bandung conference of 1955, and focused on internal development. The newly independent nations that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s became an important factor in changing the balance of power within the United Nations. In 1946, there were 35 member states in the United Nations; as the newly independent nations of the “third world” joined the organization, by 1970 membership had swelled to 127. These new member states had a few characteristics in common; they were non-white, with developing economies, facing internal problems that were the result of their colonial past, which sometimes put them at odds with European countries and made them suspicious of European-style governmental structures, political ideas, and economic institutions. These countries also became vocal advocates of continuing decolonization, with the result that the UN Assembly was often ahead of the Security Council on issues of self-governance and decolonization. The new nations pushed the UN toward accepting resolutions for independence for colonial states and creating a special committee on colonialism, demonstrating that even though some nations continued to struggle for independence, in the eyes of the international community, the colonial era was ending (Visser, 1999: 79-94). Africa in the Crosshairs of Old Colonial Empire Today, Africa is still in the crosshairs as Land Grabs intensify. Yesterday, it was the hunting of Africans to be sold and bought as slaves or the commodification of the African. And later, the continent was parceled out to 18

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European countries as colonies and sources of raw materials for European industries and markets for their manufactured goods. Let us consider the instructive case of Mozambique in the current global scramble for land.

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More than 1,000 large-scale foreign land deals are now under contract for agriculture covering more than 26 million hectares of land, according to the new report by Land Matrix Initiative.

On October 12, the government of Mozambique quietly announced that it would close its Agriculture Promotion Centre (CEPAGRI), the agency created in 2006 to promote large-scale foreign investment in the country’s agricultural sector. In a terse statement, government spokesman Mouzinho Saide gave no reason for the closure, saying only that its functions would be subsumed under a different agency in the Ministry of Agriculture. Longtime Mozambique analyst Joseph Hanlon was not so shy, reporting in his October 18 Mozambique News Report that CEPAGRI was finished because those large-scale projects it was supposed to broker: “none of them have succeeded.” “Africa remains the largest target for land grabs, accounting for 42 percent of global deals with 10 million hectares under contract.” Hyperbole aside, Mozambique’s grand visions of foreign capital modernizing its agricultural sector have indeed proven grandiose. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rich Nacala Corridor in northern Mozambique, where the ProSavana project promoted by Brazil, Japan, and Mozambique was going to transform 35 million hectares—nearly 100 million acres—into soybean plantations modeled on Brazil’s cerrado region. Brazilian agribusinessmen walked away, seeing land that was hardly “unoccupied,” resistance from the communities occupying that land, and poor infrastructure to get any product to its intended markets in China and Japan.

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ProSavana lives on in name at least—and as an ongoing threat to farmers in the region—but so far, the project’s largest product is hubris. But is land-grabbing over, in Mozambique and across Africa and the rest of the developing world? Now that crop and food prices have returned to their usual punishingly low levels, is the pressure off from foreign buyers looking to acquire large tracts of agricultural lands? Not according to new data from the Land Matrix Initiative, which has been tracking such deals since the land rush took off in 2007. A large number of formerly announced deals have failed to materialize, as with Pro-Savana, but many that remain are now under contract and coming into production.

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Land-grabbing: myth and reality More than 1,000 large-scale foreign land deals are now under contract for agriculture covering more than 26 million hectares of land, according to the new report, ”Land Matrix Analytical Report II: International Land Deals for Agriculture.” That area represents a remarkable two percent of arable land in the world. Nearly three-quarters of the projects have now begun production on some of the land. Africa remains the largest target for land grabs, accounting for 42 percent of global deals with 10 million hectares under contract. Mozambique now ranks 18th among all target countries in area under contract, with 500,000 hectares in 60 concluded deals. That puts the country, which in the 2012 report was a top target in Africa, well behind Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Sudan, which have the most on the continent. The United States and United Kingdom remain among the leading investors in the amount of land under contract for agriculture. The Land Matrix notes the rise of developing country investors in recent years and, to the surprise of many, that does not mean China. Malaysia, with heavy investments in palm oil plantations in Indonesia and other Asian countries, now is the leading source of investors, followed by the U.S. and the U.K. China ranks ninth overall, with about one million hectares under contract, barely one-third the land acquired by U.S. investors. China remains a minor agricultural player in Africa. The new report also dispels the myth that the land grabs are mainly by “resource poor” governments to secure food access for their domestic populations. At least 70 percent of the concluded deals are by private investors, with only 6 percent directly by governments. And food crops account for a minority of the land under cultivation. Cereal crops account for only an estimated 20 percent of the area under cultivation, while 44 percent is estimated to be in oilseeds such as palm oil and another 10 percent is in sugar. The latter 20

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two are considered prime “flex-crops” because they can be used to produce biofuels, raw materials for processed foods, or edible oils and sugar.

A map from the LMI report, land deals in Eastern and Southern Africa

The new data also shows that the acquired land was not “unused,” despite investor claims to the contrary. Fully 58 percent was reported to be cropland in recent use. Only 10 percent of acquired land was considered “marginal,” and Land Matrix points out that this by no means indicates that it was not in use. “Land considered to be ‘marginal’ often serves as a grazing area and is important to rural communities and indigenous peoples,” notes the report. Land Matrix 21

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also confirmed that successful projects failed to generate many jobs, as capitalintensive farming displaced labor-intensive small-scale production. One researcher estimated a net loss in livelihoods between 28 percent (Tanzania) and 75 percent (Kenya) from large-scale foreign projects.

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Mozambique: Still under threat Mozambique’s rural communities remain on high alert, even as they successfully repel many of the largest land grabs. The Mozambican government may have closed its agricultural promotion center, but it remains committed to giving away good land to foreigners. As I reported earlier, a 200,000-hectare project along the Lurio River in northern Mozambique is still very much in the pipeline, even if it doesn’t appear yet in the Land Matrix database. (GRAIN, the other international organization collecting land grab data, shows it as an announced project that could displace 100,000 people). But the failures are stunning, and a testament to communities’ resistance to the foreign invaders, as well as their insistence that the government respect the country’s progressive Land Law. In the Land Matrix’s first report in 2012, Mozambique was the second most important target in the world, with nearly 8 million hectares in reported agricultural deals. Now, the Land Matrix lists only 500,000 hectares in 65 concluded agricultural deals. Of the current projects, nine, on nearly 100,000 hectares, are listed as “abandoned,” mostly biofuel projects. Data is scarcer on the area actually under production, but Land Matrix could confirm only 21,000 hectares in production. No doubt, the area is larger than that. Interestingly, the largest operational project, a Chinese rice investment in Xai Xai, has been significantly scaled back from its listed 8,800hectare plantation because of community resistance. Large-scale projects have been more successful in forestry and tourism, with nearly two million hectares in concluded deals. And mining concessions continue to displace or threaten thousands of Mozambicans as the mineral boom continues. But the initial alarming ProSAVANA promise was 35 million hectares. ProSAVANA appears in the Land Matrix database now as a 700,000hectare project “intended (under negotiation),” but with no land under contract or production seven years after the plan was announced. The project is now limping through yet another consultation process with little pretense of attracting investors. Brazil does not appear as the home source of investment for a single Mozambican farming project, though there certainly are a few. Interestingly, Brazil ranks fifth in the world as a land-grab target, with two million hectares under contract to foreigners.

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The slowed pace of land grabbing in Mozambique is mirrored in global data from Land Matrix. The group’s first report, in 2012, had far less precise information because the land rush had just begun in earnest, triggered by the food price spikes in 2007–2008. The 2012 report showed 83 million hectares in “intended” agricultural deals, with some 56 million in Africa. Many of those intentions have gone the way of ProSAVANA. According to the new report, only 26 million hectares in deals have been concluded globally—less than onethird the threatened amount—with about 10 million in Africa, less than onefifth the area reported in 2012. An international campaign for Land Rights Now is focusing particular attention on women, indigenous communities, and others who do not have secure title to the land and are particularly vulnerable. Fundamentally, the responsibility lies with national governments to recognize communal and individual land rights and stop giving away land to foreign investors. History, like life, is complicated. A sense of proportion is essential, as is an appreciation of nuance. European colonialism went between the period 15001900 when many European powers colonized Africa, America and Asia. Designed to boost the bottom of the first region of the national economy at the expense of rivals, the colonies were usually allowed to deal only with the mother nation. Today, it seems hard to credit all the talk of Empire. Not so long ago one would have been forgiven for believing colonial history to be a mildly interesting area of academic study, good mostly for the nostalgia of Colonel Blimps or the arcane fascinations of nerdy graduate students. As one may ask: Didn’t the age of colonization finally end when the last vestiges of Portugal’s colonial empire in Africa were swept away in the mid1970s? Didn’t this finally put paid to the project of colonial empires, sweeping them forever into the ‘dustbin of history’? And with it didn’t any sense of political credibility attached to the paternalism of the ‘white man’s burden’ or a dozen other ‘civilizing’ hypocrisies also disappear forever? Gandhi caught the spirit of the times after the Second World War when asked what he thought of Western civilization. His cryptic retort: ‘I think it would be a good idea.’ The end of an era, right? Perhaps not. Today talk of Empire is everywhere from Left to Right across the political spectrum. Two significant panoramic studies, both entitled Empire – one by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000) on the Left, one by Niall Ferguson (2003) on the Right – have made claims to alter significantly the way we think about empire. Both are books of towering political ambition. Both have set off ferocious debates about the nature and prospects of imperial power. The stage for such debates was set by the collapse of optimism that accompanied the era of post-colonial independence. Read an 23

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issue of the NI from the mid-1970s and you get a flavor of the hope that infused the period. The enduring poverty and brutality in the global South, particularly Africa, is for some an indication that colonized peoples are incapable (culturally? genetically?) of self-government. For others it is stark evidence that Empire has never really gone away. Empire is coming out of the closet, and not just in books: it has once again taken center stage, this time with a cowboy swagger. The idea of an American Empire has produced a veritable avalanche of learned tomes, articles, documentaries, TV shows, web interventions and not a little resistance. If you are an Iraqi or an Afghan this is an everyday reality. No longer is it just the notso-subtle velvet hammer of IMF and World Bank advice. In country after country US military bases dot the landscape. While this is not, in most cases, the direct territorial acquisition of formal colonies, the presence of foreign troops on one’s soil is clear evidence that someone else is making claims on your natural resources and the nature of your institutions. Boots on the ground, then, have made Empire more than an academic exercise. What might yet prove to be the world’s most powerful (if most reluctant) empire is clearly flexing its muscles. Is the ‘world’s only superpower’ becoming the new Rome? The US reluctance to acclaim itself an empire lies not in any unwillingness to impose its will on others through the projection of military might or the imposition of its favored neoliberal economic model on recalcitrant populations. It lies rather in its unwillingness to admit that that is what it is doing. Historically empires have proudly proclaimed their right – indeed their obligation – to impose their order. The Glories of Rome; ‘The Sun never sets on the British Empire’; Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich; La Civilisation Française: empires have usually trumpeted their own greatness from the rooftops. But the US has, until recently, been very modest in this regard, preferring to see itself as a champion of anti-imperialism and democracy. Pop historian Karen Farrington (2004) has produced a lavish, illustrated Historical Atlas of Empires that starts in Mesopotamia in 40,000 BCE and ends with the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. Farrington never even entertains the possibility that there could be an American Empire. Even more serious historians of Empire like Frederick Cooper and Michael Doyle shrink from such a judgment. The reluctance of the US to name itself may be because the tricky question of democracy is at the center of this latest empire’s self-image. Hard to square Empire with democracy, so let’s not talk about it. Maybe people won’t notice. But bits of evidence are starting to accumulate that indicate this is changing. Lynne and Dick Cheney in their most recent Christmas card quoted Ben Franklin: ‘If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it 24

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probable that an empire can rise without his aid?’ In the White House, meanwhile, Cheney’s boss has commissioned a study of the ruling practices of past empires going back to Rome and Genghis Khan. A plethora of imperial-minded think-tanks and institutes, military and oil industry lobbyists and Christian fundamentalist battlers against various ‘evil others’ populate the official US political landscape. Their belligerence is delivered in a rather macho register. Michael Ledeen, who held the ‘Freedom Chair’ at the American Enterprise Institute, caught the mood: ‘Every 10 years or so, the US needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.’ The bold and the brash have gained imperial ascendancy inside the Washington beltway (http: //www.opendemocracy.net/content/articles/PDF/2021.pdf ).

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Post colonialism The term postcolonialism has roots in philosophy and literature as a theoretical approach to understanding the condition of nations that were once or continue as colonial possessions of other nations. While there is considerable debate over what constitutes the boundaries of the field of postcolonial studies, broadly speaking, post colonialism refers to the study of interactions between European nations and the nations that have been colonized in the post-Enlightenment period of history. European colonization can be broken into two general periods: first, with the early European explorers from the 15th to the 17th centuries; and second, in the latter half of the 19th century beginning with European imperial expansion and culminating in the “scramble for Africa” through the end of World War I. Decolonization refers to the process by which a former colony asserts its independence from its ruling empire. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, decolonization has largely occurred in Africa and Asia following World War II and the creation of the United Nations. It is imperative to remember, nonetheless, that several colonies remain today; for instance Puerto Rico’s status as a colony of the United States of America and the plight of native and indigenous groups in places like the Americas and Australia complicate any discussion of “post”colonialism (Balme, 1999, Amin, 1977, Amuta, 1989). Many scholars attribute the beginning of postcolonial studies to the publication of Edward Said’s book Orientalism (1978), though previous influential treatises such as Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) have long considered the impact of colonization on the psychological and living conditions of the colonized. Considering the long period of colonial occupation and the widespread reach of European empires, postcolonial studies grew out 25

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of an interest in the cultural, philosophical and literary production of those people within the colonized world. Postcolonial studies has been interested in questions that consider how colonial powers have been able to gain so much control over large parts of the non-Western world. Postcolonial scholars have documented how Western culture, ranging broadly from the implementation of colonial education and languages to the importation of technology, science, and medicine, has impacted colonized societies. Some argue that colonization was not all negative; rather, the infrastructure built and maintained by colonial powers has helped poor regions of the world develop into more modern and industrialized nations. Other scholars argue that while some good did come from colonial occupation for some sectors of colonized societies, the impact of colonization has been fairly detrimental to existing indigenous social, economic and political systems. In particular, some postcolonial scholars and activists point to the question of how “free” ex-colonies can ever be from their colonizers (Spivak, 1999). That is to say, some scholars contend that new forms of imperialism and domination constitute a neocolonialism that includes the spread of global trade, the development and aid industries, and military occupations. Such neocolonization (Esteva, 1998) has implications along gender, race, and class lines that impact not only the relationships between the West and the developing world, but also create new inequalities within ex-colonies themselves (Young, 1995). In general, contemporary scholars have considered how some development projects, intended to modernize former colonies (also called the “Third World”), carry with them traces of colonial missions. Development, or the transfer of ideas and technologies from developed to underdeveloped countries, is intended to help these disadvantaged countries that are mostly former colonies. Postcolonial scholars of development, such as Arturo Escobar, have noted that the era of development began as the era of colonization ended. The driving idea behind development has been based on the assumption that the rest of the world can follow the same patterns of industrialization as the West did to become developed. The problem, according to Escobar (1995), is that this assumption ignores the historical conditions of colonization that have helped create “backward” conditions within the underdeveloped world. More than that, this assumption also does not take into account the unequal economic and political conditions between the developed world and developing countries, or the inequalities within nations. Why am I writing this book? The reasons are many and I will dwell on a few. The first reason is intellectual. Intellectual activities grow out of a process to produce real life. In any given society, intellectuals are the result of the level of development of the society. Intellectuals are specialized in solving 26

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problems that confront society in the process of producing and reproducing real life. People develop skills and organizations to overcome contradictions presented to them by nature. To fulfill the needs of the people in the society, most people get involved in manual labor, as fishermen, peasants, house builders and net makers, as metalworkers making knives, hoes, axes and spears, as clothes makers, etc. Another set of skilled people like mathematicians, philosophers, artists, priests and healers, who are not directly involved in the process of production of material life, emerge later as a result of the development of material production in society. The latter type of people depends on the former type of people. Intellectual activities arise in the process of producing life, in the process of solving problems that oppose the development of forces of production. Gradually, a small number of people may be asked to observe, study and analyze further a particular phenomenon in order to advance the material production in society. For example, a society that does not produce yams cannot directly acquire yam planting knowledge; a society that does not directly make stone pyramids cannot directly acquire the art and science of building pyramids. Ancient Egyptians invented and developed geometry because they were involved in work to control the flooding of the Nile River. This was necessary to guarantee agricultural production and land delimitation upon which the whole country depended. The second reason concerns the waste of African labor over the centuries and African students, academics and policy makers must grasp this existential reality if they should count at all in the process of the continent’s liberation from Empire. Production under imperialism has given rise to nations, institutions and relationships necessary to maintain and reproduce the imperialist order: primarily the oppression and exploitation of oppressed nations by oppressor nations; secondarily the reproduction of the African petty bourgeoisie in Africa, as the enforcer of the imperialist order that keeps us, the oppressed people, chained to the oppressors from Europe and North America. The institutions of learning in capitalist society are created to train and form cadres who will manage and secure the reproduction of that capitalist society. That is to say that in a world that is split between the oppressor nations and oppressed nations, the education must serve to maintain the status quo. African students are part of the oppressed nation, which under imperialism produces essentially for the oppressor nations. Since students are not a social class by themselves, engaged in material production, many consider their studies in universities and other institutions of higher learning to be a pathway to the petty bourgeois class and the lifestyle associated with it. In fact, it is in these institutions that their role as a conscious agent of 27

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imperialist interests and values will be enhanced and consolidated. They learn to see their education, grants and, later on, their jobs and careers as an entitlement, with no regard to the causes and plight of the African workers and peasants whose labor and resistance to imperialism made it possible for them to acquire education and professional status in society. It is my view that African students must first serve the people. Their education must be used to develop the organizational and fighting abilities of the people against Empire-old or new. They cannot be apolitical, because the universities they are in are not apolitical. There is no such thing as an apolitical institution under slavery. You are either for or against. You either support it or fight it. In order to ensure that their qualification is not just a passport to the bourgeoisie, students must join the African resistance against imperialism. We do not mean the talk fest and other conferences African opportunists organize on campuses solely to consume information. We want students to join the struggle for African liberation under the leadership of African Internationalism. It is only in the process of fighting imperialism and the African petty bourgeoisie under the leadership of African internationalism that African students can really gain knowledge of the art and science of African liberation. It is only then that they can begin to resolve the contradictions of being educated but not alienated from the people, educated but not opportunistic, and firmly united with the workers and peasants for a common future. Third, we must overturn imperialist definition of Africa as a charity case. Africa has been defined by our oppressors today as a charity case. Newspapers, movies, music, sports, movie stars and various personalities in imperialist countries are involved in charity activities all over Africa. Geldof and Bono tour the world to raise money for Africa. For years, the criminal duo of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair shamelessly promoted themselves as leaders trying to help out Africa. Wherever you go, there are images that appeal for donations to help out Africa and African people. They advertise Oxfam, USAID, Save the Children, Christian Aid, Red Cross, etc. Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and now China have all developed aid programs as part of their foreign policies towards Africa. This concept of charity undermines African people’s consciousness to the reality that Europe and America are living off African resources. It covers up for all the looting and brutality inflicted on the people in the process of stealing our resources. Untold massive amounts of gold, oil, coltan, cobalt, platinum, uranium, diamond, cocoa, and other resources that leave the land of Africa every year, hundreds of billions paid to IMF and the World Bank disguised as debt are not signs of poverty. Our mines generally are owned by 28

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imperialist powers who also fix the prices of what comes from our own soil and labor. Most of the stuff we produce ends up in factories, supermarkets, homes, mansions and museums in Europe and North America. Fourth, and finally, Africa is not poor, Africa is being looted. Policy makers in Africa must understand that Africa does not have its own economy. It has an imperialist economy. Ghana and Ivory Coast are large producers of cocoa, which is processed and consumed in Europe and North America. Nigeria, Chad and Angola produce oil, which is mostly consumed in North America, China, Europe and Japan, while our people continue to queue up for oil at unaffordable costs. It does not matter how many years we have produced cocoa or oil, our people are still poor. In North America and other oppressor countries, African labor is not paid its real value. We all know by now that under direct or indirect colonial slavery, African workers and peasants are never paid the real value of our labor and natural resources, which are defined by imperialism, which has its origin in the capture and enslavement of Africa and African people in the 15th century. This situation must change. In this time of searching situations that we no longer understand because of their volatility-what Deleuze (1989: xi) describes as “situations which we no longer know how to react to, in spaces we no longer know how to describe”we hope that what we are calling Africa in the New Colonial Ages of Empire is a move to start creating a language and way of thinking methodologically and philosophically together that is up to the task. Notes 1. On Lumumba’s assassination soon thereafter, see Ibrahim J. Gassama, Africa and the Politics of Destruction: A Critical Re-Examination of Neocolonialism and its Consequences, 10 ORE. REV. INT’L L. 327, 328-332 (2008). See Patrice Lumumba, “Speech at Proclamation of Independence,” June 30, 1960, in INDEPENDENCE DOCUMENTS OF THE WORLD 793-797 (Albert P. Blaustein, Jay A. Sigler & Benjamin R. Beede eds. 1977). The precise wording of Lumumba’s speech is reported in various ways, perhaps because it was a somewhat impromptu response to insulting comments made by Belgian King Albert Baudouin at the ceremony. See David Renton, David Seddon & Leo Zeilig, The Congo: Plunder And Resistance 80-81 (2007). 2. See Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law 196 (2005). 3. See Alain Pellet, Book Review of the Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary, ed. Bruno Simma, 25 MICH. J. INT’L L. 135, 140-141 (2003).

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4. Adolfo Gilly, Introduction in Frantz Fanon, Studies In A Dying Colonialism 1-2, (1965).

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References Achebe, Chinua. (1988). Hopes and Impediments. London: Doubleday. Amin, Samir. (1977). Imperialism and Unequal Development. New York: Monthly Review Press. Amuta, Chidi. (1989). The Theory of African Literature. London: Zed Books. Balme, Christopher B. (1999). Decolonizing the Stage Theatrical Syncretism and PostColonial Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brooke-Smith, Robin, ed. (1987). The Scramble for Africa. London: Macmillan Education/Documents & Debates, 1987. Collins, Robert O., ed. (1970). Problems in the History of Colonial Africa, 1860-1960. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Deleuze, Gilles. (1989). Cinema II, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Doyle, Michael W. 1986. Empires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. Engels, Friedrich. (1958). The condition of the working class in England. Oxford: B. Blackwell. Escobar, Arturo. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Esteva, Gustavo. “Beyond Development, What?” with M.S. Prakash, in: Development in Practice, Vol. 8, No. 3, Aug. 1998. Fanon, Frantz. (1964). Toward the African Revolution, trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, Frantz. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Hayes, C. J. H. (1941). A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900.New York. Farrington, Karen 2004). Historical Atlas of Empires: From 4000 BC to the 21st Century. New York: Vintage Books. Ferguson, N. (2003) Colossus: the Price of America’s Empire. London: Allen Lane. Little, Daniel. (1993). On the Scope and Limits of Generalizations in the Social Sciences. Synthese. Marx, Karl. (1977). Capital. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage. Ringer, Fritz. (1997). Max Weber’s Methodology: The Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 30

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Mentan, T. (2010). The State in Africa: An Analysis of Impacts of Historical Trajectories of Global Capitalist Expansion and Domination in the Continent. Langaa RPCIG. Bamenda. Mentan, T. (2013). Advancing the Global Empire: Wealth and Power and the International Corporate Agenda. Colorado. Academica Press.

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Said, Edward. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Panitch, Leo and Sam Gindin. (2012). The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, New York, Verso. Spencer, Herbert. (1880). Principles of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Springhall, John. (2001). Decolonization since 1945: The Collapse of European Overseas Empires. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Suny, Ronald Grigor. 2001. The empire strikes out: Imperial Russia, “national” identity, and theories of empire. In A state of nations: Empire and nation-making in the age of Lenin and Stalin. Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, 23–66. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Young, Robert. (1995). Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. New York: Routledge. Visser, Nicholas. (1999). “Postcoloniality of a Special Type: Theory and Its Appropriations in South Africa.” Yearbook of English Studies 27 (1997): 79-94. Zeleza, T. (1999). . “The Past and Futures of African Studies and Area Studies.” Ufahamu XXV, 2: 1999: 5-41.

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Chapter 2 On Colonial Empire: Theoretical Situatedness

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Overview The desire to theorize Colonial Empire compels us to explain the material dispossession of the colonized people by imperial capital; deconstruct the dehumanizing ideologies in popular imperial media and academic writing; and describe and analyze indigenous resilience (survival), resistance (decolonization), and resurgence (existential self-determination). The conclusions suggest potential new collaborations across historical materialist and indigenous scholarship in the imperial academy, be it at periods of enslavement, brutal colonization or subtle neocolonization. Contemporary critical theorizing on Colonial Empire therefore tends to diverge in two ways. First, more traditional approaches tend to foreground the national basis of the imperial project and the subsequent ongoing inter-imperial rivalry inherent between rival capitalist states and regions. A second ‘globalcapitalist’ approach rejects the notion of Colonial Empire and instead posits the transcendence of a nationally based imperialism in favor of an increasingly transnationally orientated state and global ruling class. I argue that both accounts fail in their singularity to capture the nature and role of the imperial state within a global political economy. In other words, the colonial imperial state has long been both subject to and demonstrative of a dual national and transnational structural logic that seeks to enhance national colonial interests while reproducing a world order favorable for global capital as a whole. Crucially, the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have exacerbated the tensions between these dual logics; these potentially affect both the hegemony of Colonial Empire and the future of international relations in profound ways. Introduction One interesting observation is that in recent years, scientists have invested less attention to the discussion of colonialism in the Marxist tradition. This decline reflects the influence of Marxism in academic practice and policy. However, Marxism, moved the independence movement of all post-colonial theory and anti-colonial rule over the world. It drew attention to the expansion, helped to explain the concept of European politics after the end of the sustained 33

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political economy of development of direct political rule, and pointed out the material basis of Marxism. From the point of view of Marxism, a form of imperialism is, as I can say, inevitable. Large populations of Europeans exported to overseas resource-rich land, the country’s industrial products and a reliable source of natural resources to create a capitalist market became possible. Marx’s analysis of the progressive forces of colonialism brought updates of feudal society like a transparent rationalization of foreign domination, and exploitation. Today the colonial ages of the ‘E’ and ‘I’ words, empire and imperialism, are back in fashion. During the global justice movement at the end of the 1990s, it was common sense among activists that globalization had bypassed and undermined the state system. Africa’s enemies were not imperialist states but rather multinational corporations and international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The intellectual expression of this common sense took the form of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire, which argued that statedriven imperialism was a thing of the past. The US wars and occupations over the last decade shattered these illusions. In their place, a host of Marxists from David Harvey to Ellen Wood have attempted to craft theories of imperialism capable of explaining today’s world. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin have been developing their own distinctive theory over the last decade in a series of articles in the Socialist Register, various journals, as well as in their 2004 book Global Capitalism and American Empire. They have now expanded and enriched their argument in The Making of Global Capitalism, which recently won the prestigious Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. Its reconceptualization of the US Empire and globalization is vital for the revolutionary Left to discuss and debate. The book demonstrates how the American state spearheaded globalization and documents the dramatic impact of the neoliberal boom. But, however, it underestimates the persistence of geopolitical rivalry between states in the world system in the past and today. The Problem with Contemporary Theorizing on Imperialism Sociologists are adding specific disciplinary accents to the burgeoning literature in colonial, imperial, and postcolonial studies. They have been especially keen to add explanatory accounts to the historical literature on empires. Starting in the 1950s, sociologists pioneered the study of colonies as historical formations. Against traditional anthropological approaches, sociologists insisted on studying colonizer and colonized in their dynamic interactions, asking how both groups were being transformed. Like 34

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contemporary postcolonial scholars, sociologists began asking in the 1950s how metropoles were being remade by overseas colonialism and colonial immigration. Echoing discussions in the 1950s among sociologists working in the colonies, current discussions of postcolonial sociology question the applicability of Western social scientific concepts and theories (Weber, 1978) to the global South and ask how sociology itself has been shaped by empire. Current sociological research on empires focuses on six sets of causal mechanisms: (1) capitalism; (2) geopolitics, war, and violence; (3) cultural representations and subjectivity; (4) resistance and collaboration by the colonized; (5) institutional dimensions of empires and colonies; and (6) conflict and compromise among colonizers at the heart of colonial states (Münkler, 2007). Most theorists of imperialism resort to a form of economic reductionism in which the political and ideological dimensions of imperial power are downplayed or ignored, and categories such as “investments,” “trade” and “markets” are decontextualized and presented as historically disembodied entities that are comparable across space and time. Changes in the configuration of class relations and associated dynamics are then accounted for in terms of general economic categories such as “finance,” “manufacturing,” “banking” and “services” without any analysis of the political economy of capitalist development and class formation, or the nature and sources of financial wealth—illegal drug trade, money laundering, real estate speculation, etc. (Panitch and Leys 2004). As for the shifts in the political and economic orientation of governing capitalist politicians representing the imperial interests of the dominant class, resulting in the formation of links with other capitalists and imperialist centers with major consequences in the configuration of world power, they are glossed over in favor of abstract accounts of statistical shifts in economic measures of capital flows. Contemporary theorizing about imperialism generally ignores the sociopolitical and ideological power configurations of imperial policy, as well as the role of international financial institutions such as the World Bank in shaping the institutional and policy framework of the new world order, which not only provides a system of global governance but the rules of engagement for the class war launched by the global capitalist class against labor in its different redoubts of organized resistance. The focus of most contemporary and recent studies of the dynamics of imperial power is on the projection of military power in the project of protecting and advancing the geopolitical interests of the United States and the geo-economic interests of monopoly capital in the middle east and other zones of capital accumulation, or on the economic operations of the large multinational corporations that dominate the global economy. In regard 35

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to the Middle East the main issue in these studies is the threat presented by radical Islam (and its forces of international terrorism) to accessing one of the world’s greatest reservoirs of fossil fuel as well as the imperialist project of world domination. As for the multinational corporations that dominate the global economy they are viewed by theorists of the “new imperialism” as the major operational agency of imperial power in the world capitalist system, having displaced the nation-state in its power to advance the project of capital accumulation and the quest for world domination. While theorists and analysts in the liberal tradition continue their concern with the dynamics US foreign policy in the projection of imperial power, and Marxists in the tradition of international political economy and critical development studies continue to concentrate their analysis on the dynamics of state power, the theorists of the “new imperialism” concentrate almost entirely on the globalizing dynamics of monopoly capital. Nevertheless, the dynamics of imperial power relations are political as well as economic, and do engage the political apparatus of the state. As for the economic dynamics, as theorized by Lenin in a very different context, they derive from the search by capital for profit and productive investments as well as cheaper sources of raw materials and labor and markets. In terms of these dynamics, particularly those that relate to the fusion of industrial and financial capital, the export of capital and the emergence of monopoly capital, Lenin theorized imperialism as the highest form of capitalism, a manifestation of its fundamental laws of development. However, while liberal theorists of imperialism tend to emphasize the political, and to isolate the political dimension of imperialism from its economic dynamics, viewing imperialism purely in terms of the quest for world domination or the pursuit of geopolitical strategic concerns and the national interest, Marxist theorists following Lenin recognize that the imperial state is a critical agency of capitalist development and a fundamental source of political and military power pursued in the service of capital, to ensure its dominion. In addition to theories that view imperialism through the lens of geopolitical interests or the rational pursuit of power for its own sake liberal theorists of imperialism often resort to cultural and even psychological “explanations” of imperialism, viewing it in terms either of an imputed psychological drive to power or, as in the case of Razack (2004), the “idea of empire,” “deeply held belief in . . . the right to dominate others . . . .” Razack (2004: 9–10) expands on this rather fanciful and totally unscientific, if not absurd, theory in the following terms:

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Imperialism is not just about accumulation but about the idea of empire . . . . Empire is a structure of feeling, a deeply held belief in the need to and the right to dominate others for their own good, others who are expected to be grateful. (Emphasis in original).

From this Marxist perspective imperialism is understood in terms of its connection to capitalism, and the agency of the imperial state system—the projection of state power—in securing the conditions needed for capital accumulation. Not that there is a consensus on this point—on imperialism as the bearer of capital, an agency of capitalist development. William Robinson, for example, expands on the argument advanced by Hardt and Negri (2000) and other world system theorists that the “class relations of global capitalism are now so deeply internalized within every nation-state that the classical image of imperialism as a relation of external domination is outdated” (Robinson 2007: 7). This “image” of imperialism as “external domination” that Robinson here disparages is associated with a view that Robinson for some reason associates with theories of “new imperialism,” namely that “world capitalism in the 21st century is made up of domestic capitals and distinct national economies that interact with one another, as well as a realist analysis of world politics as driven by the pursuit by governments of their national interest” (Robinson 2007: 11). In effect, Robinson lumps together all sorts of contemporary theorizing about imperialism, whether Marxist, structuralist or realist, purely on the basis of the shared assumption, which Robinson problematizes and ridicules, that, in the words of Meiksins Wood (2003: 23) “the national organization of capitalist economies has remained stubbornly persistent.” Although what these class relations might possibly be is unclear, as is the question as to what form imperialism takes under these circumstances (the dominion of capital over labor?), Robinson argues that in effect “national capitalist monopolies” no longer need to “turn to the state for assistance . . . .” The corollary is that the state no longer needs to assume the responsibility for empire-building and the projection of imperial power is no longer concerned with the dynamics of capital accumulation. World system theorists of “transnational(ized) capital” such as William Robinson (2007) and “neoimperialism” theorists such as David Harvey (2003) coincide in the view that capital is “economic” and inherently “global” (no longer takes a national form) but that the state is “political” and inherently “national” (territorial-based and “geopolitical”)—and that they therefore pursue “distinct (albeit, according to Harvey, interconnected) “logics of power.” In Robinson’s formulation “the system of nation-states . . . is no longer the organizing principle of capitalist 37

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development, or the primary institutional framework that shapes social and class forces and political dynamics” (Robinson, 2007: 8). Another assumption made by Robinson and shared by other world system theorists of transnational capital and “globally integrated enterprise” is that “if we are to get at the root of 21st century global social and political dynamics” the Marxist tradition of imperialism theory based on the classical statements of Lenin and Hilferding should be discarded. Based on the assumption of a world of rival national capitals and economies, conflict among core capitalist powers, the exploitation by these powers of peripheral regions, and “a nation-state centered framework for analyzing global dynamics,” this theoretical tradition is entirely useless, incapable—according to Robinson—of grasping the fundamental contemporary dynamics of capitalist development (Robinson 2007: 6–7). In his critique of “neoimperialism theory Robinson conflates (and confuses) the views of Marxists in this tradition, lumping together “structuralists,” “realists,” and “neomarxists.” If, as Robinson contends, capital no longer needs the imperial state does it mean that imperialism will wither away, or does it mean, as argued by Klare (2003: 51–52), that it will take the form of

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“geopolitical competition . . . the contention between great powers and aspiring great powers for control over territory, resources, and important geographical positions such as ports and harbors . . . and other sources of wealth and influence.”

Or does it mean what Robinson and some—including Amin (2001), Arrighi (2005), Foster (2003) and others in the torrent of “new imperialism” literature that has appeared since 2001—have suggested or contend, namely that imperialism is advanced primarily, if not exclusively, in economic form via the agency of transnational(ized) corporations that represent an empire without imperialism, as Hardt and Negri would have it, or capitalism beyond imperialism, as Robinson sees it. In opposition to this rather reductionist view of imperialism, I argue that imperial power is shaped predominantly by the imperial state and its policies that take as a given that what is perceived as in the “national interest” coincides with the concerns and interests, both economic and political, of the capitalist class—or the “private sector,” in the official discourse. Notwithstanding arguments to the contrary, and taking into consideration both its economic and political dynamics and its actual operations (investments, production, sales), imperialism now as before is clearly designed and works to advance the project of capital accumulation in whatever and in as many ways as possible—to 38

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penetrate existing and open up new markets, exploit labor as humanely as possible but as inhumanely as needed, extract surplus value from the direct producers where possible, and access as needed or process raw materials and minerals. Insofar as the capitalist class is concerned the aim and the agenda of its individual and institutional members is to accumulate capital. As for the imperial state and its agents and agencies, including the World Bank and the agencies of international cooperation for security and development, the agenda is merely to pave the way for capital, to create the conditions needed for economic and social development. In neither case is uneven development of the forces of production and its social conditions (social inequality, unemployment, poverty, social and environmental degradation, etc.) on the agenda. Rather, these conditions are the unintended or “structural” consequences of capitalist development, and as such inevitable and acceptable costs of progress that need to be managed and, if and where possible, mitigated in the interest of both security and development. Under these strategic and structural conditions it is illuminating but not particularly useful to measure the impact of imperialism merely in economic terms of the volume of capital inflows (FDI, bank loans, portfolio investments, etc.) and outflows (profit, interest payments, etc.). The authors in earlier studies actually have done so—measured the impact and consequences of US imperialism in Latin America—but this economic analysis (Petras and Veltmeyer 2005b, 2007b) was contextualized in terms of the projection of US state power at the level of military force, ideological hegemony (globalization), imposition of a policy agenda, and foreign policy. This is because imperialism is a matter of class and state power, and as such an issue of politics and political economy—issues that are not brought into focus in an analysis of national accounts. At issue here are not only the structural dynamics of uneven capitalist development (the “development of underdevelopment,” in André Gunder Frank’s formulation) but social and international relations of power and competition between imperial and domestic classes, between officials and representatives of the imperial state and the state in “emerging economies” and “developing societies.” Under current conditions of rapid economic growth and capitalist development on the southern periphery of the world system, these relations are very dynamic and changing. By no means can they be described today as relations of domination and subordination. In addition, members of the global ruling class (investors, financiers, big bankers, industrialists, etc.) must compete with each other not only in the same sector but in different countries within the world capitalist and imperialist system. This is not only a question of intercapitalist and intra-imperialist rivalry. It is also a development and political issue 39

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embedded in the social structure of the capital-labor relation and the economic structure of international relations within the world system. For example, within the dynamic and changing structure of this complex system of class and international relations officials of the states with a subordinate position in the imperial state system will insist on the transfer of technological, management and marketing knowhow to strengthen the ability of their capitalists to compete and for them to make profit, extract rents and serve their “national interest.” As for relations of “domination” and “dependence” among nations on the lines of a north-south divide the structure of global production, and international relations of domination and subordination, are dynamic and change over time, in part because the geopolitical and economic concerns of the nation-state subject to imperial power leads to a quest for relative autonomy by state officials and politicians in these countries as well as protection of the national interest. “Developments” along these lines have resulted in qualitative changes in the relations between established imperial and emerging capitalist states.

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Capitalism and Colonial Empire Weber agreed with writers like Hobson that capitalism had shifted to an aggressively imperialist stance and that the “political drives for expansion” were reinforced by capitalist interests. But political impulses sometimes trumped or violated these economic imperatives. States and empires were also driven to expand by “honor” and “prestige” (Op. Cit.: 910–915). But, to dissect a theory that uniquely interpolates an international dimension of causality as an intrinsic aspect of sociohistorical development itself, we shall identity and use a list of helpful analytical mechanisms. This list then will allow for the organic—rather than contingent or external—integration of the “geopolitical” and “sociological” determinations into a single, unified theory of sociohistorical change, sublating “internalist” and “externalist” theories of modal transitions. The combination of these inter-societal dynamics thus made, and still make, possible capitalist development in colonial empire. In this sense, capitalism is best understood as a set of configurations, assemblages, or bundles of social relations and processes oriented around the systematic reproduction of the capital relation, but not reducible—either historically or logically—to that relation alone. . . . These relations may take numerous forms, such as coercive state apparatuses, ideologies and cultures of consent, or forms of power and exploitation that are not immediately given in or derivative of the simple capital-wage-labor relation, such as racism and patriarchy. 40

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Drawing on theories of intersectionality, let us dynamically integrate struggles against exploitation and oppression as all part of the anti-capitalist struggle. In doing so we will rightly challenge Political Marxists like Ellen Meiksins Wood who argue that class exploitation is essential to capitalism while oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality are not. Instead, they argue that capitalism is equally dependent on class, race, gender, and other oppressions. They advocate, therefore, that all struggles pose equivalent threats to the system. Capitalism rests on the competitive exploitation of wage labor; it is the basis of the entire system. At the same time, various oppressions are an inextricable part of it. For example, women’s oppression through their disproportionate burden in the social reproduction of labor is an essential part of capitalism in colonial empire. Recognizing the constituent nature of capital-wage labor relation to the colonial imperial system does not diminish struggles against oppression. They are absolutely necessary to unite workers to overthrow the capitalist class, and within oppressed groups, which themselves consist of groups with different class interests, workers’ have the most interest in carrying the liberation struggle the furthest. Anti-capitalist struggles can start on any number of fronts, including against aspects of oppression, but if it does not win at the point of production, the system with all its sundry oppressions, cannot be overthrown.

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Racialization, Resistance, and the multi-racial working class The concept of “racialization” used in the article is too neat and fails to demonstrate the messy process that it actually is when it is applied at the level of policy by the ruling class on a multiracial working class. Kumar and Kundnani’s account of racialization efforts by the American state paint a picture of an apparently congruent set of practices when in practice it was far from that. The breaks, discontinuities, and challenges to racialization are sometimes referred to by the authors (the case of Bacon’s rebellion, for instance) but they are not integrated theoretically in their overall analysis. We think that it is best to show processes/policies of racialization as a tool, by no means the only one, to make and unmake a multiethnic working class.10 That is racism’s purpose and hence racist policies and ideas have to be updated and modified by capitalist institutions depending on the make-up, combativeness, and history of the working class at any given moment. To see racism in this way gives the processes of racialization the historical complexity they deserve, for it also helps explain why at different moments of history, sections of the working class do not consent to these processes. Kumar and Kundnani’s narrative simply deals with the part played by the ruling class in 41

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racializing the narrative and policymaking of the American state. However, history shows that despite the best efforts of the ruling class, the working class often escaped or contested such displays of state power. White indentured servants fled to live their lives with Native Americans to escape the discipline of capital (Linebaugh and Rediker, 2013), while free Blacks united with white servants to struggle against plantation slavery (Allen, 2012). Such instances of working class resistance to the race-narrative of capital, whether covert or overt, are important to foreground, because they again highlight what capital’s project is and how its hegemony is always shot through with contradictions and possibilities of disruption. Because the authors posit race as the primary explanatory category, the essay often conflates ideological justifications for particular US policies or practices for the explanation of the policies or practices themselves. This may be the inevitable product of a thesis that asserts that “It is racist ideas that form the basis for the ways national security surveillance is organized and deployed.” Early in the article, they quote President John Quincy Adams explaining Manifest Destiny, the idea that “Divine Providence,” had ordained that the United States would be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation from coast to coast. After the Civil War, they argue, “free Black men were positioned as threats to white women.” During the Cold War, they argue, the “settler-colonial mentality” and the ideology of Manifest Destiny were reworked to justify an exceptional American empire “where the white middle class home was cast as the locus of a privatized notion of self-defense and military preparedness.” Other examples could be cited. The main problem with these types of formulations is that they tend to explain concrete historical developments as products of ideas, rather than ideas (ideologies, propaganda, etc.) as being the products of concrete historical developments. We have already touched on the postwar “social contract,” but it is hard to see how a “settler-colonial mentality” and the notions of “citizen soldiers” could top capitalism’s longest boom, when average family income more than doubled, in underpinning a notion of American exceptionalism between the 1940s and 1960s. At best, these ideological formulations show the malleability of the ideology of racism and empire over the years. But they do not provide a convincing explanation for the development of the national security state. The work of Alfred McCoy that Kumar and Kundnani cite makes a concrete historical case for the establishment of the American national security state in the techniques developed in the suppression of the early twentieth century Philippines insurgency. More recently, Sabrina Alimahomed has shown that the neoliberal construction of “Homeland Security, Inc.” relies not just on anti42

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Muslim racism, but also on good old-fashioned corporate profiteering ((2014): 82–99). These authors would not deny the role of racist ideology in the construction of the national security state. But for our part we would like to draw attention to the fact that Alimahomed’s account actually reveals the explanatory pivot for these racialized policies: the needs of profits nationally and the need to maintain imperial profits internationally. This brings us to an important and related conceptual framework. It is that “race” is a sociopolitical category.

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Capitalism and Colonial Empire I wish to open this section by stating that a history of the modern world organized around the idea of empire, culminating in the post-1945 dismantling of the European imperial system and its replacement by the “American ʻsystemʼ” that was, according to Darwin, “imperial in all but name”—a “colossal imperium . . . on an unprecedented scale” (Darwin, 2008: 469–470). Darwin also argues that the dual grand narratives of imperial history as exploitation and world history as modernization and progress are of limited value unless empires and states are viewed in their political and cultural dimensions. The rise of capitalism in Europe, the consequent improvements in overseas transport, and the rise of the New World plantation form the pillars around which arose the most vicious slave system in human history, quite unlike its ancient antecedents. Recent books by Marcus Rediker and Stephanie E. Smallwood shed light on the processes of the capture of Africans and their transport to the New World, a horrific journey called the “Middle Passage” because it formed the middle link in a “triangular trade” between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The capitalist mode of production brought with it the rise of an entrepreneurial class–and with it, the notion of personal achievement and individuality as a social ideal in colonial empire. At the same time, the increasing prosperity of a new middle class and the broader accumulation of personal wealth and transferable inheritances demanded strict sexual morality, especially for women. British historian Jeffrey Weeks (1989: 29) describes the contradictions of this new family structure: The bourgeois family was “both the privileged location of emotionality and love…and simultaneously an effective policeman of sexual behavior.” In contrast to the prosperous middle class, according to Wilson of the Socialist Workers Party of the United Kingdom, industrial life was literally killing the working class in mid-nineteenth century England. Middle-class men in the 43

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rural area of Rutland, England, lived to be fifty-two, while working-class “men” died at the average age of seventeen in industrial centers like Manchester, sixteen in Bethnel Green, and fifteen in Liverpool. Textile mill owners employed mostly women and children for long hours of arduous labor at far less pay than men, which led to illness and mortality rates that threatened to cut into owners’ profits. Frederick Engels (1887) describes the near-collapse of working-class family life in The Condition of the Working Class in England. He describes the crowded and filthy conditions in working-class homes and quotes one report by the Ministry of Health: “In Leeds, brothers and sisters, and lodgers of both sexes, are found occupying the same sleeping-room with the parents, and consequences occur which humanity shudders to contemplate.” When monopoly appears in certain branches of industry, it increases and intensifies the anarchy in capitalist production as a whole give rise to a number of very acute antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. There is one other important element in this theory. Capitalism tends to create a single world economy, but development does not take place uniformly either within individual states or in the system as a whole. Instead, it is characterized—in Trotsky’s famous phrase—by combined and uneven development. Economic, military and political power tends to be concentrated in a handful of states, which therefore dominate the rest of the world. But, as Lenin noted, “the differences in the rate of development of the various parts of world economy” were increasing. In certain circumstances it is even possible for relatively backward states to develop rapidly by importing advanced technologies. This is crucial, because it shows that the division of power between the advanced states and the rest of the world isn’t static. Even if stability in international relations is established for a period of time, it would eventually be undermined as the result of economic changes that weakened some powers and gave rise to new powers that would seek to play a bigger role in world affairs. Periodically the new economic alignment of forces would give rise to diplomatic, political, and eventually military conflict that would reconfigure the balance of forces between the dominant nations. So, for instance, the attempt at the end of World War One to prevent the outbreak of further wars by creating the League of Nations was a complete failure. Within a few years sharp differences between the major powers reemerged and the world was engulfed in an even more barbaric war. The unending Wars on Terror bear witness to the enduring element of militarism in colonial empire-old or new. Wars have continued on the periphery, and the superpowers engaged in a massive arms race, but there is no war between the two major powers, because the threat of nuclear escalation makes them more cautious. Then with the 44

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collapse of the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1991, the structure of the global system changed again, leaving the United States as the sole superpower. Meanwhile, economic changes resulted in a reversal of the trend towards the greater integration of state and capital that Bukharin had described. Instead, over the past 30 years neo-liberalism has resulted in privatization of state-owned assets and much greater deregulation of the economy. Growing international integration of the economy weakened the ability of individual governments to manage and intervene in their own economies. Taken as a whole, these developments have led some on the left to conclude that the classical Marxist theory of imperialism is outdated. In their briefly influential book Empire, for example, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt downplayed the importance of nation states and described a world in which imperial domination was maintained by a much more decentralized network of multinational corporations and international institutions. According to Negri and Hardt, “no nation-state can today, form the center of an imperialist project.” Later they write: “The history of imperialist, interimperialist, and anti-imperialist wars is over. The end of that history has ushered in the reign of peace. Or really, we have entered the era of minor and internal conflicts.” But little more than a year after Empire was published in 2000, its central theses were refuted by events in the real world, as the United States engaged in a new and more aggressive phase of imperialist intervention in Afghanistan and then Iraq. The 9/11 attacks were used as the justification for these wars, but the real reasons for the projection of U.S. power ran much deeper. One positive consequence of the Cold War for the United States was that it gave Washington political dominance over the major capitalist countries in Europe and Asia, since they depended on the U.S. military for their security. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western Europe’s dependency on the United States decreased at the same time as its economic and political integration accelerated. Planners in Washington viewed this as a potential medium-term threat to continued American global dominance. Makers of U.S. policy also became increasingly concerned about the possibility of a GermanRussian strategic alliance, and the emergence of China as a major economic and military power. Capitalism is thus the first mode of production in human history that does not require “extra-economic” (nonmarket) coercion to guarantee the production and appropriation of surplus labor, or the distribution of labor and means of production between branches of production. Under feudalism, for example, political and ideological coercion is required to extract surplus from the peasantry in the forms of rents in labor, kind or money; and peasant 45

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communities determined the broad outlines of the distribution of labor and tools among different crops, animals, and handicrafts. Under capitalism, both producers and non-producers must reproduce themselves through the marketplace for the first time in human history. The operation of the law of value—the overarching compulsion on all producers to continually economize labor-time in production through the introduction of tools and machinery; and the mechanism that distributes labor and means of production among branches of industry on the basis of relative labor-productivity—requires the separation of the political and economic. Put another way, the specificity of the capitalist state is not the relationship of its leading personnel to the capitalist class, as Miliband implied in his classic The State in Capitalist Society (1969). Rather its specificity is that the state appears as a public, impersonal power separate from the process of accumulation and exploitation, which attempts to guarantee the conditions for the reproduction of capitalist social-property relations. Violence and other forms of nonmarket coercion are not necessary to the quotidian exploitation of wage labor and the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. Put another way, the presence of armed men (and today women) in the workplace is not necessary to the routine production and appropriation of surplus value under imperial capitalism. The mere threat of unemployment is sufficient to insure that workers labor in excess of the time necessary to reproduce the equivalent of their wages. However, this does not exclude the possibility of either legally coerced wage labor or limited capitalist state intervention in economic life in certain historical conjunctures. More importantly, this does not mean that capitalism is a “pacific” mode of production where violence is not necessary to the maintenance of what Marx called the “general conditions of production.” Clearly, both state and private (private police in the nineteenth and twentieth century United States, paramilitaries in much of Latin America in the twentieth and twenty-first century) violence is necessary to defend capitalist dominance from working class and popular challenges from below. Similarly, as Wood has pointed out on a number of occasions, state violence is necessary to quash any and all resistance to the effects of modern capitalist imperialism, in particular in the global South. Colonialism and Imperialism Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon. A historical survey of world empires from the Romans and ancient Chinese to the present demonstrates that imperial statecraft, emphasized techniques these regimes used in attempting to regulate diversity. Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper (2010) contrasted empires with nation-states, which seek sociocultural homogenization rather 46

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than reproducing difference. World history is full of examples of one society gradually expanding by incorporating adjacent territory and settling its people on newly conquered territory. The ancient Greeks set up colonies as did the Romans, the Moors, and the Ottomans, to name just a few of the most famous examples. Colonialism, then, is not restricted to a specific time or place. Nevertheless, in the sixteenth century, colonialism changed decisively because of technological developments in navigation that began to connect more remote parts of the world. Fast sailing ships made it possible to reach distant ports and to sustain close ties between the center and colonies. Thus, the modern European colonial project emerged when it became possible to move large numbers of people across the ocean and to maintain political sovereignty in spite of geographical dispersion. This entry uses the term colonialism to describe the process of European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia. The difficulty of defining colonialism stems from the fact that the term is often used as a synonym for imperialism. Both colonialism and imperialism were forms of conquest that were expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically. The term colonialism is frequently used to describe the settlement of North America, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, and Brazil, places that were controlled by a large population of permanent European residents. The term imperialism often describes cases in which a foreign government administers a territory without significant settlement; typical examples include the scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century and the American domination of the Philippines and Puerto Rico. The distinction between the two, however, is not entirely consistent in the literature. Some scholars distinguish between colonies for settlement and colonies for economic exploitation. Others use the term colonialism to describe dependencies that are directly governed by a foreign nation and contrast this with imperialism, which involves indirect forms of domination. However, colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. The etymology of the two terms, however, provides some clues about how they differ. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium, meaning 47

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to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control. The legitimacy of colonialism has been a longstanding concern for political and moral philosophers in the Western tradition. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas, political theorists have struggled with the difficulty of reconciling ideas about justice and natural law with the practice of European sovereignty over non-Western peoples. In the nineteenth century, the tension between liberal thought and colonial practice became particularly acute, as dominion of Europe over the rest of the world reached its zenith. Ironically, in the same period when most political philosophers began to defend the principles of universalism and equality, the same individuals still defended the legitimacy of colonialism and imperialism. One way of reconciling those apparently opposed principles was the argument known as the “civilizing mission,” which suggested that a temporary period of political dependence or tutelage was necessary in order for “uncivilized” societies to advance to the point where they were capable of sustaining liberal institutions and selfgovernment. The goal of this entry is to analyze the relationship between Western political theory and the project of colonialism. After providing a more thorough discussion of the concept of colonialism, the third and fourth sections of the entry will address the question of how European thinkers justified, legitimized, and challenged political domination. The fifth section briefly discusses the Marxist tradition, including Marx’s own defense of British colonialism in India and Lenin’s anti-imperialist writings. The final section provides an introduction to contemporary “post-colonial theory.” This approach has been particularly influential in literary studies because it draws attention to the diverse ways that postcolonial subjectivities are constituted and resisted through discursive practices. The goal of the entry is to provide an overview of the vast and complex literature that explores the theoretical issues emerging out of the experience of European colonization. The confusion about the meaning of the term imperialism reflects the way that the concept has changed over time. Although the English word imperialism was not commonly used before the nineteenth century, Elizabethans already described the United Kingdom as “the British Empire.” As Britain began to acquire overseas dependencies, the concept of empire was employed more frequently. Imperialism was understood as a system of military domination and sovereignty over territories. The day to day work of government might be exercised indirectly through local assemblies or indigenous rulers who paid tribute, but sovereignty rested with the British. The shift away from this 48

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traditional understanding of empire was influenced by the Leninist analysis of imperialism as a system oriented towards economic exploitation. According to Lenin, imperialism was the necessary and inevitable result of the logic of accumulation in late capitalism. Thus, for Lenin and subsequent Marxists, imperialism described a historical stage of capitalism rather than a transhistorical practice of political and military domination. The lasting impact of the Marxist approach is apparent in contemporary debates about American imperialism, a term which usually means American economic hegemony, regardless of whether such power is exercised directly or indirectly (Young, 2001). Given the difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use colonialism as a broad concept that refers to the project of European political domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that ended with the national liberation movements of the 1960s. Post-colonialism will be used to describe the political and theoretical struggles of societies that experienced the transition from political dependence to sovereignty. This entry will use imperialism as a broad term that refers to economic, military, political domination that is achieved without significant permanent European settlement.

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Geopolitics, war, and violence Aberrations, bad apples, one-offs. These are the explanations usually marshaled to explain the abhorrent crimes committed during the colonial wars by agents of empire. Only after one understands how freedom and rights are being suppressed by the managers of imperial states — even as they preach peace, freedom, justice, rights, and majority rule to their citizens to maintain their beliefs in the morality of their society, and thus assure the continued support of the masses for inflicting such violence upon the world—can one write honest history (Mentan, 2016). If one does not understand that process, one is almost certain to write a history in which, unbeknownst to the author, the background and documentation have been carefully created to give Managers of State the freedom to suppress other people’s rights and transfer their wealth to the imperial center through unequal trades. Geopolitics is the intersection of geography, power, and foreign policy, and it often focuses on the states, peoples, borders, resources, environments, trade routes, and human traffic. In the transition to a new geopolitics, these factors become gradually reconfigured and they assume floating realities, differing directions, and varying significance. The key features of the emergent third wave of geopolitics are failed states, humiliated peoples, crippled economies, extreme 49

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inequality and poverty, devastated environments, plundered resources, conflicted geographies, foreign intrusions, and violent radicalism to stabilize colonial empire. The theory basically says that to run a colonial civilization you need a strong army. To run a strong army you need cohesion, discipline. To produce this cohesion and discipline you need your soldiers to feel its need. I wish to point out here that Marxist geopolitics moves beyond both critical geopolitics and the discredited classical geopolitics. It underlines the valorization of territory by capital across three levels of abstraction: that of social infrastructure, class conflict and ground-rent proper. The militarization of political anxiety is both facilitated and challenged by representations of geopolitical danger and the supposed necessity for warriors to fight wars in distant lands for colonial empire. The imperial warriors do so in exotic landscapes and settings that emphasize the confrontation with danger as external and frequently unknowable; political violence is presented as something that has both simple and very complicated geographies. The public discussion of the necessity for warfare and “intervention” in Western states is enmeshed in discourses of moralities, rights and “just war.” The professional Western warrior, whether a Special Forces operative or garrison soldier in peacekeeping mode, is a key figure of ages of colonial empire, physically securing the West, and simultaneously securing its identity as the repository of virtue against barbaric threats to civilization. Analyzing them in terms of the warrior, empire and the particular geographies of combat adds a specifically military dimension to the critical geopolitical literature on war and representation. For at least two hundred years, the distinction between AN “internal”, within which the values of democracy and liberty are propagated, and an “external”, which is never ready to accept them, has led Western countries, like Great-Britain and France, to exercise a “benevolent” violence through colonization. The flaunted objective was to “civilize” the native peoples. Such was the “white man’s burden”. Advocated in the name of the civilizing mission of the West and inspired by eschatology, this calling held the promise of redemption, both for the colonizer and for the colonized. But the aim of making the “others” better went together with a will to power or crusade that imposed at the very least a reform, if not a recasting of their (non) institutions. This pattern of discourse and practices characterizes colonialism in its profound relations with political organizations, also when the latter were democratic. There is a fascinating continuity between past and present regarding the previous justifications of colonialism, punishment and empire. For those who know the French colonial experience, narrated in the well-known movie, Battle of Algiers, for example, it is unbelievable how one is struck by similarities with urban warfare in Iraq and Palestine – who is civilian, who is a combatant, the 50

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suspension of any pretense to legality, the rawness of the killing, etc. In recent years, global military expenditure has increased again and is now comparable to Cold War levels. Recent data shows global spending at over $1.7 trillion. 2012 saw the first dip in spending — only slightly —since 1998, in an otherwise rising trend.

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Cultural representations and subjectivity Culture is a production. It has its raw materials, its resources, its ‘work of production.’ It depends on a knowledge of tradition as ‘the changing same’ and an effective set of genealogies. But what this ‘detour through its pasts’ does is to enable us, through culture, to produce ourselves anew, as new kinds of subjects. It is therefore not a question of what our traditions make of us so much as what we make of our traditions. Paradoxically, our cultural identities, in any finished form, lie ahead of us. We are always in the process of cultural formation. Culture is not a matter of ontology, of being, but of becoming (Hall, 2005: 556). In the 1970s it was commonplace to assume that the study of British imperial history, like the British Empire itself, was on its last legs. Students, it 51

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was supposed, no longer wished to study an irrelevant past; they were concerned now not with vanished empires but with the history of the peoples who had attained independence and for whom the imperial experience had been a transitory interlude. The situation at the end of the twentieth century is very different. British imperial history is in apparently robust health, widely studied in one form or another in schools and in higher education. In 1999 the North American Conference on British Studies issued a report on ‘The State and Future of British Studies’ in the United States and Canada. In general, this report sounded an anxious note about the decline in the study of British history. The history of the British Empire was, however, seen as an exception, where interest was still running at a high level. In an uncertain world for would-be academics on both sides of the Atlantic, there seem to be clear indications that university departments feel a need to employ historians of the British Empire. In Britain at least, it is posts in the pre-colonial history of territories once incorporated into the empire that now sadly go unfilled. British people of a certain age and intellectual disposition tend to bewail the ignorance of British school children of the British imperial past about which they are said never to be taught. Such lamentations are not well founded. The National Curriculum allows provision for the study of imperial history at a number of levels and the subject appears to be widely taught. Far from being seen as dated and irrelevant, the history of empire now seems to be intensely relevant not only for understanding the historical evolution and present state of countries once subjected to British imperial rule but to the understanding of Britain itself. There are many reasons why this might be so. The increasing ethnic diversity of British society, the interest of so many British people in family history that often involves an imperial connection, the apparent similarities between a contemporary global economic order underpinned by American power and the role once played by Britain or the disillusionment with the nation states that emerged from colonial rule now felt by many Asian and African intellectuals. All tended to encourage the study of Britain’s imperial past. A selfconsciously ‘new’ imperial historiography has contributed much to the present vitality of the subject, proving extremely attractive to students in higher education. Boundaries between ‘old’ and ‘new’ interpretations of a subject are usually somewhat nebulous, existing largely in the eyes of their practitioners. So it is with imperial history. Nevertheless, in crude terms, the concerns of imperial history can be said to have traditionally focused on political or economic domination: that is, on the one hand, on military force, civil administration and systems of rule and the eventual transfer of power, and, on the other, on economic development or ‘exploitation’, the special concern of a powerful 52

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Marxist tradition of writing about imperialism. Cultural issues, such as education, religious change or language policies, have also long been the staples of imperial history. Indeed, Professor John MacKenzie, who, through his own writing and the Manchester University Press series ‘Studies in Imperialism’ of which he is editor, has done so much to stimulate the cultural history of modern British imperialism, has distanced himself from the canonical works of the ‘new’ imperial history. Cultural history is, however, the defining concern of the new historians. For them, political and economic domination are assumed, but what interests them is cultural domination, which they see as having had a decisive effect both on the ruled and their rulers. They start with the unexceptionable proposition that domination involves more than physical or economic coercion; it exists in the minds of the dominated and those who dominate them. Obvious systems of domination are the ordering of the world into hierarchies based on assumptions about ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ races, separated by immutable physiological differences, or about stages of human progress, some peoples having attained ‘civilization’ while others remain sunk in ‘barbarism’ or ‘savagery’, from which they will only escape by outside intervention. Such assumptions confirmed the rulers in their sense of superiority and in their mission to bring about change, while convincing, it was hoped, the ruled of their place in the scheme of things. The new imperial history, however, goes far beyond these overt systems of mental domination. An imperial presence is revealed in central works of the English literary canon, such as Mansfield Park or Jane Eyre. Virtually all claims to knowledge about the non-western world and all attempts to ‘represent’ its peoples in descriptive writing or in any form of art are exercises of power and are assumed to be tainted by imperial assumptions. Underlying such arguments is a rejection of claims to knowledge that purport to reveal an objective reality. Such claims constitute no more than the prevailing ‘discourses’ about a subject, which ultimately reflect the dominant power in society. The mapping of colonial territories, the writing of the history of their peoples or the collection information about them through ethnographical or anthropological researches – all were (and for many critics still are) exercises of power. Imperial ways of envisaging the world are thought to have had a profound effect both on its colonies and on Britain itself. Colonial elites of course rejected those aspects of British thought that overtly consigned them to inferiority. But they willingly imbibed its underlying assumptions. British political and cultural norms became their political and cultural norms. They suppressed their own traditions or, more commonly, adopted distorted versions

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of them, derived from British teaching. Their nationalism, with its objective of a nation state, demonstrated the intellectual thrall in which they were still held. Identities are a prime concern of the new imperial history, which sees nations not as primordial entities existing from remote ages, but as imagined constructions, constantly being reimagined with shifts of power. The colonial past enabled the elites of new nations to define themselves, but the imperial experience also defined Britain. The British sense of themselves as a people came to depend on the exercise of imperial power over others, whose deficiencies highlighted Britain’s national virtues. Empire, for instance, helped to shape British ideals of masculine and feminine roles. With some justice, historians of Britain are often accused of insularity in either ignoring Britain’s imperial involvement or keeping it segregated as a separate topic. For the new imperial historians, British history without the empire makes no sense at all. New imperial historians are concerned not only with exposing the all-pervasive influence of empire throughout the world, but also put forward a program for countering that influence. The historian should not be content with seeing the past through the eyes of the dominant elites, but must try to recover the points of view of those suppressed by imperial systems and their heirs, that is of ‘subaltern’ groups of the poor and dispossessed and of women. The ultimate implication is that those who understand the dead hand of the imperial legacy that has outlived the empire in their own countries will be able to free themselves from it, just as the British can free themselves of the racism and chauvinistic nationalism they adopted with empire. It is not difficult to see why an intellectually ambitious approach to the past, with obvious relevance to present discontents, has proved so attractive. Yet those who cannot accept its suppositions and who perforce are left as practitioners of an ‘old’ imperial history need not feel antagonistic to it. Still less need they fear that it will make them redundant, unless it can be countered. They should rather welcome the stimulus that the new imperial history has given to the study of the British Empire, while also recognizing that huge areas of their subject remain largely outside its concerns; and that within its chosen ground of cultural history there is room for constructive disagreement and debate. The military, political and above all the economic history of the British Empire cannot of course be taken as simply the given background to cultural history. They are of perennial interest in themselves and require constant reassessment. Although the new imperial history, with its skepticism about what can be known of the ‘real’ world, seems to have difficulty in engaging with economic history, a discipline pre-eminently concerned with concrete knowledge, imperial history without an economic dimension is a very poor thing. 54

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Studies that draw on the new imperial history have, for instance, convincingly demonstrated connections between British medical doctrine about ‘tropical’ diseases and other assertions of imperial authority. Nevertheless, the medical history of the British Empire is much more than the analysis of discourse. It has to explain the inescapable reality of mass mortality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the cultural history of Empire, historians who are outside the pale of the ‘new’ have much to learn from those within it, especially a proficiency in the close reading and interpretation of texts. They can also welcome recent developments that have moved on beyond the analysis of colonial knowledge, as in Edward Said’s seminal Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), as purely a construct of western dominance, towards a view that accepts that the ruled as well as the rulers took parts in producing a ‘hybrid’ knowledge of western and indigenous constructions. The British in India did not, for instance, invent caste, but put their own interpretations on existing doctrines and practices.

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Global Strategies: US Imperial State and the MNC US imperial state invested trillions of dollars in military expenditures, hundreds of thousands of military personnel into wars in the Middle East (Iraq, Yemen, and Syria), North and East Africa (Libya, Somalia), South Asia (Afghanistan) and imposed sanctions on Iran costing the US hundreds of billions in “capital dis-accumulation”. The US corporate elite, driven out of Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere where US military imperialism was engaged, chose to invest in manufacturing in China and extractive sectors throughout Latin America. In other words the US imperial state strategists either chose to expand in relatively backward areas (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen) or imposed under-development by destroying or sanctioning lucrative extractive economies (Iraq, Libya, Iran). In contrast the MNC chose the most dynamic expanding zones where militarist imperialism was least engaged – China and Latin America. In other words “capital did not follow the flag” – it avoided it. Moreover, the zones where extractive capital was most successful in terms of access, profits and stability were those where their penetration was based on negotiated contracts between sovereign nations and CEO’s – economic imperialism by invitation. In contrast, in the priority areas of expansion chosen by imperial state strategists, entry and domination was by force, leading to the destruction of the means of production and the loss of access to the principle sites of extractive exploitation. US military driven imperialism undermined energy companies’ agreements in Iraq and Libya. 55

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Imperial state sanctions in Iran designed to weaken its nuclear and defense capabilities undercut US corporate extractive, public-private contracts with the Iranian state oil corporations. The drop in production and supply in oil in Iraq, Iran and Libya raised energy prices and had a negative impact on the “accumulation of capital on a world scale.” If imperial state decision-makers had followed the direction of economic rather than military driven policymakers they would have pivoted to Asia and Latin America rather than the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. They would have channeled funds into economic imperialist strategies, including joint ventures, high and medium tech trade agreements, and expanded exports by the high-end manufacturing sector, instead of financing 700 military bases, destabilization campaigns and costly military exercises. Twentieth century military imperialism stands in stark contrast to late twentieth century economic imperialism. In the mid 1960’s the US announced a vast new economic program in Latin America – the Alliance for Progress which was designed to finance economic opportunities in Latin America via joint ventures, agrarian reform and investments in the extractive sector. The imperial state’s military policies and interventionist policies were designed to secure US business control over mines, banks, factories and agro-business. US backing for the coups in Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Peru led to the privatization of key resource sectors and the imposition of the neo-liberal economic model. US policy in Asia under Nixon was directed first and foremost to opening economic relations with China, expanding trade agreements with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The ‘pivot from war’ to free trade led to a boom in US exports as well as imports, in private investments and lucrative profits. Military expenditures declined even as the US engaged in covert operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Imperial intervention combined military and economic expansion with the latter dictating policy priorities and the allocation of resources. The reversal set in with the US military backing of the jihadist extremists in Afghanistan and the demise of the USSR. The former set the stage for the rise of the Taliban to power and the emergence of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. The latter led US imperial strategists to pursue wars of conquest with impunity – Yugoslavia and Iraq during the 1990’s. Easy military conquests and visions of a ‘unipolar’ world dominated by US military supremacy, encouraged and fostered the emergence of a new breed of imperial strategists – the neo-conservative militarists with closer ties to Israel and its military priorities than to the US extractive petrol capitalists in the Middle East.

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Military versus Economic Imperialist at the ‘National Level’ The legacy of imperialism in Africa is one of war, destruction and chaos. The different colonial powers played off one tribal group against another, one ethnic group against the other and drew arbitrary borders sowing the seeds for future wars, genocide and massacres. In the post-Cold War period, the competition between the two variants of imperialism was played out in all the nation subject to US intervention. During the first Iraq war the balance between militarists and economic imperialists was in play. The US defeated Iraq but did not shred the state, nor bomb the oil fields. Sanctions were imposed but did not paralyze oil deals. The US did not occupy Iraq; it partitioned the north –socalled “Kurdish” Iraq but left the secular state intact. Extractive capital was actively in competition with the militarist neo-conservatives over the future direction of imperial policy. The launch of the second Iraq war and the invasion of Afghanistan marked a decisive shift toward military imperialism: the US ignored all economic considerations. Iraq’s secular state was destroyed; civil society was pulverized; ethno-religious, tribal and clan warfare was encouraged. US colonial officials ruled by military fiat; top policymakers with links to Israel replaced oilconnected officials. The militarist “war on terror” ideology replaced free market, free trade imperialism. Afghanistan killing fields replaced the China market as the center of US imperial policy. Billions were spent, chasing evasive guerrillas in the mountains of a backward economy while US lost competitive advantages in the most dynamic Asian markets. Imperial policymakers chose to align with sectarian warlords in Iraq over extractive technocrats. In Afghanistan they chose loyal ex-pat puppets over influential Taliban leaders capable of pacifying the country. Extractive versus Military Imperialism in Latin America. Latin American neo-liberalism went from boom to bust in the 1990’s. By the early 2000’s crisis enveloped the region. By the turn of the century US backed rulers were being replaced by popular nationalist leaders. US policymakers stuck by their neoliberal clients in decline and failed to adapt to the new rulers who pursued modified socially inclusive extractivism. The US military imperialists longed for a return of the neo-liberal backers of the “war on terrorism”. In contrast, international multinational extractive corporations were realists – and adapted to the new regimes. On a global scale, at the beginning of the new millennium, two divergent tendencies emerged. US military imperialism expanded throughout the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and the Caucuses, while Latin American regimes turned in the opposite direction – toward moderate nationalism, and populism

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with a strong emphasis on poverty reduction via economic development in association with imperial extractive capital In the face of these divergent and conflicting trends, the major US extractive multi-national corporations chose to adapt to the new political realities in Latin America. While Washington, the imperial state, expressed hostility and dismay toward the new regimes refusal to back the “war on terror” (military imperialism) the major MNCs, robust embrace of economic imperialism, took advantage of the investment opportunities opened by the new regimes’ adoption of a new extractivist model, to pour billions into the mining, energy and agricultural sectors. The Specificities of Extractive Imperialism in the Era of “Post NeoLiberalism”

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Extractive imperialism in Latin America has several specific characteristics that sharply demark it from earlier forms agro-mineral imperialism: (1) Extractive capital is not dominated by a single imperial country-like the Spanish in the 18t century, the British in the 19thcentury or the US in the 20th century. Imperial extractive capital is very diverse: Canadian, US, Chinese, Brazilian, Australian, Spanish, Indian and other MNCs are deeply involved. (2) The imperial states of the diverse MNC do not engage in “gun boat diplomacy” (with the exception of the US). The imperial states provide economic financing and diplomatic support but are not actively involved in subverting Latin American regimes. (3) The relative weight of US MNCs, in the new imperial extractivism is much less than it was a half century earlier. The rise of diverse extractive MNC and dynamism of China’s commodity market and deep financial pockets have displaced the US, the IMF and WB and established new terms of trade with Latin America. (4) Probably the most significant aspect of the new imperial extractivism is that its entry and expansion is by invitation. The Latin American regimes and the extractive MNCs negotiate contracts – MNC entry is not unilaterally imposed by an imperial state. Yet the ‘contracts’ may result in unequal returns; they provide substantial revenues and profits to the MNC; they grant large multi –million acre tracts of land for mining or agriculture exploitation; they obligate the national state to dispossess local communities and police/repress the displaced. But they also have allowed the post-neo-liberal state to expand their social spending, to increase their foreign 58

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reserves, to eschew relations with the IMF, and to diversify their markets and trading partners. In regional terms extractive imperialism in Latin America has “accumulated capital” by diverging from the military imperialism practiced by the US in other regions of the world political- economy. Over the past decade and a half, extractive capital has been allied with and relies both on postneoliberal and neoliberal regimes against petty commodity producers, indigenous communities and other anti-extractive resistance movements. Extractive imperialists do not rely on ‘their’ imperial state to quell resistancethey turn to their national political partners. Extractive imperialism by invitation also diverges from the military imperial state in its view toward regional organizations. US military imperialism placed all its bets on US centered economic integration which Washington could leverage to political, military and economic advantage. Extractive capital, in the great diversity of its ‘national identity’, welcomed Latin American centered integration which did not privilege US markets and investors. The predominance of economic imperialism, in particular the extractive version, however, needs to be qualified by several caveats. US military imperialism has been present in several forms. The US backed the military coup in Honduras overthrowing the post neo-liberal Zelaya government; likewise it supported an “institutional coup” in Paraguay. Secondly, even as MNC corporations poured capital into Bolivian mining and energy sectors, the US imperial state fomented destabilization activity to undermine the MAS government. And was defeated and the agencies and operatives were expelled. The crucial issue in this, as well as other, instances is the unwillingness of the MNC’s to join forces with the military imperialists, via boycotts, trade embargoes or disinvestment. Clearly the stability, profitability and long-term contracts between the Bolivian regime and the extractive MNC counted for more than their ties to the US imperial state. US military imperialism has expanded its military bases and increased joint military exercises with most Latin American armed forces. Indoctrinated military officials can still become formidable potential allies in any future ‘coup’, if and when the US “pivots” from the Middle East to Latin America. US military imperialism in its manifest multiple forms, from bankrolling NGO’s engaged in destabilization and street riots in Venezuela, to its political support of financial speculators in Argentina and rightwing parties and personalities in Brazil, has a continuous presence alongside extractive imperialism. The success of the latter and the eclipse of the former are based in part on two contingent circumstances. The US serial wars in the Middle East divert attention away from Latin America; and the commodity boom fuels the growth of extractive capital. The economic 59

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slowdown in China and the decline of commodity prices may weaken the regimes in opposition to US military imperialism. Paradoxically the weakening of the ties between the post-neo-liberal regimes and extractive imperialism resulting from the decline of commodity prices is strengthening the neo-liberal socio-political forces allied with US military imperialism.

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Africa’s Right Turn: The Co-Habitation of Extractive and Military Imperialism Despite their anti-imperialist potential, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) states have promoted neo-liberal and imperialist practices that facilitate capital accumulation, resource extraction and expansion of their markets. But growing popular unrest against exploitation, ecological destruction and neoliberalism in the BRICS countries may lead to a different, antiimperialist course. Throughout Latin America the post-neoliberal regimes which ruled for the better part of a decade and a half face serious challenges – from consequential social opposition at the micro-level and from aggressive political-economic elites at the macro-level. It is worthwhile to survey the prospects for a return to power of neo-liberal regimes allied with military imperialism in several key countries. Several factors are working in favor of a return to power of political parties and leaders who seek to reverse the independent and inclusive policies of the post neoliberal power bloc. First, the post-neo-liberal regimes development strategy of depending on foreign extractive capital, perpetuated and strengthened the economic basis of imperialism: the ‘colonial style’ trade relation, exporting primary commodities and importing finished goods, allowed the agro-mineral elites to occupy key positions in the politico-social structure. With the decline in commodity prices, some post-neoliberal regimes are experiencing fiscal and balance of payments shortfalls. Inflation and cuts in social expenditures adversely affect the capacity of the post-neo-liberal regimes to retain popular and middle class electoral support. The divergences between post-neoliberals and economic imperialism are accentuating with return of the neoliberal right. The agro-mineral sectors perceive an opportunity to rid themselves of their power and revenue sharing agreements with the state and to secure even more lucrative arrangements with the advance of the neo-liberal right which promises tax and royalty reductions, deregulation and lower wage and pension payments. Secondly, the post-neo-liberal regimes’ alliances with the building , construction, and other bourgeois sectors, was accompanied by corruption involving pay-offs, bribes and other illicit financial transactions designed to 60

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finance their mass media based electoral campaigns and patronage system which ensured electoral majorities. The neo-liberal right is exploiting these corruption scandals to erode the middle class electoral base of the post -neo-liberal regimes. Thirdly, the post-neo-liberal regimes increased the quantity of social services, but ignored their quality – provoking widespread discontent with the inadequate public educational, transport, and health services. And, fourthly, inflation is eroding the decade long advance of wage, pension and family allowances. The post-neo-liberal regimes are caught between the pressures to “adjust” –to devalue and impose fiscal ‘austerity’ as proposed by the international bankers and lose mass support, or to engage in deeper structural changes which require among other things, changes in the extractive dependence model and greater public ownership. The crises of the post-neoliberal regimes is leading to irresolution and opening political space for the neoliberal right which is allied to military and economic imperialism. Military imperialism, which was weakened by the popular uprisings at the turn of 20th century is never absent. US military imperialism is first and foremost powerfully entrenched in two major countries: Mexico and Colombia. In both countries neo-liberal regimes bought into the militarization of their societies, including the comprehensive and deep presence of US military-police officials in the structures of the state. In both states, US military and economic imperialism operates in alliance with paramilitary death squads, even as they proclaimed “a war on drugs”. The ideology of free market imperialism was put into practice with the elimination of trade barriers, widespread privatization of resources and multi-million acre land grants to MNC. Through its regional clients, US imperialism has a springboard to extend its influence. Mexican style ‘militarized imperialism’ has spread to Central America; Colombia serves as a launch-pad to subvert Venezuela and Ecuador. Where dissident regimes emerged in regions claimed by militarized imperialism, Honduras and Paraguay, military and civilian coups were engineered. However because of the regional concentration of US military imperialism in the Middle East it relies heavily on local collaborators, political, military and economic elites as vehicles for “regime change”. Extractive imperialism is under siege from popular movements in many countries in Latin America. In some cases, the political elites have increasingly militarized the contested terrain. Where this is the case, the regimes invite and accept an increased imperial military presence, as advisers, and embrace their militarist ideology, thus fostering a “marriage” between extractive and military imperialism. This is the case in Peru under President Humala and Santos in Colombia.

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In Argentina and Brazil, the moderate reformist policies of the Kirchner and Lula/Rousseff regimes are under siege. Faltering export earnings, rising deficits, inflationary pressures have fueled a neo-liberal offensive, which takes a new form: populism at the service of neo-liberal collaboration with military imperialism. Extractive capital has divided -some sectors retain ties with the regime, others, the majority are allied with rising power of the right. In Brazil, the Right has promoted a former environmentalist (Silva) to front for the hardline neo-liberal financial sector – which has received full support from local and imperial mass media. In Argentina, the imperial state and mass media have backed hedge fund speculators and have launched a full scale economic war, claiming default, in order to damage Buenos Aires’ access to capital markets in order to increase its investments in the extractive sector. In contrast Bolivia, the extractive model par excellence, has moved successfully to oust and weaken the military arm of imperialism, ending the presence of US military advisers and DEA officials, while deepening and strengthening its ties with diverse extractive MNCs on the one hand, and on the other consolidating support among the trade unions and peasant-Indian movements. In Ecuador the extractive regime of Correa has diversified the sources of imperial capital from the US to China, and consolidated his power via effective patronage machinery and socio-economic reforms. The US-Colombian military threat to Venezuela and Ecuador has diminished, peace negotiations with the FARC are advancing and the regime now faces trade union and Indian-peasant opposition with regard to its extractive strategy and corporatist labor reforms. In both Ecuador and Bolivia, imperial militarism appears to lack the vital strategic military-civilian allies capable of engineering a regime change. The case of Venezuela highlights the continuing importance of imperial militarism in shaping US policy in Latin America. The pivot to a military policy, was taken by Washington prior to any basic social reforms or economic nationalist measures. The coup of 2001 and lockout of 2002 were backed by the US in response to President Chavez forceful rejection of the “War on Terrorism”. Washington jeopardized its important economic stake, petrol investments, in order to put in place a regime in conforming to its global military strategy. And for the next decade and a half, the US imperial strategy totally ignored investment, trade and resource opportunities in this wealthy petrol state; it chose to spend hundreds of millions in financing opposition NGO, terrorists, electoral parties, mass media and military officials to effect a regime change. The extractive sector in the US simply became a transmission belt for the agencies of the militarized imperial state. In its place, Russia and China, interested 62

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especially extractive sector signed multi-billion dollar contracts with the Venezuelan state: a case of extractive imperialism by invitation – for economic and security reasons. Apart from the ideological conflict over US militarist expansion, Venezuela’s promotion of Latin American centered regional integration, weakened US leverage and control in the region. In its struggle against Latin American centered regional organizations and to regain its dominance, US imperialism has upgraded its economic profile via the Trans-Pacific Alliance, which includes its most loyal neo-liberal allies – Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. The global eclipse of economic – driven imperial expansion in favor of the military has not totally displaced several key economic advances in strategic countries and sectors in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. The privatization and denationalization of the biggest and most lucrative public petrol company in Latin America, PEMEX, the Mexican giant, opens up enormous profitable opportunities for US MNC. The rapid appropriation of oil fields by US MNC will enhance and compliment the militarization of Mexico undertaken by the US military-security apparatus. The Mexican example highlights several features of US imperialism in Latin America. Imperial militarization does not necessarily preclude economic imperialism if it takes place within an existing stable state structure. Unlike the imperial wars in Iraq and Libya, the military imperialist policies in Mexico advanced via powerful local political clients willing and able to engage in bloody civil wars costing over 100,000 civilian deaths in over a decade. Under the aegus and guidance of US imperial rulers, the US and Mexican military devastated civil society, but safeguarded and expanded the huge mining and manufacturing enclaves open to economic imperialist exploitation. Militarization contributed to weakening the bargaining rights of labor – wages have declined in real terms over the decades and the minimum wage is the lowest in the hemisphere. Mexico highlights the crucial role that collaborator elites play in imperial capital accumulation. Mexico is an excellent example of ‘imperialism by invitation’ – the political agreements at the top impose ‘acquiescence’ below. The extraordinary levels of corruption which permeates the entire political class, solidifies the longstanding links between Mexican political-business elite, the MNC and the security apparatus of the imperial state. Extractive imperialism is the principal beneficiary of this “triple alliance.” In the case of Mexico, militarized imperialism laid the groundwork for the expansion of economic imperialism. A similar process, involving ‘triple alliances’ is operative in Colombia. For the past decade and a half, militarizedimperialism poured over $6 billion in military aid (Plan Colombia) to finance the dispossession, assassination, arrest and torture and of over 4 million 63

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Colombians, including the killing of thousands of trade union and social movement leaders. The scorched earth policy, backed by a substantial US military mission operated through the existing state apparatus and with the active support of the agro-mineral and banking elite ,aided by nearly 40,000 member paramilitary death squads and drug traffickers laid the groundwork for the large scale entry of extractive capital – particularly mining capital. Military imperialism preceded the long-term, large scale ‘invasion’ by economic imperialism in the form of a free trade agreement and multi-million acre land grants to mining MNC. This general pattern was repeated in Peru. The ‘war on terror” under Fujimori and the subsequent liberalization of the economy, under three subsequent Presidents, culminated in the massive primarization of the economy under President Humala – who deepened and extended the expansion of imperial extractive capital. The economic downturn in some of the post-neo-liberal economies, namely Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, and the rightward moving political spectrum, has opened a window of opportunity for US economic imperialism to work in tandem with the rising neoliberal political opposition. The military option, a military coup or US military intervention is not on the horizon for the present time. The central focus of imperial state decision makers regarding regime change is a combination of overt electoral and covert ‘street intervention’: adopting ‘populist’, moralist and technocratic rhetoric to highlight corruption in high offices, inefficiency in the delivery of social services with claims of bureaucratic interference in the operations of the market. Business disinvestment, financial speculation on the currency and negative mass media propaganda has coincided strikes and protests against shortages and lag between wage and price increases. Despite costly and failed imperial wars in the Middle East, despite a decade of military retreat in Latin America, economic imperialism is advancing via the electoral route; it already has established a formidable array of allies among the political regimes in Mexico, Colombia and Peru and is posed to re-establish neo-liberal allies in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. Capitalist Development, Class Struggle and Imperialism Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (2005: 39) wrote in the opening to the Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Let us start by noting that the purpose of capitalist production is not consumption, but the appropriation of profit and the accumulation of capital. The means to the accumulation of capital is not the satisfaction of consumer need, the limit of which is only an unfortunate barrier 64

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that the capitalist has to overcome, but the development of the forces of production in order to increase the productivity of the labor commanded by the capitalist, whose product the capitalist appropriates as his own. The need to develop the forces of production is not merely an expression of the subjective motivation of the capitalist, but is imposed on the capitalist by the pressure of competition, which is no more and no less than the pressure of the immanent and self-reproducing tendency to overproduction, which compels every capitalist to expand production by developing the forces of production without regard to the limits of the market. The tendency to overproduction is not the result of ignorance or misjudgment of the limits of the market, since the innovating capitalist is able to dispose profitably of the whole of his expanded product, while the limits of the market only impose themselves on other capitalists as a result of the overproduction of commodities. The tendency to overproduction and crisis is both the cause and the consequence of the capitalists’ revolutionizing of the means of production. It is the form through which new methods of production displace the old. We shall consider classes as groups of people having their own role to play in the relations of production. Relations of production refer to the fact that in the process of industrial production the labor and capital stands in specific relation to each other. Labor is the capacity which the working class possesses, while capital is the instrument invested out of which profit is derived. Those who possess capital are the owners of capital. Those who are laborers are the owners of labor power. While capital gets profit, labor gets a wage. Labor and capital are therefore interrelated and are inseparable. One cannot be thought of without the other. But, each is rewarded differently (Avineri, 1968). Let us look back to know what Marx said about this relationship. In outlining his conception of Historical Materialism, the foundation of Marxism as a social science, Marx had argued that at each stage in the capitalist development process—the development of the forces of production—can be found a corresponding system of class relations and struggle. Development can be understood in two ways: (i) as a project, i.e., as an idea acted upon via a strategic plan or goal-based strategy in order to bring about a consciously desired end; and (ii) as a process that is shaped by conditions that are objective in their effects on people, and countries, according to their location in a system, and by forces of change that arise in response to these conditions. For Marx this was a matter of fundamental principle arising out of a fundamental conflict between the forces and relations of production. But he could have added that at each stage of capitalist development can also be found both a corresponding and distinct form of class struggle based on the forces of resistance to this advance, as well as imperialism in one form or the other and 65

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distinctly understood as the projection of state power in the service of capital— to facilitate its advance in the sphere of international relations and secure its evolution into and as a world system. That is, the projection of state power in the quest for world domination—to establish hegemony over the world system—is a necessary condition of capitalist development. Capitalism requires the state not only to establish the necessary conditions of a capital accumulation process, but to ensure its inevitable expansion—the extension of the capitallabor relation, and its mechanism of economic exploitation (the extraction of surplus value from the labor of the direct producers)—into a world system. Lenin had theorized this projection of state power in the service of capital as the most advanced stage in the capitalist development process, which includes a phase of “primitive accumulation” (in which the direct producers are separated from the land and their means of production) and a process by which the smalllandholding agricultural producers or peasant farmers are proletarianized, converted and made over into a working class. As Lenin saw it imperialism so conceived (as the “highest stage of capitalism”) featured

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(i) the fusion of industrial and financial capital; (ii) the export of capital in the search for profitable outlets overseas; (iii) the territorial division (and colonization) of the world by European capitalist powers within the institutional and policy framework of Pox Britannica (the hegemony and dominion of the United States); and (iv) an international division of labor based on an international exchange of primary commodities for goods manufactured in the center of the system. These features encompassed an economic dynamic of capital accumulation, but this dynamic and the economic structure of this system evidently required and was secured politically with the projection of state power, including military force. Lenin astutely identified the fundamental structural features of the world capitalist system at this stage of development. However, it was misleading to characterize it as “imperialism” in that the projection of imperial class-based state power was a distinct feature of capitalism in an earlier phase in the evolution of capitalism as a world system, namely mercantilism, a system in which merchant’s capital was accumulated through the expropriation of natural resources as much as exploitation of labor as well as state-sanctioned and regulated international trade. And imperialism was also a distinct feature and an adjunct to the capital accumulation process in later periods of capitalist development.

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Imperialism in an Era of State-led Capitalist Development (1950–80) In the wake of the Second World War the United States emerged as an economic super-power, in command of at least one half of world industrial capacity and up to 80 percent of financial resources or capital for productive investment. Having replaced Great Britain as the leader of what were then described as the “forces of (economic and political) freedom,” and to counter a perceived potential threat from its Russian war-time ally, now the USSR, which had also emerged from the war as an industrial power but representing an alternative socialist system for expanding the forces of national production, the US led the construction of a capitalist world order in the form of the Bretton Woods system (Bienefeld 2013; Frieden 2006; Peet 2003). This system included two “international financial institutions”—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and what would become the World Bank— as well as a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an institutional mechanism for negotiating agreements in the direction of free trade that would eventually emerge as the World Trade Organization (WTO). This system provided a set of rules used to govern relations of international trade—rules that favored the operations and expansion of what had emerged as a complex of predominantly US-based multinational corporations and thus the hegemony of US capital. However, it also provided the institutional framework of a project of international cooperation with the nation-building and development efforts of a large number of countries that were engaged in a war of national liberation and independence from the colonial powers that had subjugated them for so long. In this context capitalism engaged a process of productive and social transformation—the transformation of an economic system based on agriculture and an agrarian society and social system based on pre-capitalist relations of production into a modern industrial capitalist system based on capitalist relations of production, or wage labor. Studies of the process of social change and economic development involved in this transition to capitalism in agriculture and the resulting transformation were based on three alternative metatheories and narratives: industrialization, modernization, and proletarianization. The basic mechanism of this transformation was exploitation of the “unlimited supply of surplus rural labor” released in the capitalist development of the forces of production in the agricultural sector (Lewis, 1954). This process of capitalist development, and the associated process of productive and social transformation, can be traced out in different countries and regions at different points of time. But the process unfolded in different ways, engaging different forces of change and resistance in the class struggle, in 67

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the countries at the center of the system and those on the periphery. First, in peripheral regions (Latin America and the Caribbean, parts of Asia and Africa) were found countries that were struggling to escape colonial subjugation and imperialist exploitation as well as class rule. Governments in these countries were in a position to choose between a capitalist and a socialist path towards nation-building and economic development, a situation that called for a strategic and political response from the guardians of the capitalist world order. The response: to assist the development process in these countries—for the states in the developed countries and the international organizations and financial institutions to provide technical and financial assistance (foreign aid, in the lexicon of international development) to the undeveloped and less developed countries on the periphery of the system. In this context it is possible to view the idea and the entire enterprise of international development through the lens of imperialist theory—as a distinct form of imperialism (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005a). There is considerable evidence to suggest that the most powerful states within the institutional framework and system what can now be described as Pax Americana (the hegemony and dominion of the United States) in the post-war era of capitalism began to deploy the idea of development as a means of facilitating the entry into and the operations of capital in peripheral countries…in the development of their forces of production and the accumulation of capital in the process. In this context diplomatic pressure and military force were deployed as required or dictated by circumstance, but only secondarily, i.e., as a strategy and tactic of last resort. Thus the projection of military force to achieve the geopolitical objectives of the imperial state used predominantly by the US state in the 1950s and early 60s to maintain imperial order in its backyard—Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1963, 1965), Brazil (1964), Guyana (1953) and Chile (1973). It might be remembered that the US interventionist success in Guatemala (1954) caused the United States to repeat its policy with Cuba in 1961—a policy that led to defeat. The successful US orchestrated military coups in Brazil (1964) and Indonesia (1965) and the invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965) encouraged the United States to deepen and extend its military invasion of IndoChina which led to a historic but temporary defeat of imperial policymakers and the profound weakening of domestic political support. After the military coup engineered in Chile this strategy of direct military invention and sponsored military coups gave way to a war by proxy, which entailed the financing of both the policy-making apparatus re social and development programs and the repressive apparatus (the armed forces) deployed by its Latin American allies.

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In the same way as the imperialist project of International Cooperation for Development was used in the 1950s and subsequently to discourage those countries seeking to liberate themselves from the yoke of colonialism from turning towards a socialist path towards national development, the US government as an imperialist state resorted to the idea of “development” as a means of preventing another “Cuba” and turning the “rural poor” away from the option of revolutionary change provided by the revolutionary movements that had emerged in Latin America (Petras and Veltmeyer 2007a). The class struggle at the time (the 1950–60s) assumed two main forms. The first was as a land struggle waged by the peasantry, most of which had been either proletarianized (rendered landless) or semi-proletarianized (forced to take the labor path out of rural poverty) as it was the case in Zimbabwe during the era of Ian Smith, following his unilateral declaration of independence. In theory—both the theory formulated by development economists and sociologists as “modernization theory”, and by traditional Marxists—the capitalist development of agriculture would lead to the conversion of peasants into a wage-laboring and earning working class, but in conditions of peripheral capitalism, in the 1980s, the end result was semi-proletarianization—the formation of a rural proletariat of landless workers and an urban proletariat of street workers working not for wages but “on their own account” in the informal sector. Many of the proletarianized and impoverished peasants, separated from their means of production and livelihoods, chose to migrate and take the development path of labor staked out by the World Bank (2008) and the modernization theorists of “development.” However, many others chose to resist rather than adjust to the forces of capitalist development operating on them, to join the revolutionary social movements in the form of “armies of national liberation”. But by means of a three-pronged strategy and policy of (i) land reform (expropriation and redistributing land to the tiller), (ii) integrated rural development (technical and financial assistance to the small landholding peasant or family farmer), and (iii) repression (use of the iron fist of armed force hidden within the velvet glove of integrated development) the imperial state, via its allies in the local states, managed to defeat or “bring to ground” the social movements engaged in the land struggle. The one exception was the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which continues to be a powerful force of resistance against the incursions of capital in Colombia to this today. The second major form of the class struggle at the time had to do with the capital-labor relation, and engaged the working class in an organized labor movement against capital and the state for higher wages and improved working conditions. This struggle was part of a global class war launched by capital in 69

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the 1970s in the context of a systemic crisis of overproduction (Crouch and Pizzorno 1978). One of a number of weapons deployed in this war was the power of the state, via its policymaking role, to fatally weaken the labor movement in its organizational capacity to negotiate collective contracts for higher wages and reduce the share of labor in national incomes. This approach was particularly effective in Latin America, where the imperial state, via the international organizations and financial institutions at its command, was in a position to impose market-friendly “structural” reforms on the labor movement. As a result of these reforms in the capital-labor relation the share of labor (wages) in the distribution of national income in many Latin American countries was reduced by as much as 50 percent. The purchasing power of the average wage in Argentina, for example, was less in 2010—after six years of economic recovery and export-led rapid economic growth—than it was in 1970. The loss in the purchasing power or value of wages was particularly sharp at the level of the government-regulated minimum wage, which the World Bank throughout the 1980s and 1990s tirelessly argued was the major cause of low income, poverty and informalization in the region. For example, in Mexico, the country that followed the strictures of Washington and the World Bank in regard to deregulating the labor market, from 1980 to 2010, over three decade of neoliberalism, the minimum wage lost up to 77 percent of its value (Romero, 2014). While the imperial state was indirectly engaged in the land struggle via a program of international cooperation that was implemented by the Latin American state but financed by officials of the imperial state, imperialism vis-à-vis the labor movement took the form of an armed struggle against “subversives” (a broad urban coalition of forces of resistance mobilized by the “political left”). The struggle was led by the armed forces of the Latin American state, particularly in Brazil and the southern cone of south America (Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay), although financed by and (indirectly) under the strategic command of the US, and operating within the framework of an ideology and doctrine (the National Security Doctrine) fabricated within the ideological apparatus of the imperial state. By the end of the 1970s this movement had also suffered defeat, its forces in disarray and disarticulated under the combined weight of state repression and forces generated in the capitalist development process. With the defeat of both major fronts of the class struggle and popular movement, with the resurgence of the Right in the form of a counterrevolutionary political movement and an ideology of free market capitalism, the stage was set for a major turnaround in the correlation of opposing forces in the class struggle. Imperialism would have an important role to play in this process. 70

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Imperialism and Capitalism in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization (1980– 2000) Neoliberalism as an ideology of free market capitalism and a doctrine of policy reform in the direction of free market capitalism—”the new economic model,” as it was termed in Latin America (Bulmer-Thomas, 2006)—was some four decades in the making, manufactured by a neoliberal thought collective put together by Van der Hayek (Mirowski and Plehwe 2009). It was not until the early 1980s that the necessary conditions for bringing these ideologues to state power, i.e., in a position to influence and dictate policy, were available or otherwise created. These conditions included an unresolved systemic crisis of overproduction, a fiscal crisis in the North and an impending debt crisis in the South, and the defeat of the popular movement in the class struggle over land and labor. Under these conditions the imperial state, via its international organizations and financial institutions, mobilized its diverse powers and forces so as to mobilize the forces needed to reactivate the capital accumulation process. The main problem here—from a capitalist and imperialist perspective—was how to liberate the “forces of freedom” (to quote from George W. Bush’s 2012 National Security Report) from the regulatory constraints of the welfare-development state. The solution: a program of “structural reform” in macroeconomic policy (the vaunted structural adjustment program” constructed by economists at the World Bank and the IMF) within the framework of a Washington Consensus (Williamson 1990). By 1990 all but four major Latin American states had succumbed or joined the Washington Consensus in regard to a program that was imposed on them as a conditionality of aid and access to capital markets to renegotiate the external debt. And in the 1990s, in a third cycle and generation of neoliberal reforms, the governing neoliberal regimes in three of these states—Argentina, Brazil, Peru— had followed suit, generating conditions that would facilitate a massive inflow of productive capital in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as well as a substantial inflow of unproductive or fictitious capital seeking to purchase the assets of existing lucrative but privatized state enterprises (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2004). The first cycle corresponded to the economic policies of the military regimes established in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the 1970s—policies designed by the “Chicago boys” according to a neoliberal recipe of marketfriendly structural reforms (privatization decentralization, liberalization, deregulation). On the three cycles of neoliberal policies see, inter alia, Petras and Veltmeyer (2001).

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What followed was what has been described as the “Golden Age of US Imperialism” (viz. the facilitated entry and productive operations of large-scale profit- and market-seeking investment capital), as well as the formation of powerful peasant and indigenous social movements to resist the neoliberal policy offensive and protest the destructive impact of neoliberal policies on their livelihoods and communities—movements no longer directed against the big landlords or corporate capital and agribusiness but against the policies of the local and imperial state (Petras and Veltmeyer 2005a, 2009, 2013). By the end of the decade these movements had successfully challenged the hegemony of neoliberalism in the region as an economic model and policy agenda. What resulted was a “red” and “pink” tide of regime change—a turn to the left in national politics and the formation of regimes oriented towards the “socialism of the 21st century (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador) or a post-Washington consensus on the need for a more inclusive form of development—inclusionary state activism (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay . . .). On the post-Washington consensus and the two types of “post-neoliberal regimes” formed in the wake of widespread disenchantment with and rejection of the neoliberal model. The states formed in the so-called “red wave” of regime change constituted a new anti-imperialist front in the struggle against US imperialist intervention— another front to the one formed by the social movements in their resistance and direct action. At the level of national politics the main issues was US intervention in Latin America affairs, including the funding of opposition groups in Venezuela, the economic blockade against Cuba, and the attempt by the US government to orchestrate a free trade agreement, first between the US and both Canada and Mexico, and then a continent-wide agreement (FTAA, or ALCA in its Spanish acronym). The US regime was successful in the first instance, but failed miserably in the second—having encountered powerful forces of resistance in the popular sector of many states, as well as widespread opposition within the political class and elements of the ruling class and the governing regime in countries such as Brazil. Both imperialism and the anti-imperialist struggle in this conjuncture of capitalist development assumed different forms in different countries, but Colombia was unique in that the most powerful movement in the 1960s land struggle had never been defeated. With land still at the center of the class struggle the existence and large-scale operations of what we might term narcocapitalism allowed the US imperial state to move with armed force against the major remaining obstacle to the capitalist development of agriculture in Colombia—to make the countryside safe for US capital—under the façade of a drug war waged by the government against the manufacturers of cocaine and 72

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the narco-trafficking. The mechanism of this imperial offensive was Plan Colombia, a US military and diplomatic aid initiative aimed at combating Colombian drug cartels and left-wing insurgent groups in Colombian territory. The plan was originally conceived between 1998 and 1999 by the administrations of Colombian President Andrés Pastrana Arango and US President Bill Clinton, as an anti-cocaine strategy but with the aim of ending the Colombian armed conflict and making the countryside safe for US capital (Vilar and Cottle, 2011). A third front in the imperialist offensive against the forces of resistance in the popular sector involved International cooperation and the agencies of international development. The strategy employed by these agencies was the same as successfully used in the 1960s and 1970s to dampen the fires of revolutionary ferment in the countryside: to offer the dispossessed peasants and the rural poor a non-confrontational alternative to social mobilization and direct collective action (Veltmeyer, 2005). The strategy had a different outcome in different countries. In Ecuador, home to the most powerful indigenous movement in the region—the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE)—the strategy of ethnodevelopment orchestrated by the World Bank and the IDB resulted in dividing and weakening the movement, undermining its capacity to mobilize the forces of popular resistance (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2009). For example, in just a few years Antonio Vargas, President of CONAIE and leader of the major indigenous uprising of the twentieth century, had been converted into the head of one of the most powerful NGOs in the region, with the capacity to disburse funds for local development microprojects and a resulting diminution in the power of CONAIE to mobilize the forces of resistance. By 2007, when Rafael Correa, a left-leaning economist, came to power as the country’s president, the indigenous movement led by CONAIE, was but a shadow of its former self, allowing the political left, in the form of Correa’s Citizens Movement, to push CONAIE and the indigenous movement aside in the political project of a “Citizen’s Revolution.” The outcome was rather different in Bolivia, a paradigmatic case of antineoliberalism and anti-imperialism in the current conjuncture of the class struggle. Whereas the popular movement in Ecuador had been pushed aside in the capture of the instruments of state power by the Political Left, in Bolivia an extended process of class conflict and mass mobilization was the prelude and condition of the Political Left’s rise to power in the form of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). The water and gas “wars”, clashes with the military, and the dismissal of several corrupt and neoliberal governments, were all part of a cocktail that allowed for the emergence of a new political “actor” or 73

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instrument in the form of MAS, and the rise to power of Evo Morales, which was backed by the “social movements”—that encompassed both communities of indigenous “peasants,” a rural proletariat of landless workers, and diverse sectors of the organized working class (Dangl, 2007; Farthing and Kohl, 2006; Webber, 2010).

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Resistance and Collaboration of Extractive Capitalism

by

the

colonized

in

an Era

The neoliberal “structural reform” agenda of the Washington Consensus facilitated a massive inflow of capital in the form of foreign direct investments directed towards non-traditional manufacturing, financial and high-tech information-rich services, and natural resource extraction. The 1990s saw a sixfold increase in the inflows of FDI in the first four years of the decade and then another sharp increase from 1996 to 2001; in fewer than ten years the foreign capital accumulated by MNCs in the region had tripled (ECLAC 2012, 71) while profits soared. John Saxe-Fernandez, a well-known Mexico-based political economist, determined that over the course of the decade that the inflow of FDI had netted enormous profits, reflected in the net outflow of US$100 billion over the entire decade of (Saxe-Fernández and Núñez, 2001). Expansion fueled by capitalist industrialism and nationalism brought previously unsubjugated lands under European control during the nineteenth century. What led colonizers to treat their subject populations in radically differing ways, ranging from genocide to efforts to “salvage” precolonial cultures? In Southwest Africa, Germany massacred the Ovaherero and Witbooi; in Samoa, Germany pursued a program of cultural retraditionalization; and in the Chinese leasehold colony of Qingdao/Kiaochow, the Germans moved from policies of racialized segregation to a respectful civilizational exchange. Different European social groups competed inside the colonial state field for a specific form of symbolic capital: ethnographic capital. This involved exhibiting an alleged talent for judging the culture and character of the colonized, a gift for understanding “the natives.” Competitive dynamics among the colonial rulers decisively shaped the ongoing production of native policies. Policy formation was also influenced by geopolitical and economic interests, responses by the colonized, and the metropolitan government’s final authority in appointing and dismissing colonial officials. The effects of these additional mechanisms were typically mediated by the internal dynamics of the semi-autonomous colonial state. European empires, re-divided after the defeat of Germany in 1918, continued to expand after the First World War, reaching their greatest extent in 74

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the early 1940s. The imperial ambitions of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany created new empires that turned out to be very short-lived. With the emergence of the Cold War came a bipolar world dominated by two anti-colonial powers, the USA and USSR. Nationalism in the colonies grew apace, spurred by the loss of imperial legitimacy through the genocidal rule of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe. Other European powers now began to feel that empire was unjustifiable following an immensely costly war that ended with human rights being enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Japanese rule over many European colonies in the Pacific severed ties with the imperial power and destroyed the legitimacy of empire. Once one major colony, such as India, gained independence, the momentum for others to follow became unstoppable (Read more at https: //www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-andevents/decolonization-the-end-of-empire#l10Wyfkzl0dkpy5o.99). European colonial empires in the first half of the 20th century were vast polities, encompassing a bewildering range of landscapes, peoples, religions and cultures. Colonial strength after 1918 was, however, illusory. This reflects a central paradox of the imperial history of the inter-war years: colonial regimes which had weathered the storms of “total war” during 1914-1918 would collapse within a matter of decades. The readiness to resort to violent militarized policing methods in order to deal with the crises that followed the war only demonstrated the limits to the legitimacy of colonial rule. This was, perhaps, an inherent weakness of colonial systems, particularly those which were inflected with a liberal strain or the desire to spread ideas of “European civilization.” as were those of Britain and France. Although anti-colonial nationalist movements, with the exceptions of Ireland and Turkey, had been contained by the early 1920s, they had begun a slow process of dismantling the foundations of imperial administrations. Decolonization should not be seen as starting with the Wilsonian moment after the First World War. Its roots in many territories were sunk much deeper into the very nature of the colonial conquests and systems that developed in the nineteenth century; these were systems of rule that slowly untraveled over generations. Nonetheless, the colonial empires had reached a tipping point in the early 1920s. Mass nationalist movements, spurred by the failure of internationalist dreams (of both Lenin and Wilson) in the wake of the Paris peace treaties, now stood as the main opponents to colonial rule across numerous territories. The mobilization of the colonial empires to fight a “total war” in 1914-1918, especially the recruitment of combatants and laborers, was the crucial dynamic that drove the development of this anti-colonial upsurge. The First World War unleashed internationalist and ethno-nationalist ideas alongside demands from 75

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subject populations which could not be met without significant concessions over sovereignty and political control. Tentative steps were made to address these calls for reform with measures such as those of Edwin Montagu and Chelmsford in India and Charles Jonnart (1857-1927) in Algeria, but they merely underlined the increasingly contested nature of imperial legitimacy. It would take the defeats of 1940-42, with France crushed in Europe by Germany and Britain humiliated by Japan in South-East Asia, to finally seal the fate of the colonial empires and accelerate moves towards decolonization. Defeat and victory in the “total wars” of the 20th century were of great significance. Battlefield defeat for the Ottomans, Russians and Germans in 1917-18, as well as ensuing revolutions and internal political collapse, ensured that their pre-war imperial territories would undergo a form of decolonization in the conflict’s aftermath. Victory for the Allies produced a contrasting experience, with the Belgian, French, Italian, British, Portuguese and Japanese Empires all secured or enhanced by the war. Indeed, Britain provides an exceptional case, with the loss of Ireland by 1921 being the only example of a victorious power experiencing decolonization in the immediate wake of the war. More importantly, defeated powers in both world wars found it impossible to justify repressive rule and the racial hierarchies that excluded most colonial subjects from local political systems. After 1945, Britain and France, therefore, faced an irreversible deficit of legitimacy, having asked their subjects to once again bear the burdens of fighting a “total war” in defense of a colonial system that offered them few rewards. Victory in 1918 for Britain and France had, in some respects, only served to obscure the weaknesses of their empires when placed under the strains of mass mobilization. Henry Wilson was correct to see the First World War and its confused aftermath as a transformational moment. Imperial overstretch and the stimulation of anti-colonial nationalist movements set the tone for the colonial relationships of the interwar years in which imperial rule was scrutinized as never before. The colonial empires, as Henry Wilson realized, would be unable to survive a second experience of “total war.” In sum, this chapter has argued that a historical materialist theory of what a capitalist empire is has yet to be fully articulated. Then, I proceeded to lay bare such a theory. The theoretical situatedness of Empire has outlined an explanation of capitalist empire in relation to a historical materialist conceptualization of how capitalism operates and transforms society. In this I distinguished state and imperialism as aspects of capitalist empires, but empire itself as something related to, but larger than these historical processes. I also tried to locate capitalist empires in relation to the logic of capitalism and its crises tendencies, and the way the logic of capital plays out over uneven development and the exploitation of a variety of labor forms. Additionally, I 76

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attempted to bring out the racialized, gendered, and ecological aspects of capitalist empires in an attempt to begin to explain the political economy of capitalist empires as total social wholes in Africa. Empire and its corollary imperialism, as both have evolved over the past centuries cannot always be understood as a ‘unified whole’ in which the two basic components, military and economic are always complimentary. Divergences have been graphically illustrated by the imperial wars in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. Convergences are more obvious in Latin America, especially in Mexico, Colombia and Peru, where ‘militarization’ facilitated the expansion of extractive capital. In Africa, militarization in the name of colonial wars, maintaining peace or regime change have promoted such divergences, especially in Africa as a whole. The theoretical point is that the nature of the political leadership of the imperial state has a high degree of autonomy in shaping the predominance of one or another strand of the imperial expansion. The capacity for imperial capital to expand is highly contingent on the strength and structure of the collaborator state: militarized imperialism that invades and destroys states and the fabric of civil society has led to disinvestment; in contrast economic imperialism by invitation in neo-liberal collaborator states has been at the center of successful imperial expansion. The ambiguities and contradictions intrinsic to the post-neo-liberal extractivist based development model have both constrained the military component of imperialism while expanding opportunities for economic imperial accumulation. Accumulation by invitation, and accumulation by dispossession are simply ’moments’ in a complex process in which political regime changes intervene and establish the locations and timing for refluxes and influxes of capital. The rise of new economic imperialist powers like China competing with established imperial powers like the US and Europe, has led to alternative markets and sources of financing, which erodes the effectiveness of political, military and diplomatic instruments of imperial coercion. National and regional variations in political configurations, imperial priorities and choice of instruments of power, have deeply influenced the nature and structure of imperialism. And as the world historic record seems to argue, military or marketdriven empire building in Africa and the Middle East has been a disaster while economic driven imperialism shows signs of rapid recovery and successes in Latin America as a contrast.

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References Amin, S. 2001. “Imperialism and Globalization.” Monthly Review 53(2). http: //www.monthlyreview.org/601amin.htm. Arrighi, G. 2005. “Hegemony Unraveling I” and “Hegemony Unraveling II.” New Left Review II (32/33): 23-80. Avineri, S. (1968) The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx Bienefeld, M. 2013. “The New World Order: Echoes of a New Imperialism.” Pp.105-27 in Development in an Era of Neoliberal globalization, edited by H. Veltmeyer. Oxford: Routledge. Bulmer-Thomas, V. 1996. The Economic Model in Latin America and Its Impact on Income Distribution and Poverty. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. 2010. Empires in world history: Power and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Colin Wilson, Socialists and Gay Liberation (London: Socialist Workers Party, UK), 11. Crouch, C., and A. Pizzorno.1978. Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968. London: Holmes and Meier. Dangl, B. 2007. The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Darwin, John. 2008. After Tamerlane: The global history of empire since 1405. New York: Bloomsbury. Farthing, L., and B. Kohl. 2006. Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance. London: Zed Books. Frieden, J. 2006. Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the 20th Century. New York: W.W. Norton. Hall, S. (2005) ‘Thinking diaspora: home thoughts from abroad’, in Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, eds G. Desai & S. Nair, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, pp. 543560. Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. 2003. The New Imperialism. New York: Oxford University. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. (2005). “The Communist Manifesto,” in Phil Gasper, ed., The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Klare, M. 2003. “The New Geopolitics.” Monthly Review 55 (3): 51–56. Mentan, T. (2016). Neoliberalism and Imperialism: Dissecting the Dynamics of Global Oppression. Langaa RPCIG: Bamenda. Miliband, Ralph. (1969). The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books

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Mirowski, P., and D. Plehwe, eds. 2009. The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Münkler, Herfried. 2007. Empires: The logic of world domination from Ancient Rome to the United States. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Lewis, W. A. 1954. “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor.” Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, 22: 139–91. Panitch, L., and C. Leys. 2004. The New Imperial Challenge. New York: Monthly Review Press. Petras, J. 2000. “Geopolitics of Plan Colombia.” Economic and Political Weekly 35(52/53): 4617-23. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. 2013. The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic Boston: Beacon Press. Quoted in Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (New York: 1887). Available online at http: //_www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/_conditionworking-class/. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2001. Unmasking Globalization: The New Face of Imperialism. Halifax: Fernwood Books / London: Zed Books. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2004. Las privatizaciónes y la desnacionalización en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Libros Prometeo. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2005a. “Foreign Aid, Neoliberalism and Imperialism.” In Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, edited by A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston, 120–27. London: Pluto Press. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2005b. Empire with Imperialism. Halifax and London: Fernwood Publications and Zed Books. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2007a. “Neoliberalism and Imperialism in Latin America: Dynamics and Responses.” International Review of Modern Sociology 33(Special Issue), 27-59. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2007b. Multinationals on Trial. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. 2009. What’s Left in Latin America. Aldershot UK: Ashgate. Petras, J., et al. 1981. Class, State and Power in the Third World. Montclair: Allanheld, OSMUN. Razack, S. 2004. Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Robinson, W. 2007. “Beyond the Theory of Imperialism: Global Capitalism and the Transnational State.” Societies Without Borders 2: 5–26.

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Romero, G. 2014. “Poder adquisitivo cayó 77% en 35 años en México.” La Jornada, 6 de agosto. Sabrina Alimahomed, “Homeland Security Inc.: public order, private profit,” Race and Class 55, no. 4 (2014): 82–99. Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race Vols. 1 &2 (London: Verso, 2012). Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An outline of interpretive sociology. 2 vols. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An outline of interpretive sociology. 2 vols. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Webber, J. 2010. Red October: Left Indigenous Struggle in Modern Bolivia. Leiden: Brill. Weeks, Jeffrey. (1989). Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd ed. London: Longman Limited. Williamson, J., ed. 1990. Latin American Adjustment. How Much Has Happened? Washington DC: Institute for International Economics. World Bank. 2008. World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. New York: Oxford University Press. Wood, Meiksins. 2003. Empire of Capital. London: Verso. Young, Robert, 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell.

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Part II Africa in the Old Colonial Age of Empire

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Preview The Old Colonial Age of Empire engendered slavery, racism, colonialism and militarism that all brought forth imperialism. The division of a majority of the world’s population among the colonies of a handful of powers was its most obvious feature. Six countries, Great Britain, Tsarist Russia, France, Germany, the US, and Japan controlled the majority of the world’s colonies, while even some small countries, such as Portugal, Holland, and Belgium, controlled their own overseas empires. All in all, the majority of the world’s people lived as subject peoples in colonies or semi-colonies. And the forcible suppression needed to maintain these empires against their subject peoples, and the struggle between the great powers over who would control this or that area of the world, fueled a new period of military conflict, which led to World Wars I and II. The colonial encirclement of the world, especially Africa, is an integral component of European history from the Early Modern Period to the phase of decolonization. Individual national and expansion histories may be referred to each other in varying degrees at different times but they often also reinforced each other. Transfer processes within Europe and in the colonies show that not only genuine colonial powers such as Spain and England, but also “latecomers” such as Germany participated in the historical process of colonial expansion with which Europe decisively shaped African history. In turn, this process also clearly shaped Europe itself.

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Chapter 3 The Cotton Empire of Slavery, Racism and Resistance

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Overview Slavery was instrumental to the initial rise of capitalist industry in North America during the Cotton Empire period, and indeed across the Atlantic World, especially Britain and France. By the mid-nineteenth century it had become a major impediment to the continuation of that process. The cotton planters’ political power prevented the unification of the nation under a strong central government with the ability to implement an economic policy that would stimulate industrial development. And although slavery generated enormous wealth and power for the planters, it did not lead to the same substantial industrial and commercial growth as had taken place in the free states. Slavery had become a fetter on the development of industrial capitalism in the United States, and its destruction vastly accelerated that development. Simple laws of economic motion could not generate a revolution on their own, however. That would require the active intervention of organized revolutionaries. The slaves could not overthrow the planter class on their own. The second American Revolution combined both elements of revolution from above—a war organized and led by Lincoln and his government—as well as revolution from below, characterized by the “general strike” of slaves and their active involvement as soldiers, spies, and helpers in the Union army. Blacks also made, in the years leading up to the Civil War, the decisive contribution to the building of a mass revolutionary movement. Black activists, many of them refugees from the South, initiated and maintained the abolitionist movement during the dark days of the 1830s and 1840s, and ultimately guided it to the point where it could gain significant popular influence in the 1850s. Antislavery activists powerfully stimulated and exacerbated the tensions between North and South, and helped to provide an ideological standard to unite the forces struggling against slavery. Introduction Let us start by refreshing our memories by reviewing the term colony etimologically. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory as slaves or laborers of various 83

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definitions, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin. Slavery in the Old Colonial Age of Empire can be defined as one person bound to another person or household through servitude. Chattel slavery is the term used regarding slaves as commodities to be bought and sold, and is often the definition we use for slavery in general. Slavery—the ownership and exploitation of one person by another—is one of the oldest social relationships in human history. Slave labor was the basis for the wealth and prestige of ancient Greece and Rome. Hence, the obligation of slavery is as old as the invention of agriculture. As humans engineered ways to harvest crops and learned how to domesticate and control animals, they began to settle in communities. Some of these communities grew, birthing towns, some of which became large cities. People gathered together and, due to their newfound stability, were able to amass food, acquire possessions and supplies, and establish trade. All of these factors made life easier and more comfortable. Yet, with this comfort comes power and greed, and people begin wanting more of both. A hierarchy is formed and leaders are chosen by the group. Laws are established and enforced, and people begin to follow their chosen leaders— even so far as to pay them tributes. Borrowing and debt are thus introduced into societies that once only knew day-to-day survival. A bad harvest may cause one man to borrow food from a neighbor in order to feed his family through the year, hoping that the following harvest will not only reap enough to feed his own family but good enough for him to pay back his acquired debt. As time progresses, varying occupations emerge, as do arts and written languages. Commerce is introduced between towns and cities. All this occurs while governments grow in power and privilege—and focus. Land becomes a commodity, and one that people are willing to fight for. All of these factors have then created the means for slavery to develop. Historically, the first records of slavery date back to The Code of Hammurabi in Babylon in the 18th century BC, though it can be traced to almost every ancient civilization. Records from the Mycenaean period (Bronze Age) in Greece attest to how integral slavery was at the time. In fact, it is estimated that the majority of Athenian citizens owned at least one slave. In the ancient world, many of these slaves were acquired as spoils of war. For many of the foreign defeated, a life could be spent—and ended—in sexual servitude to an individual, temple or even worse, a barracks, or to hard manual labor, such as working in mines, toiling in construction, or fighting to the death in arenas for the free public’s entertainment. These slaves could be traded and sold, typically had no rights and no future, and were, by definition, chattel slaves.

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But some slaves have, as history has shown us, been allowed some menial rights. Babylonian slaves, for example, were allowed to own property. Ancient Egyptian citizens could inherit a form of slavery that was closely related to purpose and profession—a serfdom, so to speak, where the slave was born into a household that lived on and went with the land or property. One did not choose his profession so much as he was born into it, such as a carpenter, for the lord of the land. The level of servitude in such instances varied, and this life allowed more freedoms than other forms of slavery (though a man, woman, or child could still be traded or sold). In Sparta, a state of Greece known for its skilled warriors, most slaves were neighboring peoples conquered by the army. In one sense, these slaves continued life as normal; individuals lived in their own homes on their own land and continued many daily operations as they normally would—under Spartan masters. Other slaves also retained some rights and privileges. For example, slaves who served in domestic positions and offices in Greece were often able to attain some status and favor, even though they were not free men. The owners could show favor on these servants, who were in positions to gain the trust and confidence of their masters. Other forms of slavery included punishment for an unlawful act and selling oneself into slavery to pay off a debt, usually against the person’s will. It can also be said that European serfdom, remnants of which can be found today, was a form of slavery. How and why did slavery take root in North America? What was the character of slavery as a way of organizing society? What was the relationship between the slaveholding Southern states and the industrializing Northern states? How did slaves and their allies resist the planter class? What role did abolitionism and mass protest play in the coming of the war? These are the vital questions for analysts interested in the history of this period. They remain important today because, as I have noted and will argue below, the American Civil War does in fact represent the decisive turning point in Southern—and indeed national—history. Understanding the Civil War is vital for understanding American society today—a fact of great importance for those who want to change the world. Moreover, at a time when the eyes of many workers and young people are trained on the uprisings around the world. Hence, a correct analysis of the Civil War provides vital tools for examining the dynamics of revolutions today.

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Cotton, Sugar and Tobacco Empire and Slavery

Tinted lenses: A nostalgic vision of harvesting cotton from the postcard series “Dixie Land,” produced around 1900.

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Slaves as Capital Racialized chattel slaves were the capital that made capitalism. While most theories of capitalism set slavery apart, as something utterly distinct, because under slavery, workers do not labor for a wage, new historical research reveals that for centuries, a single economic system encompassed both the plantation and the factory. After a quarter-century of tightly focused studies, historians are addressing extended periods of time and the global dimensions of history. Cotton has been cultivated and valued since ancient times, and Mr. Sven Beckert (2014), a professor of American history at Harvard, begins there. His story, though, effectively commences in the 16th century when, as both Adam Smith and Karl Marx insisted, the voyages of discovery revealed that the oceans, rather than being barriers, were actually highways giving birth to modern capitalism. Smith hailed this development, but he pointed out that while it brought “enjoyments” and “industry” to Europe, it entailed “dreadful misfortunes” in Asia and the Americas. A range of ideological interests have been well-served by obscuring how central the cotton-producing slave economy of the South was to the emergence of the modern economic world. Even before the war, southern apologists for slavery liked to paint the plantation as a kind of extended household, hierarchical but in a more familial way than northern factories. They denied that the cotton 86

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economy was ruled by economic logic in the way that northern and British industrial capitalism was, and they tried to align themselves with an imagined older aristocratic order that capitalism was displacing. The propagandists for the Lost Cause continued to spread this myth for more than a century after the Civil War. But both the liberal and the Marxist historical imagination were also very comfortable with a sharp dichotomy between slavery and industrial capitalism. Marxist historiography understood capitalism to be a discrete historical era with a mode of production distinctive to it, one that overcame and destroyed the feudal mode; this was the conflict that Marx himself thought was playing out in the Civil War. Northern American liberals and believers in wage-based free labor were happy to deny any real contamination of liberal capitalism by the vanquished slave system. The development of cotton manufacture represented a knowledge transfer from Asia to Europe. Today North Atlantic capital, managed by giant and powerful retailers like Walmart or Carrefour, exploits the workers of Asia and the Global South. It sets the terms of production and price, encouraging brutal exploitation of labor that amounts to a brutal race to the bottom. In global cities bidding on commodity exchanges, trade in derivatives and bets on price movements transform labor and cotton into an abstraction. At a time when many believe in unregulated capitalism, this history may suggest reconsidering that faith. Slavery, they understood, was inscribed into the very fabric of the American economy. The form of slavery that emerged in Europe’s American colonies was very different from the slavery of antiquity. New World slavery emerged as part of the developing capitalist world economy. It was designed to produce raw materials and staple crops such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco for export back to the markets of Europe. This combination of an archaic labor system and the capitalist profit drive helped to define chattel slavery in the Americas (Becket, 2014). Chattel slavery did not arrive in North America as a fully formed or complete system. Rather, it evolved as a result of struggles between the colonial elite and the multiracial popular classes of Virginia and the other British possessions. Less than a generation after the founding of Jamestown in 1607, English colonists had discovered the possibility of making a fortune from the cultivation of tobacco, a luxury product with a huge market in Europe. Potential tobacco planters faced a huge challenge, however. Tobacco cultivation required intensive and disciplined labor, and very few colonists were prepared to work for someone else. They would much prefer to claim their own land from the

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“wilderness”—in other words, to seize land from the indigenous peoples of Virginia and become independent farmers themselves. In order to cope with this labor shortage, colonial authorities at first experimented with enslaving Indians. But their dwindling numbers due to disease and the Indians’ ability to escape into familiar surroundings made the planters look elsewhere. They turned instead to indentured servants. These were poor British and Irish working people, including many prisoners, who exchanged passage to North America, and the prospect of a better life, for a fixed term of labor. An indentured servant would contract to work for five or seven years, without pay. They often faced treatment similar to that which we associate with Black slaves, including brutal physical coercion, being bought and sold on the market, and even being used as stakes in games of chance. The first Africans arrived in Virginia while the system of indentured servitude was at its height. Indeed, not all Africans came to Virginia as slaves. Some labored under the same contracts of indenture as white servants. For the first few decades of the Virginia colony, Black and white servants worked together on the plantations. In many instances they socialized together and even had interracial marriages. The system of racial slavery that would later evolve simply did not exist for the first few decades after Virginia’s founding. The colonial elite quickly decided that this labor system did not suit their needs. Indentured servants who had seen out their contracts sometimes went on to become independent farmers in their own right and competed with planters for the best land. More significant, however, was the threat of interracial labor rebellion in the tobacco colonies. In 1676 Black and white working people banded together in a major uprising called Bacon’s Rebellion and came close to overthrowing the colonial regime. In the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia’s planters and merchants took steps to prevent any future manifestations of rebelliousness among freemen and interracial solidarity between servants and slaves. They began to pass laws that offered crumbs of privilege to poor white colonists while simultaneously imposing repressive new measures on Blacks. Colonial authorities outlawed interracial marriage and decisively restricted the ability of Black slaves and servants to become free or create any sort of an independent life or culture. In broader terms, the colonial elite began to develop the idea that people of African descent were somehow inherently inferior to white-skinned Europeans. This moment represents the advent of racial ideology as we know it today. Indentured servitude began to decline in importance and enslaved Africans became the predominant source of labor for the burgeoning plantation system in the Chesapeake and South Atlantic colonies (Morgan, 1975).

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Slavery first spread from the tobacco lands of the Chesapeake colonies to the rice swamps of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. It later became the labor system of the sugar plantations of Louisiana. But the institution got its biggest boost at the end of the eighteenth century, with the invention of the cotton gin. This simple machine greatly facilitated the process of removing seeds from cotton, and rendered profitable strains of the crop that grew well across the South. From this point on, the South would become the major source of the raw material that fed the industrial revolution in Northern Europe and the Northeastern United States. Cotton, more than any other product, would make chattel slavery a vital part of the capitalist world system and made possible the integration of the American South into the international market.

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Irish and African Slaves in America They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children. Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives. But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor. The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white. From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well. During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) 89

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were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle. The African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts. African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude. In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company. Slaves Built American Capitalism To fully understand American slavery, we need to analyze the relative strength of social and political structures in places such as the 18th-century Ottoman Empire and 1840s western India. To understand capitalism’s relationship to slavery, we need to see the control of cultivators in Africa over their land and labor, as well as the transformations of the Indian countryside, the institutional structures of capitalism in Britain, and the state structures of Egypt. 90

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It is at this point that the history of capitalism connects in refreshing ways with another important emerging field, global history. As is widely known, history as an academic discipline emerged hand-in-hand with the modern nation-state, and indeed played an important part in its constitution. It is for this reason that most history has been framed within the borders of modern states. In recent years, however, some historians have tried to think beyond such frameworks, bringing together stories of regional or even global scope—for example, Charles S. Maier’s Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood (Harvard University Press) and Jürgen Osterhammel’s The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press). Historian Edward Baptist illustrates how in the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Through torture and punishment slave owners extracted greater efficiencies from slaves which allowed the United States to seize control of the world market for cotton, the key raw material of the Industrial Revolution, and become a prosperous and powerful nation. Cotton was to the early 19th century, what oil was to the 20th century: the commodity that determined the wealth of nations. Cotton accounted for a staggering 50 percent of US exports and ignited the economic boom that America experienced. America owes its very existence as a first world nation to slavery. In the abstract, capitalism and slavery are fundamentally counterposed systems. One is based on “free” labor, and the other, on forced labor. However, in practice, Capitalism itself would have been impossible without slavery. In the United States, scholars have demonstrated that profit wasn’t made just from Southerners selling the cotton that slaves picked or the cane they cut. Slavery was central to the establishment of the industries that today dominate the U.S. economy: real estate, insurance and finance. Wall Street was founded on slavery. African slaves built the physical wall that gives Wall Street its name, forming the northern boundary of the Dutch colony designed to ward off resisting natives who wanted their land back. To formalize the colossal trade in human beings, in 1711, New York officials established a slave market on Wall Street. Many prominent American banks including JP Morgan and Wachovia Corp made fortunes from slavery and accepted slaves as “collateral”. JP Morgan recently admitted that it “accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took possession of approximately 1,250 enslaved individuals”. The story that American schoolbooks tell of slavery is regional, rather than national, it portrays slavery as a brutal aberration to the American rule of 91

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democracy and freedom. Slavery is recounted as an unfortunate detour from the nation’s march to modernity, and certainly not the engine that drove American economic prosperity. Nothing could be further from the truth. In order to fully appreciate the importance of slavery to American capitalism, one need only look at the torrid history of an antebellum Alabama dry-goods outfit called Lehman Brothers. Warren Buffet is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the richest billionaire in America. Berkshire Hathaway’s antecedent firm was a Rhode Island textile manufacturer and slavery profiteer. In the north, New England was the home of America’s cotton textile industry and the hotbed of American abolitionism, which grew rich on the backs of the enslaved people forced to pick cotton in the south. The architects of New England’s industrial revolution constantly monitored the price of cotton, for their textile mills would have been silent without the labor of slaves on distant plantations. The book Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery by Anne Farrow illustrates how the Northern bourgeoisie were connected to the slave system by a million threads: they bought molasses, which was made with slave labor, and sold rum as part of the Triangle Trade; they lent money to Southern planters; and most of the cotton that was sold to Britain was shipped through New England ports. Despite being turned into a civil rights hero, Abraham Lincoln did not think blacks were the equals of whites. Lincoln’s plan was to send the blacks in America back to Africa, and if he had not been assassinated, returning blacks to Africa would likely have been his post-war policy. Lincoln even admitted that the emancipation proclamation, in his own words, was merely “a practical war measure” to convince Britain, that the North was driven by “something more than ambition.” For Blacks, the end of slavery, one hundred and fifty years ago, was just the beginning of the as yet unachieved quest for democratic and economic racial equality. In the era before WWII, the American elite consensus viewed capitalist civilization as a racial and colonial project. To this day, capitalism in America can only be described as “Racial Capitalism”: the legacy of slavery marked by the simultaneous, and intertwined emergence of white supremacy and capitalism in modern America. Black people in America live in a Racial Capitalist system. Racial Capitalism exercises its authority over the Black minority through an oppressive array of modern day lynchings by the police, increasing for-profit mass incarceration and institutionally driven racial economic inequality. Racial Capitalism is unquestionably a modern day crime against humanity. Seeing an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery would be exciting if only black equality indicators were not tumbling. In fact, 92

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during Obama’s tenure the black-white median household wealth gap is down to seven black cents on the white dollar. The spread between black unemployment and white unemployment has also widened by four points since President Obama took office. The nation’s police historically enforced Racial Capitalism. The first modern police forces in America were Slave Patrols and Night Watches, which were both designed to control the behaviors of African Americans. Historical literature is clear that prior to the Civil War a legally sanctioned police force existed for the sole purpose of oppressing the slave population and protecting the property and interests of white slave owners. The glaring similarities between the eighteenth century Slave Patrols and modern American police brutality in the Black community are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Ever since the first police forces were established in America, lynchings have been the linchpin of racial capitalist law and order. Days after the abolition of slavery, the worst terrorist organization in American history was formed with the US government’s blessing: The Ku Klux Klan. The majority of Americans believe that lynchings are an outdated form of racial terrorism, which blighted American society up until the end of the era of Jim Crow laws; however, America’s proclivity towards the unbridled slaughter of African Americans has only worsened over time. The Guardian newspaper recently noted that historians believe that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on average two African-Americans were lynched every week. Compare this with incomplete data compiled by the FBI that shows that a Black person is killed by a white police officer more than twice a week, and it’s clear that police brutality in Black communities is getting worse, not better. Lynching does not necessarily mean hanging. It often included humiliation, torture, burning, dismemberment and castration. A lynching was a quintessential American public ritual that often took place in front of large crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands and children played during the festivities. Shortly after the abolition of slavery in 1899 the Springfield Weekly newspaper described a lynching by the KKK chronicling how, “the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on…before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits…the Negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver…small pieces of bones went for 25 cents…” Central to the perpetuation of Racial Capitalism is racial terrorism, which is why to this day, the US government refuses to designate the KKK as a domestic terrorist organization.

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Racially terrorizing Black communities goes hand in hand with the systematic containment and imprisonment of Blacks. Thanks in large part to the racially motivated War on Drugs, the United States right now incarcerates more African-Americans as a percentage than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid. Private prisons were designed by the rich and for the rich. The forprofit prison system depends on imprisoning Blacks for its survival. Much in the same way the United States was designed. After all, more Black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850 before the Civil War began. America’s “take-off” in the 19th century wasn’t in spite of slavery; it was largely thanks to it. Capitalism was created by slavery and slavery in turn created the enduring legacy of Racial Capitalism that persists in America today. There has historically been a sharp contrast between America’s lofty ideals, on the one hand, and the seemingly permanent second-class status of African Americas, on the other. The late 19th century irony of a statue named Liberty overseeing the arrival in New York’s harbor of millions of foreigners, even as black Southern peasants, not alien, just profoundly alienated, were kept enslaved at the social margins. The hypocrisy of a racist ideology that openly questioned the Negro’s human worth surviving America’s defeat of the Nazis. To this day, far from being a “post-racial” nation, American racial equality indicators and race relations are at a new low. The race problem is America’s great national dilemma that continues to pose the greatest threat to America’s democratic experiment. Simmering discontent in Black communities will continue to rise towards a dangerous boiling point unless and until slavery’s greatest legacy of ongoing Racial Capitalism is exposed and completely dismantled.

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Early Globalization and Slave Trade-The French Connection While many are aware of the ‘triangular’ slave trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the 18th century, few people realize that Asian-European trade was also instrumental in sustaining the exchange of human slaves. For example, French ships taking European goods to Asia returned with cowry shells and Indian textiles valued by West Africans. On the African coast, traders exchanged these Asian products for slaves who, in turn, were sent to France’s New World colonies. The circle was completed when sugar and other goods from the Americas were loaded on board and shipped back to France. The Asian-European trading relationship, as a fundamental step in the African slave trade, thus played a crucial role in the development of an integrated global economy in the early modern era.

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The role that international trade has played in developing a globally integrated economy is well-known. Along with growth and prosperity, it has brought suffering and exploitation. However, nothing comes close to the brutality and inhuman suffering that was inflicted on human beings for such a long period as the slave trade. The misery of the African slaves formed a vital link in the trading system that connected the continents and formed the backbone of the global network of commerce. Contrary to the popular image, the triangular slave trade that linked Europe, Africa, and the New World was not a closed circuit. Rather, it formed an essential bridge between Europe’s New World trade and its Asia trade. As such, it was a crucial element in the development of the global economy in the 18th century. A brief look at the international commerce of France will illustrate this point. In the 18th century, France carried on two types of trade with its New World colonies. One was the direct trade by which France sent wheat, wine, metal objects, and building materials to the New World in exchange for sugar, and, to a lesser degree, cotton, cocoa, tobacco, rocou, and coffee. The other was the triangular slave trade, which the French referred to as the “circuit” trade. French ships loaded with trade goods sailed to Africa, where the goods were exchanged for slaves. The slaves were then taken to France’s New World colonies, where they were exchanged for sugar and other plantation products. Both types of trade were conducted largely by barter: ships left France carrying a small fortune in goods, but almost no money. There was one basic economic fact - little noticed by historians - that provides the key to the relationship between the direct trade and the circuit trade (Meyer, 1969: 228). When a French ship arrived in the New World with a load of slaves to be bartered for sugar, the value of the slaves equaled about twice as much sugar as the ship could carry back to France. For that reason, the most common form of slave contract called for fifty percent of the sugar to be delivered immediately and the remainder to be delivered a year later. The second delivery carried no interest penalty, and so the slave sellers were in effect giving the buyers an interest-free loan. The major problem was how to get the remaining fifty percent of the sugar back to France. The solution was provided by the direct traders. Ships coming to the New World directly from France carried products that were of relatively low value in relation to their bulk. The amount of sugar that could be obtained in exchange often filled only a third to a half of their cargo holds. The excess space was used to carry sugar back to France for slave traders.

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An African slave with remnant of coffle rope around the neck, and (inset) the cowry shells they were often bartered with. (Courtesy: Alderman Library, University of Virginia).

Over the years a symbiotic relationship developed between the direct traders and the circuit traders. The income from hauling sugar for slave traders provided the margin that made direct voyages profitable, and the direct traders provided a means by which the slave traders could recover the remainder of their sugar. This relationship was destroyed in 1722 when the French Company of the Indies banned all private traders from the slave trade. This act not only affected the private slave traders, but also the direct traders because the company would not pay them to carry the excess sugar. The mayor of Nantes responded angrily: “Two major bankruptcies have just been declared in Nantes, and we greatly fear that there will be more. The returns from our colonies have shown a loss ever since the Company of the Indies began to enforce its monopoly...the colonies will fall along with the trade of our cities” (Marin, 1993: 181). The move jeopardized the company as well. Because it operated as a closed economic circuit, it had no way of retrieving the excess sugar. Sometimes, in desperation, the company actually sent empty ships to the Caribbean to bring back sugar, but this practice was too inefficient to be sustained. It was estimated that the company recovered only about a third of the money it invested annually in the slave trade. Because the company’s board of directors could not figure out a way to maintain its monopolistic practices and still conduct the slave trade at a profit, it voted in 1725 to abandon its monopoly and open up the slave trade 96

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to private traders. The symbiotic relationship between the slave trade and the direct New World trade was quickly restored. If the slave trade was intimately intertwined with Europe’s New World trade, it was equally embroiled in the Asia trade. When the slave ship Diligent left France for the West African coast in 1731, over half its cargo consisted of cowry shells and various types of Indian textiles. The cowry shells, which served as the major currency along the West African coast, came from the Maldive Islands, near India. Company of the Indies ships returning from India and China would stop in the Maldive Islands and purchase cowry shells, which they used as packing material to cushion crates of porcelain and other goods much as we would use Styrofoam popcorn today. The cowries also served as ballast to keep the ship steady. Because the porcelain, tea, spices, and textiles of Asia were of higher value than the European trade goods that the ships brought from France, returning ships had a great deal of empty space in their holds that was filled with cowry shells. Once back in France, the cowries were removed and repacked in barrels to be shipped to West Africa. Slave traders were aware that their financial success depended upon carrying trade goods that were in demand in Africa. Since cowry shells were the major currency on the West African coast, they were always in demand. Textiles, however, were more risky because fashions along the West African coast could change from year to year. Traders thus carried a variety of European and Indian textiles in order to spread out the risk. The Diligent, for example, carried several types of Indian textiles: limancas (a fine striped cloth from the Coromandel Coast), salempouri blue (a cotton cloth of varying quality), and “Indian cloth” (a general term printed calicoes, cottons, and chintzes). The demise of the French East India Company in 1706 (it was later resurrected as the Company of the Indies) caused a problem for French slave traders. It was impossible for them to remain competitive in the slave trade without ready access to cowry shells and Indian textiles. So vital was the Asian trade to the slave trade that a consortium of merchants raised over a million livres to start a company to replace the defunct French East India Company. In requesting authorization from the French Council of Commerce, the merchants cited the difficulties they were having in obtaining the products of Asia that were vital for the slave trade. The slave trade could not function successfully, they argued, unless they had direct access to cowry shells and Indian textiles. The government denied the merchants’ request and instead formed the Company of the Indies, which was given a monopoly over both the Asia trade and the slave trade. The integration of France’s Asia trade with the slave trade was now complete. Ships returning from Asia unloaded their textiles and cowry shells at the company port of Lorient on the Brittany Coast of France, and the 97

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goods were immediately reloaded onto company slave ships bound for Africa. The Asia trade supplied necessary trade goods for the slave ships, and the slave ships provided a steady market for the Asian products. The only flaw in the company’s system was that it failed to integrate itself into the direct trade with the New World. That flaw proved fatal. After the Company of the Indies abandoned its monopoly on the slave trade in 1725, a new system emerged that endured for decades. The company brought Indian textiles and cowry shells to its home port in Lorient, where it sold them to private slave traders who exchanged them for slaves in Africa. The slaves were then carried to the New World and exchanged for sugar. Roughly half of that sugar was carried back to France on slave ships, and the other half was carried by direct traders. The triangular slave trade, the Asia trade, and the direct trade to the New World formed an integrated system. No segment of it could survive without the others. It is a tragic irony that the archaic institution of slavery played such a crucial role in the 18th century development of the modern world economy.

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Capitalism: A system Born of Slavery

Few topics have animated today’s chattering classes more than capitalism. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the discussion has spanned political boundaries, with conservative newspapers in Britain and Germany running stories on the “future of capitalism” (as if that were in doubt) and Korean 98

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Marxists analyzing its allegedly self-destructive tendencies. Pope Francis has made capitalism a central theme of his papacy, while the French economist Thomas Piketty attained rock-star status with a 700-page book full of tables and statistics and the succinct but decisively unsexy title Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press). With such contemporary drama, historians have taken notice. They observe, quite rightly, that the world we live in cannot be understood without coming to terms with the long history of capitalism—a process that has arguably unfolded over more than half a millennium. They are further encouraged by the all-toofrequent failings of economists, who have tended to naturalize particular economic arrangements by defining the “laws” of their development with mathematical precision and preferring short-term over long-term perspectives. What distinguishes today’s historians of capitalism is that they insist on its contingent nature, tracing how it has changed over time as it has revolutionized societies, technologies, states, and many if not all facets of life. Nowhere is this scholarly trend more visible than in the United States. And no issue currently attracts more attention than the relationship between capitalism and slavery. If capitalism, as many believe, is about wage labor, markets, contracts, and the rule of law, and, most important, if it is based on the idea that markets naturally tend toward maximizing human freedom, then how do we understand slavery’s role within it? No other national story raises that question with quite the same urgency as the history of the United States: The quintessential capitalist society of our time, it also looks back on long complicity with slavery. But the topic goes well beyond one nation. The relationship of slavery and capitalism is, in fact, one of the keys to understanding the origins of the modern world. For too long, many historians saw no problem in the opposition between capitalism and slavery. They depicted the history of American capitalism without slavery, and slavery as quintessentially noncapitalist. Instead of analyzing it as the modern institution that it was, they described it as premodern: cruel, but marginal to the larger history of capitalist modernity, an unproductive system that retarded economic growth, an artifact of an earlier world. Slavery was a Southern pathology, invested in mastery for mastery’s sake, supported by fanatics, and finally removed from the world stage by a costly and bloody war. Some scholars have always disagree with such accounts. In the 1930s and 1940s, C.L.R. James and Eric Williams argued for the centrality of slavery to capitalism, though their findings were largely ignored. Nearly half a century later, two American economists, Stanley L. Engerman and Robert William Fogel, observed in their controversial book Time on the Cross (Little, Brown, 1974) the modernity and profitability of slavery in the United States. Now a flurry of 99

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books and conferences are building on those often unacknowledged foundations. They emphasize the dynamic nature of New World slavery, its modernity, profitability, expansiveness, and centrality to capitalism in general and to the economic development of the United States in particular. The historians Robin Blackburn in England, Rafael Marquese in Brazil, Dale Tomich in the United States, and Michael Zeuske in Germany led the study of slavery in the Atlantic world. They have now been joined by a group of mostly younger American historians, like Walter Johnson, Seth Rockman, Caitlin C. Rosenthal, and Edward E. Baptist looking at the United States. While their works differ, often significantly, all insist that slavery was a key part of American capitalism—especially during the 19th century, the moment when the institution became inextricable from the expansion of modern industry—and to the development of the United States as a whole. For the first half of the 19th century, slavery was at the core of the American economy. The South was an economically dynamic part of the nation (for its white citizens); its products not only established the United States’ position in the global economy but also created markets for agricultural and industrial goods grown and manufactured in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. More than half of the nation’s exports in the first six decades of the 19th century consisted of raw cotton, almost all of it grown by slaves. In an important book, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Harvard University Press, 2013), Johnson observes that steam engines were more prevalent on the Mississippi River than in the New England countryside, a telling detail that testifies to the modernity of slavery. Johnson sees slavery not just as an integral part of American capitalism, but as its very essence. To slavery, a correspondent from Savannah noted in the publication Southern Cultivator, “does this country largely—very largely—owe its greatness in commerce, manufactures, and its general prosperity.” Much of the recent work confirms that 1868 observation, taking us outside the major slaveholding areas themselves and insisting on the national importance of slavery, all the way up to its abolition in 1865. In these accounts, slavery was just as present in the counting houses of Lower Manhattan, the spinning mills of New England, and the workshops of budding manufacturers in the Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts and Rhode Island as on the plantations in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. The slave economy of the Southern states had ripple effects throughout the entire economy, not just shaping but dominating it. Merchants in New York City, Boston, and elsewhere, like the Browns in cotton and the Taylors in sugar, organized the trade of slave-grown agricultural commodities, accumulating vast riches in the process. Sometimes the 100

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connections to slavery were indirect, but not always: By the 1840s, James Brown was sitting in his counting house in Lower Manhattan hiring overseers for the slave plantations that his defaulting creditors had left to him. Since planters needed ever more funds to invest in land and labor, they drew on global capital markets; without access to the resources of New York and London, the expansion of slave agriculture in the American South would have been all but impossible. The profits accumulated through slave labor had a lasting impact. Both the Browns and the Taylors eventually moved out of commodities and into banking. The Browns created an institution that partially survives to this day as Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co., while Moses Taylor took charge of the precursor of Citibank. Some of the 19th century’s most important financiers—including the Barings and Rothschilds—were deeply involved in the “Southern trade,” and the profits they accumulated were eventually reinvested in other sectors of the global economy. As a group of freedmen in Virginia observed in 1867, “our wives, our children, our husbands, have been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locate upon. … And then didn’t we clear the land, and raise the crops of corn, of tobacco, of rice, of sugar, of everything. And then didn’t the large cities in the North grow up on the cotton and the sugars and the rice that we made?” Slavery, they understood, was inscribed into the very fabric of the American economy. Southern slavery was important to American capitalism in other ways as well. As management scholars and historians have discovered in recent years, innovations in tabulating the cost and productivity of labor derived from the world of plantations. They were unusual work sites in that owners enjoyed nearly complete control over their workers and were thus able to reinvent the labor process and the accounting for it—a power that no manufacturer enjoyed in the mid-19th century. As Caitlin Rosenthal has shown, slave labor allowed the enslavers to experiment in novel ways with labor control. Edward E. Baptist, who has studied in great detail the work practices on plantations and emphasized their modernity in The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of Modern Capitalism (Basic Books), has gone so far as to argue that as new methods of labor management entered the repertoire of plantation owners, torture became widely accepted. Slave plantations, not railroads, were in fact America’s first “big business.” Moreover, as Seth Rockman has shown, the slave-dominated economy of the South also constituted an important market for goods produced by a wide variety of Northern manufacturers and artisans. Supplying plantations clothing and brooms, plows and fine furniture, Northern businesses dominated the large 101

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market in the South, which itself did not see significant industrialization before the end of the 19th century. Further, as all of us learned in school, industrialization in the United States focused at first largely on cotton manufacturing: the spinning of cotton thread with newfangled machines and eventually the weaving of that thread with looms powered at first by water and then by steam. The raw material that went into the factories was grown almost exclusively by slaves. Indeed, the large factories emerging along the rivers of New England, with their increasing number of wage workers, cannot be imagined without reliable, ever-increasing supplies of ever-cheaper raw cotton. The Cabots, Lowells, and Slaters—whatever their opinions on slavery—all profited greatly from the availability of cheap, slavegrown cotton. As profits accumulated in the cotton trade, in cotton manufacturing, in cotton growing, and in supplying Southern markets, many cultural, social, and educational institutions benefited: congregations, hospitals, universities. Given that the United States in the first half of the 19th century was a society permeated by slavery and its earnings, it is hardly surprising that institutions that at first glance seem far removed from the violence of plantation life came to be implicated in slavery as well. Craig Steven Wilder has shown in Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (Bloomsbury, 2013) how Brown and Harvard Universities, among others, drew donations from merchants involved in the slave trade, had cotton manufacturers on their boards, trained generations of Southern elites who returned home to a life of violent mastery, and played central roles in creating the ideological underpinnings of slavery. By 1830, one million Americans, most of them enslaved, grew cotton. Raw cotton was the most important export of the United States, at the center of America’s financial flows and emerging modern business practices, and at the core of its first modern manufacturing industry. As John Brown, a fugitive slave, observed in 1854: “When the price [of cotton] rises in the English market, the poor slaves immediately feel the effects, for they are harder driven, and the whip is kept more constantly going.” Just as cotton, and with it slavery, became key to the U.S. economy, it also moved to the center of the world economy and its most consequential transformations: the creation of a globally interconnected economy, the Industrial Revolution, the rapid spread of capitalist social relations in many parts of the world, and the Great Divergence—the moment when a few parts of the world became quite suddenly much richer than every other part. The humble fiber, transformed into yarn and cloth, stood at the center of the emergence of the industrial capitalism that is so familiar to us today. Our modern world 102

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originates in the cotton factories, cotton ports, and cotton plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries. The United States was just one nexus in a much larger story that connected artisans in India, European manufacturers, and, in the Americas, African slaves and land-grabbing settlers. It was those connections, over often vast distances that created an empire of cotton— and with it modern capitalism. To understand American slavery, we need to analyze the relative strength of social and political structures in places such as the 18th-century Ottoman Empire and 1840s western India. To understand capitalism’s relationship to slavery, we need to see the control of cultivators in Africa over their land and labor, as well as the transformations of the Indian countryside, the institutional structures of capitalism in Britain, and the state structures of Egypt. It is at this point that the history of capitalism connects in refreshing ways with another important emerging field, global history. As is widely known, history as an academic discipline emerged hand-in-hand with the modern nation-state, and indeed played an important part in its constitution. It is for this reason that most history has been framed within the borders of modern states. In recent years, however, some historians have tried to think beyond such frameworks, bringing together stories of regional or even global scope—for example, Charles S. Maier’s Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood (Harvard University Press) and Jürgen Osterhammel’s The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press). Within that literature, economic history has played a particularly important role, with trailblazing works such as Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000) and Marcel van der Linden’s Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Brill, 2008). Economic history, which for so long has been focused mostly on “national” questions—the “coming of managerial capitalism” in the United States, “organized capitalism” in Germany, the “sprouts of capitalism” in China—now increasingly tackles broader questions, looking at capitalism as a global system. When we apply a global perspective, we develop a new appreciation for the centrality of slavery, in the United States and elsewhere, in the emergence of modern capitalism. We can also understand how that dependence on slavery was eventually overcome later in the 19th century. We come to understand that the ability of European merchants to secure ever-greater quantities of cotton cloth from South Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries was crucial to the transAtlantic slave trade, as cloth came to be the core commodity exchanged for slaves on the western coast of Africa. We grasp that the rapidly expanding markets for South Asian cloth in Europe and elsewhere motivated Europeans 103

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to enter the cotton-manufacturing industry, which had flourished elsewhere in the world for millennia. And a global perspective allows us to comprehend in new ways how slavery became central to the Industrial Revolution. As machine production of cotton textiles expanded in Britain and continental Europe, traditional sources of raw cotton—especially cultivators in the Ottoman Empire as well as in Africa and India—proved insufficient. With European merchants unable to encourage the monocultural production of cotton in these regions and to transform peasant agriculture, they began to draw on slave-grown cotton, at first from the West Indies and Brazil, and by the 1790s especially in the United States. As a result, Europe’s ability to industrialize rested at first entirely on the control of expropriated lands and enslaved labor in the Americas. It was able to escape the constraints on its own resources—no cotton, after all, was grown in Europe—because of its increasing and often violent domination of global trade networks, along with the control of huge territories in the Americas. For the first 80 years of modern industry, the only significant quantities of raw cotton entering European markets were produced by slaves—and not from the vastly larger cotton harvests of China or India. By 1800, 25 percent of the cotton that landed in Liverpool, the world’s most important cotton port, originated in the United States; 20 years later, that proportion had increased to 59 percent; by 1850, 72 percent of the cotton consumed in Britain was grown in the United States, with similar proportions for other European countries. A global perspective lets us see that the ability to secure more and cheaper cotton gave European and North American manufacturers the ability to increase the production of cheap yarn and cloth, which in turn allowed them to capture ancient cotton markets in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, furthering a wave of deindustrialization in those parts of the world. Innovations in long-distance trade, the investment of capital over long distances, and the institutions in which this new form of capitalist globalization were embedded all derived from a global trade dominated by slave labor and colonial expansion. A global perspective on the history of cotton also shows that slave labor is as much a sign of the weakness as of the strength of Western capital and states. The ability to subdue labor in distant locations testified to the accumulated power of European and North American capital owners. Yet it also showed their inability to transform peasant agriculture. It was only in the last third of the 19th century that peasant producers in places such as Central Asia, West Africa, India, and upcountry Georgia, in the United States, could be integrated into the global empire of cotton, making a world possible in which the growing of cotton for industry expanded drastically without resort to enslaving the 104

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world’s cotton workers. Indeed, one of the weaknesses of a perspective that focuses almost exclusively on the fabulously profitable slave/cotton complex of the antebellum American South is its inability to explain the emergence of an empire of cotton without slavery. We cannot know if the cotton industry was the only possible way into the modern industrial world, but we do know that it was the path to global capitalism. We do not know if Europe and North America could have grown rich without slavery, but we do know that industrial capitalism and the Great Divergence in fact emerged from the violent caldron of slavery, colonialism, and the expropriation of land. In the first 300 years of the expansion of capitalism, particularly the moment after 1780 when it entered into its decisive industrial phase, it was not the small farmers of the rough New England countryside who established the United States’ economic position. It was the backbreaking labor of unremunerated American slaves in places like South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama. When we marshal big arguments about the West’s superior economic performance, and build these arguments upon an account of the West’s allegedly superior institutions like private-property rights, lean government, and the rule of law, we need to remember that the world Westerners forged was equally characterized by exactly the opposite: vast confiscation of land and labor, huge state intervention in the form of colonialism, and the rule of violence and coercion. And we also need to qualify the fairy tale we like to tell about capitalism and free labor. Global capitalism is characterized by a whole variety of labor regimes, one of which, a crucial one, was slavery. During its heyday, however, slavery was seen as essential to the economy of the Western world. No wonder The Economist worried in September 1861, when Union General John C. Frémont emancipated slaves in Missouri, that such a “fearful measure” might spread to other slaveholding states, “inflict[ing] utter ruin and universal desolation on those fertile territories”—and on the merchants of Boston and New York, “whose prosperity … has always been derived” to a large extent from those territories. Slavery did not die because it was unproductive or unprofitable, as some earlier historians have argued. Slavery was not some feudal remnant on the way to extinction. It died because of violent struggle, because enslaved workers continually challenged the people who held them in bondage—nowhere more successfully than in the 1790s in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti, site of the first free nation of color in the New World), and because a courageous group of abolitionists struggled against some of the dominant economic interests of their time. A contributing factor in the death of slavery was the fact that it was a system not just of labor exploitation but of rule that drew in particular ways on state 105

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power. Southern planters had enormous political power. They needed it: to protect the institution of slavery itself, to expand its reach into ever more lands, to improve infrastructures, and to position the United States within the global economy as an exporter of agricultural commodities. In time, the interests of the South conflicted more and more with those of a small but growing group of Northern industrialists, farmers, and workers. Able to mobilize labor through wage payments, Northerners demanded a strong state to raise tariffs, build infrastructures conducive to domestic industrialization, and guarantee the territorial extension of free labor in the United States. Afraid that they were losing control over essential levers of power, slaveowners tried to strike out on their own. After the Civil War, a new kind of capitalism arose, in the United States and elsewhere. Yet that new capitalism—characterized first and foremost by states with unprecedented bureaucratic, infrastructural, and military capacities, and by wage labor—had been enabled by the profits, institutions, networks, technologies, and innovations that emerged from slavery, colonialism, and land expropriation. That legacy is still with us today. The great inequalities, both domestically and internationally, that characterize the world we live in are at least partly the result of capitalism’s long and violent history. There are still many open questions about slavery and capitalism, some specific, some broad. We have not yet conclusively shown, for example, how methods of labor control migrated from the world of the plantation to the world of the factory. We need more-detailed research on where the profits from slavery accumulated in Europe and the American North, and how they mattered to other sectors of the economy. We would benefit from a better understanding of how the tight economic connection between Northern entrepreneurs and slavery came to be undone. And we have only begun to account for what the rethinking of slavery does to our more general understanding of capitalism. But what we do know is that the histories of slavery and of capitalism look very different if we understand them in relation to each other. In sum, between the years 1650 and 1900, historians estimate that at least 28 million Africans were forcibly removed from central and western Africa as slaves (but the numbers involved are controversial). A human catastrophe for Africa, the world African Slave Trade was truly a “Holocaust.” The Holocaust: •

Muslim traders exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, to the Middle East, and to North Africa. African slave exports via the Red Sea, trans-Sahara, and East Africa/Indian Ocean to 106

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•

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other parts of the world between 1500-1900 totaled at least 5 million Africans sent into bondage. Between 1450 and 1850, at least 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean—the notorious Middle Passage— primarily to colonies in North America, South America, and the West Indies. 80% of these kidnapped Africans (or at least 7 million) were exported during the 18th century, with a mortality rate of probably 1020% on the ships en route for the Americas. Unknown numbers (probably at least 4 million) of Africans died in slave wars and forced marches before being shipped. Within central Africa itself, the slave trade precipitated migrations: coastal tribes fled slaveraiding parties and captured slaves were redistributed to different regions in Africa. African slave trade and slave labor transformed the world. In Africa, slave trade stimulated the expansion of powerful West African kingdoms. In the Islamic world, African slave labor on plantations, in seaports, and within families expanded the commerce and trade of the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. In the Americas, slave labor became the key component in trans-Atlantic agriculture and commerce supporting the booming capitalist economy of the 17th and 18th centuries, with the greatest demand in the Americas coming from Brazil and the sugar plantations of the Caribbean.

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The Transatlantic (Triangle) Slave Trade The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the Transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of African persons supplied to the European colonies of the “New World“ (the newly discovered North and South American continents) that were in and around the Atlantic Ocean. It lasted from the 16th century to the 19th century. Most slaves were shipped from West Africa and Central Africa and taken to the New World. Some slaves were captured by European slave traders through raids and kidnapping, but most were obtained through coastal trading with fellow Africans. Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million Africans made it to the New World, although the number of people taken from their home is considerably higher. The slave-trade is sometimes called the “Maafa” by African and Black scholars, which means “olocaust” or “great disaster” in Swahili. The slaves were one element of a three-part economic cycle—the Triangular Trade and its Middle Passage— which ultimately involved four continents, four centuries and millions of people. 107

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Events in Black History Home The transatlantic slave trade is unique within the universal history of slavery for three main reasons: 1) its duration - approximately four centuries; 2) those victimized: black African men, women and children; and, 3) the intellectual legitimization attempted on its behalf - the development of an anti-black ideology and its legal organization, the notorious Code noir. As a commercial and economic enterprise, the slave trade provides a dramatic example of the consequences resulting from particular intersections of history and geography. It involved several regions and continents: Africa, America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Indian Ocean. The transatlantic slave trade is often regarded as the first system of globalization. According to French historian Jean-Michel Deveau the slave trade and consequently slavery, which lasted from the 16th to the 19th century, constitute one of “the greatest tragedies in the history of humanity in terms of scale and duration.” The transatlantic slave trade was the biggest deportation in history and a determining factor in

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the world economy of the 18th century. Millions of Africans were torn from their homes, deported to the American continent and sold as slaves.

The transatlantic slave trade, often known as the triangular trade, connected the economies of three continents. It is estimated that between 25 to 30 million people, men, women and children, were deported from their homes and sold as slaves in the different slave trading systems. In the transatlantic slave trade alone the estimate of those deported is believed to be approximately 17 million. These figures exclude those who died aboard the ships and in the course of wars and raids connected to the trade. The trade proceeded in three steps. The ships left Western Europe for Africa loaded with goods which were to be exchanged for slaves. Upon their arrival in Africa the captains traded their merchandise for captive slaves. Weapons and gun powder were the most important commodities but textiles, pearls and other manufactured goods, as well as rum, were also in high demand. The exchange could last from one week to several months. The second step was the crossing of the Atlantic. Africans were transported to America to be sold throughout the continent. The third step connected America to Europe. The slave traders brought back mostly agricultural products, produced by the slaves. The main product was sugar, followed by cotton, coffee, tobacco and rice. The circuit lasted approximately eighteen months. In order to be able to transport the maximum number of slaves, the ship’s steerage was frequently removed. Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England and France, were the main triangular trading countries.

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African Enslavement and British Industrialization Slave-owning planters, and merchants who dealt in slaves and slave produce, were among the richest people in 18th-century Britain. Profits from these activities helped to endow All Souls College, Oxford, with a splendid library, to build a score of banks, including Barclays, and to finance the experiments of James Watt, inventor of the first really efficient steam engine. Liverpool merchant bankers, heavily involved in the slave-based trades, extended vital credit to the early cotton manufacturers of its Lancashire hinterland. West Indian planters built stately homes - some, ridiculously extravagant dwellings such as William Beckford’s Fonthill - and furthered the modernization of British agriculture by ‘improving’ their estates. Others invested in canals. And, of course, many spent their ill-gotten gains on gambling, prize fights and riotous living. The plantations were themselves by-products of a new economic system. Plantation slavery thrived thanks to a consumer revolution that took place in Britain and the Netherlands in the 17th century. In these countries, consumer markets widened as farmers and manufacturers hired wage workers as the best way to expand output and sales. The fact that farmers had to pay rent, and that laborers needed a job if they were to feed their families, was the germ of a new economic system - what we now call capitalism. Many different types of people now needed money in their pocket or purse. They no longer produced the food they ate or the clothes they wore. The betteroff bought fine wines or oriental silks. But even the day laborer could buy tobacco and sugar. Merchants met this new demand by setting up slave plantations in Virginia and the Caribbean. While there was a growing taste for exotic stimulants and luxuries, consumers had little idea of the terrible human cost involved in their production. But those directly engaged in the Atlantic slave trade or plantations certainly knew of the terrible loss of life and the unrelenting toil of slavery. Planters and merchants bought Africans partly because they were better than white people at surviving in the tropics, and partly because they could deprive their African captives of any rights. White servants were badly treated too, but there were limits when abuse exposed them to legal action and personal censure from their neighbors. Non-slaving colonists sometimes objected to the growing power of slave-owners, but it was fatally easy to let the Africans do all the harshest work. The planters soon discovered that they could play on white fears to construct a thoroughly commercial and racial version of an old institution - slavery. The slave plantations themselves anticipated the intense organization of labor, with coerced slave gangs working under the eye and whip of the slave 110

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driver. On all slave plantations hours of work were very long, but on the sugar estates the mills were kept going 24-hours-a -day, with enslaved people working at night as well, in 18-hour shifts. The slave plantation colonies of the Americas not only supplied premium commodities, but were a captive market for metal tools, textiles and provisions. Indeed, the British empire of the early and mid-18th century became a zone of thriving trade in which the ability of New England and Newfoundland to sell provisions to the West Indies, and to participate in the Africa trade, also boosted their ability to buy English manufactures. The boom in Atlantic produce also underpinned a huge program of commercial ship-building and maintenance, with about a third of the English mercantile fleet being built in the North American colonies. Slavery in early European history holds a more economical stance and is seen as a gateway for the industrial revolution of Britain. Many countries including Britain fought for African trading routes. The economy of Britain began to flourish rapidly after the introduction of slaves. In addition to this, after the abolition of slavery, the economy and production of crops diminished to an unbelievable extent. The trading routes between Europe and Africa caused a lot of tension between neighboring countries. Taking control of these routes was more profitable than finding a gold mine for most traders. There came a point in time where the trade of slavery would yield more than gold and herbs combined. It was a business that many traders strived to be part of. The Portuguese controlled the first trading routes to Africa but nearing the 16th century these routes were taken over by the Dutch who held them for nearly a century. As a result of the increased demand for slaves and the profit being made from this trade, countries such as the French and English aimed towards this trade as well. The English and French eventually took over this trade and passed Acts to keep control. Would all these countries put that much effort and risk because of racist views? Economics and money was their main goal centuries ago as it is today. A representation of this would be the ‘Enterprise’ ship that netted a profit of nearly twenty-five thousand pounds from one cargo of slaves. With the increased demand for slaves, larger ships were travelling across the Atlantic to Africa in order to carry more slaves in a single roundtrip. This sparked a new age of ship architecture as new models with greater stability and reliance were being built. “Around 1730, in Bristol it was estimated that on a fortunate voyage the profit on a cargo of about 270 slaves reached 7,000 pounds or 8,000 pounds”. Due to the growing necessity for slaves and as a result -of this, the considerable decrease in number of Africans to be enslaved, commercial farmers and planters were going out of their way to buy these slaves. 111

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It was seen as a long-term investment with greater profit outcomes and less work on their part. The British economy was greatly influenced by the evolution of this slave trade and the slave trade was the main spark of the Industrial Revolution of Britain. Eric William stated that “The profits obtained provided one of the main streams of that accumulation of capital in England which financed the Industrial Revolution”. Monitoring the British economy from the beginning of the slave trade in Britain until the abolition of it, one can see the unbelievable increase in wealth of farmers and production of crops. This increase in production kept the trade within Britain which depreciated the crops imported from Britain but increased those exported. This led to a large monetary influx into Britain because it was self-sustained. One of the main crops being grown in large amounts all over Britain was sugar. “The West Indian islands became the hub of the British Empire, of immense importance to the grandeur and prosperity of England. It was the Negro slaves who made these sugar colonies the most precious colonies ever recorded in the whole annals of imperialism.” This goes to show how important slavery was for Britain. In order for a slavery to cause an Industrial Revolution, there was no chance of Britain letting go of such an inhumane but golden opportunity. The trade gave a triple stimulus to British Industry. Many people see slavery in Britain as a racist point of view as it was directed towards one certain culture and stereotyped color, but nobody ever thought of the economic stance that it gave Britain. The use of slavery by Britain aided them in becoming one of the countries in the triangular trade. They simply saw slavery as an easy way to make enough money to build their economy instead of seeing it as unethical and unjust. “This is what society is like. The infrastructure is more important than the super-structure, the economic base than the ideologies”. This goes back to show home important building the economy was for Britain during that time period. If the law making all humans equal was removed from the constitution today, slavery has a strong will of returning as economy plays a large role in many decisions. “Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.” What Eric Williams meant by this quote was simply that slavery was not founded as a result of racism but grew into Britain and many other countries around the world because of its aid to the economy and production of goods. As a result of the boost in Britain’s economy, Britain could not allow for the abolition of slavery even with riots breaking out for justice. This in turn was seen as racism and was disguised from its economic standpoint. Britain’s economy took a great plunge after the abolition of slavery. The declivity in production of crops as a result of the shortened workforce on the fields caused fear in the colonies. Farmers’ could not sustain their crops and 112

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many feared the loss of their business and trade. Exporting goods was enhanced again as slavery began to fade away. “Since after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the planters were forced to rely on their existing workforce and its reproduction to keep the estates in operation.” Flooding Britain with anxiety and uneasiness, the fall of the slave trade struck the nation’s economy with great threat. Thankfully, Britain held itself together through these rough times and focused on building an empire rather than just sustaining daily living. Holding this mindset, Britain had eventually sustained its economy to such a fixed condition that the abolition of slavery did not affect them at such a negative extent. Britain held its ground and as an outcome of the Industrial Revolution and began to grow at a rapid pace with increased industrialization and a vast growth of population in colonies. Factories were opening up on every corner employing hundreds of thousands of individuals. This accelerated industrialization acquired increasing capital which allowed for the Atlantic slave trade to nearly abolish as well as the Triangular trade. This eventually led them to become one of if not the strongest nation in the world. Through the vast change of Britain’s economy throughout the African slave trade, we can see that the relationship of slavery with Britain’s economy was a direct positive correlation. The more slaves employed on these fields yielded a larger production of crops to be sold which in turn increased Britain’s main capital as a whole following this correlation closely. The triangular trade was highly profitable and was probably the main cause of Britain’s accumulation of capital. The accumulation of capital from the “slave trade” significantly aided in the prospering of investments. Investments predominantly consisted of Industries that hired many of the residents in these European colonies. On account of the greater profits obtained from these Industries in comparison to the African slave trade, Britain found it quite easy to abolish slavery. The influx of capital that was poured into the Atlantic slave trade was not as promising as the industries being set up. It is quite obvious that capitalism was Britain’s main ambition during this span of great economic stress. Dr Eric Williams has stressed, in his Capitalism and Slavery, that the origin of transatlantic Negro servitude was thus ‘economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor’. Slavery of Africans in Britain was not seen as racist for the Europeans but as vital to their economy. Racism was a result of Britain’s desire for capital as they set aside any reasoning of inhumanity and equality of others. They saw these Africans as different from their own which is a form of racism but their actions were purely economical as one can see through-out this time period. If slavery held a racist standpoint, why would Britain abolish slavery once a new, 113

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more promising opportunity approached them? The economic theory comes into consideration again where slavery was simply a part of building Britain’s economy and allowing for the Industrial Revolution.

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Slavery, Racism and After Racism isn’t part of human nature. The best evidence for this assertion is the fact that racism has not always existed. Rather, racism is a particular form of oppression. It stems from discrimination against a group of people based on the idea that some inherited characteristic, such as skin color, makes them inferior to their oppressors. Yet the concepts of “race” and “racism” are modern inventions. They arose and became part of the dominant ideology of society in the context of the African slave trade at the dawn of capitalism in the 1500s and 1600s. Although it is a commonplace for academics and opponents of socialism to claim that Karl Marx ignored racism, Marx in fact described the processes that created modern racism. His explanation of the rise of capitalism placed the African slave trade, the European extermination of indigenous people in the Americas, and colonialism at its heart. In Capital, Marx writes: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production” (1977: 915). Marx connected his explanation of the role of the slave trade in the rise of capitalism to the social relations that produced racism against Africans. In Wage Labor and Capital, written twelve years before the American Civil War, he explains: what is a Negro? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other. A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in a certain relation. A cotton spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It only becomes capital in a certain relation. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself (Marx, 1997: 28). In this passage, Marx shows no prejudice to Blacks (“a man of the black race,” “a Negro is a Negro”), but he mocks society’s equation of “Black” and “slave” (“one explanation is as good as another”). He shows how the economic and social relations of emerging capitalism thrust Blacks into slavery (“he only becomes a slave in certain relations”), which produce the dominant ideology that equates being African with being a slave. These fragments of Marx’s writing give us a good start in understanding the Marxist explanation of the origins of racism. The close connection between slavery and capitalism, and thus, between racism and capitalism, gives the lie to those who insist that slavery would have 114

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just died out. In fact, the South was more dependent on slavery right before the Civil War than it was 50 or 100 years earlier. Slavery lasted as long as it did because it was profitable. And it was profitable to the richest and most “wellbred” people in the world. Slave production was inefficient from the point of view of industrial capitalism. The comparison between the industrial North and the Confederacy illustrates this. As capitalism developed it had less need to use slave labor. In Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, for instance, representatives of some the biggest industrial capitalists called for an end to the slave trade and even abolition. This wasn’t because industrial capitalists opposed slavery on principle, but because they didn’t like the degree to which planters won government policies favorable to them. In 1807 and 1833, the British Parliament passed laws outlawing slavery (Williams, 1980: 98n107). In the United States, the Civil War abolished slavery and struck a great blow to racism. But racism itself wasn’t abolished. On the contrary, just as racism was created to justify colonial slavery, racism as an ideology was refashioned. It now no longer justified the enslavement of Blacks, but it justified second-class status for Blacks as wage laborers and sharecroppers. Racist ideology was also refashioned to justify imperialist conquest at the turn of the last century. As a handful of competing world powers vied to carve up the globe into colonial preserves for cheap raw materials and labor, racism served as a convenient justification. The vast majority of the world’s people were now portrayed as inferior races, incapable of determining their own future. Slavery disappeared, but racism remained as a means to justify the enslavement of millions of people by the U.S., various European powers, and later Japan. Racism also remained one of the main ways that the ruling class used to keep Blacks and white workers divided. Karl Marx remarked on a similar division between English and Irish workers in Britain, comparing it to the division between Blacks and poor whites in the USA: ‘Every industrial and commercial center in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude toward him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the “niggers” in the former slave states of the U.S.A.’ This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This 115

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antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization’ (Marx and Engels, 1972: 293n294). In his famous passage on the antagonism between English and Irish workers in Britain in the end of the 19th century, Marx outlined the main sources of racism under modem capitalism. By its nature, capitalism fosters competition between workers. Bosses take advantage of this in two ways: first, to deliberately stoke divisions between workers; second, to appeal to racist ideology: “capitalism forces workers to compete for jobs, for affordable housing, for admittance to schools, for credit, etc. When capitalism restructures, it replaces workers with machines and higher-paid workers with lower-paid workers. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, U.S. bosses used the surplus of cheap labor immigration provided to substitute unskilled workers for skilled (generally white, native workers), “triggering a nativist reaction among craft workers” (Steinberg, 1989: 38). Bosses seek to leverage this competition to their advantage. “Keep a variety of laborers, that is different nationalities, and thus prevent any concerted action in case of strikes, for there are few, if any, cases of Laps, Chinese, and Portuguese entering into a strike as a unit,” advised Hawaiian plantation managers in the early 1900s (Takaki, 1993: 252). Here was a fairly stark example of the bosses’ conscious use of racism to divide the workforce. Today, bosses continue to do the same, as when they hire nonwhite strikebreakers against a strike of predominantly white workers. And politicians never stand above playing “the race card” if it suits them. Racism serves the bosses’ interests and bosses foster racism consciously, but these points do not explain why workers can accept racist explanations for their conditions. The competition between workers that is an inherent feature of capitalism can be played out as competition (or perceived competition) between workers of different racial groups. Because it seems to correspond with some aspect of reality, racism thus can become part of white workers’ “common sense.” This last point is important because it explains the persistence of racist ideas. Because racism is woven right into the fabric of capitalism, new forms of racism arose with changes in capitalism. As the U.S. economy expanded and underpinned U.S. imperial expansion, imperialist racism—which asserted that the U.S. had a right to dominate other peoples, such as Mexicans and Filipinos—developed. As the U.S. economy grew and sucked in millions of immigrant laborers, anti-immigrant racism developed. But these are both different forms of the same ideology—of white supremacy and division of the world into “superior” and “inferior” races—that had their origins in slavery. What does this discussion mean for us today? First, racism is not part of some unchanging human nature. It was literally invented. And so it can be torn down. Second, despite the overwhelming ideological hold of white 116

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supremacy, people always resisted it—from the slaves themselves to white antiracists. Understanding racism in this way informs the strategy that we use to combat racism. Antiracist education is essential, but it is not enough. Because it treats racism only as a question of “bad ideas” it does not address the underlying material conditions that give rise to the acceptance of racism among large sections of workers. Thoroughly undermining the hold of racism on large sections of workers requires three conditions: first, a broader class fight back that unites workers across racial lines; second, attacking the conditions (bad jobs, housing, education, etc.) that give rise to the appeal of racism among large sections of workers; and third, the conscious intervention of antiracists to oppose racism in all its manifestations and to win support for interracial class solidarity. The hold of racism breaks down when the class struggle against the bosses forces workers to seek solidarity across racial lines. Socialists believe that such class unity is possible because white workers have an objective interest in fighting racism. The influence of racism on white workers is a question of their consciousness, not a question of some material bribe from the system they receive. Struggle creates conditions by which racism can be challenged and defeated (Mentan, 2012).

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References Barbara Solow & Stanley Engerman, British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery, originally published in 2004, ed. Barbara Solow & Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004). Beckert, Sven. (2014). Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Alfred A. Knopf: New York. Egerton, Douglas. (1993). Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Frank Cass. (1991). The Slaves’ Economy, First published in 1991, ed. Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan. Frank Cass & CO. LTD. Dubois, W. E. B. (1969). The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Freehling, William W. (1992). Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836. New York: Oxford University Press. Hinks, Peter P. (1997). To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. 117

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James Pope-Hennessy. (2004). Sins of the Fathers: The Atlantic Slave Trade 1441-1807, First published in 1970, ed. James Pope-Hennessy. Castle Books. Mayer, Henry. (1998). All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: Norton and Co. Mentan, T. (2012). Assault on Paradise. Perspectives on Globalization and Class Struggles. Langaa RPCIG. Bamenda. Meyer, Jean. (1969). L’Armement Nantais dans la Deuxieme Moitie du XVIIIe Siècle. Paris. McCarthy, Timothy Patrick. (2006). “To plead our own cause: Black print culture and the origins of American abolitionism,” in McCarthy and John Stauffer (eds.), Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism. New York: New Press. Levine, Bruce. (1992). Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (New York: The Noonday Press. Martin, Gaston. (1993). Nantes au XVIIIe Siècle: L’Ere des Negreiers, 17141774. Paris. Marx, Karl. (1977). Capital Vol.1.New York: Vintage Books. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. (1972). Ireland and the Irish Question. New York: International Publishers. Marx, Karl. (1997). Wage Labor and Capital/Value, Price and Profit (New York: International Publishers. Steinberg, Steven. (1989). The Ethnic Myth, 2nd edition. Boston: Beacon Press. Nelson, Truman. (2009). The Old Man: John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Rael, Patrick. (2002). Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Stampp, Kenneth M. (1956). The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South. New York: Random House. Takaki, Ronald. (1993). A Different Mirror. New York: Little, Brown and Co. Williams, Eric. (1980). Capitalism and Slavery. New York: Perigee Books. Williams, Eric. (1994). Capitalism and Slavery, First published in 1944, ed. Eric Williams. The University of North Carolina Press. Williams, Eric. (1944/94). Slavery and Capitalism. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. Wood, Forrest G. (1968). Black Scare. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Chapter 4 Africa in the Old Empire of Territorial Colonization Overview Colonization involves more than just political rule. In the 20th century it was particularly associated with European ethnic groups dominating others within the dominated group’s territory. Thus colonization has been associated with European, white, Christian, wealthy rulers who imposed their cultural values over the ruled by either devaluing or attempting to eradicate the colonized groups’ religions, languages, customary laws and economic activities. Colonialism has therefore been seen by many sociologists as closely associated with the development of racism. Also, colonization has been associated with the dominance of the colony’s economy by the colonizer, and it is this that is one of the key differences which Marxist writers see as distinguishing 20th-century colonization from earlier forms. Colonized Africa supplied gold, diamonds, copper, tin, rubber, cotton, palm oil, cocoa, tea, and much else to the growing industries and cities of Europe. The continent’s inhabitants, including increasing numbers of white settlers, provided markets for European manufactures. Colonial infrastructure projects, like railway construction, made European industrialists and bond-holders rich to the detriment of impoverished Africa.

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Introduction We are dealing here with European empires in Africa. This entails national powers that projected themselves far beyond their borders into the New World, especially Africa, seeking out resources and people to exploit. But what do historians really mean when they talk about ‘Empire’? What is it that distinguishes an imperial project from traditional expansionism, and what is the colonial experience like for both the European colonizer and the colonized African? And what do historians find is the lasting legacy and impact of colonial exploitation in differing contexts that leads us to describe things as “postcolonial”? By around 1880, European colonial intrusion in Africa consisted of a series of coastal enclaves and settlements in the Cape in the far south and Algeria in the far north. Up to that point, Europeans had been kept out of most of the interior of Africa by deadly tropical diseases for which they had little immunity and powerful African states. Most Africans lived in independent societies that 119

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ranged from highly centralized kingdoms to decentralized “stateless” groups. This changed rapidly from around 1880 to 1914 when, in a process called “the Scramble for Africa,” European powers conquered all of Africa except for Ethiopia, which defended itself from Italian invasion, and Liberia, which was a settlement of freed slaves from the United States. On the European side, important factors which facilitated this process included superior firepower from new magazine-fed rifles and machine guns, extreme racism, and nationalistic competition. Since they had planned the conquest at the 1884 Berlin Conference, the European powers did not fight each other over parts of Africa. On the African side, rulers did not perceive the European invasion as a common threat and reacted separately, some cooperating and others resisting. While the initial colonial conquest was often achieved by privately owned chartered companies with commercial interests in a particular area, financial problems meant that the respective European governments took over the colonies within a few years. Over the years, various theories have sought to explain this dramatic conquest, including Hobson (1902), which sees it as related to the rise of greedy ultra-rich businessmen; Lenin (1963), which claims it represented the last stage of the capitalist system which was beginning to tear itself apart; Robinson and Gallagher 1961, which explains it in terms of European powers trying to secure points of strategic important; and Hopkins (1973-all cited under General Overviews), which demonstrates that the European desire to secure sources of raw materials related to industry motived the scramble for West Africa. In Southern Africa, the discovery of valuable minerals, diamonds in the late 1860s and gold in the 1880s, prompted the British to secure the interior, which led to a series of wars and eventually the creation of the self-governing and white settler–dominated Union of South Africa in 1910.

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European Colonization of Africa Between the 1870s and 1900, Africa faced European imperialist aggression, diplomatic pressures, military invasions, and eventual conquest and colonization. At the same time, African societies put up various forms of resistance against the attempt to colonize their countries and impose foreign domination. By the early twentieth century, however, much of Africa, except Ethiopia and Liberia, had been colonized by European powers. The European imperialist push into Africa was motivated by three main factors, economic, political, and social. It developed in the nineteenth century following the collapse of the profitability of the slave trade, its abolition and suppression, as well as the expansion of the European capitalist Industrial 120

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Revolution. The imperatives of capitalist industrialization—including the demand for assured sources of raw materials, the search for guaranteed markets and profitable investment outlets—spurred the European scramble and the partition and eventual conquest of Africa. Thus the primary motivation for European intrusion was economic.

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Causes of the scramble: Africa and global markets Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the world largely untouched by “informal imperialism” and “civilization,” was also attractive to Europe’s ruling elites for economic and racial reasons. During a time when Britain’s balance of trade showed a growing deficit, with shrinking and increasingly protectionist continental markets due to the Long Depression (1873-1896), Africa offered Britain, Germany, France, and other countries an open market that would garner it a trade surplus: a market that bought more from the metropole than it sold overall. Britain, like most other industrial countries, had long since begun to run an unfavorable balance of trade (which was increasingly offset, however, by the income from overseas investments). As Britain developed into the world’s first post-industrial nation, financial services became an increasingly important sector of its economy. Invisible financial exports, as mentioned, kept Britain out of the red, especially capital investments outside Europe, particularly to the developing and open markets in Africa, predominantly white settler colonies, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. In addition, surplus capital was often more profitably invested overseas, where cheap labor, limited competition, and abundant raw materials made a greater premium possible. Another inducement to imperialism, of course, arose from the demand for raw materials unavailable in Europe, especially copper, cotton, rubber, tea, and tin, to which European consumers had grown accustomed and upon which European industry had grown dependent. However, in Africa — exclusive of what would become the Union of South Africa in 1909 — the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small, compared to other continents, before and after the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference. Consequently, the companies involved in tropical African commerce were relatively small, apart from Cecil Rhodes’ De Beers Mining Company, who had carved out Rhodesia for himself, as Léopold II would exploit the Congo Free State. These observations might detract from the proimperialist arguments of colonial lobbies such as the Alldeutscher Verband, Francesco Crispi or Jules Ferry, who argued that sheltered overseas markets in Africa would solve the problems of low prices and over-production 121

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caused by shrinking continental markets. However, according to the classic thesis of John A. Hobson, exposed in Imperialism (1902), which would influence authors such as Lenin(1916), Trotsky or Hannah Arendt(1951), this shrinking of continental markets was a main factor of the global New Imperialism period. Later historians have noted that such statistics only obscured the fact that formal control of tropical Africa had great strategic value in an era of imperial rivalry, while the Suez Canal has remained a strategic location. The 1886 Witwatersrand Gold Rush, which lead to the foundation of Johannesburg and was a major factor of the Second Boer War in 1899, accounted for the “conjunction of the superfluous money and of the superfluous manpower, which gave themselves their hand to quit together the country,” which is in itself, according to Hannah Arendt, the new element of the imperialist era. Following the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, the occupation of Egypt and the acquisition of the Congo were the first major moves in what came to be a precipitous scramble for African territory. In 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference to discuss the Africa problem. The diplomats put on a humanitarian façade by condemning the slave trade, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages and firearms in certain regions, and by expressing concern for missionary activities. More importantly, the diplomats in Berlin laid down the rules of competition by which the great powers were to be guided in seeking colonies. They also agreed that the area along the Congo River was to be administered by Léopold II of Belgium as a neutral area, known as the Congo Free State, in which trade and navigation were to be free. No nation was to stake claims in Africa without notifying other powers of its intentions. No territory could be formally claimed prior to being effectively occupied. However, the competitors ignored the rules when convenient and on several occasions war was only narrowly avoided. Britain’s occupations of Egypt and the Cape Colony contributed to a preoccupation over securing the source of the Nile River. Egypt was occupied by British forces in 1882. Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda were subjugated in the 1890s and early 1900s; and in the south, the Cape Colony (first acquired in 1795) provided a base for the subjugation of neighboring African states and the Dutch Afrikaner settlers who had left the Cape to avoid the British and then founded their own republics. In 1877, Theophilus Shepstone annexed the South African Republic (or Transvaal — independent from 1857 to 1877) for the British. The UK consolidated its power over most of the colonies of South Africa in 1879 after the Anglo-Zulu War. The Boers protested and in December 1880 they revolted, leading to the First Boer War (1880-1881). The head of the British government Gladstone (Liberal) signed a peace treaty on March 23, 1881, giving self-government to the Boers in the Transvaal. The Second Boer 122

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War was fought between 1899 to 1902; the independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and of the South African Republic (Transvaal) were this time defeated and absorbed into the British Empire.

Other factors played an important role in the process of grabbing colonies in Africa. The political impetus derived from the impact of inter-European power struggles and competition for preeminence. Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were competing for power within European power politics. One way to demonstrate national preeminence was through the acquisition of territories around the world, including Africa. The social factor was the third major element. As a result of industrialization, major social problems grew in Europe: unemployment, poverty, homelessness, social displacement from rural areas, and so on. These social problems developed partly because not all people could be absorbed by the new capitalist industries. 123

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One way to resolve this problem was to acquire colonies and export this “surplus population.” This led to the establishment of settler-colonies in Algeria, Tunisia, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and central African areas like Zimbabwe and Zambia. Eventually the overriding economic factors led to the colonization of other parts of Africa. Thus it was the interplay of these economic, political, and social factors and forces that led to the scramble for Africa and the frenzied attempts by European commercial, military, and political agents to declare and establish a stake in different parts of the continent through inter-imperialist commercial competition, the declaration of exclusive claims to particular territories for trade, the imposition of tariffs against other European traders, and claims to exclusive control of waterways and commercial routes in different parts of Africa. This scramble was so intense that there were fears that it could lead to interimperialist conflicts and even wars. To prevent this, the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened a diplomatic summit of European powers in the late nineteenth century. This was the famous Berlin West African conference (more generally known as the Berlin Conference), held from November 1884 to February 1885. The conference produced a treaty known as the Berlin Act, with provisions to guide the conduct of the European inter-imperialist competition in Africa. Some of its major articles were as follows:

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1. The Principle of Notification (Notifying) other powers of a territorial annexation 2. The Principle of Effective Occupation to validate the annexations 3. Freedom of Trade in the Congo Basin 4. Freedom of Navigation on the Niger and Congo Rivers 5. Freedom of Trade to all nations 6. Suppression of the Slave Trade by land and sea This treaty, drawn up without African participation, provided the basis for the subsequent partition, invasion, and colonization of Africa by various European powers. The global expansion of Western Europe between the 1760s and the 1870s differed in several important ways from the expansionism and colonialism of previous centuries. Along with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, which economic historians generally trace to the 1760s, and the continuing spread of industrialization in the empire-building countries came a shift in the strategy of trade with the colonial world. Instead of being primarily buyers of colonial products (and frequently under strain to offer sufficient salable goods to balance the exchange), as in the past, the industrializing nations increasingly became sellers in search of markets for the growing volume of their 124

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machine-produced goods. Furthermore, over the years there occurred a decided shift in the composition of demand for goods produced in the colonial areas. Spices, sugar, and slaves became relatively less important with the advance of industrialization, concomitant with a rising demand for raw materials for industry (e.g. cotton, wool, vegetable oils, jute, dyestuffs) and food for the swelling industrial areas (wheat, tea, coffee, cocoa, meat, butter). This shift in trading patterns entailed in the long run changes in colonial policy and practice as well as in the nature of colonial acquisitions. The urgency to create markets and the incessant pressure for new materials and food were eventually reflected in colonial practices, which sought to adapt the colonial areas to the new priorities of the industrializing nations. Such adaptation involved major disruptions of existing social systems over wide areas of the globe. Before the impact of the Industrial Revolution, European activities in the rest of the world were largely confined to: (1) occupying areas that supplied precious metals, slaves, and tropical products then in large demand; (2) establishing white-settler colonies along the coast of North America; and (3) setting up trading posts and forts and applying superior military strength to achieve the transfer to European merchants of as much existing world trade as was feasible. However disruptive these changes may have been to the societies of Africa, South America, and the isolated plantation and whitesettler colonies, the social systems over most of the Earth outside Europe nevertheless remained much the same as they had been for centuries (in some places for millennia). These societies, with their largely self-sufficient small communities based on subsistence agriculture and home industry, provided poor markets for the mass-produced goods flowing from the factories of the technologically advancing countries; nor were the existing social systems flexible enough to introduce and rapidly expand the commercial agriculture (and, later, mineral extraction) required to supply the food and raw material needs of the empire builders. Britain’s Involvement in Africa Although Britain’s energetic activity to suppress the slave trade was far from effective, its diplomatic and military operations for this end led it to much greater involvement in African affairs. Additional colonies were acquired (Sierra Leone, 1808; Gambia, 1816; Gold Coast, 1821) to serve as bases for suppressing the slave trade and for stimulating substitute commerce. British naval squadrons touring the coast of Africa, stopping and inspecting suspected slavers of other nations, and forcing African tribal chiefs to sign antislavery treaties did not halt the expansion of the slave trade, but they did help Britain attain a commanding 125

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position along the west coast of Africa, which in turn contributed to the expansion of both its commercial and colonial empire. The growth of informal empire The transformation of the old colonial and mercantilist commercial system was completed when, in addition to the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts were repealed in the late 1840s. The repeal of the Navigation Acts acknowledged the new reality: the primacy of Britain’s navy and merchant shipping. The repeal of the Corn Laws (which had protected agricultural interests) signaled the maturation of the Industrial Revolution. In the light of Britain’s manufacturing supremacy, exclusivity and monopolistic trade restraints were less important than, and often detrimental to, the need for ever-expanding world markets and sources of inexpensive raw materials and food. With the new trade strategy, under the impetus of freer trade and technical progress, came a broadening of the concept of empire. It was found that the commercial and financial advantages of formal empire could often be derived by informal means. The development of a worldwide trade network, the growth of overseas banking, the export of capital to less advanced regions, the leading position of London’s money markets—all under the shield of a powerful and mobile navy—led to Great Britain’s economic preeminence and influence in many parts of the world, even in the absence of political control.

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Partition of Africa By the turn of the 20th century, the map of Africa looked like a huge jigsaw puzzle, with most of the boundary lines having been drawn in a sort of game of give-and-take played in the foreign offices of the leading European powers. The division of Africa, the last continent to be so carved up, was essentially a product of the new imperialism, vividly highlighting its essential features. In this respect, the timing and the pace of the scramble for Africa are especially noteworthy. Before 1880 colonial possessions in Africa were relatively few and limited to coastal areas, with large sections of the coastline and almost all the interior still independent. By 1900 Africa was almost entirely divided into separate territories that were under the administration of European nations. The only exceptions were Liberia, generally regarded as being under the special protection of the United States; Morocco, conquered by France a few years later; Libya, later taken over by Italy; and Ethiopia.

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The second feature of the new imperialism was also strongly evident. It was in Africa that Germany made its first major bid for membership in the club of colonial powers: between May 1884 and February 1885, Germany announced its claims to territory in South West Africa (now South West Africa/Namibia), Togoland, Cameroon, and part of the East African coast opposite Zanzibar. Two smaller nations, Belgium and Italy, also entered the ranks, and even Portugal and Spain once again became active in bidding for African territory. The increasing number of participants in itself sped up the race for conquest. And with the heightened rivalry came more intense concern for preclusive occupation, increased attention to military arguments for additional buffer zones, and, in a period when free trade was giving way to protective tariffs and discriminatory practices in colonies as well as at home, a growing urgency for protected overseas markets. Not only the wish but also the means were at hand for this carving up of the African pie. Repeating rifles, machine guns, and other advances in weaponry gave the small armies of the conquering nations the effective power to defeat the much larger armies of the peoples of Africa. Rapid railroad construction provided the means for military, political, and economic consolidation of continental interiors. With the new steamships, settlers and materials could be moved to Africa with greater dispatch, and bulk shipments of raw materials and food from Africa, prohibitively costly for some products in the days of the sailing ship, became economically feasible and profitable.

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Penetration of Islamic North Africa was complicated, on the one hand, by the struggle among European powers for control of the Mediterranean Sea and, on the other hand, by the suzerainty that the Ottoman Empire exercised to a greater or lesser extent over large sections of the region. Developments in both respects contributed to the wave of partition toward the end of the 19th century. First, Ottoman power was perceptibly waning: the military balance had tipped decisively in favor of the European nations, and Turkey was becoming increasingly dependent on loans from European centers of capital (in the late 1870s Turkey needed half of its government income just to service its foreign debt). Second, the importance of domination of the Mediterranean increased significantly after the Suez Canal was opened in 1869. France was the one European nation that had established a major beachhead in Islamic North Africa before the 1880s. At a time when Great Britain was too preoccupied to interfere, the French captured the fortress of Algiers in 1830. Frequent revolts kept the French Army busy in the Algerian interior for another 50 years before all Algeria was under full French rule. While Tunisia and Egypt had been areas of great interest to European powers during the long period of France’s Algerian takeover, the penetration of these countries had been informal, confined to diplomatic and financial maneuvers. Italy, as well as France and England, had loaned large sums to the ruling beys of Tunisia to help loosen that country’s ties with Turkey. The inability of the beys to service the foreign debt in the 1870s led to the installation of debt commissioners by the lenders. Tunisia’s revenues were pledged to pay the interest due on outstanding bonds; in fact, the debt charges had first call on the government’s income. With this came increased pressure on the people for larger tax payments and a growing popular dissatisfaction with a government that had “sold out” to foreigners. The weakness of the ruling group, intensified by the danger of popular revolt or a military coup, opened the door further for formal occupation by one of the interested foreign powers. When Italy’s actions showed that it might be preparing for outright possession, France jumped the gun by invading Tunisia in 1881 and then completed its conquest by defeating the rebellions precipitated by this occupation. The Europeans in North Africa The course of Egypt’s loss of sovereignty resembled somewhat the same process in Tunisia: easy credit extended by Europeans, bankruptcy, increasing control by foreign-debt commissioners, mulcting of the peasants to raise revenue for servicing the debt, growing independence movements, and finally military conquest by a foreign power. In Egypt, inter-imperialist rivalry, mainly 128

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between Great Britain and France, reached back to the early 19th century but was intensified under the circumstances of the new imperialism and the construction of the Suez Canal. By building the Suez Canal and financing Egypt’s ruling group, France had gained a prominent position in Egypt. But Britain’s interests were perhaps even more pressing because the Suez Canal was a strategic link to its empire and its other Eastern trade and colonial interests. The successful nationalist revolt headed by the Egyptian army imminently threatened in the 1880s the interests of both powers. France, occupied with war in Tunisia and with internal political problems, did not participate in the military intervention to suppress the revolt. Great Britain bombarded Alexandria in 1882, landed troops, and thus obtained control of Egypt. Unable to find a stable collaborationist government that would also pay Egypt’s debts and concerned with suppressing not only the rebellion but also a powerful anti-Egyptian Mahdist revolt in the Sudan, Britain completely took over the reins of government in Egypt. The rest of North Africa was carved up in the early 20th century. France, maneuvering for possession of Morocco, which bordered on her Algerian colony, tried to obtain the acquiescence of the other powers by both secret and open treaties granting Italy a free hand in Libya, allotting to Spain a sphere of influence, and acknowledging Britain’s paramountcy in Egypt. France had, however, overlooked Germany’s ambitions, now backed by an increasingly effective army and navy. The tension created by Germany led to an international conference at Algeciras (1906), which produced a short-lived compromise, including recognition of France’s paramount interest, Spanish participation in policing Morocco, and an open door for the country’s economic penetration by other nations. But France’s vigorous pursuit of her claims, reinforced by the occupation of Casablanca and surrounding territory, precipitated critical confrontations, which reached their peak in 1911 when French troops were suppressing a Moroccan revolt and a German cruiser appeared before Agadir in a show of force. The resulting settlements completed the European partition of North Africa: France obtained the lion’s share of Morocco; in return, Germany received a large part of the French Congo; Italy was given the green light for its war with Turkey over control of Tripoli, the first step in its eventual acquisition of Libya; and Spain was enabled to extend its Río de Oro protectorate to the southern frontier of Morocco. The more or less peaceful trade-offs by the occupying powers differed sharply from the long, bitter, and expensive wars they waged against the indigenous peoples and rulers of Islamic North Africa to solidify European rule.

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The race for colonies in sub-Saharan Africa The partition of Africa below the Sahara took place at two levels: (1) on paper—in deals made among colonial powers who were seeking colonies partly for the sake of the colonies themselves and partly as pawns in the power play of European nations struggling for world dominance—and (2) in the field—in battles of conquest against African states and tribes and in military confrontations among the rival powers themselves. This process produced, over and above the ravages of colonialism, a wasp’s nest of problems that was to plague African nations long after they achieved independence. Boundary lines between colonies were often drawn arbitrarily, with little or no attention to ethnic unity, regional economic ties, tribal migratory patterns, or even natural boundaries. Before the race for partition, only three European powers—France, Portugal, and Britain—had territory in tropical Africa, located mainly in West Africa. Only France had moved into the interior along the Senegal River. The other French colonies or spheres of influence were located along the Ivory Coast and in Dahomey (now Benin) and Gabon. Portugal held on to some coastal points in Angola, Mozambique (Moçambique), and Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau). While Great Britain had a virtual protectorate over Zanzibar in East Africa, its actual possessions were on the west coast in the Gambia, the Gold Coast, the Sierra Leone, all of them surrounded by African states that had enough organization and military strength to make the British hesitate about further expansion. Meanwhile, the ground for eventual occupation of the interior of tropical Africa was being prepared by explorers, missionaries, and traders. But such penetration remained tenuous until the construction of railroads and the arrival of steamships on navigable waterways made it feasible for European merchants to dominate the trade of the interior and for European governments to consolidate conquests. Once conditions were ripe for the introduction of railroads and steamships in West Africa, tensions between the English and French increased as each country tried to extend its sphere of influence. As customs duties, the prime source of colonial revenue, could be evaded in uncontrolled ports, both powers began to stretch their coastal frontiers, and overlapping claims and disputes soon arose. The commercial penetration of the interior created additional rivalry and set off a chain reaction. The drive for exclusive control over interior areas intensified in response to both economic competition and the need for protection from African states resisting foreign intrusion. This drive for African possessions was intensified by the new entrants to the colonial race who felt menaced by the possibility of being completely locked out. 130

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Perhaps the most important stimulants to the scramble for colonies south of the Sahara were the opening up of the Congo River basin by Belgium’s king Leopold II and Germany’s energetic annexationist activities on both the east and west coasts. As the dash for territory began to accelerate, 15 nations convened in Berlin in 1884 for the West African Conference, which, however, merely set ground rules for the ensuing intensified scramble for colonies. It also recognized the Congo Free State (now Congo [Kinshasa]) ruled by King Leopold, while insisting that the rivers in the Congo basin be open to free trade. From his base in the Congo, the king subsequently took over mineralrich Katanga region, transferring both territories to Belgium in 1908. In West Africa, Germany concentrated on consolidating its possessions of Togoland and Cameroon (Kamerun), while England and France pushed northward and eastward from their bases: England concentrated on the Niger region, the center of its commercial activity, while France aimed at joining its possessions at Lake Chad within a grand design for an empire of contiguous territories from Algeria to the Congo. Final boundaries were arrived at after the British had defeated, among others, the Ashanti, the Fanti Confederation, the Opobo kingdom, and the Fulani; and the French won wars against the Fon kingdom, the Tuareg, the Mandingo, and other resisting tribes. The boundaries determined by conquest and agreement between the conquerors gave France the lion’s share: in addition to the extension of its former coastal possessions, France acquired French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, while Britain carved out its Nigerian colony. In southern Africa, the intercolonial rivalries chiefly involved the British, the Portuguese, the South African Republic of the Transvaal, the British-backed Cape Colony, and the Germans. The acquisitive drive was enormously stimulated by dreams of wealth generated by the discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West and gold in Matabeleland. Encouraged by these discoveries, Cecil Rhodes (heading the British South Africa Company) and other entrepreneurs expected to find gold, copper, and diamonds in the regions surrounding the Transvaal, among them Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and Trans-Zambezia. In the ensuing struggle, which involved the conquest of the Nbele and Shona peoples, Britain obtained control over Bechuanaland and, through the British South Africa Company, over the areas later designated as the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. At the same time, Portugal moved inland to seize control over the colony of Mozambique. It was clearly the rivalries of stronger powers, especially the concern of Germany and France over the extension of British rule in southern Africa that enabled a weak Portugal to have its way in Angola and Mozambique.

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The boundary lines in East Africa were arrived at largely in settlements between Britain and Germany, the two chief rivals in that region. Zanzibar and the future Tanganyika were divided in the Anglo-German treaty of 1890: Britain obtained the future Uganda and recognition of its paramount interest in Zanzibar and Pemba in exchange for ceding the strategic North Sea island of Heligoland (Helgoland) and noninterference in Germany’s acquisitions in Tanganyika, Rwanda, and Urundi. Britain began to build an East African railroad to the coast, establishing the East African Protectorate (later Kenya) over the area where the railroad was to be built. Rivalry in northeastern Africa between the French and British was based on domination of the upper end of the Nile. Italy had established itself at two ends of Ethiopia, in an area on the Red Sea that the Italians called Eritrea and in Italian Somaliland along the Indian Ocean. Italy’s inland thrust led to war with Ethiopia and defeat at the hands of the Ethiopians at Adwa in 1896. Ethiopia, surrounded by Italian and British armies, had turned to French advisers. The unique victory by an African state over a European army strengthened French influence in Ethiopia and enabled France to stage military expeditions from Ethiopia as well as from the Congo in order to establish footholds on the Upper Nile. The resulting race between British and French armies ended in a confrontation at Fashoda in 1898, with the British army in the stronger position. War was narrowly avoided in a settlement that completed the partition of the region: eastern Sudan was to be ruled jointly by Britain and Egypt, while France was to have the remaining Sudan from the Congo and Lake Chad to Darfur. Germany’s entrance into southern Africa through occupation and conquest of South West Africa touched off an upsurge of British colonial activity in that area, notably the separation of Basutoland (Lesotho) as a crown colony from the Cape Colony and the annexation of Zululand. As a consequence of the South African (Boer) War (1899–1902) Britain obtained sovereignty over the Transvaal and the Afrikaner Orange Free State. Colonization, Colonialism and Imperialism The words “colonization”, “colonialism“, and “imperialism“ cannot be used without invoking their highly politicized pasts. They did not always have negative connotations: European statesmen once proudly proclaimed their imperial reach, insisting that they brought economic progress to the world and relief from backwardness and despotism to Africa. In the 1930s European nations mounted public exhibitions to display the accomplishments of colonization—vivid demonstrations of power, of good works, and of the 132

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ability of the colonizing state to integrate diverse but unequal cultures into a harmonious whole. Yet colonialism was also under attack even before European powers consolidated their rule over most of Africa in the early twentieth century. Europe’s role as colonizer is often invoked for contradictory purposes: in assertions of Europe’s responsibility for extreme forms of inequality and dehumanization and in forms of colonial nostalgia and apology. Imperialism—the exercise of power by a state beyond its borders—is much older than Europe itself and has taken many forms, from the Romans’ conquest of territory around the Mediterranean, to the imperialism of free trade exercised by Great Britain in the early nineteenth century, to the power of large corporations and industrial nations in the early twenty first century. Colonialism—the erection by a state of an apparatus of administrative control over peoples who are defined as distinct—is a specific form of imperialism, and it too has a long history. Prior to the late nineteenth century, various imperial countries nibbled at the edges of Africa, but rarely did these conquering nations penetrate inland and more rarely still did they try to alter African societies. Before this time, the effects of Europe’s economic power—demonstrated through trade in slaves, ivory, gold, and other commodities— were widely though unevenly felt in Africa, influencing but not determining the political and economic structures of coastal and inland communities. Colonialism in the late nineteenth century was self-consciously interventionist. After the Industrial Revolution, the advancement of military technologies and the self-confidence of bourgeois culture gave European elites a sense that their ways of organizing life stood not only for might but also for progress. Africa became an object of reformist imperialism because it could be portrayed as a slavery-ridden continent that was held in check by tyrants and isolated from the beneficial effects of commerce. This kind of European imperialism soon became the object of critique, for a contradiction lay at its heart. Bourgeois ideology in nineteenth-century Europe derived its power from its claims to universality—to the superiority of the free market, the rationalist heritage of the Enlightenment, the orderly structures of states, and the rightness of self-rule—but colonization necessarily implied the rule of one particular people over another. The late-nineteenth-century conquest of Africa brought forth critics of imperialist violence and exploitation—and some doubts about the wisdom of intervention itself— and by the middle of the twentieth century, imperialism was being challenged ever more strongly from within and without. The questioning of imperialism in twentieth-century Europe was sparked in part by Marxism, but Karl Marx himself had a profoundly ambiguous role in this process. He was committed to the idea of progress and saw capitalism as a 133

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step toward an eventual socialist world. In his writings on India, he portrayed the British conquest as both a horrific reflection of greed and inhumanity and as an unintentionally progressive step that quashed the backwardness of Hindu culture and opened up the possibility of a capitalist, and later a socialist, future. The issue of imperialism confronted political theorists with important questions about Europe itself. J. A. Hobson, a British liberal, viewed imperialism as a consequence of underconsumption in metropolitan economies: he argued that by keeping workers’ wages as low as possible but investing profits in increased production, capitalists created domestic markets that could not sufficiently absorb their ever-expanding capacity. Capitalists therefore turned to their respective governments to find and protect new markets and maintain privileged access to resources, resulting in competition over the control of foreign territory. Hobson’s argument was a plea for improving the standard of living of the English working class in order to stave off deadly wars among rival colonizers. Vladimir Lenin brought much of Hobson’s argument and data back into the Marxist fold, insisting that imperialism did not reflect a remediable flaw of European society but rather an inherent characteristic of a stage of capitalism. He directed much of his polemic against social democratic theories about reform in Europe, which he regarded as part of an imperialist effort to buy off members of the working class with the sweat and blood of conquered peoples abroad. Capitalism in colonies, for Lenin, was not a progressive but a parasitic force. Attached to the Soviet project, Lenin’s arguments had a mixed impact, for they were later both mobilized and contradicted by the Soviet Union’s shifting foreign policy. Lenin’s argument resonated among—and to a significant extent was radicalized by—many colonial intellectuals in Africa, for it made sense of the exploitation they perceived in colonial economies in the early and mid-twentieth century. For them, colonization was an extractive process, producing superprofits for capitalists in remote wealthy metropoles, misery for local workers, and stagnation for colonial economies. But opponents to colonial rule could also be found in local communities, in regional networks of religious shrines, and in Islamic polities that had consolidated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Especially in coastal West Africa, Christian, Westerneducated elites were marginalized by a European intrusion that claimed to represent values of Christianity and liberal politics. Such elites sometimes tried to find their ways within niches in the colonial system, while merchants and farmers often tried to turn colonial structures to their own interests. Most people, however, were thwarted by the contradictions of colonial rule itself: the hypocrisy of a politics that professed rationality and individuality but 134

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discriminated against individuals on the grounds of race; that spoke in the name of the free market, but acted through arbitrary regulation and monopolies; and that claimed Christian virtues but stunted the development of African personality. African critics of colonialism, like James Africanus Beale Horton and Edward Wilmot Blyden, emerged even while African states and communities were still trying to stave off or come to grips with the colonizing onslaught. Colonization never went uncontested: it was challenged in a multiplicity of idioms in Europe and in Africa, through different forms of mobilization, via efforts at selective appropriation as well as outright resistance.

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Nature of European Imperialism in Africa Shorn of its Hobsonian and Marxist-Leninist theorizings, imperialism is essentially about the establishment of dominion or rule (imperium), usually, but not necessarily, by an alien power over peoples of another stock, for the purposes of expanding the commerce and other economic interests of the imperial power; for the promotion of its political and strategic interests; or sometimes solely for the sake of prestige. Imperialism is thus generally exploitative and aggressive. Ancient imperial powers like Egypt, Assyria, and Rome not only erected boastful memorials to their conquests, they paraded the loot and imposts exacted from subject peoples. The deeds of European empire builders and proconsuls in Africa were little different, no matter the claims of the “civilizing mission” myth. European imperialism in Africa evolved in two major phases. The first, more aggressive and violent, began with the European “scramble” for African territory and ended with the continent’s partition and conquest. The second phase saw the institution of imperialism into a system—colonialism—by which the continent was organized and administered for maximum economic exploitation. It is significant that these events occurred before Africa had had time to recover from the ravages of what was arguably the most tragic episode in human history, the slave trade. For Africa, colonialism was thus, in a sense, a continuation of the slave trade in other ways—the exploitation of the black peoples in situ. Imperialism in the colonial phase was, however, not entirely without some benefits, such as new infrastructures or, in some localities, new economic opportunities. But it would be an exaggeration to conclude that these palliatives transformed an essentially economic venture into a philanthropic enterprise. In this regard, it is instructive to note that a century or so prior to the 1880s, Africa had witnessed a genuine European philanthropic initiative directed at repairing the ravages of the slave trade. Under the inspiration and leadership of the British 135

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antislavery and evangelical movements, and with substantial support from government circles, it was decided to bring Christian civilization to Africa. A colony for freed slaves was founded in Sierra Leone in 1787, and in 1841 an elaborate expedition sponsored by the British government was dispatched to establish a Christian agricultural community on the Niger (in modern Nigeria). Meanwhile, a crusade of sorts by Christian missionaries from all over Europe was making its way to different parts of the African continent to convert the people and propagate Western culture. The potentials of these humanitarian projects for meaningful change in Africa can be gauged from the results that were becoming manifest along the western African coast by the 1850s. A Western-educated elite was gradually emerging, its members assuming positions of responsibility and eminence in the church, in business, in the professions, and from the 1880s, in the governance of European colonies like the Gold Coast and Lagos. It was at this point, when Africans were starting to adopt and adapt European civilization, and to play a role in the “civilizing” programs designed by the West, that a change in European policy began. Where Africans had hitherto been accepted as human beings—”benighted” but capable of being civilized—they were now regarded as subhuman, fit only to be conquered and despoiled. This new attitude soon infected even the European missionaries, who henceforth, quite unjustly and on account of racial arrogance, denied otherwise qualified Africans leadership positions in the church. By and large, humanitarianism thereafter became a cover for predatory aggression.

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Patterns of European Imperial Expansion in Africa Four major factors influenced the pattern of European expansion in Africa before the “scramble”: European traders, Christian missionaries, British antislavery patrols off the coasts of Africa, and the situation within the African states. Following the late-fifteenth-century initial Portuguese contact, the first European settlements in Africa were established by traders. These included Saint-Louis in Senegal, Bathurst (Banjul) in present-day Gambia, and the famous Gold Coast forts of Cape Coast and Elmina. The relationship between the traders and their African hosts was regulated by treaties, and in the course of time the Europeans, like the Muslim traders in the medieval Sudan, began to exert some measure of cultural influence on neighboring communities. This was particularly marked in the Gold Coast, where in 1844 Governor George Maclean negotiated a number of “bonds” empowering the British to participate in the administration of justice in the Fante states.

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The traders generally preferred to be independent of their home governments. Nevertheless, they naturally turned to the latter whenever their security was threatened. Hence there was the occasional gunboat to overawe menacing African neighbors. This practice, as well as the conclusion of treaties of “commerce and friendship,” sometimes with extraterritorial clauses, became common from the 1820s. Similarly, with the commencement of British antislavery naval patrols, a new phase in Afro-European relations came into being. Britain, followed by France and Germany, appointed consuls at strategic points along the coast, or wherever, as in Zanzibar and the Bights of Bénin and Biafra, commercial interests or political considerations dictated such a course. The “informal empire” of the trader was thus being reinforced by the influence of the consul supported by military muscle. It was this combination that brought about the deposition of King Kosoko of Lagos in 1851. Across the continent in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, British consuls and political agents had similarly succeeded in converting that state into a quasi-protectorate of their government by the 1860s. Although European settlement in coastal Africa was pioneered by traders, it was Christian missions that extended imperial influence inland before the “scramble.” As outposts of European civilization the mission stations were, according to Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, a British imperialist agent, “essay[s] in colonization.” The missionaries mediated the disputes of host communities and acted as intermediates between them and the advancing imperialist agencies. Yet neither this nor Christian charity prevented them from sometimes communicating vital intelligence to the invading European armies or inviting military expeditions against states that resisted Christian proselytizing. The Christian missions were, above all, a disruptive force, partly because of their iconoclastic attitude to African culture and partly because their converts usually renounced the authority of their chiefs while advocating the institution of European rule, which they expected to advance the spread of the Gospel and facilitate the development of commerce and Western civilization. Remarkably, African rulers developed no common policy toward European incursion, even though many of them had a network of diplomatic ties. While empires like Asante and Bénin tried to regulate or ban contact with Europeans, most coastal states had become too dependent on overseas trade to contemplate this course. Moreover, interstate and local tensions enabled the Europeans to recruit African allies. Thus, until the late 1870s, the trader, the consul, and the missionary were the main agencies of European expansion. It is important to add that for the most part, their activities lacked the brazen aggressiveness that characterized the advent of the “scramble.” It is not easy to explain the change, but in addition to 137

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traders and missionaries, Africa was now attracting other kinds of Europeans: merchant adventurers, railway engineers, entrepreneurs, and soldiers—ruthless and, for the most part, unscrupulous men who had little sympathy with the earlier humanitarian dream of re-creating European culture in Africa. Convinced that the era of free trade was at the end, they urged their governments to secure colonies that would serve as sources of raw materials as well as markets for manufactured goods. Meanwhile, the policy makers in Europe, who had hitherto been reluctant to commit themselves to imperial expansion, were now becoming more responsive to the advocates of colonial possessions at home as well as apostles of empire in Africa itself. The international European rivalry that heralded the “scramble” started in western Africa as a duel between the French and the British, first for control of the Niger Basin and subsequently for the acquisition of the coastal territories between present-day Sierra Leone and Bénin. By 1882 France had succeeded in linking its bases in the Senegal and Upper Niger Valleys, and George Taubman Goldie, the British proprietor of the Royal Niger Company, had in 1884 bought out his French rivals and secured the Lower Niger for Britain. Almost simultaneously, a four-way conflict involving King Léopold of Belgium, France, Britain, and Portugal was raging over the Congo Basin. While King Léopold and France established posts on opposite banks of the river, Britain and Portugal struck a pact in 1884 reasserting the latter’s historic claim to the mouth of the river. Meanwhile Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, had joined the race for African colonies by staking claims to territories in eastern Africa, southwestern Africa, Togo, and Cameroon. The “scramble” was now in full swing. Apart from the diplomatic wrangles, alliances, and intrigues which it generated among the European powers, Africa was invaded by adventurers of all sorts intent on inducing rulers to sign treaties purporting to cede their countries to this or that European power. The Berlin Conference of November 1884 to February 1885 eventually drew up rules regulating the procedure for annexing the territories covered by the treaties and other claims while avoiding intra-European conflict. Except for the recognition by the powers of a new and “sovereign” state (albeit under King Léopold II of Belgium), in the Congo Basin, the actual partitioning began after the conference, through bilateral agreements which took several years to negotiate. Only Emperor Menilek II of Ethiopia, of all African rulers, participated in the partitioning even though he was not invited to the congress. He won this signal distinction by his defeat of the invading Italian forces at Adwa in 1896, thereby saving his country and thereafter embarking on expansionist moves of his own, on the basis of which he concluded boundary agreements with Britain, France, and Italy between 1897 and 1908. In western Africa, the British and the French 138

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settled the boundaries of their respective colonies in two phases: 1887 to 1889, and 1892 to 1895. And in eastern Africa, the sultan of Zanzibar’s dominions along with the other polities were partitioned between Britain and Germany in the years 1886 to 1890. Meanwhile, from the late 1870s, the tempo of advancing European imperialism had begun to cause disquiet among African peoples. From the Senegal to the Upper and Lower Niger Basins, as well as in the Congo and eastcentral Africa, there were apprehensions that the Europeans were out to seize the land. The local conflicts and armed skirmishes that thus developed were subsequently transformed into full-scale wars as European armies invaded Africa to make good their territorial claims in conformity with the Berlin Conference principle of “effective occupation.” Although the African forces enjoyed numerical advantage, the outcome of the protracted wars was generally decided by the piecemeal nature of the campaigns; the fact that interstate rivalries enabled European armies to secure African allies; and the superiority of European weapons such as the Gatling and Maxim guns. That African armies gave good accounts of themselves is evident from victories by the Zulu (1879), the Hehe (1891), and the Ethiopians (1896) over European forces. But the ferocity and heroism of the resistance were no match for the ruthlessness and brutality of the invading forces. By the eve of World War I the whole of the continent except Ethiopia and Liberia had been overrun. But even as the conquest was in progress, European imperialism was moving into its next phase—colonialism.

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Colonial Experience Until roughly the 1980s, scholarly writing on colonialism took colonial projects as a given framework, whether evaluated positively or negatively. Colonial enterprises have been praised as innovative, condemned as exploitative, or written off as contributing little to the development of African economies or to capital accumulation in Europe— as a mere “episode” in African history. Much African history written after 1960 was constructed against the traditions of imperial history, both its critical and apologetic strands. Africanists on and off the continent wanted to help build a past usable for an Africa weakened by colonialism, one that would give integrity to Africa’s own institutions and cultures and put the contemporary task of nation-building in the context of a longer African history of innovation and adaptation. Precolonial Africa and resistance were worthy subjects for this nationalist historiography, but what Africans resisted was often treated as obvious—as oppression

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incarnate—and not worthy of the same kind of culturally attuned analysis received by other aspects of African society. The fact that economic dependence outlived colonialism’s end in the 1960s gave new life to theories of imperialism. In the early 1970s, a West Indian scholar and activist, Walter Rodney, placed colonial rule in the wider context of European economic power, arguing that the “underdevelopment” of Africa began with the slave trade and that the African states and elites that participated in it became addicted to forms of commerce that distorted local economic growth and tied African leaders to a subordinate position in the world economy. Economic dependence had preceded as well as survived colonization. Rodney’s argument remained within the tradition of seeing imperialism in economic terms. Some scholars argue, however, that both the economic causes and effects of imperialism in Africa have been overstated. Far from being a necessary focus of European commercial interests, Africa received very little capital investment from its colonizers, and investors concentrated on just a few places and commodities. Scholars have also explained British involvement in Africa as a necessary side effect of its strategic interests in India, in the Suez Canal, and in Egypt—the vital communications line of the Empire. Britain’s attitude, in this analysis, was strictly defensive: to keep other colonizers away from the Nile and retain trading areas established earlier. Even so, Britain did end up with some of the choicest territory. If Great Britain consolidated its advantages from an earlier imperialism of free trade by claiming territory in Africa, other European states regarded Africa as a resource useful for catching up to the British. France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal may have followed fantasies of future economic potential— and fears of being preempted by others—more than current interests. Portugal, relatively poor among European countries, was perhaps the most economical of imperialists; achieving state control over resources in African colonies was the only way for its firms to compete. Several historians have added that the causes of imperialism should not be sought exclusively in Europe but also in Africa itself, since the conflicts between Africans and Europeans gave rise to tensions and insecurities that limited advancing trade frontiers and brought about a radical European intervention to redefine the terms of interaction in the colonizers’ favor. Economic interests, from another perspective, were mediated by the perceptions of publics and elites. In Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, governments were beginning to face the social dislocations of industrialization; consequently, organizing the seemingly chaotic communities— abroad as well as at home—now made political sense. Crucial to making intervention plausible was imperial propaganda, especially after reports of David Livingstone’s 140

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voyages of the early 1860s contrasted commerce, Christianity, and civilization in Europe with slavery, tyranny, and insecurity in Africa. As soon as any European power moved into a part of Africa, others were likely to follow for fear of losing future opportunities. In that way, tentative, low-cost initiatives in the 1870s evolved into the “scramble” for Africa. Yet in spite of the rivalries, a collective cultural arrogance shared by European colonizers asserted itself. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 and again at the Brussels Conference of 1889-1890, these European powers set out rules for claiming territory in Africa and agreed on the duties of a colonizing power: preventing Africans from trading in slaves, arms, or liquor. Africans were perceived as disorderly and incapable of self-control or economic progress, and Europeans were viewed as responsible and disciplined. But if European states arrogated to themselves the right to alter the economic and political lives of Africans, the extent to which the colonizers could actually determine the direction of change was much less clear. Despite its lesser power, wealth, and global influence, Africa had a critical role in shaping its encounter with Europe. Africa, in fact, remains one of the most important examples worldwide of the limits of the forced imposition of European culture and capitalism. Studies of both western and eastern Africa, for instance, show the failure of early British efforts to implement anti-slavery ideology in order to turn African slaveowners into capitalist landlords and slaves into workers. The colonial state was unable to produce the social or economic forms it sought. Instead, slaves and slaveowners forged new forms of production by reconstituting less oppressive but still unequal relationships. Some ex-slaves also found niches for themselves in the colonial cash economy, where they could minimize dependence on both their employers and their former masters. The most successful effort at forcing Africans into a subordinate role in a capitalist economy occurred in South Africa. Oppression there depended not only on the program of racial engineering of the 1890s and 1900s, but also on the presence of a settler population from an earlier period—before the discovery of diamonds in the 1860s and gold in the 1880s gave a new impetus to British involvement. White Europeans’ presence in the country allowed them to form a class of capitalists and managers who were conscious of their racial distinctiveness, as well as a bureaucracy that could control the movement of Africans between wage-labor jobs and increasingly miserable lives in rural “reserves.” Colonialism became internalized, and a white-run Union of South Africa became independent in 1910. Although the Rhodesias, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mozambique also had European settler communities, these nations did not achieve South Africa’s version of white domination and capitalist development. In nineteenth-century Algeria, France built a colonial 141

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society similar to South Africa on a territory considered an integral part of France itself. European immigrants from around the Mediterranean as well as from France were defined as French citizens, in contrast to the majority Muslim resident population of Algeria, who were deemed “subjects” and denied the rights of citizens. Some of the economic successes of colonial regimes in Africa came about more through African than European agency. For example, the vast expansion of cocoa production in the Gold Coast at the turn of the twentieth century, in Nigeria starting in the 1920s, and in Côte d’Ivoire beginning in the 1940s took place in the absence of colonial initiatives to develop this natural resource. Colonizers generally had difficulty inducing Africans to produce cash crops. Africans also were reluctant to sell their labor except in small units of time, a tactic designed to straddle a village economy with few cash resources and a wage-labor economy that offered minimal wages and security. This reluctance was probably more important than colonial strategies in forcing wage labor into a largely migrant mold. Most Africans worked for European employers for only a year or two. Rural resources not only kept urban and industrial wages low, but also made recruitment insecure and reduced employers’ control over the production process. The geography of economic colonialism was therefore highly uneven. Islands of cash-crop production, wage-labor agriculture, and mining were surrounded by vast labor catchment areas in which coercion and lack of economic alternatives were necessary if Europeans were to recruit any laborers at all. These spatial limitations of colonial rule also held true politically. The conquerors could concentrate military force to defeat African armies or “pacify” villages, but the routinization of power often demanded alliances with local authority figures, be they lineage heads or recently defeated kings. Any supposed distinction between British “indirect rule“ and French “association” was less significant than the political realities on the ground, in which sparse colonial personnel relied consistently on collaborators among their supposed African “subjects.” In recent years, the study of colonialism has largely moved away from the questions of political economy that were raised in the 1970s toward a focus on European projects of cultural transformation and their complex effects: the “colonization of the mind,” as it is sometimes termed. Literary as well as historical scholarship has pointed out that European national or continental self-representations depended on ascribing “otherness” to non-European populations. An Africa of tribes and tradition was set against a Europe of technology and progress that was coupled with a version of Christianity linked to the individual seeking salvation and its earthly benefits. 142

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European missionaries played a profoundly influential role in education, especially when compared to the feeble efforts of colonial states until near the end of the colonial era, even in the case of the secular Republican French government. Such analyses demonstrate how deeply colonialism was woven into what it meant to be European and help to explain competing visions and tensions among colonizers. From the European side, it was not always clear whether the idea of civilization was meant to be a project for raising Africans in a European image or a standard that Africans could never truly meet and which therefore legitimated the colonial hierarchy. From the African side, the question is what Africans actually thought about the symbolic structure of colonial power or European civilization. The cultural edifice of the West could be taken apart brick by brick by Africans and parts of it could be used to shape quite different cultural visions of their own. The growth of messianic Christian cults, which turned the missionaries’ message of deliverance upside down, was only one example of this process. For young people, education and wage labor could be used as a means to subvert patriarchal authority within African communities and maneuver among different secular and religious institutions in colonial society. Literacy in a European language could be a means to record and pass on indigenous conceptions of history and a tool to make claims on European and African authorities. As studies of cultural and social change have deepened, a scholarly trend that began with the duality of European modernity and African tradition has had to confront the artificiality of such dichotomies and acknowledge the complex bricolages that Africans actually assembled out of various practices and beliefs. An historical perspective on the colonial experience that focuses on the interaction of Africans and Europeans points to a schematic but useful periodization. The early colonial period, around 1900, witnessed attempts at systematically imposed change as well as crude and violent forms of appropriation— most notoriously in King Léopold’s Congo and Portuguese Angola—but both methods underestimated the ability of Africans to flee, resist, or selectively assimilate. By World War I, European powers had served notice on one another that their worst excesses were giving imperialism a bad name around the world and endangering order in the colonies, but they had also discovered that African society was not going to be remade easily. In the interwar period, Great Britain, most notably, had the temerity to assert that its failures were actually a deliberate strategy of indirect rule—to conserve African social and cultural forms while slowly purging them of their unacceptable features (such as witchcraft) and adapting them to export economies. The Africa

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being conserved, of course, was more the product of the previous two decades than that of timeless tradition. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the mediocrity of Africa’s colonial transformation allowed officials to diffuse the problems of lowered earnings and reduced employment in the cities into the surrounding countryside. The midcentury colonial crisis began with a partial economic recovery in the late 1930s and it exploded during and after World War II. By then, France and Great Britain, especially, saw a heightened need for the resources of their empires to rebuild their domestic economies. They faced challenges, however, not only from opposition movements within Africa and the West Indies but also from their war allies, who saw “self-determination” as a primary aim of the war: to demonstrate that colonized people could find progress under a European aegis. In response to this imperative, Great Britain and France began “development” drives in 1940 and 1946, respectively. These drives also countered mounting protests from African wage laborers, who found that development within the confines of the narrow colonial infrastructure resulted in escalating prices and little prospect for improvement in their lives. A wave of strikes, beginning in 1935 in British Africa and in 1946 in French Africa, was countered by government attempts to move from migrancy to “stabilization” and to invoke the experience of managing class conflict in Europe to incorporate Africans into the social order in a more controllable way. Doing so meant making a discursive as well as an economic break with the past, starting to think of Africans as potentially modern people. Meanwhile, the attempts to impose a scientific and dynamic vision of agriculture—such as projects to reduce soil erosion—through characteristically coercive colonial methods mobilized opposition in many rural areas. Only after World War II did images of backward Africa and progressive Europe became a program for action rather than a representation of hierarchy—and such a conception soon proved to be costly. Once again, colonial intervention generated conflict without leading to the breakthrough in economic structure promised by the top-down conception of development. Whether nationalist efforts were strong enough to overthrow colonial rule by themselves is unclear, but social movements of a variety of sorts—from labor unions to anti-conservation movements to consumer revolts— were escalating and coalescing into coherent anti-colonial forces, sometimes in conflict with one another. Unable to gain control of Africa, European powers began to think more seriously about the Africa that actually existed. Its potential had to be compared with the alternative possibilities of making additional investments in a Europe that was moving toward closer commercial integration. By the mid144

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1950s, as France and Great Britain calculated that the costs of colonial rule outweighed the benefits, the possibility of negotiating a disengagement and a positive postcolonial relationship with African elites began to seem more attractive than the political risks and socioeconomic uncertainties of continued colonial rule.

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The Colonial (Dis)Order Pro-imperialism treatises usually represent colonialism as a crusade armed with a blueprint for the development of Africa. In reality the system was designed to promote imperial interests and maintain a level of colonial law and order conducive to maximum economic exploitation. But partly as an afterthought, and by way of rationalizing their activities, the imperial rulers began to advertise colonialism as a humanitarian mission. Yet, the main instrument for securing African acquiescence in the new order was force. Colonial armies and constabularies were organized, into which such Africans as the Zulu, the Somali, and the Hausa (martial races, according to colonial myth) were recruited. The new order was anchored on two institutions: the colonial economy and the colonial state. The latter was often an amalgam of two or more indigenous polities, its borders sometimes splitting peoples who had hitherto been political and cultural units between different European colonial administrations. Thus, whereas the traditional African state was more or less a community with reciprocal interests, the colonial state at its inception was usually an artificial entity put together for administrative convenience. An important feature of the new state was the urban center, which, for peoples with dispersed settlement patterns like the Igbo (Ibo) and the Gikuyu, was an innovation. The towns eventually became administrative as well as business headquarters. The administration of the colonial state consisted of two tiers of government, central and local. The former was composed of white officials who exercised somewhat summary legislative, executive, and judicial functions without any real division of powers. Thus the governor was the chief executive as well as the principal lawmaker who could issue decrees and proclamations. Outside the urban centers political officers in fact functioned as magistrates and judges besides their administrative functions, and professional law officers in the judiciary acted more or less as civil servants. The local governments, which supposedly were controlled by traditional authorities, were in reality an expedient device for solving the problems of expense and personnel. Whereas the French and, to a lesser extent, the Belgians virtually reduced African kings and chiefs to petty officials, the British usually increased their powers under a 145

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system known as indirect rule, by which the chiefs were made responsible to British officials in the exercise of “traditional” powers defined by the British overlords. Far from strengthening traditional institutions, indirect rule led to their perversion by freeing chiefs from customary restraints and making them instruments of colonial autocracy. The system of dual administration—the colonial overlying the neotraditional—might have been expected to lead to mutual interaction and the adaptation from this of a modern African system of government. But such interaction could not take place. The colonial administrations were dominated by white officials, and it was only reluctantly that educated Africans, after World War II, were nominated, and later elected, to serve in them. But the same educated elite was, by and large, deliberately excluded from participation in the neotraditional councils and other institutions of indirect rule. The colonial system succeeded in maintaining a modicum of stability without promoting the development of indigenous political institutions or providing any real training for Africans in the Western system. Predictably, when at independence the educated elite had to assume power, it chose to take over the colonial states in preference to both the precolonial political institutions and their neotraditional versions. The colonial economy was another pivotal institution and, in many ways, the raison d’être of European imperialism in Africa. Well before the nineteenth century, Africa had developed a system of regional trading networks based on products from local industries and agriculture, as well as foreign goods. The European economy became increasingly buoyant, thanks to the scientific and industrial revolutions, plus centuries of overseas trade. Nevertheless, until colonialism, Africa was Europe’s trading partner, not its economic appendage. The colonial economic institution was designed to change all that. The first step was to wrest the control of trade from middlemen, like the Swahili states of the eastern African coast, and powerful magnates, like Ja Ja, king of the Niger Delta state of Opobo. Many of the wars resisting European penetration in the Lower Niger, in eastern Africa, and in the Congo Basin were precipitated by European measures to take control of trade. A fundamental point in the emergent colonial economy was its exportimport reorientation. The decline of regional trading networks, which was facilitated by the new colonial boundaries, as well as the smothering of local industries through the flooding of African markets with European goods, contributed to this development. Encouragement was, however, given to the growth of cash crops like cocoa, peanuts, coffee, tea, and cotton, organized so as to ensure that a colony specialized in one major crop, such as cocoa in the Gold Coast and Côte d’Ivoire, peanuts in Senegal and the Gambia, and cotton 146

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in Uganda. Even in those areas, there were European firms or prosperous merchants and produce buyers who stood between the African producer and the world market, and skimmed off most of the profit. The preferential treatment reserved for white farmers in settler colonies like Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, not to mention South Africa, is another feature of colonial economic policy. On the excuse that settlers were expected to become the base of economic life in these colonies, the best lands were alienated to them at giveaway prices, while special laws were enacted and taxes instituted to force Africans to leave their plots and seek wage labor on white farms. Paradoxically, even where, as in Kenya, peasant production was doing well in terms of export promotion, the colonial authorities used administrative measures to impose restrictions on African farmers so as to boost white production. In the Belgian Congo, African produce was purchased by white farmers and resold at handsome profits. A notable feature of the colonial economic system was that its development strategies served, particularly in retrospect, to consolidate imperial rule, to subordinate the African economy to that of the imperial power, and to make European businesses, rather than African communities, the main beneficiaries of the exploitation of African resources. Thus, with the introduction of money and the establishment of banking institutions, these banks’ funds, including savings deposited by Africans, were invested in the colonizing countries. Banking laws often discouraged the granting of loans to African entrepreneurs. Similarly, the development of transport infrastructures (railways, ports, and road networks) was geared to the exploitation of minerals and the movement of cash crops for export. In this regard, in places like western Africa, where individual entrepreneurs and motor transport companies were able to participate in road transport, trucks became more effective than railways in stimulating African production and economic activities generally. Although the new economic dispensation and the colonial state represented the most obvious manifestations of colonialism, Christianity and Western education were also important cultural components of European imperialism in Africa. Of course, neither evangelization nor the spread of education per se was the concern of the imperial rulers. But the advance of European power stimulated a rapid expansion of Christianity after an initial cultural resistance. Christianity, in turn, promoted the educational program (usually with some support from the colonial authorities) which nurtured a new class of Africans— Christian ministers, teachers, and clerks—who sought accommodation with colonial rule. Although it was from this same class that the grave diggers of colonialism later emerged, some of its members, especially Christian ministers, believed that Europe was executing a divine mission to free the African 147

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continent from “paganism” and “darkness.” In the French, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies, ambitious educated Africans assiduously pursued the qualifications laid down for “assimilation,” while their counterparts in the British colonies celebrated Empire Day (24 May) by singing “Rule, Brittania.” By the 1930s the colonial state had achieved a measure of stability except for occasional insurrections against official abuses. The economic infrastructures, whatever their limitations for transforming the age-old system of production in Africa, had secured to the colonial powers’ industries a regular supply of raw materials as well as a stable market. Above all, Africans had come to accept colonial rule as a fact of life, such that the most fervent nationalists merely pleaded for a role for Africans within colonial administrations. The traditional rulers, descendants of the intrepid kings who had led their people in resistance against colonial conquest, were now loyal subjects of their imperial masters. Certainly the European powers had every cause to be elated at the success and prospects of the imperial venture in Africa.

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African Societies and the Colonial Impact In spite of this euphoria of the imperial conqueror, the impact of colonialism on Africa, in terms of what development it generated and the extent to which it was a landmark in the continent’s history, remains a widely debated issue. Scholarly attention has been devoted to the strategies or initiatives by which African peoples survived imperial rule, and the fact that many African institutions managed, in spite of colonial constraints, to survive until independence and after. There is no gainsaying the fact that these studies have enabled scholars to have a better understanding of the colonial situation as well as the nature of the impact of imperial rule on African societies. Nevertheless, it is necessary to look more closely at the context in which African strategies and initiatives for surviving colonialism operated and the extent to which these somewhat circumscribed circumstances influenced the nature and quality of the initiatives. Similarly, while it is true that African institutions survived European rule, greater attention needs to be paid to the form in which they have done so. In other words, if Africa had been free (as Japan was at the time it chose to borrow certain aspects of Western civilization), what would it have opted for in such areas as ethos, material production, and sociopolitical institutions? Issues like these can illuminate the limitations of the choices open to African societies under colonialism, as well as the gravity of the problems arising from the foisting on African peoples of institutions not designed for their best interests. 148

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The economy is one important area in which the validity of the above views can be tested. The main problems of production before the colonial era were labor, technology in the form of tools and techniques, land, and transport and related infrastructure. The problems of land and labor were interrelated. Because land was accessible to all, there was no labor market outside of the slave system. At the same time, there was little incentive for innovations in land use, not to mention developments in crafts, techniques, and tools. African peoples were all too conscious of these problems, hence such appeals as that of the Mani Kongo to the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century and that of the chiefs of Old Calabar to Captain William Owen of the British Navy in 1828 for artisans, tools, and machines. The solutions prescribed by colonialism for these problems are implicit in the economic system instituted by the imperial rulers. The interrelated problem of land and labor was tackled by depriving the peoples of eastern, central, and southern Africa of much of their land, which was alienated to European settlers. Where this was not enough to guarantee cheap labor for white farms, company plantations, and the mines, taxes were instituted as an incentive to wage labor or, whenever necessary, labor was conscripted. It must be conceded that conditions in other parts of the continent, and indeed in certain areas of the settler colonies, were not as bleak for the average African as described above. In addition, mention ought to be made of signal innovations within the economy, such as the introduction of cash-crop farming, the development of transport facilities, and the promotion of Western education, albeit largely through the efforts of the Christian missions. In other words, the colonial economic system created new opportunities that produced some affluent individuals who, especially in the cash-crop areas, could afford modern tin-roofed buildings or become owners of trucks. There was also a new class of businessmen with some basic education who became agents of the commercial companies owned by Europeans. Nevertheless, living conditions for the new class of wage earners were often hard. They were even worse for the mass of the people tilling the land with the same old tools, who were obliged to pay colonial tributes euphemistically referred to as taxes. The overall economy was characterized by the concentration of “development” in a few urban centers at the expense of the rural areas, which, in addition, lost their many promising sons and daughters to the cities and towns through migration in search of education or better opportunities. Many traditional local industries became moribund, and no amount of African initiative could change the orientation and structure of an economy dependent on outside forces or arrest the extraction of the wealth of the African continent

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by the giant European companies. Indeed, the legacy of the colonial economy is one of the major factors in the late-twentieth-century predicament in Africa. As pointed out earlier, there was considerable disruption of sociopolitical institutions during the colonial era. For example, many of the polities and kingdoms were destroyed, split up, or merged in the process of creating the colonial states. Owing to the divide-and-rule policy of colonial administrations, there was little desire to integrate the often disparate ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups in these states into coherent units. Nor was there much enthusiasm, since colonial rule was expected to endure almost indefinitely, to provide training in the running of Western political institutions. African societies responded to the disruption of their sociopolitical institutions in different ways. For example, even in the French and Belgian colonies, where the kingdoms were destroyed or split into convenient administrative units, the people kept some of the institutions going by continuing to provide for the maintenance of their kings and chiefs. Similarly, organizations designed for the vitality of social units like clans, lineages, age groups, and the like continued to thrive, especially outside the new urban areas. But perhaps the most crucial impact of colonialism in this area is that it progressively destroyed the social control and judicial functions of esoteric societies and cults, without establishing viable Western alternatives. By the same token, wherever indirect rule was instituted, colonialism served to reinforce existing autocratic tendencies in governance and to introduce them even where they were alien to the indigenous political culture. The manipulations to which the chieftaincy institution was subjected in the colonial period thus began a trend in which traditional rulers became a reactionary and corruptive force in society rather than guardians of communal morality and values. The nature of the overall cultural impact of colonialism may be evaluated in the field of Western education. By the time colonial rule officially came to an end, Western culture was barely skin deep. In the early twenty-first century basic values derived from Western ideas of individual rights, accountability, and the responsibility of rulers to the governed remain remote from realization in political life. Moreover, the African worldview continues to be defined by the magical and preternatural ethos of African science. Hence diviners and soothsayers enjoy the patronage of the educated elite, and African gods, in spite of revivalist Christianity and Islam, continue to attract followers. Nevertheless, these survivals of authentic African culture do not prevent African models of development from being based on the pattern established by colonialism. Hence, educational policies are often divorced from African values, and research is seldom undertaken in areas such as traditional medicine or the African approach to the mastery of natural forces. 150

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It is in the area of ethos that colonialism may have exerted the greatest negative impact on African societies. Most Africans tended to see the colonial state as an institution for exploitation and plunder. Unlike the traditional polities and communities, it conferred no benefits, rendered no services, and therefore deserved no loyalty. People were therefore not expected to expend much energy in its service, since, according to a Yoruba saying, “a kii se ise oba Iaagùn” (one need not dissipate sweat in the service of the king [i.e., the imperial government]). The state was fair game for looters and cheats. And since people today see little distinction between the colonial state and its rulers, on the one hand, and the emergent nation-state and its African overlords, on the other, the attitudes to the former have been transferred to the latter. This is perhaps one important explanation of the incidence of corruption in public life in contemporary Africa, where private morality does not apply in the domain of public office. In sum, in assessing the overall impact of colonialism, it is vital to see beyond its superstructures, which were created for its own sustenance. After all, Europe went into Africa in pursuit of its own interests, even if the apologists of imperialism maintain that a continent could be invaded, subjugated, and exploited for its own good, or that foreign powers could have a “mandate,” as Frederick Lugard claims, to take possession of the resources of other people’s land, on the pretext of making them available to humanity. The much-vaunted claim that European rule established peace in Africa has proved rather exaggerated—this much has become obvious with the collapse, since independence, of the fragile structures bequeathed by colonialism. As for the advances Africa is supposed to have made under colonial tutelage, one might observe, with perhaps no more than a touch of overstatement, which the African went into colonialism with the hoe and the machete of his own manufacture, and came out using the same tools, which he now had to import.

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Concessionary Companies During the three centuries from the foundation of the Compagnie des Indes m 1664 to the demise of the Mozambique Company (1941), the European presence in Africa underwent major changes. So did the companies that were granted concessions on that continent. Before the colonial era, European states relied on private companies for the organization of trade, mainly the slave trade. This system was in itself a continuation of the economic structure prevailing within Europe and between Europe and other parts of the world. The concession, or permission to trade, was given for a fixed quantity of products or for a defined spatial zone over which large powers were granted. When the 151

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legal slave trade ended following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, most companies could not find lucrative products to maintain their profits, and they disappeared. But with the renewed interest in Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century, the concessionary company gained a second life in another form.

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Chartered Companies Reluctant to take charge of large areas, some countries resorted to the old system of chartered companies to assert their presence by delegating to private companies administrative powers such as collecting taxes or customs dues, organizing labor, repressing potential uprisings by military means, and creating trading monopolies. This was specifically but briefly the case for Germany under Wilhelm I (1797-1888). Placing the emphasis on building national unity, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) did not want to embark on colonial adventures. In the mid-1870s, industrialization and economic growth led some entrepreneurs to look for foreign markets. Private firms developed commercial relationships with Africa, mainly the southwestern part of the continent and the mainland of the Zanzibar sultanate. Later, these firms sought official recognition. At the moment that Germany and France were organizing the Berlin Conference, the explorer Gustav Nachtigal (1834-1885) was given the power by Bismarck to grant concessionary status to two German trading companies: Karl Peters’s (1856-1918) German East Africa Company (1885-1890) and Adolf Lüderitz’s (1834-1886) German Colonization Company for southwest Africa (1885-1889). However, lack of capital, disappointment over mineral discoveries, and the resistance of the populations quickly pushed the German government to take over, as early as 1889 for southwest Africa and in 1890 for East Africa. In both cases, German colonization started with the use of repression, especially against the Herero and Nama in present-day Namibia. In Togo and Cameroon, no trading company was ready to offer a substitute for colonization, but private capital played an active role through the foundation of plantations. This constituted another form of revived chartered companies, such as the South-Kamerun Association (27,792 square miles) or the Nord-West Kamerun Association (30,880 square miles). Great Britain also provided leading trading entrepreneurs whose chartered companies enforced British presence on the coveted continent. This was the case of George Taubman Goldie (1846-1925), who was granted a charter in 1886. Trading along the Niger River from the 1870s, Goldie absorbed rival firms to form the United African Company in 1879, which became the National 152

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African Company in 1882, later known as the Royal Niger Company, which was officially responsible for controlling trade and navigation on the Niger. It had to face both the resistance of several African states and the ambition of France. This made it impossible to organize efficient commercial networks. In 1900 Great Britain took over, giving substantial financial compensation to the company. This territory became the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, whose first high commissioner was Frederick Lugard. Southern Africa experienced the same process, motivated there by mining interests. In 1889 Cecil Rhodes, who had already built a huge fortune on diamond and gold mining in South Africa, obtained a charter for the British South Africa Company (BSA) over a vast territory, stretching from Transvaal to Congo and from Angola to Mozambique. In reality, though, he had to limit his actual authority to a more realistic zone, centered on Matabeleland and Mashonaland. Competition between white settlers and local peasants, whose economy was based on cattle breeding, quickly led to violence. The revolt of the Ndebele in 1895, temporarily united with the Shona, was followed by the creation of reservations. This region became the heart of Cecil Rhodes’s empire. Even confined to a smaller territory, the BSA represented an important financial interest. The company retained its administrative powers until the 1920s when they were considered a severe burden. The company was anxious to give them up and be compensated for them, and the settlers were eager to acquire political rights. In 1923 the European population of Southern Rhodesia obtained internal self-government and Northern Rhodesia came under the Colonial Office in 1924. The company’s mineral rights were confirmed in Northern Rhodesia. The BSA was by far the most successful chartered company in Africa, thanks mainly to a flourishing mining industry (copper, gold, asbestos) and a prosperous settler community. To the northeast, William Mackinnon (1823-1893) obtained a charter for his Imperial British East Africa Company in 1888. This company, ill-organized and without much capital, had little commercial success but secured British sovereignty over Uganda and what became Kenya Colony and Protectorate. It disappeared in 1895, and the whole territory became a British protectorate. These companies had shortcomings and ultimately failed. However, they served as a convenient transition stage between old colonial methods and the modernized version of imperialism. Concession Companies Granting vast concessions of land to a few companies would have incurred the opposition of trading firms already active in western Africa. But Central 153

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Africa was still little exploited. Faced with large territories and limited financial and administrative means, Léopold II of Belgium (1865-1909) was the first to resort to private companies to help exploit the resources of his vast Congo Free State. Léopold II was officially given authority over an ill-defined but large territory at the Berlin Conference. As early as 1887 he recognized the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l’Industrie that was given large pieces of land in return for the construction of the Matadi-Leopoldville Railway (1890-1898). Wild rubber and mining prospects (first discovered in 1892) led to the creation of several other companies such as the Katanga Company (1891) and the Société Anversoise. Léopold II himself invested much capital in these ventures; his financial difficulties led to a cession of his personal holdings to Belgium in 1908. With the Congo Reform Association and the stubbornness of Edmund D. Morel (1873-1924), a campaign was launched in 1907 against red rubber; exposing the brutal conditions under which this product was extorted from local producers. As a result, freedom of trade was reestablished, forced labor was officially forbidden, and a monetary tax was imposed. The economic system was still based on the same big private companies in the Belgian Congo, but their administrative powers were strictly limited to the mining zone. The most successful company was the Union Minière du HautKatanga, which had a paternalist policy providing for most of the needs of its employees. The example of the apparently successful policy chosen by Léopold II greatly influenced France, which had to deal with a similar ecological and economic environment. Laborious discussions took place in the Chamber of Deputies from 1887 to 1895 on the policies of delegating administrative powers to big companies versus direct takeover. The former was adopted for Central Africa. Relying on private companies was a way of trying to solve the problem of low density, scarce customs duties, and vast territories while attracting capital in a hostile region. About 270,200 (out of 347,400) square miles were divided in 1899 among forty concession companies: For a limited investment and with few constraints, they could exploit the resources of a large area, mainly rubber, while being responsible for collecting the taxes and building the minimal equipment. The companies quickly abused their rights and escaped any kind of control. The main problem was manpower, so they used any means to extort rubber: taxes in goods, forced labor, and imprisonment of women and children. This resulted in a true looting economy, of which Ubangi-Chari is the best example. Although Pierre P. F. C. Savorgnan de Brazza was initially in favor of this system as a means to develop the country, he was appalled by the way the companies misused their power; in 1905 he was sent on an inspection mission, 154

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following a campaign of protest in France. He denounced the brutality and inefficiency, but his death on the way home and the official hushing up of the scandal did not result in a reform of the concession system. It more or less died or evolved because of its own shortcomings: Although some companies had high profit rates before World War I (25 to 35% for some from 1905 to 1911), their lack of investment and the end of wild rubber put a stop to this system. Except for a few companies that could rely on other products, either ores or wood—such as the Compagnie Forestière Sangha-Oubangi as late as 1935—most of them disappeared. Central African societies had meanwhile greatly suffered through famines, high mortality rates, social and economic disorganization, displaced people, and diffusion of severe and new illnesses. The remaining companies, in French Equatorial Africa (a federation instituted in 1910) and in the Belgian Congo, lost their administrative prerogatives and became mere capitalist enterprises. They took advantage of the colonial system that gave them a monopoly situation, a profitable tariff system, and easy access to labor.

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Portuguese in Africa As a heritage of the first colonial era, Portugal exerted nominal control over large territories without having the means to exploit them. Therefore, it relied on foreign capital (mainly British) and companies to build railways, organize plantations, and exploit mines. Six companies concentrated more than half the capital invested mainly in Mozambique: the Niassa, Mozambique, and Zambesia Companies; the Moçamedes Company; the Benguela Railway; and the Mozambique Sugar Company (which later became the Sena Sugar Estates). They lasted much longer without having proved more efficient than in German or British colonies, where they had long disappeared. The Niassa Company, founded in 1894, was abolished in 1928 without having fulfilled its contract to build the railway. The Mozambique Company (1891) was the most successful and also the last to dissolve in 1941: Its large administrative authority was effectively a state within a state, preventing Mozambique from acting as a single colony, but except for the railway, the company invested little money. Two kinds of concessions can be distinguished. Some were granted for a specific commercial investment (public works, industrial, or agricultural enterprises). These companies had quasi-governmental functions: They could control labor supplies, organize white settlers, or even be responsible for health measures. Left with almost no external control, they formed autonomous enclaves.

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The other type of concession was defined in terms of a certain area of land, over which the company exercised administrative tasks while receiving wide economic privileges. Companies could vary greatly in size and economic importance, but the main purpose when they were granted (1888 to 1894) was to provide a façade of occupation and give Portugal nominal claims over large territories. The Moçamedes Company was the only one in Angola to be granted a charter with limited powers: no control over taxation or customs dues, and no authority over coastal ports. First French-owned, then taken over by Rhodes, and finally French again, it lasted from 1894 to 1923, having succeeded only in establishing cotton plantations and cattle ranches. Some enterprises, not given a charter, exercised similar powers. The best example is the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (DIAMANG), whose zone first covered two-thirds of Angola. Though not officially responsible for administration, it acted as the government of the Lunda district where diamonds were found. Its large profits were partially invested in building a communications network and industrial infrastructures related to mining in this remote part of Angola. The company also became the main banker for the Angolan government in the 1920s and 1930s, and received official help for recruiting its annual ten thousand laborers. The concession system drew more and more criticism: It submitted Portuguese Africa to the rule of foreign capital and showed little results, except for the Sena Sugar Company and DIAMANG, and deprived the administration of its legitimate sources of revenue. Most of the profits made by the companies came from taxation and the sale of contract laborers. Though the last of the concession companies disappeared in 1941, it was clear at the end of the nineteenth century that they were not the proper instruments to exploit efficiently, and ultimately to develop, African colonies. They nevertheless served their initial purpose: to give the means to lay claim to vast territories not yet controlled, in response to the rules established by the Berlin Conference. In time, they all gave way to purely capitalist enterprises, although strict separation between private interests and public legal procedures was not established at once, for example, for labor supply. The changing nature of the relations between European centers of empire and their African colonies, under the impact of the unfolding Industrial Revolution, was also reflected in new trends in colonial acquisitions. While in preceding centuries colonies, trading posts, and settlements were in the main, except for South America, located along the coastline or on smaller islands, the expansions of the late 18th century and especially of the 19th century were distinguished by the spread of the colonizing powers, or of their emigrants, into 156

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the interior of continents. Such continental extensions, in general, took one of two forms, or some combination of the two: (1) the removal of the indigenous peoples by killing them off or forcing them into specially reserved areas, thus providing room for settlers from western Europe who then developed the agriculture and industry of these lands under the social system imported from the mother countries, or (2) the conquest of the indigenous peoples and the transformation of their existing societies to suit the changing needs of the more powerful militarily and technically advanced nations. At the heart of Western expansionism was the growing disparity in technologies between those of the leading European nations and those of the rest of the world. Differences between the level of technology in Europe and Africa were not especially great in the early part of the 18th century. In fact, some of the crucial technical knowledge used in Europe at that time came originally from Asia. During the 18th century, however, and at an accelerating pace in the 19th and 20th centuries, the gap between the technologically advanced European countries and technologically backward African regions kept on increasing despite the ”diffusion of modern technology” by the colonial powers that arrested the technological development of Africa. The most important aspect of this disparity was the technical superiority of Western armaments, for this superiority enabled the West to impose its will on the much larger colonial populations in Africa. Advances in communication and transportation, notably railroads, also became important tools for consolidating foreign European colonial rule over extensive African territories. And along with the enormous technical superiority and the colonizing experience itself came important psychological instruments of minority rule by foreigners: racism and arrogance on the part of the European colonizers and a resulting spirit of inferiority among the colonized Africans. In sum, the adaptation of the nonindustrialized African and Asian colonies to become more profitable adjuncts of the industrializing European nations were forced to embrace, among other things: (1) overhaul of existing land and property arrangements, including the introduction of private property in land where it did not previously exist, as well as the expropriation of land for use by white settlers or for plantation agriculture; (2) creation of a labor supply for commercial agriculture and mining by means of direct forced labor and indirect measures aimed at generating a body of wage-seeking laborers; (3) spread of the use of money and exchange of commodities by imposing money payments for taxes and land rent and by inducing a decline of home industry; and (4) where the precolonial society already had a developed industry, curtailment of production and exports by native producers.

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The classic illustration of this last policy is found in India. For centuries India had been an exporter of cotton goods, to such an extent that Great Britain for a long period imposed stiff tariff duties to protect its domestic manufacturers from Indian competition. Yet, by the middle of the 19th century, India was receiving one-fourth of all British exports of cotton piece goods and had lost its own export markets. Clearly, such significant transformations could not get very far in the absence of appropriate political changes, such as the development of a sufficiently cooperative local elite, effective administrative techniques, and peace-keeping instruments that would assure social stability and environments conducive to the radical social changes imposed by a foreign power. Consistent with these purposes was the installation of new, or amendments of old, legal systems that would facilitate the operation of a money, business, and private land economy. Tying it all together was the imposition of the culture and language of the dominant power.

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African Resistance to European Imperialism In terms of historical periodization, African resistance to colonial rule may be divided into four phases (Curtin, et al., 1995). The first was African responses to the colonial conquest itself. This occurred from about 1880 to 1910. The second phase spanned 1914 to 1939, the period of the consolidation of colonial rule. The third phase ran from the end of World War II (1939-1945) to the attainment of independence between the early 1950s and the 1980s. The final phase may be broadly categorized as African responses to neocolonialism—that is, their bid to redefine not only their relationships with the former colonizers, but also their efforts to deconstruct negative images associated with the continent. Apart from its tendency to fall into these phases, anticolonialism in Africa differed from place to place and over time. The littoral states that had longer contact with Europeans, usually since the fifteenth century (e.g., the Fante of Ghana), and in some cases had experienced acculturation and social change, tended to initially accommodate colonial rule. But this changed dramatically when they realized that colonial rule was not as beneficent as they had assumed. Conversely, the interior peoples, largely non-Christians whose contacts with Europe were comparatively evanescent, resisted the colonial conquest by deploying vigorously militant forms of anticolonialism. The Islamic areas in Africa—for example, French West Africa and the North African states—resisted colonial rule more than areas where indigenous African religions were the norm. The Islamic areas were influenced by the Muslim doctrine that recognized Euro-Christianity as an infidel entity, indeed, 158

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the antithesis of Islam. Hence, compared to non-Islamic Africa, anti-colonial efforts in the Islamic regions were more vigorous, militant, and prolonged Additionally, the nature of African anticolonialism depended on whether the colony was a settler or non-settler one. Settler colonies were colonies with a large number of resident migrant Europeans. These developed, for example, in Kenya and Algeria. In such colonies, the European settlers were directly involved in the administration of the colony. In contrast, nonsettler colonies were colonies that lacked large numbers of permanent European settlers, such as Nigeria and the Cameroon. Overall, anticolonialism efforts in the settler colonies tended to be more violent and prolonged than those in nonsettler areas because the European settlers were not willing to allow Africans to regain their independence. In Algeria, for example, about one million Africans perished because of the tenacity of resistance adopted by the French settlers.

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Armed Resistance In the late 19th century European nations began to change their approach toward Africa from trading to exploitation and outright domination and political control (Engels et al.1994). By the end of World War I, most of Africa had been effectively colonized. European colonialists had managed to quell the efforts by Africans to resist the establishment of colonial rule with one exception. Menelik II, emperor of Ethiopia, led his army to accomplish this unique feat in March 1896, defeating General Oreste Baratieri’s Italian army and its Eritrean allies at the Battle of Adwa. Like Menelik II, Samory Touré, who created a large Mandinka empire in West Africa between the 1860s and the 1890s. This was the unique example of successful African resistance to colonialism. For the most part colonialization was successful throughout most of subSaharan Africa. Once colonialism was established resistance tended to be more directly aimed against the imposition of capitalism on African societies. Day-today resistance, which often included action such as tax avoidance, tended to be common, as direct confrontation was never usually viewed as a viable strategy. Many African people had no initial reaction to colonialism. This was because the early years colonialism had little impact on the lives of many rural African peoples. This situation changed as the impact of colonialism became more widespread and resistance increased and became more intense in the middle decades of the 20th century. There were a number of armed rebellions against colonial rule all across Africa in the periods following each of the World Wars. For example in South Africa: John Chilembwe organized an armed rebellion against the colonial government. On the 23 January 1915, an armed group of men attacked the 159

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Livingstone Estate while another group attacked the Bruce Estate. A third group was sent to attack the Blantyre Armory in a bid to obtain weapons for an armed revolt on the capital, Zomba, to overthrow the colonial government. Although the first two attacks were successful, the attack on the Blantyre African Lakes Corporation Armory was not and the final revolt failed. The first phase of African resistance to colonial rule from about 1880 to 1910 was broadly characterized by several forms of militant anticolonialism in which military resistance was the norm. Most African states took up arms to safeguard their independence during this period. The idea that it was only centralized states that took up arms against the European aggressors, as some researchers have argued, is no longer tenable. Even kin-based, noncentralized societies, such as the Tiv of Nigeria and the Tallensi of Ghana, resorted to militant forms of resistance. In southern Africa, the Chikunda, Chokwe, and Nguni, all noncentralized societies, also resorted to military resistance. Numerous other African states and societies resorted to armed resistance: for example, in West Africa, Lat Dior, the ruler of Cayor (in present-day Senegal), confronted the French from 1864 to 1886; the Baule of the Ivory Coast put up spirited resistance against the French from 1891 to 1902; the Asante of Ghana engaged the British in several wars during the nineteenth century and went to war against them again in 1900 to 1901; and the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin) fought against the French from 1891 to 1902. In addition, the Yoruba state of Ijebu fought against the British in 1892, while the Sokoto Empire in Northern Nigeria confronted the British from 1899 to 1903. The most celebrated military resistance to colonialism in West Africa is credited to Samori Ture (ca. 1830-1900), a Muslim leader in the Madinka Empire, who engaged the French in protracted armed resistance from 1882 to 1898. East Africa was also a theater of armed resistance to colonial rule. The Swahili coast of Tanzania under the Muslim leader Abushiri engaged the Germans from August 1888 to December 1899. The Hehe people of Tanzania fought against the Germans from 1891 to 1894; when the Hehe leader, Nkwana, realized the futility of resistance, he committed suicide. Similarly, armed resistance broke out in northern and northeastern Africa. Egyptians rose up against the British in 1882, while the Sudanese confronted the British from 1881 to 1889. Somalis confronted the multiple forces of the British, Italians, and the French between 1884 and 1887. In the northern arc of the continent, the Libyans, Tunisians, and Moroccans fought against the French, the Italians, and the Spanish. In sum, overwhelming numbers of African states and societies resorted to military resistance in an effort to safeguard their independence. In the end, the European-led armies carried the day. This is not to say that Africans did not put 160

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up spirited resistance. Indeed, if one considers the duration of individual resistance, there is evidence to suggest that African armies, in spite of their limited military technology, fought bravely and were able to prolong their resistance to the dismay of the European aggressors. This was especially true in cases where Africans possessed comparatively unlimited military resources, martial prowess, and unbridled determination. The resistance of Samori Ture of the Madinka Empire, who fought the French in West Africa in the late 1800s, illustrates this point best. Ture had a well-organized, professional infantry and cavalry that were further divided into battalions, each of which played different roles in battle. Additionally, Ture, unlike some other African leaders, was able to equip his armies with modern weapons. For example, by 1893, he had amassed about six thousand Gras repeater rifles. He equipped his troops by selling gold and ivory, which were abundant in his empire. He also benefited from his region’s vast population, which enabled him to recruit large numbers of soldiers for his armed forces. Compared to most African armies, Ture had larger military forces. By 1887 the size of his infantry ranged from 30,000 to 35,000 troops, while the cavalry was about 3,000 strong. In addition, Ture’s army had skilled workers who repaired and even improved European-made guns. Above all, Ture was a capable leader and a skilled general. His scorched-earth strategy and his tactic of initiating intermittent military skirmishes allowed Ture to determine when he wanted to fight instead of when the French were ready to fight. This approach enabled him to prolong his resistance against the French. In order to make his policies more effective throughout the seventeen years of military campaigns against the French, he moved the base of his empire and army from region to region. He covered several thousand miles from French West Africa to the northern reaches of Ghana. This process of migration enabled Ture to expand his empire by conquering some African states along the way. For example, between 1895 and 1896, he conquered the Abron and Gyaaman kingdoms, as well as parts of Gonja, all in northern Ghana. Such military conquests significantly added to Ture’s ability to replenish his resources. Eventually, he was captured by the French in 1898 and exiled to Gabon, where he died in 1900. Ture’s French adversaries wrote that to the end he was a man of honor. If Samori Ture is remembered for his prolonged resistance to the French, Emperor Menelik II (18441913) of Ethiopia is celebrated for having decisively humiliated Italy in 1896 at the Battle of Adwa. There are several similarities in the way that Ture was able to prolong his resistance against the French and how Menelik was able to defeat the Italians. First, both had well-trained, disciplined, and well-equipped professional armies. Menelik also imported large quantities 161

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of guns from France and Russia. By 1893 the Ethiopian forces had 82,000 rifles and twenty-eight canons. At the decisive Battle of Adwa, Menelik’s forces numbered over 100,000 compared to Italy’s approximately 17,000 men. Geography also played to the advantage of Menelik and Ture because they knew the terrain of battle better than their European adversaries. In contrast, while the French assiduously pursued Ture and his mobile army, the Italians blundered by assuming that the Ethiopian armies, like those of other African states, could be easily defeated. In the end, it was only Ethiopia that was able to decisively defeat a European power, Italy, to maintain its independence. However, from 1935 to 1936 the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) occupied Ethiopia in revenge for the humiliating defeat that Italy suffered in 1896. The Italian occupation stimulated African nationalism and Pan-Africanism because many Africans, including diasporic Africans, believed that Ethiopia was a symbol of African resilience and independence. Some historians have even suggested that had it not been for the outbreak of World War II, the seething disenchantment unleashed by the Italian occupation could have served as a watershed for decolonization in Africa. Several factors explain the success of the European-led armies in Africa. The paramount reason was the superiority of European military technology. As the famous lines of English author Hilaire Belloc (1870—1953) attest, “Whatever happens, we have got / the Maxim gun, and they have not” (The Modern Traveller, 1898). By the later part of the nineteenth century, military technology in Europe had developed considerably. It was this technological advantage that accounted for the ability of the Europeans to conquer not only Africa, but other parts of the world. Those African societies, such as Ture’s, that could muster large forces and equip their armies to a level comparable to the Europeans, were able to put up the greatest degree of anticolonial resistance. Another reason for the success of European armies in Africa is that most African armies were not professional, but were mobilized in the event of war. Thus they lacked systematic training, military discipline, and the martial prowess to withstand the well-equipped, disciplined European-led armies. Most African armies were mobilized when events dictated that colonialism was imminent, but African enthusiasm and dedication could not withstand the technological superiority of the European forces. Few African states and societies engaged in mutual assistance to fight the forces of colonialism. One exception involves the cooperation of Ture and King Prempeh I (1872-1931) of Ashanti in the late 1890s during the final stages of Ture’s resistance to the French. In general, however, Africans failed to unite against the European aggressors. Some commentators refer to this fact as 162

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evidence of the extent of local crisis and the contending political polarities in Africa on the eve of the colonial conquest. The evidence does not support this contention, however. It is based on the erroneous view that precolonial Africa was a monolithic state, and therefore all of Africa could have united in anticolonialism. Rather, pre-colonial Africa was made up of a multiplicity of states with different political systems. Not surprisingly, some African states, such as the Fante of Ghana, even assisted the British against Ashanti because throughout the nineteenth century, the Fante had struggled against the forces of Ashanti hegemony. The idea of Pan-Africanism had not yet developed among African states on the eve of the colonial conquest, which helps explain the lack of political unity among African states at the time. The first two decades of the twentieth century also witnessed militant forms of anticolonialism against forced labor, forced cultivation of crops, land alienation, and taxation. In Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), for example, the German colonial authorities’ harsh demands for cotton cultivation, forced labor, and taxation unleashed the Maji Maji Rebellion in 1905. The rebellion, led by Kinjikitile Ngwale (d. 1905), an indigenous prophet, was organized across ethnic lines and involved over twenty different ethnic groups inhabiting an area of 10,000 square miles (about 25,900 square kilometers). Other such rebellions included the peasant revolts in Madagascar in 1904 to 1905 and 1915; the Mahdi revolts in Sudan from 1900 to 1904; a vigorous protracted rebellion in Somaliland from 1895 to 1920; and the Egba revolt in southeastern Nigeria in 1918. Armed uprisings during this phase were not only responses to the political economy of colonial rule, they were also efforts to overthrow colonial rule. The latter rationale explains why colonial regimes brutally suppressed such anticolonialism, as exemplified by the brutal response of the Germans to the Maji Maji Rebellion, in which more than 75,000 Africans were killed.

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Non-violent Anti-colonial Resistance Realizing the futility of armed resistance in the face of the European possession of superior military technology, Africans adopted new strategies, one of which was mass migration. This involved communities, groups, and individuals migrating from theaters of objectionable colonial politics to areas where their independence could be safeguarded. It has been suggested that this strategy of anti-colonialism was common in the French, Belgian, German, and Portuguese colonies because of arbitrary exploitation based on forced labor, taxation, forced cultivation of certain crops, and military recruitment, among other things.

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Mass migrations could be seasonal, occurring, for example, during periods of forced labor recruitment in the dry season. Such migrations could also be episodic, occurring during periods of taxation, as when fifty thousand Africans fled from the Zambezi Valley to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) between 1895 and 1907. Colonial forced labor and military recruitment during both world wars also stimulated mass migrations; for example, in 1916 and 1917, more than two thousand people migrated from the French Ivory Coast to neighboring Ghana. Permanent mass migrations occurred in situations where European settlers seized African lands and then forced the Africans to become laborers and landless peasants. In Kenya, for example, the Kikuyu, who lost their ancestral territory in the so-called white highlands to European settlers, migrated en masse to burgeoning urban centers like Nairobi in search of employment. In the Belgian Congo, Africans suffering from the predatory policies of European companies, whose main aim was profit by any means, migrated to neighboring districts. The importance of mass migration as a vehicle of anticolonialism is that it freed Africans from the claws of colonialism and at the same time rendered certain colonial policies ineffective. Although armed resistance was the norm, other forms of confrontation, which have been compositely described as peaceful or diplomatic, occurred. Diplomacy was employed, for example, by King Jaja (d. 1891) of Opobo in the Niger Delta and King Prempeh of Ashanti. Prempeh, convinced that negotiations with the colonial government in the Gold Coast (Ghana) would remain fruitless, sent an embassy to the British government in London. The delegation left on April 3, 1895, arrived in England on April 24, 1895, and remained in London until December of that year. But the British government failed to meet with the Ashanti delegation, and instead British forces in the Gold Coast attacked and subjugated Ashanti in 1896. This action culminated in a final military showdown in 1900, when Yaa Asantewaa (d. 1921), the Queen of Edweso in Ashanti, decided that in order to redeem their independence, the Ashanti had to go to war against the British. Eventually, the British efforts to subdue Ashanti materialized in 1901 when the British-led armies emerged victorious. Independent Christian churches and variants of syncretic Christianity generically termed millennial movements or Ethiopianism also served the anticolonial agenda of Africans. Christianity was seen as a pathfinder for colonial rule and European hegemony, both of which undermined the African way of life. This way of life included, for example, the spectrum of African rites of passage, namely, indigenous ceremonial rites that underscored birth, naming, puberty, marriage, and death and funerals. The European attack and denigration 164

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of African culture through the ideological artery of Christianity forced Africans to distill Christianity in order to render it more amenable to their way of life (Haynes, 1996). The millennial movements and other anticolonial religious movements thrived in an environment of apocalyptic vision, divine intervention, divination, and healing espoused by leaders such as Nehemiah Tile, who founded the Tembu Church in South Africa in 1884; Willie J. Mokalapa, who founded the South African Ethiopian Church in 1892; Reverend John Chilembwe and his Providence Industrial Mission in Malawi in 1900; and Wade Harris, who lead the millennial movement in the Ivory Coast in 1915. These religious movements involved a synthesis of European Christianity and indigenous African religions. For example, members practiced Christian liturgies along with spirit possession derived from indigenous African religions. Moreover, Old Testament prophetism became synonymous with African forms of divination. These millennial and other movements exemplify the way that Africans grappled with objectionable aspects of Christianity and succeeded in grafting the useful aspects of it onto their indigenous worldview and ontology. Overall, these religious movements empowered Africans by restoring faith in African religions and cultures, which had been placed in the vortex of colonial rule. More significantly, some of these movements became powerful anticolonial movements as well. Chilembwe, for example, used his Providence Industrial Mission to spread his views that colonialism was an anathema to the Bible and Christianity. Consequently, in January 1915 he organized a revolt against the colonial system, and was eventually persecuted by the colonial authorities. Another form of peaceful anticolonialism that began in the nineteenth century and continued throughout the colonial period, was the use of indigenous and foreign-based newspapers to promote anticolonial views. The London-based Pan-Africanist newspaper African Times, for example, became an anticolonial platform. In the Gold Coast, James Hutton Brew founded the anticolonialist Gold Coast Times in 1874. Black South Africans presented their views in Imvozaba Ntsundu or Native Opinion, established in 1884 by J. T. Jabavu and published in both English and Xhosa. Others periodicals with an anticolonialist bent included The Lagos Weekly Record, founded in Nigeria in 1891, and the Nigerian Chronicle, established in 1908. The life spans of these newspapers differed: Some lasted several years, while others survived for only a few months. The Gold Coast, for example, had about twelve newspapers from 1874 to 1919. The African intelligentsia used the press to question objectionable colonial policies. This occurred more in West Africa, North Africa, and southern Africa than in Central Africa and East Africa. Barred 165

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from serving on the legislative councils and from participating in colonial administration because of their anticolonial views, the African intelligentsia used the press to articulate anticolonialism. The use of the indigenous press as a political platform can be divided into phases. The first period, from about the 1870s to the 1920s, can be conveniently described as reformist anticolonialism because the objective of the African intelligentsia was not to overthrow colonialism but to better it. They attacked colonialism for the following reasons: the lack of African representation on legislative councils, brutalization of Africans, forced labor, taxation, lack of educational opportunities, and indirect rule that allowed illiterate indigenous rulers to govern educated African intellectuals. In the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918), African intellectuals intensified their anticolonialist activities through the medium of the press. Several conditions help explain the revolutionary change in the African intelligentsia’s attitude toward colonialism at this time. First, after the war the colonial powers, especially France and Britain, systematically implemented vigorous colonial policies aimed at maximizing exploitation to make up for losses incurred during the war. Second, the forceful winds of the Pan-African movement reshaped the anticolonial perspective of intellectuals in Africa. Finally, social changes, especially in urban centers, fueled the anticolonial movement: Rapid population growth and urbanization provided mass support for the evolving anticolonial constituencies. The African intelligentsia also used societies, clubs, and associations as vehicles for the dissemination of anticolonialism. In 1912 South African blacks formed the South African Native National Congress. The congress became instrumental in challenging the Native Land Act of 1913, which had dispossessed Africans of their lands. In addition, the formation of the Gold Coast Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) in 1888 was directly associated with the colonial government’s effort to take over what it considered to be public lands. The ARPS campaigned in local newspapers, in particular the Gold Coast Methodist Times and the Gold Coast Aborigines, both in the late nineteenth century, and the Gold Coast Nation and the Gold Coast Leader during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Apart from various petitions issued by the ARPS, in 1898 the organization sent a delegation to England to meet directly with British officials. The delegates wanted the British government to address various problems of colonial rule, especially the Lands Bill. The delegation was successful because the British government’s Colonial Office asked the colonial government to abandon both the Lands Bill and the hut tax. In 1906 another delegation was sent to England under the auspices of the ARPS to demand the repeal of the Town Council 166

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Ordinance, though this time the Colonial Office did not grant the wishes of the ARPS. Apart from the questions relating to land that led to the formation of anticolonial associations, other exigencies of the colonial situation also resulted in the founding of clubs and associations. In Senegal, the Young Senegalese Club fought for better working conditions. In Malawi, the North Nyasa Native Association, founded in 1912, and the West Nyasa Native Association, established in 1914, agitated for better working conditions and educational reforms. The Egyptian pan-Islamist writer Shiekh Ali Yusuf founded the Hizb al-Islah al Dusturi (Constitutional Reformers) in 1907, while the intellectual Mustafa Kamil founded the Nationalist Party, also in 1907. Both organizations campaigned for the independence of Egypt. These political organizations, formed during the late nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, paved the way for the revolutionary nationalism that would emerge in the 1920s and would crystallize in the 1930s and 1940s into vigorous independence movements. Some of the political associations of the early decades of the twentieth century cut across colonial frontiers. The National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), for example, was founded in the Gold Coast by J. E. Casely Hayford in 1919 to 1920. Its membership was elitist, constituting mostly African intellectuals. The NCBWA, unlike earlier associations, had a regional base: it represented four English-speaking colonies—Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Gambia. Thus, by embracing several colonies, the organization combined the idea of national unions based on specific colonies with PanAfricanism. The NCBWA worked for political representation, the establishment of municipal corporations, and the promotion of higher education, among other things. The achievements of the NCBWA were long term rather than immediate. The NCBWA gained political concessions from colonial governments, including the Clifford Constitution of Nigeria (1922) and revised constitutions in Sierra Leone (1924) and Ghana (1925). The NCBWA also contributed to the formation of radical political parties: NCBWA leader Herbert McCauley formed the Nigerian National Democratic Party in 1923, while Wallace Johnson is credited with founding the West African Youth League in 1938. In the long term, the activities of the NCBWA radicalized the African intelligentsia’s stand against colonial rule. Pan-Africanism also served as an agency of anti-colonialism. It was a global movement, championed by various organizations and individuals who believed that all people of African descent shared a common identity and shared their struggles against the vestiges of slavery, racism, and colonialism. The 167

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proponents of the Pan-African movement included Liberian Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963) of the United States, the Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), and J. E. Casely Hayford of the Gold Coast (1866-1903). The aim was to bring all peoples of African descent together to discuss the inequalities facing Africans worldwide. A series of Pan-African congresses were held during the interwar years. The last conference, held in Manchester, England, in 1945, was attended by several future leaders of independent Africa, including Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) of Ghana. From the Pan-African movement grew a nationalist idea that empowered Africans to address colonialism. For example, in the course of the independence struggles in Africa, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, Nkrumah organized a series of Pan-African congresses in Accra, Ghana, aimed at empowering other African nationalist leaders to overthrow the colonial yoke. The changing landscape of colonial economies also provided opportunities for African anticolonialism. During the 1920s and 1930s, the import-export trade in Africa was dominated by expatriate firms. Due to the monopoly these firms exercised, they were able to dictate not only the prices of African cash crops, but also those of goods imported from Europe. The monopolization of commerce by expatriate traders and firms not only had an impact on local farmers, it also had adverse effects on the fortunes of African merchants, in particular, the great tradition of African merchant families, which had been crucial in the import-export trade since the precolonial period. This situation resulted in new forms of anticolonialism. Some African societies boycotted European goods and also refused to sell their cash crops to expatriate traders. For instance, in response to price-fixing by Europeans in 1921, rural Transkei women in South Africa boycotted European goods. Similarly, in Ghana a spate of boycotts of European goods and refusals to sell cash crops to expatriate firms occurred periodically from 1920 to 1937. This form of anticolonialism intensified during the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, when prices of cash crops fell sharply while those of imported goods increased astronomically. Indeed, the economic downturn in the 1920s and 1930s provided opportunities for rural peoples who had used armed resistance in the nineteenth century to stage boycotts and holdups in opposition to colonialism. During the same period, rural peoples increasingly teamed up with residents of urban areas to seek redress for injustices in the colonial economic systems. They objected to policies that resulted in rural communities receiving poor prices for their crops, while those living in urban areas experienced escalating costs of living due in part to increasing prices for imported goods.

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Trade unionism or organized labor formed another area of economic anticolonialism when African workers, both men and women, joined forces to demand better working conditions from their European employers. African laborers staged strikes and boycotts to support their demands. In 1890 workers on the Dakar-Saint Louis railway lines went on strike in Senegal. In 1891 Dahomian women working in the Cameroon also resorted to a strike. In Mozambique, a series of strikes organized by African employees of the Merchants Association in 1913, train workers in 1917, and railroad technicians in 1918 rocked the local economy. In South Africa, sewage and garbage collectors staged a strike in Johannesburg in 1917. In fact, throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and the postwar period, trade union activities formed a vital part of African anticolonialism. For example, railway workers’ strikes occurred in French West Africa in 1946 and 1947, and in Tunisia the colonial police killed thirty-two and wounded about two hundred Tunisian trade unionists who were agitating for labor reforms. Trade union activism was instrumental in the eventual decolonization of Africa. By resorting to demonstrations, boycotts, and strikes, trade unions were able to bring the injustices associated with the colonial system to the attention of a larger anticolonial audience. Additionally, their organizational abilities, which cut across class, religious, and ethnic lines, benefited the anticolonial movements. Most significantly, some of the leaders of the labor unions also assumed the leadership of revolutionary anticolonial movements. Both Siaka Stevens (1905-1988) of Sierra Leone and Sekou Toure (1922-1984) of Guinea were labor leaders who became leaders of their liberated countries. From about the 1930s forward, new kinds of political organizations emerged that were more forceful and revolutionary than those that existed in earlier decades. The new political parties were no longer interested in reforming the colonial system, but aimed to overthrow it. The New-Destour Party in Tunisia, founded by Habib Bourghiba in 1934; the Istiqlal (Independence) Party, founded in Morocco in the late 1930s; the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, launched in 1944; and Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, founded in Ghana in 1949, all championed anticolonialism. A rapid population growth beginning in about the 1930s provided mass support for the new political parties. In addition, the well-educated African middle class played an important role by rallying others to the cause of the independence movements. There was a considerable number of primary- and middle-school dropouts who had besieged urban centers in search of employment. Because of the inherent hardships and deprivations of urban settings, they latched on to the grand promises of anticolonial campaigners and offered their support for decolonization. 169

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Rapid urbanization during the colonial period created opportunities for interaction among different ethnic groups. Unlike the early period of resistance to colonial conquest, Africans on the eve of decolonization presented a formidable united front in their quest for decolonization. Furthermore, the return of African soldiers who participated in World War II brought new political insights to the decolonization movements. For example, in Ghana it was the revolutionary actions of the former servicemen in 1948 that contributed to popular discontent against the British colonial government. Overall, local anticolonial trends, which had developed in different forms in various places, reached fruition in the 1950s, enabling Africans to overthrow colonial rule.

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Post-World War II Anticolonial Resistance Several global developments in the aftermath of World War II paved the way for decolonization. In 1941 Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the British prime minister, and American president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) signed an agreement that became known as the Atlantic Charter. The agreement stipulated that at the end of the war, the Allied nations could determine their own political destinies. Roosevelt insisted that the agreement should be applied universally. As a result, African and Asian nationalists capitalized on the promise of the Atlantic Charter to argue for political independence. In addition, the two major colonial powers in Africa, France and Britain, had been weakened considerably by the war. Indeed, had it not been for assistance from the United States, their fortunes at the end of the war would have been worse. However, the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers that emerged after the war, were determined to dismantle colonialism in Africa. This development was enhanced during the ensuing Cold War, when the Soviet Union gave material and ideological support to African nationalists in their effort to gain independence. Furthermore, the creation of the United Nations in 1945 benefited anticolonialism. The human rights doctrine of the United Nations challenged the inequalities inherent in the colonial situation. More importantly, African and Asian countries used the forum of the General Assembly of the United Nations to articulate and internationalize their anticolonialism campaigns. Finally, the independence of Asian countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s served as a precedent for Africans. Thus, in the postwar period, a mixture of local and international events unleashed the powerful winds of anticolonialism in Africa that culminated in decolonization. Finally, actual decolonization took several forms. Nonsettler colonies like the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Nigeria used constitutional methods, sometimes 170

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marked by occasions of militancy and violence, to achieve decolonization. Ghana, for example, pursued decolonization through a constitutional process involving political parties, but there can be no doubt that the revolutionary actions of soldiers on February 28, 1948—the so-called 1948 Riots—constituted a major turning point in the country’s relentless march for independence. The “riots” started in Accra, the colonial capital, and were occasioned by two incidents. The first occurred when a British senior police officer ordered his men to open fire on unarmed former servicemen who were intent on marching to Osu Castle, the seat of the colonial government, to present a petition to the governor. The second event was a reaction to an anticipated nationwide drop in the prices of European goods that failed to materialize. The disturbances, which lasted seventeen days, resulted in the deaths of twenty-nine people, left 237 injured, and destroyed property estimated at two million British pounds. In this case, popular agitation forced the hand of the colonial government to grant political concessions. More significantly, the riots energized political parties to campaign for decolonization. This occurred on March 6, 1957, when Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party won the day. The decolonization period also witnessed armed resistance, which occurred in such settler colonies as Kenya, Algeria, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. In all cases, Africans took up arms against stubborn colonial regimes that were bent on staying put. Unlike Ghana and other nonsettler colonies, the main issue of contention in the settler colonies was land. For this reason, much of the revolutionary fervor that underscored the movement for independence came from landless peasants, such as the Mau Mau in Kenya, who rebelled in the 1950s. The cost was enormous because the Europeans in Africa—for example, the Portuguese in Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, the British in Kenya, and the French in Algeria—resorted to extreme measures, such as aerial warfare, to suppress African resistance. In Algeria, about one million Africans were killed. Although the futility of resistance loomed, Africa’s settler colonies eventually won independence, but only after protracted, costly wars with the European colonizers. In 1951 the South African government introduced a new law called the Bantu Authorities Act enabling it to control chiefs in rural areas. Chiefs were no longer accountable to their own people but to the government. The people began to see their chiefs as collaborators with the government who were no longer listening to their problems. In Pondoland and Tembuland people attacked chiefs who collaborated with the apartheid government and created their own traditional local assemblies to reject the Bantu Authorities Act. The 1958 Sekhukhuneland revolt did not attempt to overthrow the colonial government. The aim of the revolt was to protect the land of the Pedi from 171

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being taking away by the government and thus safeguard the integrity of the Pedi kingdom. Migrant workers attacked people suspected of collaborating with the government. Great changes were taking place in the immediate post war period. European colonies in Asia demanded and earned independence from Europe. Of particular importance was the independence of India and Pakistan from Britain in 1947. Many Africans looked at India as an example of what was politically possible for their own countries. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, new mass-based political parties were formed in almost every African colony. Unlike earlier political organizations, these parties were not restricted to the educated elite. They wanted and needed mass support for their cause. The cause went beyond the demand for more opportunity and an end of discrimination. The central demand was for political freedom, for end of colonial rule! Libya (1951) and Egypt (1952) were the first African nations to gain independence. Ghana (Gold Coast) in 1957 was the first country south of the Sahara to become independence. 1960 was the big year for African independence. Fourteen African countries gained their independence in 1960. By 1966, all but six African countries were independent nation-states. Most of the countries that won their independence by 1966, the struggle was mainly nonviolent. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the six remaining African colonies (Year they gained independence in parenthesis); Angola (1976), Guinea-Bissau/ Cape Verde(1975), Mozambique (1975), Namibia (South West Africa) (1990), South Africa (1994), and Zimbabwe (1980). All of which gained their independence only after years of active rebellion.

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Conclusion African anticolonialism began with efforts to safeguard African independence and ways of life. By the early 1900s, armed resistance had failed, but Africans continued their anticolonial efforts by using other methods. Indeed, by the early 1900s the indigenous press had become an invaluable tool for anticolonialists. The trend was fueled by the political changes ushered in by the Pan-African movement. The African intelligentsia thus moved their stake from reform activism to revolutionary anticolonialism. From about the second decade of the twentieth century, the colonial powers vigorously implemented administrative policies that had an impact on Africans. Economic exploitation nursed an alliance between the African intelligentsia and the native chiefs, as well as between rural and urban Africans. During the interwar years, the activities of Pan-Africanists and the formation of viable political parties served to question the essence of colonialism. In addition, rapid population growth, urbanization, and educational attainments before World 172

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War II engendered mass support for nationalist parties. Finally, the effects of World War II propelled the forces of African anticolonialism and nationalism to greater heights by placing Africans on the pathways of eventual decolonization.

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References Ajayi, J. F. Ade. (1968). “The Continuity of African Institutions under Colonialism.” In Emerging Themes of African History, ed. Terence O. Ranger. London: Heinemann Educational. Ajayi, J. F Ade. (1969). “Colonialism: An Episode in African History.” In Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960, Vol. 1, ed. Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan. London: Cambridge University Press. Arendt, Hannah. (2004). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Schocken. Aveneri, Schlomo, ed. (1968). Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Boahen, A. Adu, ed. (1985). UNESCO General History of Africa: Africa under Colonial Domination. Berkeley: University of California Press. Boahen, A. Adu, ed. (1985). Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880-1935. UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. 7. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cain, P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. (1997). British Imperialism, 1688-2000, 2nd edition. London: Longman, 2003. Cain, P. J., and A. G. (1993). Hopkins. British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914. London: Longman. Clarence-Smith, William G. (1979). Slaves, Peasants, and Capitalists in Southern Angola, 1840-1926. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. From Revelation to Revolution. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Conklin, Alice. (1997). A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cooper, Frederick. (1996). Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, Frederick. (1997). Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cooper, Frederick. (2002). Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. (2001). Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies concessionnaires, 1898-1930, 2 vols. Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. 173

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Crowder, Michael. (1978). Colonial West Africa. London: K Cass. Curtin, P., S. Feierman, L. Thompson, and J. Vansina. (1995). African History: From Earliest Times to Independence. London: Longman. Engels, D., and S. Marks (eds.). (1994). Contesting Colonial Hegemony. State and Society in Africa and India. London: German Historical Institute/British Academic Press. Flint, John E. (1960). Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria. London: Oxford University Press. Galbraith, John S. (1972). Mackinnon and East Africa, 1878-1895; A Study in the “New Imperialism.” Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Gann, Lewis H., and Peter Duignan. (1967). Burden of Empire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism in Africa South of the Sahara. New York: Praeger. Gann, Lewis H., and Peter Duignan. Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960. 5 vols. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969-1975. See Vol. 1: The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1870-1914, and Vol. 4: The Economics of Colonialism. Gründer, Horst. (1985). Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. Paderborn, Germany: Schóningh. Hargreaves, J. D. (1963). Prelude to the Partition of West Africa. London: Macmillan. Hargreaves, J. D. (1974). West Africa Partitioned, Vol. 1: The Loaded Pause, 18851889. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Haynes, Jeff. (1996). Religion and Politics in Africa. London: Zed/ Nairobi: East African Educational. Hobsbawm, Eric. (1987). The Age of Empire. NY: Pantheon Books Hobson, J.A. (2005). Imperialism, A Study. Cosimo Classics. Hobson, J. A. (1975). Imperialism: A Study. New York: Garden Press. Hochschild, Adam King. (1998). Léopold’s Ghost. Boston and New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin. Lenin, V. I. (1969). Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers. Lugard, Frederick Dealtry. (1965). The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 5th edition. Hamden, C. Marseille, Jacques. (1984). Empire colonial et capitalisme français: Histoire d’un divorce. Paris: Albin Michel. Mazrui, Ali, ed. (1993). UNESCO General History of Africa: Africa since 1935. Berkeley: University of California Press. McKittrick, Meredith. (2002). To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Merlier, Michel. (1962). Le Congo, de la colonisation belge à l’independence. Paris: F. Maspero.

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Newitt, Malyn D. D. (1981). Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Tears. London: Longman. Owen, Roger, and Bob Sutcliffe, eds. (1972). Studies in the Theory of Imperialism. London: Longman. Pakenham, Thomas. (1991). The Scramble for Africa, 1876-1912. New York: Longman. Perham, Margery. (1962). The Colonial Reckoning. New York: Knopf. Roberts, Andrew, ed. (1990). The Colonial Moment in Africa: Essays on the Movement of Minds and Materials, 1900-1940.Cambridge, U.K. Cambridge University Press. Robinson, Ronald, and John Gallagher. (1961). Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Rodney, Walter. (1972). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: BogleL’Ouverture. Rotberg, Robert I. (1988). The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power. New York: Oxford University Press. Said, Edward W. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf. Stora, Benjamin. (2001). Algeria 1830-2000: A Short History. Trans, by Jane Marie Todd. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Thomas, Lynn. (2003). Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Chapter 5 Africa: Legacies of Old Colonial Age of Empire

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Overview The Old Colonial Age of Empire stretched from 1450-1950. It was an epoch of slavery, racism, colonialism, imperialism and resistance. These systems of slavery, patriarchy, capitalism, old colonization, and imperialism were based on a system of European power and dominance. These types of systems governed the way African societies lived and were treated on the ground. The enslaved, colonized and exploited resisted these evils. And, they were offered the abolition of slave trade and slavery, decolonized. But, something escaped societal memory. In other words, there are two major ways that Africans were duped into seeing ‘The changing of the masks’ as social progress: a) By not understanding that every successful nonviolent movement had a violent counterpart that was crucial to the success of the overall struggle; and, b) By not understanding the way that oppression simply changes forms, methods, and definitions while maintaining or increasing the actual level of oppressive violence. Without doubt, colonial governments brought roads, railroads, ports, new technology, and other benefits to Africa. However, their policies also damaged traditional economies and dramatically changed patterns of land ownership and labor. Although the colonial system provided opportunities—such as education, jobs, and new markets for goods—for some Africans, it left many people poor and landless. In addition, the emphasis on cash crops raised for export made African societies dependent on foreign nations. Little was done to develop trade between colonies. As a result, many African nations still trade more with overseas countries than with neighboring states. Colonial rule disrupted the traditional political and social institutions that had developed in Africa over centuries. As Europeans carved out empires, they destroyed existing kingdoms and split up or combined many ethnic groups. In time, the colonies they created became African nations consisting of diverse groups with little in common with their fellow citizens. Furthermore, European powers destroyed much of the political and social control of traditional African chiefs and rulers. They failed, however, to establish lasting replacements for these authorities. Finally, European colonialism introduced Africans to various aspects of Western culture. African schools and universities are based on European systems of education and religion. But other parts of Western culture 177

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have not taken root as firmly. The impact of colonialism varied somewhat with each European power. Moreover, some governments used various approaches from one colony to the next. The handful of European nations that dominated Africa—Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain— developed different sets of policies for their colonial possessions.

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Introduction The term legacy can be defined in various ways according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The definition that will allow a better understanding of the topic of this chapter, defines legacy as anything that is handed down by an ancestor (OED Online-legacy). The era of globalization began in 1415 with the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta (contemporary Morocco), which resulted in the first enduring overseas European colony. In subsequent centuries, AngloEuropeans and Japanese managed to control, at various times, virtually the entire inhabitable planet. Only a few nations escaped direct control of these colonial powers. None escaped their spheres of influence. The goal of the Colonialism and Its Legacies is to marry the virtues of case study and crossnational approaches so that the influence of colonialism on the modern world can be measured in ways that are satisfying to scholars working with in-depth historical studies as well as global datasets. The project aims to develop a comprehensive, cross-national time-series study of Anglo-European and Japanese colonization that should stimulate future research concerning the causes and effects of colonialism by scholars in all fields of the social sciences— regardless of method, theoretical framework, or area of interest. Despite extensive study, the academic world has yet to render a clear verdict on colonialism’s legacy. Persistent methodological problems associated with dominant research strategies contribute to the lack of clear conclusions in the field. The dominant case study approach is informative, but unsystematic. By contrast, the cross-national approach is systematic, but it generally flattens what should be a multidimensional analysis. Despite its ubiquity in the contemporary fields of anthropology, economics, history, political science, and sociology, the subject of colonialism is rarely studied in a detailed and systematic manner. Without a comprehensive historical dataset, scholars lack the means to adjudicate among causal hypotheses. What has colonialism wrought? Under what circumstances might colonialism leave favorable or unfavorable legacies? How shall we understand the immense variety of colonial experiences? How might the various eras of globalization be compared with each other? Such questions are among those addressed by the Colonialism and Its Legacies project on Africa. 178

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It has become commonplace to observe that the colonial experience shaped the modern era in profound ways. Colonial policies and practices are widely blamed for the underdevelopment of the South, the absence of significant industrialization, ethnic strife, weak state capacity, authoritarian rule, weak national identity, diffuse and porous borders, hunger, illiteracy, and corruption. Interestingly, colonialism is also sometimes praised for furthering social, political, and economic development in the South. Indeed, it is a central issue of dispute in the scholarly community whether colonialism fostered, or delayed, the development of the regions that it touched. Africa provides a stunning example of these directly contradictory arguments. Conventionally, Africa’s developmental prospects were thought to have been hindered by colonial interference (Young, 1994). Yet, the striking fact is that Africa experienced considerably less colonial intervention than most parts of the world. This has led some writers to claim, at least implicitly, that Africa’s problems at the present time are attributable to insufficient colonial influence (Herbst, 2000; Mamdani, 1996). In short, while there is general agreement that “colonialism mattered,” it is less clear what the long-term effects of this traumatic intervention actually have been. Indeed, the virulence of scholarly and popular opinions about colonialism is matched only by the inconclusiveness of current research (contrast Alam, 2000 and Grier, 1999). Given that colonialism is a complex subject and evokes strong feelings it is perhaps not surprising that the extensive study devoted to this weathered subject across the fields of the social sciences has not rendered a clear verdict on its legacies. However, there are undeniable lasting legacies of the Old Colonial age of Empire on Africa– which we now briefly review. The Transatlantic Slave Trade left an enduring impact on Africa, the Americas and Europe, indeed in many respects it had a global impact. The Trade and Atlantic slavery in general, had a major influence on the development of capitalism, an economic and political system that developed first in Europe and then spread throughout the world Britain’s industrial revolution was principally spearheaded by the production of textiles, and much of the raw cotton for this important industry was produced by slave labor in the United States. Even after Britain had abolished the slave trade and slavery, profits continued to flow in to Britain from investments in the slave trade and slavery maintained by other countries, including the United States, Cuba and Brazil. In the 19th century the economic interests of European colonial powers actually led to even more interference in Africa’s affairs even after the official abolition of the slave trade. By the end of that century the rivalry between the major European colonial powers culminated in the ‘Scramble for Africa’. All the major colonial powers invaded the African continent and established colonial rule. By 1914 only two 179

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countries, Liberia and Ethiopia, remained independent. There is the relationship of dependency that had developed during the period of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that continued much to the detriment of Africa. It is clear that Africa lost many millions of its population. Africa also became increasingly tied to the economies of Europe so some of the continent’s economic independence was lost. This was followed by the loss of political independence during the colonial period. Africa’s ability to develop independently was severely hampered both by the impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and by colonial rule. Even after the end of colonial rule, Africa remains impoverished, debt-ridden and dependent and largely dominated by the major powers in the center-periphery asymmetrical relationship. Another major legacy of this period was the enduring nature of racism and Eurocentrism. In many countries such as the United States enacted laws which gave legal sanction to discrimination against those of African descent, and even in Britain there were no laws against racism until 1965. Colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean was openly based on the racist view that Africans and those of African descent could not govern themselves, as was the openly racist system of apartheid in South Africa. During the 20th century great victories against racism were achieved, for example as a result of the civil Rights movement in the United States, but racism and racist violence still exist in many countries throughout the world today.

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The Basic Division Capitalism is an economic system based on the exploitation of the many by the few. Because of the gross inequality it produces, capitalism relies on various political, social, and ideological tools to rationalize that inequality while simultaneously dividing the majority, who have every interest in uniting to resist it. How did and does the one percent maintain its disproportionate control of the wealth and resources in American society, for instance? By a process of divide and rule. Racism is only one among many oppressive legacies intended to serve this purpose. For example, American racism developed as a justification for the enslavement of Africans at a time when the world was celebrating the concepts of liberty, freedom, and self-determination. The dehumanization and subjection of black people had to be rationalized in this moment of new political possibilities. But the central objective was preserving the institution of slavery and the enormous riches that it produced. As Marx recognized:

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Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.

Marx also identified the centrality of African slave labor to the genesis of capitalism when he wrote that,

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the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of Black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.

The labor needs of capital alone could explain how racism functioned under capitalism. The literal dehumanization of Africans for the sake of labor was used to justify their harsh treatment and their debased status in the United States. This dehumanization did not simply end when slavery was abolished; instead, the mark of inferiority branded onto black skin carried over into Emancipation and laid the basis for the second-class citizenship African Americans experienced for close to a hundred years after slavery. The debasement of blacks also made African Americans more vulnerable to economic coercion and manipulation—not just “anti-blackness.” Coercion and manipulation were rooted in the evolving economic demands of capital, but their impact rippled far beyond the economic realm. Black people were stripped of their right to vote, subjected to wanton violence, and locked into menial and poorly paid labor. This was the political economy of American racism. There was another consequence of racism and the marking of blacks. African Americans were so thoroughly banished from political, civil, and social life that it was virtually impossible for the vast majority of poor and workingclass whites to even conceive of uniting with blacks to challenge the rule and authority of the ruling white clique. Marx recognized this basic division within the working class when he observed, “In the United States of America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the Black it is branded.” Marx grasped the modern dynamics of racism as the means by which workers who had common objective interests could also become mortal enemies because of subjective — but nevertheless real — racist and nationalist ideas. Looking at the tensions between Irish and English workers, Marx wrote: 181

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Every industrial and commercial center in England possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland. This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it.

For socialists in the United States, recognizing the centrality of racism in dividing the class that has the actual power to undo capitalism has typically meant that socialists have been heavily involved in campaigns and social movements to end racism. But within the socialist tradition, many have also argued that because African Americans and most other nonwhites are disproportionately poor and working class, campaigns aimed at ending economic inequality alone would stop their oppression. This stance ignores how racism constitutes its own basis for oppression for nonwhite people. Ordinary blacks and other nonwhite minorities are oppressed not only because of their poverty, but also because of their racial or ethnic identities. There is also no direct correlation between economic expansion or improved economic conditions and a decrease in racial inequality. In reality, racial discrimination often prevents African Americans and others from fully accessing the fruits of economic expansion. After all, the black insurgency of the 1960s coincided with the robust and thriving economy of the 1960s — black people were rebelling because they were locked out of American affluence. Looking at racism as only a byproduct of economic inequality ignores the ways that racism exists as an independent force that wreaks havoc in the lives of all African Americans. The struggle against racism regularly intersects with struggles for economic equality, but racism does not only express itself over economic questions. Antiracist struggles also take place in response to the social crises black communities experience, including struggles against racial profiling, police brutality, housing, health care, educational inequality, and mass incarceration and other aspects of the “criminal justice” system. These fights against racial inequality are critical, both for improving the lives of African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities in the here-andnow; and for demonstrating to ordinary white people the destructive impact of racism in the lives of nonwhite people. Winning ordinary whites to an antiracist program is a key component in building a genuine, unified mass movement capable of challenging capital. Unity cannot be achieved by suggesting that black 182

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people should downplay the role of racism in society so as not to alienate whites — while only focusing on the “more important” struggle against economic inequality.

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European Development versus African Underdevelopment One of the main objectives of colonialism and its twin imperialism was to exploit their African colonies and their inhabitants to generate economic wealth for the mother country and her corporations. As a result, large numbers of people were forced into slavery or the system of indentured laborers, and vast areas of natural habitats were cleared and converted to monocultural plantations. Another impact of imperialism was the export of Western values resource exploitation, consumerism and materialism to the colonies. In the meantime, the Enlightenment began to shift West societies towards values such as democracy, independent judiciary, free press and escape from religious tyranny. These, when well developed, offer checks and balances against excessive concentration of power and corruption, and some safeguards against environmental predation. After the colonies gained independence, the newly independent citizens uncritically embraced most of the negative values and have vigorously continued the practices of their early colonial masters. As a result, in the former colonies, the environment, especially natural habitats and their species, is being destroyed at a scale that is unprecedented in history. The causal significance of colonial legacies varies, in that they affect subsequent freedom of maneuver to different extents and in different directions. At its strongest, colonial legacy takes the form of “path determination.” This path determination implies that colonial choices determined post-colonial ones, or at least conditioned them, such that departure from the colonial pattern was, and perhaps remains, difficult and costly. Besides asking about the strength of the influence of the past on the future, we need to consider the nature of that influence. Did colonial rule put African countries on a higher or lower path of economic change? I will argued here that the ‘path(s)’ on which African economies were (to a greater or lesser extent) set by the time of independence are most usefully seen as necessarily initiated in the colonial period. They were not continuations and adjustments from paths of communal economic change established before the European partition of the continent. Colonial capitalism integrated Africa into the Global Economy asymmetrically. The economic reasons are: • Demand for Raw Materials: As you may have learned from your studying Europe, in the 19th century, Europe experienced the industrial revolution. Industrial production, like all modes of 183

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•

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•

production, requires human resources, capital resources, and natural resources. There was no shortage of labor in Europe. Two centuries of trade with Asia, the Americas, and Africa (including the Atlantic Slave Trade) had brought great profits to European traders. These profits provided the capital necessary to finance the industrial revolution. However, most of Europe was resource poor. Consequently, European industries were dependent on raw materials from Asia, the Americas, and Africa. For example, one of the earliest industries in Europe was the cotton textile industry, which helped stimulate the industrial revolution. This industry was completely dependent on imported cotton. As industrialization grew and spread throughout Europe, competition for raw materials increased. Consequently, some European industrialists encouraged their governments to colonize African countries as a method of guaranteeing sources of raw materials. Need for Markets: By the late 19th century, the industries in Europe were producing more industrial goods than Europeans could consume. Consequently, industrialists sought markets for their goods around the world. As competition between industries for markets grew, industrialists encouraged their governments to undertake colonization of Africa in order to protect markets for their industrial goods. Commerce, Christianity, Civilization: Some historians argue that one of the most important economic reasons for colonization was the belief by some Europeans, particularly missionaries, that the development of trade and commerce in Africa was an essential component to the restitution of “civilization” in Africa. Today, historians reject this ethnocentric conception of civilization, but many Europeans of the period felt that Africa was not “civilized”. They believed that trade and commerce, along with introduction of Christianity, were key to development in Africa. Christian mission societies and other advocates of this position pushed European governments to colonize Africa and thereby provide a supportive environment for the expansion of commerce.

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Colonial Economic Connection between Europe and Africa

The Scramble for Africa took place between 1886 and 1914. During this time, European countries colonized all of Africa, with the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia. As is shown the following map, Britain, France, and Portugal were the main colonial powers in Africa, but Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain also had colonies. Establishing political control, or sovereignty, over their colonies was the primary objective of the colonial powers in the early years of colonialism. The colonial powers used a combination of warfare, threat of force, and treaty making with African rulers in their efforts to gain political control of African colonies. Once political control was realized and institutions of governance were in place, economics became the main concern of the colonial governments. Europe experienced an economic depression at the end of the 19th century; consequently, the colonial powers felt that they had no money to spend on political administration, social programs, or economic development in their colonies. They were adamant that the colonies should pay for themselves. The colonial administration in each colony was charged with raising the revenue necessary to pay for all expenses, including the colonial army and police force.

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Given the great geographic diversity of Africa in terms of natural resources, climate, vegetation, topography, and precipitation, there was no uniform model that the colonial powers used to raise revenue throughout Africa. In the same way that economic activity in the early 20th century varied throughout Europe and in the United States, economic activity in Africa was just as diverse. Within this diversity, economic historians of Africa have identified five modes of economic activity and revenue generation in colonial Africa  Mineral Exploitation: Africa is a continent rich in mineral resources. In colonies where there were large deposits of minerals, colonial governments encouraged the exploitation of the minerals. Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and the Belgian Congo (Congo) are examples of colonies whose economies were dominated by copper production. In these colonies, colonial governments initiated policies that forced some African farmers to leave their homes to become mine workers.

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 Large Scale Agricultural Production: In colonies in East and Southern Africa that had climates attractive to European settlers, the primary colonial economic activity and revenue generation was large scale farms owned by Europeans. Examples include Angola (coffee), Kenya (coffee, tea), and Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (tobacco, beef). In this system, European settler farmers needed land and labor. To meet these needs, the colonial governments instituted unpopular policies that removed good farm land from the local population and forced some local men to work as laborers on European controlled farms.  Small Scale Agricultural Production: Most African colonies had neither large deposits of minerals, nor the environment to encourage European settlement. In these colonies, the colonial governments actively encouraged farmers to grow special cash crops that would be exported to raise revenues. Cash crops included food crops such as groundnuts/peanuts (Senegal, Nigeria), coffee (Tanganyika, Rwanda, Uganda), cocoa (Ghana, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire) and non-food crops, such as cotton (Mali, Niger, Sudan) and tobacco (Malawi).  Supply of Labor: Parts of some African colonies were poor in natural resources. In these situations, the colonial regimes instituted policies that strongly encouraged able bodied men to leave their homes and migrate either to distant areas within the same colony or to neighboring colonies where they worked in mines or on large farms. Mine owners and commercial farmers paid a recruitment fee to the colonial government of the worker’s home country. For example, in Southern Africa the colonies of Bechuanaland (Botswana), Basotholand (Lesotho), Swaziland, and parts of Mozambique and Malawi became labor reservoirs for the mines and large farms of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and South Africa.  Mixed Economies: Most colonial economies in Africa are called monoeconomies by economists. This indicates that the colonial economies were dependent on mining, settler agriculture, or the small scale production of a single cash crop. There were a few exceptions to this trend. By the end of colonialism in South Africa (1994), the country had a very vibrant and diversified economy boasting mineral, agricultural, and manufacturing industries, and an advanced commerce sector. Another example of a mixed economy is Nigeria. In the 1950s, the last decade before independence, the discovery of large reserve of petroleum helped diversify an agriculturally based economy.

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Primary Revenue Generating Products during Colonial Era

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Source: http: //science.jrank.org/pages/8696/Colonialism-Africa-Dependent-ColonialCapitalism.html#ixzz4nwxcCFNJ

Indeed, African colonial economies were all expected to provide raw materials and markets for the imperial economies and to be financially selfsupporting. The colonial economy was characteristically export-oriented and monocultural and suffered from uneven productivity between sectors and outside domination in terms of markets, technology, and capital. It developed in three phases: first, the period up to World War I, when coercion—forced labor, cultivation, and taxation—predominated; second, the interwar years, characterized by regulation of the colonial economy and the disruptions of the Great Depression, which exposed its vulnerabilities and fostered new economic policies of development planning; and third, the post–World War II period,

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when “colonial development and welfare” policies took hold, characterized by increased state intervention and investment in “economic development.” Economic Legacy of the Post- European Contact

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The first significant interaction between Europe and Africa was in 1415 with voyages sponsored by Henry the Navigator of Portugal to establish trade for gold in West Africa. This introduction to foreign trade was the beginning of the movement of trade to the coast creating pockets of influence in these areas. At this time the Portuguese still viewed the Africans on a somewhat level playing field as “different but equal.” However, when other European countries began entering Africa, the Portuguese were pushed out and the relationship between shifted. When considering the foundation of economic dependency in Africa, the one crop economic system set up in many of the colonies for the express benefit of their European colonizers is the source of the problem. Nevertheless, the first one crop economy can be seen even before the official establishment of colonies and the direct control of African economy. In retrospect, the slave trade, beginning in the mid to late 17th century, became so pervasive throughout Africa that it drove out almost all other commodities in African trade. Not only did it become the center of the economy, but it also depopulated the country while displacing others. The export of the African labor force was for the express purpose of profit on the part of the European countries. With the industrial revolution and slave revolts, there was no longer profit to be gained from the slave trade so in 1807 the slave trade was abolished in favor of legitimate commerce and a new economic role for Africa. “In fact, the new trade patterns, European exploration, missions, technological advances, and other outside factors are evidence of the intensification of European influence on the exploitation of the continent, and a preclude to colonialism.” Effect on African Economy I will start by clarifying the existential situation. In other words, to evaluate the colonial legacy, we need to distinguish it from the situation and trends at the beginning of colonial rule, which in most of Sub-Saharan Africa occurred during the European “Scramble”, from 1879 to circa 1905. At that time the region was, as before, characterized generally (not everywhere all the time) by an abundance of cultivable land in relation to the labor available to till it (Hopkins 1973; Austin 2008a). This did not mean “resource abundance” as much of Africa’s mineral endowment was either unknown or inaccessible with pre-industrial technology 189

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or was not yet valuable even overseas. For example, many of the major discoveries (notably of oil in Nigeria and diamonds in Botswana) were to occur only during the period of decolonization. After the detrimental European contact of the Slave trade, which robbed Africa of millions of people, the colonization period of the 19th and 20th centuries cemented a legacy of economic exploitation in Africa, which many countries are still reeling from today. “The aim of colonialism [was] to exploit the physical, human, and economic resources of an area to benefit the colonizing nation. European powers pursued this goal by encouraging the development of a commodity based trading system, a cash crop agriculture system, and by building a trade network linking the total economic output of a region to the demands of the colonizing state.” The linking of the total economic output of a region to its colonizing state often resulted in mono-crop economies. Countries like Egypt, Sudan, Mali, and the Congo were responsible for the production of raw goods such as: cotton, peanuts, coffee, and rubber. These were then transported to the European nations in charge of the respective countries. Due to the nature of the relationship between colonizer and colonized, these Western powers wanted to pay as little as possible for the goods that were being produced, essentially skewing individual countries’ economies to simply meet their population’s demands overseas. The ramifications of this for the African populations were that: food shortages and starvation became commonplace, and various other crops were not able to be in rotation, as monocrop economies are extremely detrimental to the soil as nutrients are constantly being extracted, and never replenished.

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The above image is a picture of two Congolese men standing next to drying rubber, the main export of the Congo, in the late 19th to mid-20th century. An extremely cruel and exploitative system, “large numbers of men were worked to death, as Leopold’s ad hoc army raped and starved their wives to make them work harder to collect wild rubber…the harsh and appalling labor conditions under Leopold II reduced the population of the Congo by about 73 percent.” However, much like other nations, since the economy was structured around a mono-crop, rubber, once Belgium began to divest from the region, the nation’s economy suffered tremendously. Even today, the Congolese population still suffers from the exploitation of their natural resources by foreign entities. As recently as 2015, the case of a British oil company attempting to begin production in a protected national park was brought to the public light. Since the colonial age of empire, the countries of the world have been divided into two major world regions - the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery are those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization like African countries. The basic principle of the ‘Core-Periphery’ theory is that as general prosperity grows worldwide, the majority of that growth is enjoyed by a ‘core’ region of wealthy countries despite being severely outnumbered in population by those in a ‘periphery’ that are ignored. There are many reasons why this global structure has formed, but generally there are many barriers, physical and political, that prevent the poorer citizens of the world from participating in global relations. The disparity of wealth between core and periphery countries is staggering, with 15% of the global population enjoying 75% of the world’s annual income.

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The Core

The ‘core’ consists of Europe (excluding Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Israel. Within this region is where most of the positive characteristics of globalization typically occur: transnational links, modern development (i.e. higher wages, access to healthcare, adequate food/water/shelter), scientific innovation, and increasing economic prosperity. These countries also tend to be highly industrialized and have a rapidly-growing service (tertiary) sector. The top twenty countries ranked by the United Nations Human Development Index are all in the core. The opportunities created by these advantages perpetuate a world driven by individuals in the core. People in positions of power and influence around the

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world are often brought up or educated in the core (nearly 90% of world ‘leaders’ have a degree from a Western university). The Periphery The ‘periphery’ consists of the countries in the rest of the world: Africa, South America, Asia (excluding Japan and South Korea), and Russia and many of its neighbors. Although some parts of this area exhibit positive development (especially Pacific Rim locations in China), it is generally characterized by extreme poverty and a low standard of living. Health care is non-existent in many places, there is less access to potable water than in the industrialized core, and poor infrastructure engenders slum conditions. Many people living in rural areas perceive opportunities in cities and take action to migrate there, even though there are not enough jobs or housing to support them. Over one billion people now live in slum conditions, and the majority of population growth around the world is occurring in the periphery. The rural-to-urban migration and high birth rates of the periphery are creating both megacities, urban areas with over 8 million people, and hypercities, urban areas with over 20 million people. These cities, such as Mexico City or Manila, have little infrastructure and feature rampant crime, massive unemployment, and a huge informal sector.

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Core-Periphery Roots in Colonialism One idea for how this world structure came about is called the dependency theory. The basic idea behind this is that capitalist countries have exploited the periphery through colonialism and imperialism in the past few centuries. Essentially, raw materials were extracted from the periphery through slave labor, sold to core countries where they would be consumed or manufactured, and then sold back to the periphery. Advocates of this theory believe that the damage done by centuries of exploitation have left these countries so far behind that it is impossible for them to compete in the global market. Industrialized nations also played a key role in establishing political regimes during post-war reconstruction. English and the Romance languages remain the state languages for many non-European countries long after their foreign colonists have packed up and gone home. This makes it difficult for anyone brought up speaking a local language to assert him or herself in a Eurocentric world. Also, public policy formed by Western ideas may not provide the best solutions for non-Western countries and their problems. 192

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Core-Periphery in Conflict There are a number of locations that represent the physical separation between the core and periphery. Here are a few: • • •

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•

The growing fence between the U.S. (core) and Mexico (periphery) to prevent the entrance of unauthorized immigrants. The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Air and naval patrols on the waters between Australia and Southeast Asia and between the EU and North Africa to keep out unwanted immigrants. The UN-enforced border separating the Turkish north and Greek south of Cyprus, known as the Green Line.

The core-periphery model is not limited to a global scale, either. Stark contrasts in wages, opportunities, access to health care, etc. among a local or national population are commonplace. The United States, the quintessential beacon for equality, exhibits some of the most obvious examples. U.S. Census Bureau data estimated that the top 5% of wage earners made up roughly onethird of all US income in 2005. For a local perspective, witness the slums of Anacostia whose impoverished citizens live a stone’s throw from the grand marble monuments that represent the power and affluence of the Washington D.C.’s central downtown. In sum, while the world may be metaphorically shrinking for the minority in the core, for the majority in the African periphery, for instance, the world maintains a rough and limiting geography. Colonial rule in Africa was intended to be cheap, viz. for taxpayers in Europe. The British doctrine was that each colony should be fiscally selfsupporting. Thus, any growth in government expenditure was supposed to be financed from higher revenues, as it was in Ghana in the 1920s when Governor Guggisberg was able to fund the creation of what became the country’s bestknown hospital and school, as well as a new harbor and more railways and roads, from customs proceeds that had been fueled by the colony’s increasing exports of cocoa beans. In practice the French were equally committed to covering costs. In French West Africa too there was a major program of public works in the 1920s, although, as also in Ghana, within a few years expenditure had to be curtailed when export prices fell and the growth of revenue ended (Hopkins 1973: 190). In the case of Francophone Africa, colonialism is an enduring stain in the continent’s history and economic oppression continues to exist. An article by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, peace activist and editor of SiliconAfrica.com 193

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addressed this practice. He points out how when Guinea demanded independence from French colonial rule in 1958, the French unleashed their fury with more than 3,000 leaving the country taking their entire property. In addition, they destroyed anything that couldn’t be taken – destroying schools, nurseries, public administration buildings, cars, books, medicine, and research institute instruments, crushing tractors and sabotaging others, killing animals and burning food in warehouses or poisoning it. In effect they were sending a message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be high. After the French destroyed Guinea who had sought independence, the alternative was to pay a tax. No African country could estimate the effect this had on 14 different countries. The article called attention to an ongoing practice by which former French African countries are forced to pay a colonial tax to France – even today. In fact, France continues to thrive on the practice, which extracts approximately 500 billion US dollars from African countries each year. As Koutonin notes, this outrageous tax deprives African economies of much needed funds, exacerbates debt, and strips their authority over their own natural reserves. But the detriments are more than just economic, as the ills of colonialism manifest in social ways that are equally devastating to the dignity and identity of the African people: ‘Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of the Republic of Togo, instead of signing the colonisation continuation pact with De Gaulle, instead agreed to pay an annual debt to France for the so called benefits of French colonization. This prevented the French not destroying the country before they left however the amount estimated by France was so big that the reimbursement of the so called “colonial debt” was close to 40% of the country budget in 1963. Olympio’s dream was to build an independent and self-sufficient and self-reliant country but the French had him killed by a sergeant who was given a $612 bounty by the French embassy. History has shown that despite years of Africans fighting to liberate themselves, France repeatedly used many ex-Foreign legionnaires to carry out coups against elected presidents. This included Jean-Bedel Bokassa who assassinated David Dacko, the first President of the Central African Republic. In the last 50 years, a total of 67 coups occurred in 26 African countries, of which 16 are ex-French colonies. This indicates that France is desperate to hold on to whatever land it has in Africa. In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said: “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power” and that Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterrand already prophesied in 1957 that:

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“Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”.

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Colonial Tax in the Billions As of January 2014, 14 African countries are obliged by France, through a colonial pact, to put 85% of their foreign reserves into France’s central bank under French minister of Finance control. They are effectively putting in 500 Billion dollars every year to the French treasury. African leaders who refuse are killed or victim of coup. Those who obey are supported and rewarded by France with lavish lifestyle while their people endure extreme poverty, and desperation. There are a number of components of the colonization pact that has been in effect since the 1950’s. The main points being that the African countries should deposit their national monetary reserves in the France Central Bank. France has been holding the national reserves of fourteen African countries since 1961: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Despite the two main African banks having African names, they have no monetary policies of their own. In fact France allows them to access only 15% of the money in any given year. If there is need for any more, they need to borrow the extra money from their own 65% from the French Treasury at commercial rates. The pact also included clauses that Africa had an obligation to make French the official language of the country and the language for education and an obligation to use France colonial money FCFA (the Nordic countries tried unsuccessfully to get rid of this system when they discovered this).Also, they were obliged to send France an annual balance and reserve report. If they refused to send it, they would not be entitled to any money. Finally, there is the obligation to ally with France in situation of war or global crisis. Over one million Africans soldiers fought for the defeat of Nazism and fascism during the Second World War. With their contribution ignored or minimized, the French know that Africans could be useful for fighting, which in effect shows that France is psychopathic when it comes to Africa. The only question that remains unanswered however is people’s first reaction when they learn about the French colonial tax is often a question: “Until when?” In sum, the case for the prosecution of European development and African underdevelopment was argued most strongly by dependency theorists and radical nationalists (Amin 1972; Rodney 1972). Today, the case is championed by “rational choice” growth economists. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson (2001; 2002) have argued that Africa’s relative poverty at the end of the 20th century was primarily the result of the form taken by European 195

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colonialism on the continent: Europeans settling for extraction rather than settling themselves in overwhelming numbers and thereby introducing the kinds of institution (private property rights and systems of government that would support them) that, according to Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, was responsible for economic development in Europe and the colonies of European settlement in North America and Australasia. Colonial extraction in Africa could be seen most decisively in the appropriation of land for European settlers or plantations, a strategy used not only to provide European investors and settlers with cheap and secure control of land, but also to oblige Africans to sell their labor to European farmers, planters or mine-owners (Palmer and Parsons, 1977). Even in the “peasant” colonies, i.e. where the land remained overwhelmingly in African ownership, we will see that major parts of the services sector were effectively monopolized by Europeans. Then there was coercive recruitment of labor by colonial administrations, whether to work for the State or for European private enterprise (Fall 1993; Northrup 1988). Of potentially great long-term importance was the unwillingness of colonial governments to accept, still less promote, the emergence of markets in land rights on land occupied by Africans, whether in “settler” or “peasant” colonies (Phillips 1989). From the perspectives of both dependency theory and “rational choice” institutionalism, the original sin of colonialism in Africa was that it did not introduce a full-blooded capitalist system, based upon private property and thereby generating the pressures towards competition and accumulation necessary to drive self-sustained economic growth.

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Colonial Boundaries and Intractable Conflicts “(Many African) new nations were born during the process of decolonization. Most of these new nations, however, had not existed at all as nations before colonization, or they had not existed within the post-colonial borders” (Katz, 1996: 29). Most colonial borders were created either through conquest, negotiation between empires, or simply by administrative action (Ibid.), with little or no regard for the sociological realities of those living in the areas (passim.). Nevertheless, many of the leaders and governments of postcolonial African states have fought to keep the territorial boundaries created by past imperialist governments. As a result, a number of boundary conflicts arose within post-colonial territories. Parties to these conflicts justify and legitimate their side’s position, using different historical boundaries as evidence for their claims. For example, the Libya-Chad conflict involves a dispute over 114,000 square kilometers of territory, known as the Aouzou Strip. Libya 196

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justified its claims to this territory based on ancient historical boundaries, while Chad justified its stance based on boundaries established during the colonial period (Source: http: //www.gppac.net/dev/ECCP/ECCPSurveys-v010.nsf/vwWebSurveys/F38697C14EF60C1BC1256B2700317DC0). The practice of favoring one ethnic, religious, racial, or other cultural group over others in colonial society, or of giving them a higher status, helped to promote inter-group rivalries, and often contributed to the unequal distribution of resources. Favored or privileged groups had access to, or control of, important resources that allowed them to enrich their members, at the expense of nonmembers. Today, many post-colonial states continue the practice of favoring one group over others, whether it be a minority European settler population (as in South Africa), a minority European alliance group (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Rwanda, Burundi) or an internal ethnic group (e.g., India). As a result, we see numerous conflicts being caused in part, by dominant groups enacting and enforcing governmental, economic, political, and other social policies that distribute resources unequally among their nation’s members (Katz, Op.cit.). Apparently, Africa is commitment to colonial borders although drawn without consideration for those actually living there. African borders, in this thinking, are whatever Europeans happened to have marked down during the 19th and 20th centuries, which is a surprising way to do things given how little these outsider-drawn borders have to do with actual Africans. When European colonialism collapsed in the years after World War Two and Africans resumed control of their own continent, sub-Saharan leaders agreed to respect the colonial borders. Not because those borders made any sense – they are widely considered the arbitrary creations of colonial happenstance and European agreements -- but because “new rulers in Africa made the decision to keep the borders drawn by former colonizers to avoid disruptive conflict amongst themselves”, as a Harvard paper on these “artificial states” put it. Conflict has decreased in Africa since the turbulent 1960s and ‘70s, and though the continent still has some deeply troubled hotspots, the broader trend in Africa is one of peace, democracy, and growth. The threats of destabilizing war, of coups and counter-coups, have eased since the first independent African leaders pledged to uphold European-drawn borders. But a contradiction remains in the African system: leaders are committed to maintaining consistent borders, and yet as those governments become more democratic, they have to confront the fact that popular will might conflict. African national borders are afflicted by a multitude of troubles that straddle villages and communities. These can include military skirmishes, cattle rustling, 197

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terrorism, secessionist movements, smuggling, ethnic violence, people trafficking, irredentism and agrarian revolts. Border disputes have been a reality on the continent through the millennia. Precolonial Africa was hardly a setting of harmony and bliss between African peoples. Most kingdoms paid attention to territorial control and did adapt some precise boundaries. But border disputes are not the preserve of Africa, as the recent conflict between the Ukraine and Russia attests. But Africa certainly has its own peculiar set of problems, most by dint of the Berlin Conference which partitioned the continent into lucrative pieces for the colonizers. But the conference never meant to achieve a meaningful delimitation of Africa. As Lord Salisbury admitted not only was the delimitation largely arbitrary, but the mapping exercise was far from a precise art. Pre-independence Africa watched Europeans: … drawing lines upon maps where no white man’s feet ever trod. Today, close to 100 active border disputes exist across the continent. Rising nationalism, population and environmental pressures mean that the situation is likely to get worse. Unless, that is, an army of indigenous peace practitioners work closely with available pan-Africanist leaders and statesmen to douse and resolve tensions.

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Tensions abound - North, South, East and West In East Africa there are tensions between a number of countries. They include: • conflict over the Ilemi Triangle between Sudan and Kenya; • the Nadapal boundary dispute between Kenya and South Sudan; • the dispute over Lake Malawi between Tanzania and Malawi; • the dispute over the Mingino Islands between Kenya and Uganda; • the Badme territory dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia; and • border disputes between Sudan and South Sudan. Recent West African boundaries and borders disputes include: • land and maritime disputes between the Cameroon and Nigeria; • territorial disputes on the Island of Mbanié between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea; • the frontier dispute between Burkina Faso and Niger frontier dispute; and • the Benin–Niger frontier dispute.

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In North Africa, boundary disputes and contested territories abound. Examples include Moroccan claims over Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla. There is the long-lasting Morocco and Mauritania struggle against the Polisario Front, while Libya and Algeria have intervened in favor of the Saharan national liberation movement. Algeria and Morocco accuse each other of harboring militants and condoning arms smuggling. Libya appears to claim about 32,000 sq. km that apparently is under Algerian control. Sudan claims, but Egypt de facto administers, security and economic development of the Halaib region north of the 22nd parallel boundary. Southern Africa has its own set of disputes. The contestation between Namibia and South Africa over the Orange River has been described as one of the oldest boundary disputes in the world. There are tensions between Swaziland and South Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) accuses Angola of shifting monuments on their common boundary. Namibian exploitation of the Okavango River has been a source of disagreement with Botswana. Unresolved boundaries afflict portions of the Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia borders. Central African states’ ongoing boundary problems include location of the boundary in the broad Congo River between the Republic of Congo and the DRC. Uganda and the DRC continue to dispute the Rukwanzi Island in Lake Albert and other areas on the Semliki River with hydrocarbon potential. As though dispute over territories and boundaries is not challenging enough, separatist tendencies aiming at the creation of more independent states are rife. Currently there are approximately 58 potential secessionist territories in 29 out of the total 57 independent states of Africa. These phantom states are championed by at least 83 political associations and pressure groups. Such statistics are understandably alarming. They unfortunately portend an increase in civil conflicts.

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Dispelling the pre-colonial harmony myth Precolonial Africa was very sensitive to migration tensions and territorial conflicts – perhaps even on a wider scale than today. African cultures relied on city walls and other strict boundary markers. This is reflected both in oral and written literature. Recent satellite imagery as well as archaeological studies provide overwhelming evidence that ancient Africa relied on precise boundary markers separating states and political groups. For instance, there were about 10,000 town walls, 25% or more of them on presently deserted sites, between Lake Chad and the Atlantic Ocean.

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There were also the 160km-long Sungbo’s Eredo wall, the 45km-long Orile Owu wall and walls completely surrounding the pre-European influence cities of Kwiambana, Old Ningi and Gogoram.

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African Union efforts to find a solution Commendably, the African Union (AU) has been committed to an audacious border programme since 2007. This may go down as one of the most significant legal events on the continent. The declaration demands an Africawide exercise to demarcate international land and maritime boundaries. But, in line with the “run before you walk” reputation of the AU, it has set an overly ambitious timetable and several deadlines have already been missed. Participation in the initiative has been patchy at best. It is scandalous that the program, originally envisaged to have been completed before 2015, has arguably not achieved more than one-quarter of its objectives. The complete delimitation and demarcation of Africa is a herculean task. We are talking about an area of approximately 6.1 million square km and 28,000 miles of international boundaries. In many cases the issue is what exactly was owned and passed over to African states from the colonial powers. Hence, fancy legal doctrines that lawyers like to throw about, such as the so called uti possidetis juris, are no more than a logical tautology. This seeks to freeze all territories to a snap shot of the area states were given on the day of independence. African states have been making liberal use of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Of the 18 contentious cases between African states submitted to the ICJ, 13 concern territorial or boundary disputes. Cogent criticisms have been levelled at both courts. These include the accusation that they have been applying Eurocentric international law in a way that compromises the interest of African countries. The composition and staffing of both is also largely unrepresentative of Africa. Fortunately, there are examples of good practice among African states to deal with boundary problems. In theory, boundary tensions could be addressed through various indigenous mechanisms. These include the Councils of Elders and the use of peace radios and peace newspapers by East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development and by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

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Conflict Resolution Appreciation of local realities is one of the strong points to opt for resolution by indigenous means. When a dispute matures enough for political attention, governments should ideally follow the following steps: • • •

issues;

Declare an open dispute; Involve pertinent interstate commissions; Seek the help of a neutral study group to discover and delineate the

Initiate technical studies and hold seminars; • Initiate direct negotiations; • Involve the appropriate regional economic commission; • Seek, or allow, the intervention by the AU; • Implement an ad hoc African arbitral mechanism; • Resort to judicial mechanisms such as the African Court of Justice or the ICJ.

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•

There is also scope for increasing the participation of indigenous experts, civil society organizations as well as more systematic use of plebiscites in dealing with territorial disputes. Africa’s borders are best left intact despite their historically problematical origins and questionable ethnographic rationality. The increased energization and politicization of ethnic identity evident in much of Black Africa during the past generation call for reexamination of the boundaries inherited from colonialism. Although post-colonial nationalism has taken root in some countries, it has not, overall, provided the political cohesion to obviate the need for periodic boundary adjustments in light of prevailing political realities both within Black Africa and within the global political and economic systems. The underlying social and political forces evidently giving rise to politicized ethnic consciousness are not likely to recede in the near future. Accordingly, arguments concerning the rationality, and therefore the inviolability, of inherited boundaries, must be understood in light of political circumstances which have evolved during the first generation of independence from colonial rule. Similarly, people of Asia, Africa and worse yet, “Muslims”, seen through the lens of European societies, are often classed into the same ethnic group, despite having little relation to one another historically. To top this off, any geographic assessment of ethnic boundaries can only be viewed crosssectionally, spatial boundaries of ethnic groups subject to adjustment in

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response to temporal factors such as migrations, warfare, weather events and economic opportunity. Despite these limitations, Murdock’s perhaps naive map remains an important and unique resource for Africanists. Assessments of spatial distribution of events within Africa are plagued by difficulties presented by the present political boundaries. These boundaries often inefficiently reflect the distribution of ethnic and social groups, and more reflect the exploitative priorities of colonial powers and, to a lesser extent, obstacles of topography such as rivers and impassible mountain ranges. There are linguistic and cultural variations within these defined groups, and, of course, lacking the benefit of large scale surveys. The partition of groups had no regard for the myriad ways in which humans identify themselves. I can safely say that listing only three ethnic boundaries in a country like Malawi that lays claim to at least 20 self-identifying groups is inadequate. For a continent that houses less than one sixth of the world’s population, the level of human variation is staggering. If Africa were to establish its national borders based on ethnic or linguistic identification as Europe has, the number of resultant countries would dwarf that of the number of countries of the present world combined.

The difference is striking. Looking closely at the map, one can see that conflicts events largely occur within ethnic boundaries. Now, before one jumps to the conclusion that all conflict in Africa is ethnically motivated, conflict 202

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events often occur near rivers or state boundaries that are set by rivers so it is no surprise that these maps might match up. Also, generating any type of higher level partitioning of geographic areas will result in a more informative map. However, these results should at least inform future analytic methods, based not on existing political boundaries, but rather on unseen local delineations, some of which may or may not be readily apparent nor accessible. Performing a hot spot analysis on the data to find areas of clusters of magnitude, in this case event counts, that would be higher or lower than expected, given the counts of a region’s neighbors. I also included a count rendering of the respective counts of each area. I was able to produce the following:

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Conflict events are largely concentrated along a swath that spans the southern region of Sub-Saharan Africa, with spatially sparse events occurring in the west. The largest number of events occurs within the borders of Zimbabwe, nearly all of which have been violent actions against civilians by a repressive and brutal government.

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Lack of Governmental Institutions, Skills, and Experience

The weakness of postcolonial nations was a result of colonialism—which left a political heritage of weak states with limited control over territory and regimes that relied on ethnic divisions, a centralized authority, and patronage systems inherited from colonial rule. Resting on a weak political base, new national leaders were thus vulnerable to the pull of internal influence and corruption, and the support of external imperial patrons, all contributing to conditions where the United States (or in some cases, the USSR) found an opening to replace the influence of these countries’ former colonial masters. Both sides weighed strategic considerations and influence in various African countries that had become contested states in early Cold War competition, such as Guinea and Mali. Under colonialism, the major powers on the continent set up administrative apparatuses that in some cases—mainly the British and the Germans—utilized local rulers, but, as Rodney writes, in no instance would the colonizers accept African self-rule. The French, on the other hand, virtually destroyed all indigenous political systems and established their own networks of administrators. Infrastructure such as roads were built not only to facilitate the movement of commodities and machinery, but also that of the colonial armies and police required to discipline the indigenous population, whether the expulsion of people from their land or the forced cultivation of cash crops. African national movements were relatively late-forming in the colonial era and assumed power with a relatively newly created state apparatus and a weak national identity that, in practice, tended to rely upon pitting ethnic groups against each other to mobilize power. Thus, as Peter Dwyer and Leo Zeilig (2012) describe in their book on African social movements, “Colonialism had in most cases severely hampered the growth of an indigenous bourgeoisie.” This had not always been the case under colonialism, but rather was the product, in the second half of the nineteenth century, of a shift away from the use of educated Africans in colonial administration toward colonially created “native” authorities. Producing these “tribal” leaders allowed European colonial powers to rely on a section of African society for administrative, military, and political roles. 204

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But by the turn of the century, fierce imperial competition drove an expansionist push in Africa, deepening conflict between European and local populations as they tightened their overall control over the colonies altogether. Under these intensified conditions, alliances with local “partners” were increasingly unsustainable, and African leadership was increasingly excluded from the state (Mamdani, 1996: 74-75). These colonial processes undermined the development of a native bourgeoisie and likewise left a political imprint in the postcolonial era, when new ruling classes were attempting to establish some degree of political and economic independence, despite the overhang of these legacies. Dwyer and Zeilig (2012) show that in the case of the Congo, for example, with “the economy already cornered by foreign corporations . . . all that [aspiring African elites] could sell was their political power and influence in the state machinery.” These historical developments formed the material basis for new regimes vulnerable to the pull of patronage or “clientelism,” as Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani has called it (Ibid.). For some new rulers, adhering to the “colonial mold of the state” was a logical objective, cemented by nationalist leaders who fought to secure sovereignty for small states (Southal and Melber eds., 2009: 41). For those states emerging from colonialism, new ruling classes were mainly drawn from the urban middle classes, with little accountability to weak indigenous landowners or capitalists (Harris, 1987: 168), able to remain relatively autonomous vis-à-vis local capital (while remaining under the rule of foreign investors and powers ((Seddon, 2009: 81). Frantz Fanon describes in The Wretched of the Earth how these new rulers draped themselves in the nationalism and aspirations of the anticolonial revolutions so as to facilitate accumulation in which they would also be beneficiaries: “Spoiled children of yesterday’s colonialism and today’s governing powers, they oversee the looting of the few national resources. Ruthless in their scheming and legal pilfering they use the poverty, now nationwide, to work their way to the top through import-export holdings, limited companies, playing the stock market, and nepotism. They insist on the doctrine of nationalization for business transactions, i.e., reserving contracts and business deals for nationals. Their doctrine is to proclaim the absolute need for nationalizing the theft of the nation” (Fanon, 1963: 12).

Governmental and legal structures bore the marks of the colonial era, an imprint extended to the present day in some cases. “Tribalism” intersected with political rule in the postcolonial period such that district and local-level leaders continued on in appointed (unelected) roles, accountable only to the newly 205

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formed central governments. Countries such as Kenya—the site of large-scale colonial land seizures—maintained the legal basis for such practices, keeping laws on the books that enshrined communal land as “government property” (Aukot, 2008). Legal loopholes established in the colonial era continue to be used today to sanction the open theft of commonly held land by foreign multinationals, in an agricultural land grab that has seized millions of hectares for corporate investment (Hamalengwa, 2015). The ideological visions for these new states were not one-dimensional. A political divide within the nationalist currents expressed competing frameworks at the top among those new layers of leaders who explicitly embraced coordination and collaboration with the West for the coming era, and those leaders advocating and championing independence, “Africanization,” regional unity, and a left-wing framing of state-directed national development. The radical wing of the nationalist movements also tended to draw upon a base of trade unions, migrant workers, and students (Seddon, 2009: 78). While himself an influential figure under the mantle of “African socialism,” Ghanaian president Nkrumah also wrote of the tensions between these two poles, and the class implications of this model. Later his class background would prove decisive, and Ghana emblematic of the failure of those left-wing aspirations, the “end of an illusion,” as Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer (1966) would describe it: “Nkrumah was the perfect representative of the Gold Coast petty bourgeoisie. With admirable clarity he defined his position as one which opposed ‘particular consequences’ but accepted the assumptions of the political system.” However, Nkrumah correctly identified the dynamics in 1963: In the dynamics of national revolution there are usually two local elements: the moderates of the professional and “aristocratic” class and the so-called extremists of the mass movement. . . . The moderates are prepared to leave the main areas of sovereignty to the colonial power, in return for a promise of economic aid. The socalled extremists are men who do not necessarily believe in violence but who demand immediate self-government and complete independence. They are men who are concerned with the interests of their people and who know that those interests can be served only by their own local leaders and not by the colonial power (1970: 217–18).

These divergent views—left and right—both reflected variants on rule “from above,” a new, postcolonial order that nonetheless retained the class divisions of a society resting on accumulation and competition, along state capitalist lines. As Mamdani has described it, in “conservative African states, the hierarchy of the local state apparatus, from chiefs to headmen, continued after 206

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independence. In the radical African states . . . [t]he antidote to a decentralized despotism turned out to be a centralized despotism” (1996: 25). It is widely claimed that States have a critical role in economic and governmental development. This claim is made at least in enforcing the rules of good governance, economic activity and providing physical public goods. Therefore, one should seek to know how colonial rule affected the historic constraint on political centralization in Africa, namely the difficulty of raising revenue for oiling the machinery of governance. Beyond this one may need to consider the size of the State and the nature of authority and legitimacy, i.e. whether colonization was responsible for fragmenting Africa, as is often said, or whether, as the colonial rulers themselves claimed, they were a modernizing force, bringing the State to the “Stateless” and replacing patrimonial authority by bureaucratic authority. For the most part, European colonial societies were repressive and undemocratic in nature. Domestic governmental systems and structures were controlled and operated either from abroad or by a select domestic, privileged group. Consequently, when liberation came, these states lacked the internal structures, institutions, and 1egalitarian way of thinking needed to create good governance systems. The result is that many postcolonial states, although independent, are still ruled by repressive and restrictive regimes. For example, Melber (2002) states, “(t)he social transformation processes in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa can at best be characterized as a transition from controlled change to changed control.” The particular identity of the colonial power made some difference to the lives of those subjected to European rule. Contrasts between the two largest empires in Africa are traditionally made with reference to greater British reliance on African chiefs as intermediaries (“indirect rule”) and the French doctrine of forcefully assimilating a small minority of Africans into French culture and citizenship. On the whole, I argue that, in economic terms, the similarities were much greater than the differences, except when the latter arose from the composition of their respective African empires. French rule, like British, relied on African intermediaries, including chiefs, even though France was much more insistent on brutally abolishing African monarchies (as in Dahomey, in contrast to the British treatment of the structures and dynasties of the States of Buganda, Botswana, Lesotho and, after an abortive attempt at abolition, Ashanti). In West Africa the French made much greater use of forced labor, but that was primarily because the French territories were, from the start, relatively lacking in cashearning and therefore wage-paying potential. That specific policy, Corvée and its use to benefit white planters rather than African farmers, made a difference to the colonial legacy in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. It meant that African cocoa 207

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farming took off much more quickly and dramatically in the former, so that Ghana was much wealthier at independence, when Côte d’Ivoire was in the process of catching up (and overtaking) after a late start (Hopkins 1973: 218-9), which it proceeded to do by the 1980s.

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Colonialism and Religion African religion was a complex and all-encompassing social institution that involved philosophical views, belief in the super- natural, and rituals. It was a pervasive aspect of life. Religion played both a positive and a negative role in African society. On the one hand, it was an integral part of the social life of the people and facilitated the cooperation and discipline needed to aid the group’s survival. On the other hand, it often exercised a conservative influence on social development since it changed slowly, if at all. According to Walter Rodney, religion slowed down the development of Africans’ capacity to produce food, nothing, and shelter: “Belief in prayer and in the intervention of ancestors and various Gods could easily be a substitute for innovations designed to control the impact of weather and environment.” Rodney is referring to the religious practice called ancestor-worship, a belief that the spirits of dead relatives are always around to protect and provide. Food and drink were always put on the ground for these spirits before it was consumed. As in other societies, this belief in some otherworldly or supernatural force with power over weather, life and death, health, and everything else reflects a pre- scientific understanding of nature and society. The pre-scientific understanding of nature and society derived from the fact that religion was all-encompassing; precolonial Africans integrated religion into all aspects of life. Religions saw the supernatural involved in everything animate and inanimate. Religions allowed worship of numerous deities, from the lesser gods and goddesses to the Supreme Being. Religions acknowledged the worship of the ancestors who could speak to the deities on behalf of the living. Two major world religions, Christianity and Islam, had been present in parts of Africa for several centuries before the Atlantic slave trade. Both world religions have had profound impact on many African societies. Conversion of Africans to Christianity went as follows: • •

Spain and Portugal spread Roman Catholicism to their African colonies by converting the indigenous peoples, and, by inferiorizing local religions

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Christianity dramatically entered Africa in two waves. In the first wave, Christianity arrived in the northeast quadrant of Africa through Egypt between the first and third centuries C.E. (Common Era, same as A.D. Anno Domini), into Nubia between the second and fourth centuries C.E., and reaching Ethiopia between the third and fifth centuries C.E. Christianity in Egypt and Ethiopia were and still are mainly Coptic, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, and other Orthodox Christian religions that have maintained close ties for more than a millennium to the Christian Orthodox religions in Greece, Armenia, the Balkans, and Russia. Early African Christian thinkers included Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo, Clement of Alexandria, among others. They contributed greatly to theological doctrines and debates in the first several centuries of Christianity. African Christians in Ethiopia and Eritrea developed unique church architecture. The architecture located in the Ethiopian cities of Axum, Debre Damo, and Lalibela are world renown. The second dramatic entrance of Christianity into Africa came in the fifteenth century (1401-1500) with direct contact with Europeans, at first, primarily the Portuguese. European travelers and (so-called) explorers proved eager to establish trade missions, negotiate military alliances against the Muslim states in northern Africa, and convert souls to Christianity. New Christian kingdoms emerged when African royal courts and government officials and bureaucrats converted to Christianity. The most notable Christian African state was the Kingdom of Kongo. The emergence of the Atlantic slave trade added problems in African-European relations, but coastal Africans who were (middlemen and middle women) entrepreneurs enjoyed relatively good relations with Europeans in the first three centuries of direct contact. Some coastal African elites and merchants converted to Christianity. Roman Catholic and Protestant forms of Christianity accelerated their expansion with massive European colonization in the last-third of the nineteenth century (1801-1900). Inhabitants of the Sahara, Sahel, and Mediterranean regions of Africa view the Sahara Desert not as a barrier, but as an ocean (of sand) bridged by trade and nomadic routes. The Sahel is an artificial construct for purposes of envisioning an area, a specific geographical location.

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Islam arrived in Africa in the seventh century (601-700) C.E. In the firstthird of the seventh century, the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslims found refuge in and support from the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. But Islam’s presence in Africa greatly expanded in the latter half of the seventh century. Islam became the dominant religion in northern Africa in what are now the nations of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and the Sudan. Islam’s expansion into the sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Africa along the Indian Ocean occurred through trade and Islamic missionaries, not conquest. Some sub-Saharan African rulers and their subjects, particularly those in Somalia, the Swahili city states in eastern Africa, and those in the Sahel of western and western central Africa, converted to Islam and enjoyed extensive contacts with the non-African Muslim world and by extension with trade routes reaching into Europe and eastern Asia. The Sahel kingdoms and empires, most notably Mali and Songhay, became renown in the Muslim world. Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated because Catholicism and Protestantism were the religions of the European colonial powers (Melvin, 2003) and acted in many ways as the “religious arm“ of those powers (Bevans,2010). According to Edward Andrews, Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as “visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery.” However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century, missionaries became viewed as “ideological 210

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shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them”,[3] colonialism’s “agent, scribe and moral alibi” (Comaroff, 2010). Christianity is targeted by critics of colonialism because the tenets of the religion were used to justify the actions of the colonists (Meador, 2010). For example, Toyin Falola asserts that there were some missionaries who believed that “the agenda of colonialism in Africa was similar to that of Christianity.” Falola (2001) cites Jan H. Boer of the Sudan United Mission as saying, “Colonialism is a form of imperialism based on a divine mandate and designed to bring liberation - spiritual, cultural, economic and political - by sharing the blessings of the Christ-inspired civilization of the West with a people suffering under satanic oppression, ignorance and disease, effected by a combination of political, economic and religious forces that cooperate under a regime seeking the benefit of both ruler and ruled.” Edward Andrews (2010) writes conclusively:

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“Historians have traditionally looked at Christian missionaries in one of two ways. The first church historians to catalogue missionary history provided hagiographic descriptions of their trials, successes, and sometimes even martyrdom. Missionaries were thus visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, an era marked by civil rights movements, anti-colonialism, and growing secularization, missionaries were viewed quite differently. Instead of godly martyrs, historians now described missionaries as arrogant and rapacious imperialists. Christianity became not a saving grace but a monolithic and aggressive force that missionaries imposed upon defiant natives. Indeed, missionaries were now understood as important agents in the ever-expanding nation-state, or “ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them.”

Why did Africans accommodate foreign religions? African spirituality does not represent a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism. It simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane. African spirituality is truly holistic. For example, sickness in the indigenous African worldview is not only an imbalance of the body, but also an imbalance in one’s social life, which can be linked to a breakdown in one’s kinship and family relations or even to one’s relationship with one’s ancestors. An old African adage says: “The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.” Hence, Africans easily make room for a plurality of religious points of view without one religious point of view excluding or compromising the other. Unfortunately, religious conflicts 211

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become intractable and fratricidal in countries like Nigeria, Chad, Libya and Egypt.

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Resistance, Decolonization and Independence Africa is the most ravaged continent in the world. It was home to great civilizations that predated most other civilizations. But like the history of other civilizations, they blossomed and declined mostly without successor civilizations. Unfortunately, the recuperation process was halted by the worst international abuse of human rights in the form of the chatelization or commodification of African human beings. Thus, Africans lost their humanity and were massively exported in the illegitimate triangular trans-Atlantic trade. The practice was that of abducting and exporting men and women in their prime from the continent. It was the greatest human resource displacement in human history. The effect was a human resource gap and deficit. Human capital for development was therefore not only short in quantity but also in quality resulting first in retardation and later in retrogression of African development. The slave trade dispersed Africans to Europe, the United States and the Islands. In these destinations, they rendered uncompensated service under conditions which would be criminal for pets in those societies to live. Eventually the economic tide turned with the industrial revolution and it was no longer cost-effective to retain slaves. But the economic situation was not enough to end the nefarious trade. Missionaries and philanthropists carried out campaigns against slavery which eventually cost the United States a civil war. The war ended but slaves remained in chains as they fought continuous street battles to regain their humanity. As one would expect, the status of the African-American who was uprooted and for a while was without citizenship, determined most American perception of the African continent itself. This created the misperception of a ‘Dark Continent’ which does not describe the state of development but the unknown continent of a continent about which Pliny had said “Ex Africa semper aliquid novum.” The phrase ‘Dark Continent’ became a justification for the imposition of colonial rule. The industrial revolution which signaled the death of the slave institution also initiated an equal deprivation of humanity in the form of colonialism. After the Slave Trade, the Europeans turned to what, in their view, was legitimate trade, not fair trade. Unfortunately, as trade progressed, the European powers discovered that trade on the basis of equality was irksome as proved by the activities of British traders in the Niger Delta. The British Consul was no longer able to guarantee compliance with trade agreements. It therefore became necessary to impose direct European authority. Thus the history of colonies is 212

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summarized by the phrase “the flag follows the trade.” The scramble for African colonies was accelerated by the need for the strategic balance of power in Europe. The British, for example, used trading companies like the Royal Niger Company, the British East African Company, and the British South African Company to administer their various colonies. But in the heat of the scramble non-state actors were no match for the other European states. Africa was shared out by the European powers including Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium {as successor to Leopold II}, and Italy. The continent was subjected to all sorts and condition of administration ranging from personal rule of King Leopold II to the French ambitious project of designating African territories as France Overseas and transforming Africans into French citizens. The whole colonial project was anchored on a superior race and civilization hypothesis. Even King Leopold 1I who sufficiently infuriated his European peers by the crudity of his administration described the project as a civilizing mission. It was characterized by forced labor, heavy taxes and corporal chastisement. The French system regarded African culture as inferior and should be replaced by French culture. On the other hand, the British elevated the expediency of indirect rule into a doctrine of cultural preservation which was subject to the repugnancy doctrine that a culture merits a certificate of fitness only when it was not repugnant to British sensibility and sense of justice. It was therefore not based on the parity of cultures but one culture in the service of a master culture. Paradoxically, the British ascribed Pax Britannica to their colonies where wars were necessary to capture slaves. In the end, colonialism was not a substitute for slavery but a form of slavery in situ and at source. It manifested in the form of forced labor in the mines and plantations, forced cultivation of crops for European industries, and taxes to pay for colonial administration. The prisoner was forced to pay for his handcuffs. African reaction to colonial slavery took different forms dictated by respective philosophies of colonial administrations. In British exploitation colonies where the British did not intend to settle permanently, the transition to independence was peaceful. This was unlike the settlement colonies like South Africa, Kenya, and Southern Rhodesia. Similarly Namibia which was a trust territory administered by South Africa was liberated after a bitter struggle by the Namibians. The former French colonies were also divided between countries with substantial settlers like Algeria and the other countries. Since the French engaged themselves in the task of replicating France in all her colonies, there was no plan for independence. Algeria fought one of the bitterest wars of liberation to become independent of France. Guinea under 213

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Sekou Toure, to the utter surprise of France, led Guinea to reject the offer of membership of the French Community (Hodder, 1978: 124). Although France had offered the choice to the colonies, she did not expect any country to opt for independence. Guinea therefore did the ‘wrong’ thing by choosing freedom. France angrily granted her independence in a hurry in 1958 by destroying the rudimentary infrastructure as an object lesson for preferring freedom to colonial servitude... As one would expect, Guinea had a rough beginning and was only propped up by China. The other Francophone African colonies benefited from the decision of Guinea and were granted independence within two years of Guinean independence. The present Democratic Republic of the Congo was granted Independence without any serious political or administrative training. In fact, the Congo was the most deficient and factionalized country at independence in 1960. She was initiated into independence with a civil war which consumed her first President and the country recorded the first United Nations peace-keeping operation. The Portuguese colonies of Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique engaged in wars of liberation which destroyed any semblance of administration which was laid by Portugal. Worse still, these were colonies in which the arsenals of the cold war were unleashed and the ever fragile political institutions were further weakened. At the time of independence, these countries were fatigued, heavily divided along ideological lines, and lacking in executive capacity. The case of Somalia which stood an excellent chance of unity was uniquely unfortunate. The Somalis were divided between five different administrations of British Somaliland, French Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, Northern Kenya, and Ethiopia. They resorted to irredentist wars of unification. British and Italian Somaliland united after independence to form Somalia and in the early years of the administration of Siad Barre recorded immense progress which was later neutralized by cold war contradictions and the authoritarian regression of Siad Barre. The above was the picture of Africa which established the Organization of African Unity in 1963. Colonialism, in the traditional sense, ended as European countries started fighting over themselves over the World Wars and in effect, weakened themselves in the process (allowing the United States and Soviet Union to eventually gain in immense power. They would spend another 50 years continuing that fight). Colonized people, the world over, saw their chance to break free as they realized that Europe was not invincible or as civilized as they claimed. Britain could no longer hold on to India, for example. In Africa a sense of local patriotism or nationalism took deeper root among African intellectuals and politicians. Some of the inspiration for this movement came from the First World War in which European countries had relied on colonial troops for their 214

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own defense. Many in Africa realized their own strength with regard to the colonizer for the first time. At the same time, some of the mystique of the invincible European was shattered by the barbarities of the war. However, in most areas European control remained relatively strong during this period. Colonialism had thus transformed an entire continent. Vast plantations and cash crop-based, or other extractive economies were set up throughout. Even as colonial administrators parted, they left behind supportive elites that, in effect, continued the siphoning of Africa’s wealth. Thus has colonialism had a major impact on the economics of the continent today? Various commentators, mostly from the third world observer that colonialism in the traditional sense may have ended, but the end results are much the same. Various struggles for self-determination sprang up first in British colonies, often influenced by the Indian example, and had contact with Indian leaders. The fact that Britain had in principle indicated willingness to dismantle its empire also created a context relatively favorable to nonviolent struggle (compared for example to Portugal, ruled internally by a dictatorship and committed – until the 1974 internal revolution – to keeping its colonies). However, until brought under pressure from popular movements Britain expected to grant independence in stages, gradually increasing African representation in government. Moreover, where there were large numbers of white settlers, there was counter-pressure to enshrine white dominance. The process of decolonization was, therefore, by no means always smooth. Britain responded to the (limited) anti-settler violence in the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s with ruthless military force and detained over 70,000 suspects in appalling conditions.

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Legacy of Varying Resistance to Colonialism and Imperialism The nature of African resistance to colonial policies varied between countries, even within the British imperial sphere. In Uganda, for example, the traditional ruler of Baganda, Kabaka Mutsea II, was deported for leading opposition to British plans for an East African federation. In Tanganyika, however, a modernizing nationalist movement was created by TANU, supported by up to a million members and with an extensive network of local organizations and youth and women’s groups. Because of British government responses to events in neighboring countries, TANU, led by Julius Nyerere, did not need to launch a major independence struggle. It won all but one seat in the 1960 elections and Tanganyika became independent in 1961. The end of the colonial period and the establishment during 1957–76 of all the former colonies as independent states was attributable both to a change 215

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in European attitudes toward Africa and the possession of colonies and to an African reaction to colonial rule born of the economic and social changes it had produced. Europeans had colonized western Africa in the later 19th and early 20th centuries confident that their civilization was immensely superior to anything Africa had produced or could produce. Yet hardly had their colonies been established than these convictions began to be challenged. World War I, and the immense misery and loss of life it caused, led some Europeans to doubt whether nations who could so brutally mismanage their own affairs had any moral right to dictate to other peoples. Some reflection of this view was seen in the League of Nations and the system of mandates applied to the former German colonies. Although in western Africa these were entrusted to either French or British administration, the mandated territories did not become the absolute possessions of the conquerors, and the role of the new rulers was declared to be to equip the mandated territories and their peoples for selfgovernment. A second shock to European self-confidence came with the Great Depression of the 1930s, when trade and production shrank and millions of Europeans had no work. It began to be argued that a remedy lay in more active development of the overseas territories controlled by Europe. If more European capital and skills were directed to the colonies, so that they could produce more raw materials for European industry more efficiently, both Europe and the colonies would gain; as the colonies became wealthier through the exploitation of their resources, the people of the colonies would buy more from Europe. In 1929 Britain had enacted the first Colonial Development Act, providing that small amounts of British government money could be used for colonial economic development, thus breaking the deadlock by which the only colonial governments that could embark on development programs to increase the wealth of their subjects, and to improve their own revenues, were those that already commanded sufficient revenue to pay for the programs or to service the loans the programs required. The idea that the colonies should be actively developed, in the European as much as in the African interest, was broadened during and after World War II. Transport and currency problems made it urgent for Britain and France to exploit strategic raw materials in their colonies. Furthermore, during 1940–44, when France itself was in German hands, it was only from the colonies and with their resources that Gen. Charles de Gaulle and his associates could continue the fight. The British funding policy, initiated in 1929, of providing the funds needed for colonial development was greatly expanded in the 1940s and extended to social as well as economic plans. After the war the governments of both Britain 216

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and France required their colonial administrations to draw up comprehensive development plans and in effect offered to provide the funds for those that could not be funded from local resources. In view of past history, the need for such plans was probably greater in the French colonies than in the British, and the French West African program for 1946–55 envisaged the investment of $1,108,000,000, compared with programs totaling $549 million for the four British colonies. Virtually all of the financing for the French program came from France itself. But some of the British colonies had built up considerable reserves from the high prices commanded by their produce during the war and immediate postwar years, and they themselves were able to provide much of the money needed. This tended to accentuate already existing disparities. In the extreme case the Gold Coast plan envisaged spending $300 million, only 4 percent of which was British money. This was the same level of expenditure, roughly $60 per capita, as envisaged for French West Africa. Nigeria’s program, with a contribution from Britain of 42 percent, proposed to spend $220 million—only about $7 per capita. The figures for Sierra Leone were $21 million, 45 percent from the United Kingdom, and $10 per capita; and for the tiny Gambia $8 million, 35 percent, and $27 per capita. Political advance for the French colonies was naturally seen in terms of increased African participation in French political life. In 1944 it was proposed that the colonies become overseas territories of France. Delegates from the colonies in fact participated in the making of the new postwar French constitution, but this was subject to referenda in which metropolitan French votes predominated. The constitution eventually adopted in 1946 was less liberal to Africans than they had been led to expect.

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The emergence of African leaders By the later 1940s, however, there were appreciable numbers of Africans in both the French and the British colonies who had emerged from traditional society through the new opportunities for economic advancement and education. In coastal areas Christian missionaries and their schools had advanced with the European administrations. The colonial governments, requiring African subordinates for their system, commonly aided and developed the elementary and vocational education initiated by the Christian missions and often themselves provided some sort of higher education for the chiefly classes whose cooperation they required. If rather little of this education had penetrated to the Sudan by the 1940s, in some coastal areas Africans had become eager to invest some of their increasing wealth in education, which was seen as the key to European strength. 217

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Relatively few Africans started up the French educational ladder—school attendance by the mid-1950s was some 340,000, about 1.7 percent of the total population—but those who did found themselves in a system identical with that in France. In British West Africa schools had got a footing before there was much administration to control them, and their subsequent development was more independent. The British educational system therefore developed into a pyramid with a much broader base than the French one. By the mid-1950s there were more than two million schoolchildren in Nigeria, about 6 percent of the total population and a much higher proportion of the population of the south, in which the schools were concentrated; in the Gold Coast there were nearly 600,000, some 12 percent of the population. Many more people in the British than in the French territories thus got some education, and appreciably more were able to attend universities. In 1948 universities were established in the Gold Coast and Nigeria; by 1960 the former territory had about 4,500 university graduates and the latter more than 5,000. The first French African University was a federal institution at Dakar opened in 1950; by 1960 the total number of graduates in French West Africa was about 1,800. By the 1940s there was enough education to make European-style political activity possible in all the coastal colonies. Such activity may be traced back to at least the 1890s, when Gold Coast professionals and some chiefs founded the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) to prevent the wholesale expropriation of African lands by European entrepreneurs or officials. The ARPS went on to campaign against the exclusion of qualified Africans from the colonial administration. Following this, in 1918–20, a National Congress of British West Africa was formed by professionals to press for the development of the legislative councils in all the British colonies into elective assemblies controlling the colonial administrations. In French West Africa early political activity was concentrated in the four towns of Senegal whose people possessed political rights before 1946. Because the seat of power was very clearly in France, with Senegalese electors sending a deputy to the French National Assembly, the result by the 1930s was the emergence of a Senegalese Socialist party allied to the Socialists in France. By the late 1940s both the French and the British territories possessed an educated, politicized class, which felt frustrated in its legitimate expectations; it had made no appreciable progress in securing any real participation in the system of political control. In fact, anything approaching effective African participation seemed more remote than ever. Implementation of the development programs led to a noticeable increase in the number of Europeans employed by the colonial regimes and their associated economic enterprises. On the other hand, because many Africans had served with, and received 218

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educational and technical training with, the British and French armies, the war had led to a great widening of both African experience and skills. Furthermore, the postwar economic situation was one in which African farmers were receiving high prices for their produce but could find little to spend their money on, and in which the eagerly awaited development plans were slow to mature because European capital goods were in short supply.

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The formation of African independence movements There thus developed a general feeling among the intelligentsia that the colonies were being deliberately exploited by ever more firmly entrenched European political and economic systems and that there had developed a new, wider, and mobilizable public to appeal to for support. In 1946 politicians in French West Africa organized a federation-wide political association, the African Democratic Rally (RDA). The RDA and its members in the French National Assembly aligned themselves with the French Communist Party, the only effective opposition to the governments of the Fourth Republic. The result, during 1948–50, was the virtual suppression of the RDA in Africa by the colonial administrations. In British West Africa the tensions were greatest in the Gold Coast. In 1947 the established politicians brought in Kwame Nkrumah, who had studied in the United States and Britain and had been active in the Pan-African movement, to organize a nationalist party with mass support. In 1948 European trading houses were boycotted, and some rioting took place in the larger towns. An official inquiry concluded that the underlying problem was political frustration and that African participation in government should be increased until the colony became self-governing. In 1951, therefore, a new constitution was introduced in which the legislative council gave way to an assembly dominated by African elected members, to which African ministers were responsible for the conduct of much government business. By this time Nkrumah had organized his own mass political party, able to win any general election, and during the following years he negotiated with the British a series of concessions that resulted in 1957 in the Gold Coast becoming the independent state of Ghana. Once the British had accepted the principle of cooperating with nationalist politicians, their other western African colonies began to follow the example set by the Gold Coast. But Nkrumah had been greatly aided by the high price for cocoa in the 1950s (which meant that by 1960 Ghana’s trade was worth $630 million a year and that government revenue, at more than $280 million, was broadly adequate to give the people what they wanted in the way of modernizing programs) and by the comparatively high level and generally wide spread of 219

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education in a sizable yet compact territory that was without too serious ethnic divisions. The other colonies were not so well placed. The small size of The Gambia was the principal factor contributing to the delay of its independence until 1965. Sierra Leone was a densely populated country that was appreciably poorer than Ghana (its GNP per capita, at about $70, being approximately one-third of Ghana’s) and in which there was a wide disparity in levels of education and wealth between the Creoles—the descendants of liberated slaves who lived in and around Freetown—and the rest of the people. When independence was achieved in 1961, these deeply rooted problems had been papered over rather than solved. Nigeria presented the greatest challenge to British and African policymakers alike. In the south two nationalist parties emerged, the Action Group (AG), supported primarily by the Yoruba of the west, and the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), whose prime support came from the Igbo of the East. These parties expected the whole country quickly to follow the Ghanaian pattern of constitutional change. But any elective central assembly was bound to be dominated by the north, which had some 57 percent of the population and whose economic and social development had lagged far behind. The North’s political leaders—most of whom were conservative Muslim aristocrats closely allied with the British through indirect rule—were not at all eager to see their traditional paramountcy invaded by aggressive and better-educated leaders from the south. The first political expedient was to convert Nigeria into a federation of three regions. In 1957 this allowed the east and the west to achieve internal selfgovernment without waiting for the north, but it left open the questions of how politics were to be conducted at the center and how Nigerian independence was to be secured. At this juncture it occurred to the northern leaders that by allying themselves to one of the southern parties they might maintain their local monopoly of power and gain prestige in the country as a whole by asking for its independence. The problem of central politics was thus resolved when the northern leaders entered a coalition federal government with the NCNC, and in 1960 Nigeria became independent. Meanwhile, in French West Africa the RDA, led by Félix HouphouëtBoigny, broke with the Communist Party. The votes of a small bloc of African deputies in the French National Assembly were of considerable value to the shifting coalitions of non-Communist parties that made up the unstable French governments of the 1950s, and the RDA began to seek to influence these governments to allow greater freedom to the colonies. By 1956 Houphouët-Boigny’s policy had secured a widening of the colonial franchises and the beginnings of a system by which each colony was on the way 220

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to becoming a separate unit in which African ministers would be responsible for some of the conduct of government. The implications of this approach, however, did not meet with the approval of some other African leaders, most notable among them Léopold Sédar Senghor in Senegal and Ahmed Sékou Touré in Guinea. Senghor had stood outside the RDA since the days of its alliance with the Communists, which he had thought could only bring disaster. Together with Sékou, who had remained within the RDA, he argued that Houphouët’s policy would split up the western African federation into units that would be too small and poor to resist continued French domination. In 1958 the French Fourth Republic collapsed and de Gaulle was returned to power. On September 28, 1958, in a referendum, the colonies were offered full internal self-government as fellow members with France of a French Community that would deal with supranational affairs. All of the colonies voted for this scheme except Guinea, where Sékou Touré led the people to vote for complete independence. Senegal and the French Sudan were then emboldened in 1959 to come together in a Federation of Mali and to ask for and to receive complete independence within the community. These two territories separated in the following year, but all the others now asked for independence before negotiating conditions for association with France, and by 1960 all the former French colonies were de jure independent states. By that time only the excessively conservative regimes of Portugal and Spain sought to maintain the colonial principle in western Africa. Encouraged and aided by independent neighbors, Guinean nationalists took up arms in 1962 and after 10 years of fighting expelled the Portuguese from three-quarters of Portuguese Guinea. In 1974 the strain of this war and of wars in Mozambique and Angola caused the Portuguese people and army to overthrow their dictatorship. Independence was quickly recognized for GuineaBissau in 1974 and for the Cape Verde Islands and Sao Tome and Principe in 1975. Spain concluded in 1968 that the best way to preserve its interests in equatorial Africa was to grant independence to its people without preparing them for it. The result was chaos. The Factor of Pan-Africanism Independence fired the pan-African spirit to ensure the complete decolonization of the Continent and superintend its development. Although the new African States were in agreement on the need for continental cooperation, they differed on the extent of such cooperation. Seven African countries Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Ghana, Guinea and Mali formed the Casablanca group in 1961. They were led by radical meta-nationalist Heads of State who proposed 221

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a United States of Africa principally to establish an African Military Command and an African Common Market. This radical proposal would have meant the loss of the recently acquired sovereignty which the more conservative countries felt was unrealistic. In 1961, seven countries (Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia Togo and Tunisia) joined the Brazzaville Group (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Dahomey, Gabon, Madagascar, Mauretania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta) to form the Monrovia Group. Unlike the Casablanca Group, the Monrovia Group advised gradualism in the Pan-African project. It accordingly proposed a loose association of African states. These two groups occupied the ideological spectrum in the 1960s. It took the mature diplomatic handling of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia to forge a unity between the two resulting in the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 following the Monrovia Group caution to hasten slowly. The OAU, by its Charter, thus put a moratorium on conflicts over ideology (Oloruntimehin, 2000: 2). The OAU Charter, curiously but understandably, approved the sanctity of the colonial boundaries. Whereas the Organization was an anti-colonial response, it endorsed the colonial boundaries with all their deficiencies following the principle of uti possidetis juris. The contradiction, as it were, is understandable because countries that recently gained independence would want to avoid a spate of intra-African wars by reopening boundary issues which would make unity difficult. Africa stands out as the most politically fragmented continent with the longest land boundaries (Hodder, 1978: 30) totaling 50,000 miles and awkwardly shaped states (Hodder, 1978: 102). Many of the states have multiple immediate neighbors with Sudan having nine and Zaire about nine (Hodder, 1978: 31). In addition, fourteen of the world’s twenty-eight landlocked states are in Africa. They depend on neighboring transit states for access to the sea. But despite the imperfections of colonial boundaries, they were accepted as the territorial frameworks for independence following Nyerere’s advice to use them as instruments of unity rather than division (Hodder 1978: 35). The Somalis who suffered most from the partition attempted to reunite the Somalis divided into five different administrations. That posed a serious problem in the Horn of Africa and left a sore relationship ever since. Secondly, The OAU adopted the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of member countries (Maathai, 2009: 33). This is a corollary principle of state sovereignty. It is the result of the historic battles waged by colonies to acquire sovereignty. It was also necessitated by fear of the bigger African neighbor countries that may have territorial ambitions. Early postindependence period was characterized by fear of domination. Even when there 222

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was no direct domination, it was fashionable to raise the specter of neocolonialism particularly because most of the states remained fragile and at the risk of internal strife. The principle of non-intervention, inadvertently, tends to protect authoritarian leaders who violated citizen rights and protected regimes more than state or citizen. There have however been developments globally and in Africa and to mitigate the walls erected by the sovereignty of nations. In 2005, the African Union pioneered the principle of humanitarian intervention when a state manifestly fails to protect its populations. This is an obvious extension of the Banjul Declaration for the Protection of Human and Peoples Rights. The AU also adopted the Ezulwini Consensus of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a tool for the prevention of mass atrocities. This followed the passage of the (R2P) by the General Assembly in September 2005. However, it must be noted that the R2P is a norm and not a law. It is based on the principle that sovereignty is a responsibility of states and not a privilege. Sovereignty is therefore deserved by the performance of states and not an automatic property of States. This is a shift away from the strict Jean Bodin definition of sovereignty held by the African States at the inception of the OAU. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and the stunning apathy of the world powers was the turning point in the reinterpretation which now requires the international community to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The reaction of the African countries to these principles which they approve has been clumsy and only understandable in the light of their rigid adherence to old fashioned sovereignty and African solidarity. In the glaring cases of Zimbabwe and Sudan, the African countries have neither taken positive actions nor allowed such actions. This form of protection against principle has permitted the continuation of genocide in Darfur. There are some misgivings against the R2P on the grounds that it infringes the sovereignty of states particularly as regards military intervention. The issue was taken up by the International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) which listed six conditions for military intervention as: (1) Just Cause, (2) Right Intention, (3) Final Resort, (4) Legitimate Authority, (5) Proportional Means, (6) Reasonable Prospect. Although these conditions are well intentioned, they are not precise. The imprecision of the conditions of intervention is also compounded by the selectivity of implementation particularly when the mass atrocities are perpetrated by the Powers. It has also been pointed out that there are possibilities of discrimination in intervention. Although both Rwanda and Kosovo predate the R2P, the interest of the Powers in Kosovo contrasted with the apathy in the case of Rwanda.

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Conclusion International factors affecting governments, states and politics in Africa today are exogenous components which can be regarded as playing a significant role (positively and negatively) in the unfolding of socio-economic and political developments on the continent. That is, the political and economic relationship between post-colonial Africa and the West have the same underpinnings and meet the same objective like the relationship of the colonial period. This relationship was based on absolute control over Africa and its human and material resources and the nourishment of Western industries and economies with Africa’s produce and markets. The exploitative and asymmetric character of this relationship has far reaching effects which weighs down the development on the continent negatively. The consequential adverse impacts of Western Old Colonial age of Empire are international factors and actors impacting Africa’s political, economic and socio-cultural developments negatively. Centuries of slavery, racism, colonialism and apartheid have left a legacy of institutional racism, whereby dark skins are often instinctively prejudiced in societies across the globe (Macpherson, 1999). Racism is also endemic in global relations between nations: nations seen as ‘white’ are invariably higher in the pecking order than black ones. ‘White privilege’ also means growing up with the implacable assumption that one’s view of the world, social understanding and ways of looking is the ‘normal’ – which is also replicated in companies, international culture – whether in films or thought, quality universities and global media. Those of color have to adapt to ‘whiteness’, or play by ‘whiteness’ rules. Racism has infused the DNA of almost every institution in society and racist practices have often become so part and parcel of habits and routine, and social and professional interaction that it is often not even recognized as such. Racism has a terrifying impact on individuals. The US-based Institute for Peace Justice described some aspects of racism as a “rejection or neglect as well as attack — a denial of needs, a reduction of persons to the status of objects to be broken, manipulated, or ignored. The violence of bombs can cripple bodies; the violence of miseducation can cripple minds. The violence of unemployment can murder self-esteem and hope. The violence of a chronic insecurity can disfigure personalities as well as persons”. Institutionalized racism and apartheid have left Africans and African Americans, with massive ‘existential insecurity’. Their cultures were under attack, they were physically dislocated, they were deprived materially, and they were deprived from equitable access to public goods such as education and healthcare. Chronic insecurity caused by humiliation scars the individuals. 224

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Slavery, colonialism and apartheid have caused ‘dislocation’ of “familiar and trusted social benchmarks”– whether cultural, individual or social. This leaves a void within many individuals. The challenge for both the US and SA is how to help broken individuals fill that void. Frantz Fanon (1967) points out how institutional racism scars the black “psyche”: causing inferiority complexes, low self-esteem, aggression, anxiety, depression, and often “a defensive romanticization of indigenous culture”, whether emphasizing fundamentalist Zulu-ness or Africanness, or nostalgic African communal development ideologies. In our globalized world individual self-esteem, identity and value are increasingly measured in how much an individual in terms of material possessions. Since a big part of the legacy of institutional racism is that blacks are invariably mostly poorer off, this stereotype reinforces ‘existential insecurity’, among the poor blacks.

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References Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2001. The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review 91, no. 5: 1369-1401. DOI: 10.1257/aer.91.5.1369 Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2002a. An African success story: Botswana. CEPR Discussion Paper 3219. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.290791. Alam, M. Shahid. 2000. Poverty from the Wealth of Nations: Integration and Polarization in the Global Economy since 1760. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Amin, Samir. 1972. L’Afrique de l’Ouest bloquée. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Austen, Ralph A. 1987. African economic history: Internal development and external dependency. London: James Currey. Andrews, Edward (2010). “Christian Missions and Colonial Empires Reconsidered: A Black Evangelist in West Africa, 1766–1816”. Journal of Church & State. 51 (4): 663–691. doi: 10.1093/jcs/csp090. Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer. (1966). Ghana: The End of an Illusion. New York and London: Monthly Review Press. Comaroff, Jean; Comaroff, John (2010) [1997]. “Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination”. In Grinker, Roy R.; Lubkemann, Stephen C.; Steiner, Christopher B. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 32. Ekuru Aukot, “Northern Kenya: A Legal-Political Scar,” Pambazuka News, Issue 401, October 9, 2008, http: //pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/51035. 225

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Fall, Babacar. (1993). Le travail forcé en Afrique occidentale française, 1900-1945. Paris: Karthala. Falola, Toyin (2001). Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies. University Rochester Press. p. 33. Frantz Fanon. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Greer, Thomas H. (1987). From A Brief History of the Western World, 5th edition. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers. Grier, Robin M. 1999. “Colonial Legacies and Economic Growth.” Public Choice 98: 317-335. Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hodder, B. W. A Short Introduction to African Affairs (London, Methuen &Co Ltd 1978) Jinadu, L. Adele, The African Peer Review in Nigeria, July 2008 in OSISA above Jordaan, Eduard “Inadequately Self-Critical: Rwanda’s SelfAssessment for the African Peer Mechanism,” African Affairs 105/420,2006 Kanbur, Ravi “The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM): An Assessment of Concept and Hopkins, A. G. (1973). An economic history of West Africa. London: Longman. Katz. Mark N. 1996). “Collapsed Empires.” In Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Olser Hampson and Pamela Aall, 25-37. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace. Northrup, David. 1988. Beyond the bend in the river: African labor in eastern Zaire, 1865-1940. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Kwame Nkrumah. (1970). “Neocolonialism in Africa,” in The Africa Reader: Independent Africa. New York: Vintage Books. Maathai, Wangari The challenge for Africa (New York, Pantheon Books 2009) Mafeje, Archie “Africanity: A Commentary by Way of Conclusion” CODESRIA Bulletin Nos 3&4, 2001 Mbelle, Nobuntu The APRM Process in South Africa, March 2010 in OSISA above McMahon, Edward R. The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance: A Positive Step on a Long Path May 2007 www.afrimap.org/english/images/paper/ACDEG7IADC.McMahon.pdf Accessed Jan 6 2011. Macpherson, W. (1999). The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, Report of an Inquiry by Sir William. Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Decentralized Despotism and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meador, Jake. “Cosmetic Christianity and the Problem of Colonialism – Responding to Brian McLaren”. Retrieved 2010-11-17. According to Jake 226

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Meador, “some Christians have tried to make sense of post-colonial Christianity by renouncing practically everything about the Christianity of the colonizers. They reason that if the colonialists’ understanding of Christianity could be used to justify rape, murder, theft, and empire then their understanding of Christianity is completely wrong. Melber, Henning. (2002).”Liberation without Democracy? Flaws of PostColonial Systems in Southern Africa” http: //www.dse.de/zeitschr/de1027.htm 2002. Melvin E. Page, Penny M. Sonnenburg (2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 496. Of all religions, Christianity has been most associated with colonialism because several of its forms (Catholicism and Protestantism) were the religions of the European powers engaged in colonial enterprise on a global scale. Bevans, Steven. “Christian Complicity in Colonialism/ Globalism” (PDF). Retrieved 2010-11-17. The modern missionary era was in many ways the ‘religious arm’ of colonialism, whether Portuguese and Spanish colonialism in the sixteenth Century, or British, French, German, Belgian or American colonialism in the nineteenth. This was not all bad — oftentimes missionaries were heroic defenders of the rights of indigenous peoples. Mahmood Mamdani. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. .Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, “No Land, No Freedom,” Pambazuka News, Issue 726, May 14, 2015, http: //pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/94717. Nigel Harris. (1987). The End of the Third World: Newly Industrializing Countries and the Decline of an Ideology. London: Meredith Press. Oloruntimehin, B. O., Rebuilding ECOWAS on Democratic Principles (Ibadan, Development Policy Centre 2000). Sandbrook, Richard, The Politics of Africa’s Economic Stagnation (Cambridge university Press 1985). Saungweme, Sekai, A Critical Look at the Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance May 2007. www.afrimap.org/english/images/paper/ACDEG.Saungweme.pdf Access ed January 5, 2011. Palmer, Robin, and Neil Parsons, eds. (1977). The roots of rural poverty in Central and Southern Africa. London: Heinemann. Peter Dwyer and Leo Zeilig. (2012). “An Epoch of Uprisings,” chap. 3 in African Struggles Today: Social Movements since Independence. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. London: BogleL’Ouverture. 227

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Roger Southall and Henning Melber, eds. (2009). A New Scramble for Africa? Imperialism, Investment and Development. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Seddon, David. (2009). “Historical Overview of Struggle in Africa,” in Leo Zeilig, ed. Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Young, Crawford. 1994. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Part III Africa in the New Colonial Age of Empire

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Preview Capitalism’s corrosive effects on various societies around the chaotic global belt, and conclusively demonstrating the irrational and structurally destabilizing nature of the capitalist social formation itself, particularly in its latest deathdealing, monstrously destructive configuration, neoliberalism, endures in Africa. But, the center of this capitalist system of the world is located in the temperate region. It requires as its raw materials and means of consumption a whole range of primary commodities which are not available or producible, either at all or in adequate quantities, within its own borders. These commodities have to be obtained from the tropical and sub-tropical region within which almost the whole of Africa is located; and the bulk of them (leaving aside minerals) are produced by a set of petty producers (peasants). What is more, they are subject to “increasing supply price,” in the sense that as demand for them increases in the capitalist sector, larger quantities of them can be obtained, if at all, only at higher prices, thanks to the fixed size of the tropical land mass. Capitalism today is of course much more complex, with an enormous financial superstructure. This makes the imperialist arrangement even more essential. The more complex capitalism becomes, the more it needs its basic simple props. With the reassertion of the dominance of finance, in the guise now of an international finance capital, African states have withdrawn from supporting petty producers, a process of income deflation is in full swing, and the imperialist arrangement is back in place, because of which we can see once more a tendency toward a secular decline in per capita food grain availability in the continent as in the colonial period. Obviously, the issue of imperialism is important not for scholastic reasons, but because of the praxis that a recognition of its role engenders. It is clear that since capitalist globalization involves income deflation for the peasantry and petty producers, and since their absorption into the ranks of the active army of labor under capitalism does not occur because of the paucity of jobs that are created even when rates of output growth are high, there is a tendency toward an absolute immiserization of the working population. For the petty producers, this tendency operates directly; and for others, it operates through the driving down of the “reservation wage” owing to the 229

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impoverishment of petty producers. Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). Hence, African countries tied to the apron strings of international finance capital will continue to be appendages in the New Colonial Empire, be it the Neocolonial, Neoliberal of Neoliberal Globalization variant.

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Chapter 6 Africa between Independence and Neocolonial Age of Empire

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Overview For the newly independent African countries, the struggle for political independence and the struggle for economic independence are interrelated. Without secure and full political independence from Empire, genuine economic independence is impossible; without genuine economic independence, secure and full political independence cannot last. In other words, political independence is the precedent for economic independence, while economic independence is the basis for political independence or liberation from the stranglehold of Empire. Whether before or after independence, the winning, maintaining and consolidating of political independence is always the primary task for all African countries. Political independence takes precedence over economic independence. At the same time, the two are interdependent and complementary. Before independence, all efforts must be directed first of all at winning political independence so as to prepare the conditions for economic independence. After independence, African countries, while continuing to consolidate their political independence, need to make full use of their political power to obliterate the influences of the imperialists and their lackeys, carry out agrarian and other social reforms, establish and develop independent national economies and thus consolidate the political independence or emancipation already secured. In the process of striving for economic independence, it is necessary to combine economic struggle with political struggle so that they complement and promote each other. The end purpose of both is to achieve full independence. To win full political independence and genuine economic independence will require a long and arduous struggle, the whole process being marked by zigzags—with quantitative changes leading to qualitative changes— and by sharp and complex struggles with imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism and all other reactionary forces at home and abroad. Unfortunately, Africa gained political independence fraught by reactionary forces of imperialism, the Cold War and contradictions of its decolonization.

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Introduction: Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1960 The primary task of all oppressed peoples and nations seeking liberation is to overthrow imperialist colonial rule and to strive for political independence. However, it is far from sufficient merely to win political independence, which is only “the first step in a Long March.” After winning political independence, the African countries needed to make full use of their political power to go on to win economic independence. Only thus would they be able to thoroughly rid themselves of imperialist control and colonialist and neo-colonialist exploitation and approach full independence. If, on the other hand, the African countries after their independence fail to carry forward the national-democratic revolution, do not take effective revolutionary measures and actively strive for economic independence, then they cannot win final, secure and full independence, and the danger exists that they will lose their hard-won political independence. The political independence won by many African countries is far from secure and has to be consolidated. In the new conditions of the postwar period, the imperialist countries headed by the United States adopted neo-colonialist tactics and maintained their colonial rule through hand-picked and specially trained agents. By forming military blocs, establishing military bases, setting up “federations” and “communities,” making use of “aid” and carrying out aggression and intervention under the aegis of the United Nations, these imperialist countries have sought to keep, and in some cases have succeeded in keeping, a number of newly independent African countries under their control. Thus, while these African countries are allowed to have formal political independence, they are in fact still dependent on the imperialist countries economically or even politically. Apropos this situation, Lenin’s warning many decades ago is still relevant. In his Preliminary Draft of Theses on the National and Colonial Questions written in 1920, Lenin pointed to the need “constantly to explain and expose among the broadest masses of the toilers of all countries, and particularly of the backward countries, the deception systematically practiced by the imperialist powers in creating, under the guise of politically independent states, states which are wholly dependent upon them economically, financially and militarily....” Today, when neocolonialism—a type of colonialism far more vicious, cunning and ferocious than old colonialism—is seriously threatening the newly won political independence of African countries, this warning has a special practical significance. The colonial world, according to Frantz Fanon, can be understood as the encounter between two forces, those of the colonial settler and the native population, defined and sustained by violence (2001: 28). Colonial rule is 232

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imposed by European states in order to exploit the resources of the colonized area, and indeed, for Fanon, ‘Europe is literally the creation of the Third World’ (Ibid.: 81). Unlike in developed capitalist societies, where the economic exploitation of the masses is veiled by a hegemonic superstructure upheld by institutions such as organized religion and the education system, exploitation in the colonies is naked and thus necessarily upheld by violent means of oppression, constructing a Manichean world based on an immediately clear distinction between colonizer and colonized. A central aspect of the oppression of the native people is their dehumanization and the attempt to destroy their national culture (Fairchild, 1994: 192). This is achieved by the use of language that degrades the natives to the status of animals, the application of racist ‘scientific’ theories of the inferiority of the native population, and concentrated attacks on indigenous cultural practice (Fanon, 2001: 32-33, 244; 2004: 43). The colonizers are thus ‘committed to destroying the people’s originality’ by presenting cultural practices, which are ‘in fact the assertion of a distinct identity, concern with keeping intact a few shreds of national existence’, as ‘religious, magical, fanatical behavior’ (Fanon, 2004: 43-44, 46). The dehumanization of the native serves a dual purpose. First, it allows the colonizers to escape the apparent contradictions between Western values of democracy and equality on the one hand, and the undemocratic and extremely violent oppression of the native population on the other (Rabaka, 2010: 115). Second, the internalization of dehumanizing and violent colonial relations destroys the natives’ ‘sense of selfhood’ (Gibson, 2003: 107) allowing for continued colonial exploitation due to ‘a belief in fatality [which] removes all blame from the oppressor’ (Fanon, 2001: 42). However, despite the myriad tools used to dehumanize the natives, they are never fully convinced of their inferiority, ‘and it is precisely at the moment [the native] realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure [the native population’s] victory’ (Ibid.: 33). In other words, the necessarily violent imposition and sustenance of colonial rule simultaneously sow the seeds of its own destruction. Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. Historically, there was no one process of decolonization. In some areas, it was peaceful, and orderly. In many others, independence was achieved only after a protracted revolution. A few newly independent countries acquired stable governments almost immediately; others were ruled by dictators or military juntas for decades, or endured long civil wars. Some European governments welcomed a new relationship with their former colonies; others contested decolonization militarily. The process of decolonization coincided with the new 233

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Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and with the early development of the new United Nations. Decolonization was often affected by superpower competition, and had a definite impact on the evolution of that competition. It also significantly changed the pattern of international relations in a more general sense. The creation of so many new countries, some of which occupied strategic locations, others of which possessed significant natural resources, and most of which were desperately poor, altered the composition of the United Nations and political complexity of every region of the globe. In the mid to late 19th century, the European powers colonized much of Africa and Southeast Asia. During the decades of imperialism, the industrializing powers of Europe viewed the African and Asian continents as reservoirs of raw materials, labor, and territory for future settlement. In most cases, however, significant development and European settlement in these colonies was sporadic. However, the colonies were exploited, sometimes brutally, for natural and labor resources, and sometimes even for military conscripts. In addition, the introduction of colonial rule drew arbitrary natural boundaries where none had existed before, dividing ethnic and linguistic groups and natural features, and laying the foundation for the creation of numerous states lacking geographic, linguistic, ethnic, or political affinity. During World War II Japan, itself a significant imperial power, drove the European powers out of Asia. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, local nationalist movements in the former Asian colonies campaigned for independence rather than a return to European colonial rule. In many cases, as in Indonesia and French Indochina, these nationalists had been guerrillas fighting the Japanese after European surrenders, or were former members of colonial military establishments. These independence movements often appealed to the United States Government for support. While the United States generally supported the concept of national selfdetermination, it also had strong ties to its European allies, who had imperial claims on their former colonies. The Cold War only served to complicate the U.S. position, as U.S. support for decolonization was offset by American concern over communist expansion and Soviet strategic ambitions in Europe. Several of the NATO allies asserted that their colonial possessions provided them with economic and military strength that would otherwise be lost to the alliance. Nearly all of the United States’ European allies believed that after their recovery from World War II their colonies would finally provide the combination of raw materials and protected markets for finished goods that would cement the colonies to Europe. Whether or not this was the case, the alternative of allowing the colonies to slip away, perhaps into the United States’ 234

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economic sphere or that of another power, was unappealing to every European government interested in postwar stability. Although the U.S. Government did not force the issue, it encouraged the European imperial powers to negotiate an early withdrawal from their overseas colonies. The United States granted independence to the Philippines in 1946. However, as the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union came to dominate U.S. foreign policy concerns in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations grew increasingly concerned that as the European powers lost their colonies or granted them independence, Sovietsupported communist parties might achieve power in the new states. This might serve to shift the international balance of power in favor of the Soviet Union and remove access to economic resources from U.S. allies. Events such as the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Netherlands (1945–50), the Vietnamese war against France (1945–54), and the nationalist and professed socialist takeovers of Egypt (1952) and Iran (1951) served to reinforce such fears, even if new governments did not directly link themselves to the Soviet Union. Thus, the United States used aid packages, technical assistance and sometimes even military intervention to encourage newly independent nations in the Third World to adopt governments that aligned with the West. The Soviet Union deployed similar tactics in an effort to encourage new nations to join the communist bloc, and attempted to convince newly decolonized countries that communism was an intrinsically non-imperialist economic and political ideology. Many of the new nations resisted the pressure to be drawn into the Cold War, joined in the “nonaligned movement,” which formed after the Bandung conference of 1955, and focused on internal development. The newly independent nations that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s became an important factor in changing the balance of power within the United Nations. In 1946, there were 35 member states in the United Nations; as the newly independent nations of the “third world” joined the organization, by 1970 membership had swelled to 127. These new member states had a few characteristics in common; they were non-white, with developing economies, facing internal problems that were the result of their colonial past, which sometimes put them at odds with European countries and made them suspicious of European-style governmental structures, political ideas, and economic institutions. These countries also became vocal advocates of continuing decolonization, with the result that the UN Assembly was often ahead of the Security Council on issues of self-governance and decolonization. The new nations pushed the UN toward accepting resolutions for independence for colonial states and creating a special committee on colonialism, demonstrating that even though some nations continued to struggle for 235

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independence, in the eyes of the international community, the colonial era was ending.

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African National Independence

Depicted on the map are the 48 continental nations of Africa and the nation of Madagascar along with the year each nation became independent.

Background to Independence on Neocolonial Ropes I will start by stating categorically that the developed countries of the Northern hemisphere of the world especially Western Europe and the United States of America (USA) have been at the gaining end of the parasitic and asymmetrical relationship between the North and the impoverished South, this 236

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asymmetric relationship is what is today known as imperialism. Imperialism which is the process of extending a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of political and economic hegemony over other nations has been the bane of many underdeveloped nations of the world especially in Africa, thus while a part of the world build empires both home and abroad, another part continually spirals down the drain of poverty, peril, stagnancy, impoverishment and underdevelopment. This According to Spiegel et al. (2012), is because “Regardless of time or place, whether they were continental or extended over water, empires served the same basic functions: they represented the extension of one people’s control over another, the extension of one state’s hegemony over others’ territory, the opportunity to extract goods cheaply without concern for local costs, and the chance to extend values (religious, moral, cultural, and social)”. Thus imperialism is a dialectical relationship among a party (usually states) in which there is disequilibrium in the distribution of gains and losses, hence, what counts as loss for one party becomes gain for the other. The Western imperial powers have devised so many means to maintain such asymmetrical relationship at all cost even post colonially. It is the employment of these methods that some scholars call Neo-colonialism, Post-colonial imperialism and what I personally call imperialism-in-continuum. This paper thus traces many of the developmental crises in Africa to the negative consequences of imperialism. Neo-colonialism refers to the indirect control of the nations of the south by their former colonial masters socially, politically and economically. Neo-colonialism started immediately after the decolonization of African and Asian nations. The colonial administrators’ interest would not be jeopardized by the transfer of power. One of the methods was to prepare ground for creation of puppet leaders by involving leaders of national movements into colonial government. This ensured that the emerging leaders were groomed to up hold the existing exploitation relation. Neo-colonialism is the geopolitical practice of using capitalism, business globalization, and cultural imperialism to influence a country in lieu of either direct military control or indirect political control, imperialism and hegemony. The term neo-colonialism was coined by Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, to describe the socio-economic and political control that can be exercised economically, linguistically, and culturally, whereby promotion of the culture of the neo-colonist country facilitates the cultural assimilation of the colonized people and thus opens the national economy to the multinational corporations of the neo-colonial country. The Political Science term “Neo-Colonialism” became popular usage in reference to the continued European economic, political and cultural control of African countries that had been decolonized in 237

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the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–45). Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana (1960–66), coined the term “neo-colonialism” in the book NeoColonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965). Decolonization has had a significant impact on the economies of the newly formed African states. First and foremost, newly independent African states had to develop an economic system. Moreover, even though the former colonies were now formally independent, they were still rather dependent on the West for assistance in developing economic and political structures. Thus, Western corporations still had a significant amount of control over the new states. Newly independent states borrowed money from the West in order to fund their own development, resulting in a new system of debt. For decades, this debt has been politically impossible for many countries to pay off and it still exists. Although decolonization ended formal colonialism, unequal economic relationships between the developed West and newly independent states had set up a system referred to as neocolonialism. Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization, and cultural forces to control a country in lieu of direct military or political control. External forces exert power in Africa in two ways. First, multinational corporations (MNCs), or companies with operations in multiple countries, apply pressure for certain political behaviors to suit their own interests. For example, if an American company wants to farm in Ethiopia, the company can apply pressure on the Ethiopian government to grant them certain conditions in exchange for the investment in the land. This function operates because of the dependency principle. In other words, many African countries are so desperate to bring in revenue to support their domestic agendas that it is in their interests to accept unsavory conditions from foreign companies. In this way, foreign companies exert significant influence over post-colonial states. The combination of the degree of the influence and the dependency principle creates a situation that in many ways mirrors colonialism. Second, foreign countries can exert influence over post-colonial states by only offering loans under certain conditions. This, again, invokes the dependency principle and mirrors colonialism. With the utmost speed, neo-colonialism must be analyzed in clear and simple terms for the full mass understanding by the surging organizations of the African peoples. Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Africa, imperialism simply switched tactics. Without a qualm it dispensed with its flags, and even with certain of its more irritating expatriate officials. This meant that it was ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devised innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked 238

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colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism. Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed ‘The Invisible Government’, arising from Wall Street’s connection with the United States Pentagon and various intelligence services. Quoting David Wise and Thomas B. Ross (1964): ‘The Invisible Government ... is a loose amorphous grouping of individuals and agencies drawn from many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its heart. Nor is it confined to the nine other agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community: the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence and Research, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. ‘The Invisible Government includes also many other units and agencies, as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are seemingly private. ‘To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction. ‘This Invisible Government is a relatively new institution. It came into being as a result of two related factors: the rise of the United States after World War II to a position of pre-eminent world power, and the challenge to that power by Soviet Communism... ‘By 1964 the intelligence network had grown into a massive hidden apparatus, secretly employing about 200,000 persons and spending billions of dollars a year.’”

As a form of domination, neocolonialism came into existence during the periods of political “decolonization” after the World War II. As most colonies were inadequately prepared for independence and self-governance, the colonial powers offered “help” to the newly independent countries. Most of these countries accepted the offer because they hoped to be able to participate in the global economy and move towards “progress” and “development.” In this sense, newly independent countries remained dependent on the former colonial powers. Since the same relationship of domination continued, “a new national 239

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flag or anthem in many respects did little to change the status for most of the population or the real relations of power between the former colony and the former colonizer” (Warf, 2006: 330). Here, from the very citadel of neo-colonialism, was a description of the apparatus which now directs all other Western intelligence set-ups either by persuasion or by force. Results were achieved in Algeria during the April 1961 plot of anti-de Gaulle generals; as also in the trouble in Congo (Leopoldville) which began with Lumumba’s murder, and continues till now. And with what aim have these innumerable incidents occurred? The general objective has been mentioned: to achieve colonialism in fact while preaching independence. On the economic front, a strong factor favoring Western monopolies and acting against the developing world is inter-national capital’s control of the world market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. From 1951 to 1961, without taking oil into consideration, the general level of prices for primary products fell by 33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose 3.5 per cent (within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent). In that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin American countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 million. In the same period, while the volume of exports from these countries rose, their earnings in foreign exchange from such exports decreased. Another technique of neo-colonialism is the use of high rates of interest. Figures from the World Bank for 1962 showed that seventy-one Asian, African and Latin American countries owed foreign debts of some $27,000 million, on which they paid in interest and service charges some $5,000 million. Since then, such foreign debts have been estimated as more than £30,000 million in these areas. In 1961, the interest rates on almost three-quarters of the loans offered by the major imperialist powers amounted to more than five per cent, in some cases up to seven or eight per cent, while the call-in periods of such loans have been burdensomely short. While capital worth $30,000 million was exported to some fifty-six developing countries between 1956 and 1962, ‘it is estimated that interest and profit alone extracted on this sum from the debtor countries amounted to more than £15,000 million. This method of penetration by economic aid recently soared into prominence when a number of countries began rejecting it. Ceylon, Indonesia and Cambodia are among those who turned it down. Such ‘aid’ is estimated on the annual average to have amounted to $2,600 million between 1951 and 1955; $4,007 million between 1956 and 1959, and $6,000 million between 1960 and 1962. But the average sums taken out of the aided countries by such donors in a sample year, 1961, are estimated to amount to $5,000 million in profits, $1,000 million in interest, and $5,800 million from non-equivalent 240

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exchange, or a total of $11,800 million extracted against $6,000 million put in. Thus, ‘aid’ turns out to be another means of exploitation, a modern method of capital export under a more cosmetic name. Still another neo-colonialist trap on the economic front has come to be known as ‘multilateral aid’ through international organizations: the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-national Bank for Reconstruction and Development (known as the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association are examples, all, significantly, having U.S. capital as their major backing. These agencies have the habit of forcing would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying information about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by the World Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans. As for the alleged development, between 1960 and mid-1963 the International Development Association promised a total of $500 million to applicants, out of which only $70 million were actually received. In more recent years, as pointed out by Monitor in The Times, 1 July 1965, there has been a substantial increase in communist technical and economic aid activities in developing countries. During 1964 the total amount of assistance offered was approximately £600 million. This was almost a third of the total communist aid given during the previous decade. The Middle East received about 40 per cent of the total, Asia 36 per cent, Africa 22 per cent and Latin America the rest. Increased Chinese activity was responsible to some extent for the larger amount of aid offered in 1964, though China contributed only a quarter of the total aid committed; the Soviet Union provided a half, and the East European countries a quarter. Although aid from socialist countries still falls far short of that offered from the west, it is often more impressive, since it is swift and flexible, and interest rates on communist loans are only about two per cent compared with five to six per cent charged on loans from western countries. Nor is the whole story of ‘aid’ contained in figures, for there are conditions which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and navigation treaties; agreements for economic co-operation; the right to meddle in internal finances, including currency and foreign exchange, to lower trade barriers in favor of the donor country’s goods and capital; to protect the interests of private investments; determination of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of such funds a majority of it, in fact to buy goods from the donor nation. These conditions apply to industry, commerce, agriculture, shipping and insurance, apart from others which are political and military.

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So-called ‘invisible trade’ furnishes the Western monopolies with yet another means of economic penetration. Over 90 per cent of world ocean shipping is controlled by me imperialist countries. They control shipping rates and, between 1951 and 1961, they increased them some five times in a total rise of about 60 per cent, the upward trend continuing. Thus, net annual freight expenses incurred by Asia, Africa and Latin America amount to no less than an estimated $1,600 million. This is over and above all other profits and interest payments. As for insurance payments, in 1961 alone these amounted to an unfavorable balance in Asia, Africa and Latin America of some additional $370 million. Having waded through all this, however, we have begun to understand only the basic methods of neo-colonialism. The full extent of its inventiveness is far from exhausted. In the labor field, for example, imperialism operates through labor arms like the Social Democratic parties of Europe led by the British Labor Party, and through such instruments as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), now apparently being superseded by the New York Africa-American Labor Centre (AALC) under AFL-CIO chief George Meany and the well-known CIA man in labor’s top echelons, Irving Brown. In 1945, out of the euphoria of anti-fascist victory, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) had been formed, including all world labor except the U.S. American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1949, however, led by the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), a number of pro-imperialist labor bodies in the West broke away from the WFTU over the issue of anti-colonialist liberation, and set up the ICFTU. For ten years it continued under British TUC leadership. Its record in Africa, Asia and Latin America could gratify only the big international monopolies which were extracting super-profits from those areas. In 1959, at Brussels, the United States AFL-CIO union center fought for and won control of the ICFTU Executive Board. From then on a flood of typewriters, mimeograph machines, cars, supplies, buildings, salaries and, so it is still averred, outright bribes for labor leaders in various parts of the developing world rapidly linked ICFTU in the minds of the rank and file with the CIA. To such an extent did its prestige suffer under these American bosses that, in 1964, the AFL-CIO brains felt it necessary to establish a fresh outfit. They set up the AALC in New York right across the river from the United Nations. ‘As a steadfast champion of national independence, democracy and social justice’, unblushingly stated the April 1965 Bulletin put out by this Centre, ‘the AFL-CIO will strengthen its efforts to assist the advancement of the economic conditions of the African peoples. Toward this end, steps have been taken to expand assistance to the African free trade unions by organizing the African-

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American Labor Centre. Such assistance will help African labor play a vital role in the economic and democratic upbuilding of their countries.’ The March issue of this Bulletin, however, gave the game away: ‘In mobilizing capital resources for investment in Workers Education, Vocational Training, Co-operatives, Health Clinics and Housing, the Centre will work with both private and public institutions. It will also encourage labor-management cooperation to expand American capital investment in the African nations.’ The italics are mine. Could anything be plainer? Following a pattern previously set by the ICFTU, it started classes: one for drivers and mechanics in Nigeria, one in tailoring in Kenya. Labor scholarships are being offered to Africans who want to study trade unionism in of all placesAustria, ostensibly by the Austrian unions. Elsewhere, labor, organized into political parties of which the British Labor Party is a leading and typical example, has shown a similar aptitude for encouraging ‘Labor-management co-operation to expand . . . capital investment in African nations.’ But as the struggle sharpened, even these measures of neo-colonialism were proving too mild. So Africa, Asia and Latin America have begun to experience a round of coups d’état or would-be coups, together with a series of political assassinations which destroyed in their political primes some of the newly emerging nations’ best leaders. To ensure success in these endeavors, the imperialists made widespread and wily use of ideological and cultural weapons in the form of intrigues, maneuvers and slander campaigns. Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded. Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade 243

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union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments. While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists’! Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow. Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilizing all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps. During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), and the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programs were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the center of its programs lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information. The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western 244

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countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organization of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants. In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries. Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA). Moral Re-Armament is an organization founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the Second World War, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterized MRA as a fascist organization ‘subsidized by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western world, claimed that MRA was actually subsidized by the CIA. When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA. Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organization, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 245

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Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even proWest countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities. However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims. The USIA was staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programs are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programs whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy. The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centers in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries. This agency was directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centers. In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The American government backed the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centers in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centers as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan. Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties 246

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between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries. Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyze the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favor. Secondly, it organizes networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defense and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion. One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organization created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centers. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia. Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources. Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history. The American Revolution of 1776 struggled through to victory over a tangle of inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, outright

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subversion and counter-revolution the like of which has been repeated to some degree in every subsequent revolution to date. The Russian Revolution during the period of Intervention, 1917 to 1922, appeared to be dying on its feet. The Chinese Revolution at one time was forced to pull out of its existing bases, lock stock and barrel, and make the unprecedented Long March; yet it triumphed. Imperialist white mercenaries who dropped so confidently out of the skies on Stanleyville after a plane trip from Ascension Island thought that their job would be ‘duck soup’. Yet, till now, the nationalist forces of Congo (Leopoldville) continue to fight their way forward. They do not talk of if they will win, but only of when. Asia provided a further example of the strength of a people’s will to determine their own future. In South Vietnam ‘special warfare’ is being fought to hold back the tide of revolutionary change. ‘Special warfare’ is a concept of General Maxwell Taylor and a military extension of the creed of John Foster Dulles: let Asians fight Asians. Briefly, the technique is for the foreign power to supply the money, aircraft, military equipment of all kinds, and the strategic and tactical command from a General Staff down to officer ‘advisers’, while the troops of the puppet government bear the brunt of the fighting. Yet in spite of bombing raids and the immense build-up of foreign strength in the area, the people of both North and South Vietnam are proving to be unconquerable. In Africa, Ghana withstood all efforts by imperialism and its agents; Tanzania nipped subversive plots in the bud, as have Brazzaville, Uganda and Kenya. The struggle raged back and forth. The surging popular forces may still have been hampered by colonialist legacies, but nonetheless they advanced inexorably. All these examples prove beyond doubt that neo-colonialism was not a sign of imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It testifies to its inability to rule any longer by old methods. Independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject peoples, so that even what it claims to have ‘given’ it now seeks to take away. All the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one direction, the ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history — divide and rule. Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for destroying neocolonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-union government on the much divided continent of Africa. Along with that, a strengthening of the AfroAsian Solidarity Organization and the spirit of Bandung was already under way. To it, Africans must seek the adherence on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin Americans. Furthermore, all these liberatory forces have, on all major issues and at every possible instance, the support of the growing socialist sector of the world. Finally, we must encourage and utilize to the full those still all too

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few yet growing instances of support for liberation and anti-colonialism inside the imperialist world itself. To carry out such a political program, Africa must all back it with national plans designed to strengthen themselves as independent nations. An external condition for such independent development is neutrality or political nonalignment. This was expressed in two conferences of Non-Aligned Nations, the last of which, in Cairo in 1964, clearly and inevitably showed itself at one with the rising forces of liberation and human dignity. And the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid but activity seldom directed, was to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, proliberation masses of our continents. They, and they alone, make, maintain or break revolutions.

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African Independence under Empire Most indigenous Africans are immensely underdeveloped and have suffered for more than five centuries because of the triple evils of colonial capitalism, state terrorism, and racism imposed on them by European colonial powers, successive global powers and their African collaborators. The European colonial powers, namely Spain, Portugal, England, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Italy and their African collaborators terrorized, exterminated, abused and misused indigenous Africans from the 16th century to the first half of the 19th centuries, and consequently they have underdeveloped and impoverished the surviving African populations. The homelands and natural resources of Africans were expropriated and transferred to European colonial settlers, their descendants and their African collaborators that have no interest to protect the political, economic, civil, and social rights of these people. Since most of these indigenous people are not represented in government, academic, economic, and media institutions or neocolonial African states, their voices are muzzled and hidden and most people of the world are misinformed and know nothing or little about them. By degrading and erasing their cultures, histories, and humanity of indigenous Africans, the descendants of the settlers and their African collaborators have convinced themselves that they can continue to terrorize and dispossess the resources of these people without moral/ethical and political responsibilities with the help of powerful states of the West as well as financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The imperialist nations of the West invest much in the developing countries of Africa through multinational corporations (MNCs). These companies exploit market area and cheap labor. To prove the above, Haag (2011), opined that 249

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“countries from Europe and America have been able to get inexpensive natural resources from the poorer countries in Asia and Latin America including oil for power ores and minerals.” The industrialized or imperialist nations also used their MNCs (Multinational Corporations) or even Transnational Corporations to further plunder the resources of the third-world till today. As a classical example, North-America and European corporations have acquired control of more than three-fourths of the known mineral resources of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Such multinational corporations invest in countries with cheaper labor markets U.S corporate foreign investment grew 84 percent 84 percent from 1985 to 1990, the most dramatic increase being in cheap labor countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Nigeria. Transnational’s have developed a global production line. General motors’ has factories that produce cars, trucks and a wide range of auto components in Canada, Brazil, Venezuela , Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavian, Nigeria, Singapore, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea and a dozen other countries. Another economic method is world market control. Europe and America control the world market by fixing price of African cash crops and by keeping the prices low, they make Africa remain dependent on their aids. Thus these nations are perpetually kept in a situation of unequal exchange. This is why Haag (Ibid.) went on to opine that “imperialist nations have mandate to fix price of Africa cash crops and other raw materials in addition with conditions” Another economic tool utilized by the west against Africa is the giving of loans and grants. Imperialist nations make use of financial institutions such as World Bank, IMF, IFC to give the developing countries loans and grants accompanied by very high interest rate and unrealistic conditionality. This proves hard for African nations to pay back in the long run, which results to debt burden and hence underdevelopment and dependence; for many years, Nigeria groaned under the heavy weight of debt burden until some were cancelled under the Olusegun Obasanjo civilian regime (1999-2007). The IMF operates as a United Nations specialized agency and is a permanent forum for consideration of issues of international payments, in which member nations are encouraged to maintain an orderly pattern of exchange rates and to avoid restrictive exchange practices. The IMF was established, along with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or World Bank, at the UN Monetary and Financial Conference held in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire with the sole aim of rebuilding the war-torn Europe (thus, an institution of the West, run by the West for the good of the West and practically the West alone). The IMF began operations in 1947. Membership is open to all independent nations and included 184 countries in 2004. Imperialism has come to predominate. Control is exercised informally and less overly. The U.S.A, for 250

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instance exerts considerable influence over certain Third World nations as a result of its national economical financial organization such as World Bank and IMF. Technology is another economic tool of northern dominance. There is a minimum technology transfer from the rich countries of the west to the poor countries of Africa even in a situation of import substitution. For example, in Nigeria, the Coca Cola Company brings machinery but do not allow the staff members from Nigeria to access the technological knowhow of the manufacturing process of soft drinks. This makes it that money is made in these countries, but is spent outside it, because money for the purchase of the machinery and expertise returns to the developed countries of the west. In the socio-cultural dimension, the west also utilize the mass media in the maintenance of an asymmetrical international order. Through worldwide mass media such as BBC, CNN, VOA, DW, the imperialist west disseminate information that psychologically justify their activities in Africa. Education is also used by the neo-colonialist to exploit developing countries. In the developing countries, the curriculum is informed by imperialistic rather than practical education. Hence the imperialists through colonialism have instituted a system of education that is not based on creativity, productivity and solution finding, but on paper works and theoretical explanations. Thus while the states of the west are busy producing and innovating through practical education, most scholars in the impoverished Africa are busy gathering certificates. It is this kind of situation that prompted Claude Ake’s book Social Science as Imperialism published in 1982. Cultural indoctrination is another way the west maintain their exploitative grip on Africa. Through the use of the mass media, books, magazines and the internet, people of the west inculcate their cultural values which include the mode of dressing and food into Africa. Through the adoption of western cultural ideals, new markets are established because of the induced demand in Africa where the people now want to appear like the people in the West. There is a very good and blossoming textile and foot wear industry in Aba, Nigeria but the government seem oblivious of these industries and the people many a time prefer made-in-U.S. and made-in-UK products over these local but very good products, the same goes for food items as people prefer foreign rice over the locally produced and more nutritious ones. Politically, the west establishes cordial relations with the ruling class in Africa. This is done so as to make it easier for these leaders to be used as local agents of imperialism. By installing and supporting puppet leaders (especially at independence), the imperialists are able to exploit these nations with the support of these petty bourgeois leaders who embezzle national funds and bank them 251

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overseas, thereby creating more capital in the north. Thus the leader benefits individually with the imperialists while the country remains impoverished. It is common in developing countries for leaders to be stupendously rich while the citizens wallow in abject poverty. Also, the advanced states of the north especially the U.S.A arbitrarily encroach into the territories of the southern states and topple leaders who are perceived to be working against northern imperialist interests. This informed the U.S.A invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime the same scenario also played out in Libya in 2011 when Col. Muammar Gadhafi the leader of the Libyan state was killed by pro-U.S.A local rebel forces. This asymmetrical imperialist relationship best explains why many African nationalists and critics of colonialism see the independence gained from the withdrawing colonial powers as only partial liberation. Some call it ‘false independence’. The reason is simple. European colonial imperialism prevented the capitalist development of African countries that were colonized or semicolonized. Furthermore, it brought about an imperialist-dependent capitalism in those African countries, destroyed and impeded the development of any progressive thing in those countries that it penetrated, and plundered the mineral and other natural resources of such countries stumbling into independence. In fact, European colonial imperialism tended clearly towards the export of capital rather than the export of commodities mainly associated with the free-competition stage of capitalism, and that it had a usurious character. The year 1960 was the most important in African history. From Senegal to Somalia, from Algeria to the Union of South Africa, the continent reverberated with cries of independence, attained or desired. Bewildering at times in variety and extent, events developed at a pace that in some cases precluded firm judgments about their significance. Amid the diversity, however, certain basic facts stood out as characteristic of Africa as a whole: (1) Africans, with notable exceptions, achieved or were moving in the direction of control over their own destinies. (2) For the most part, they favored a policy of nonalignment in the “cold war,” fearing reimposition of an old or establishment of a new colonialism. (3) Willing to co-operate with each other on diplomatic, economic and cultural levels, they did not, however, take any remarkable steps toward establishing Kwame Nkrumah’s proposed United States of Africa. Indeed, intraterritorial friction was not uncommon. (4) Beset by postimperialist economic problems, the Africans looked to the United Nations for aid. (5) Despite the problems of freedom, they rejoiced in their newly won status. The five points highlighted above explain why decolonization is a central historical trend in the continent. Occurring in four broad phases from 1776 up 252

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to 1991, it has shaped the present-day global system of states through the release of revolutionary forces. The term “decolonization” refers to the process through which colonial rule dissolved, and it encompasses the various political, economic, cultural and social dimensions of this process both in the periphery and in the metropole. For more than 200 years, decolonization has linked the history of Europe with that of the other four continents in significant ways, and it continues to influence the relationship between the European continent and the rest of the world right up to the present. Decolonization is therefore a central historical trend. Occurring in four broad phases from 1776 up to 1991, it has shaped the present-day global system of states through the release of revolutionary forces. The term “decolonization” refers to the process through which colonial rule dissolved, and it encompasses the various political, economic, cultural and social dimensions of this process both in the periphery and in the metropole. For more than 200 years, decolonization has linked the history of Europe with that of the other four continents in significant ways, and it continues to influence the relationship between the European continent and the rest of the world right up to the present. After World War II, the structure of global politics changed dramatically. Before the war, the world was economically and politically multipolar. After the war it remained economically multipolar but became politically bipolar, with the formation of two rival global military alliances, one dominated by the United States, the other by the Soviet Union. While nominally socialist, the USSR was by this time ruled by a bureaucratic elite that exploited the majority of the population in order to compete with the West for power and influence. The stage was set for the Cold War. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union took over most of Eastern Europe (initially with the agreement of their wartime Western allies) and installed regimes modeled on its own, with one-party states that controlled in each case most of the economy. While state and capital never fully merged in most of the capitalist world, they did so in the Soviet bloc for several decades (Gasper, 2010). It would be hard to deny that this was a period of intense interimperialist rivalry. Wars continued on the periphery, especially in Africa, resulting in millions of deaths, and the two superpowers engaged in a massive arms race, but there was no war between the USA and the USSR, although they came extremely close at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and on several other occasions (Lewis, 2014). It was under these interimperialist rivalries that Africa gained its independence. Underlying this immediate concern were continuing imperial rivalries with other major powers, driven by the same intersecting logics of economic and military competition analyzed by Lenin and Bukharin in different geopolitical circumstances ninety years earlier. None of the other powers could threaten Washington’s hegemony 253

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on a global level, but they could erode US dominance in specific areas. The longterm goal of US imperialism was to maintain its control of oil—first established after World War II—by shoring up friendly governments in the area no matter what their records might be on human rights like Mobutu’s Zaire, and by containing and when possible replacing unfriendly ones like those of Lumumba and Nkrumah. Though intimately related to the extraordinary crescendo of political events, other significant developments of a nonpolitical nature took place in Africa in 1960. No startling economic progress was made toward meeting the “revolution of rising expectations.” Africa would continue to hope to secure financial and technical aid from abroad. Symbolic steps, however, indicating that stagnation had not set in, included the May 17 opening of the Kariba dam hydroelectric project on the Zambezi river, the start of work on the second Aswan dam on the Nile (with $280,000,000 of Soviet aid) and the continued solicitation of funds for the Volta river development in Ghana. President Kwame Nkrumah’s denial of reports of prospective nationalization of industry in Ghana, though himself professedly a socialist, touched on a matter of pervasive importance for the underdeveloped countries. What economic concessions would be offered to induce outside capital to come to Africa? One readily apparent factor helping the continent was the attempt to curry favor from the Africans by both the eastern and western blocs. In the face of economic and political pressures, the Africans turned toward the United Nations for solutions to their dilemmas. The UN department of economic and social affairs had, earlier in the year, pointed to the difficult problems involved in building sound and self-sustaining economies in Africa. Concluding his five-week tour through Africa in February, Hammarskjöld called for the channeling of aid to Africa through the United Nations and in April called for more aid. Perhaps for reasons such as these, the new African members, after their admission to the United Nations, supported the secretarygeneral in the Sept. 21 dispute over his Congo policy. The degree of co-operation among African states during the year was to be found more in the diplomatic and cultural fields than in the economic area. Conferences and meetings of African governments and peoples took place at Tunis (Jan. 25), Accra (April 7), Conakry (April 11–15), Addis Ababa (June 10) and Léopoldville (Aug. 25–31). Aside from the condemnation of imperialism, racialism and the French atomic tests in the Sahara, these meetings were notable less for their achievements than for the continued contact with each other they afforded African leaders. Yet differing political orientations, language barriers, separate histories, tribal and religious obstacles and personal ambition acted to hamper co-operation. The first West African Olympic-style games, however, 254

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opened in Nigeria on Oct. 3, and leaders such as Tom Mboya and Nyerere did come out in support of the federation of the British areas of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar. It appeared, though, that for the near future the forces of inertia would operate to keep changes within a nation-state framework. On the whole a vast new interest in the African panorama, almost commensurate with the epic changes, was displayed by news media, individuals, organizations and governments in 1960. Both the Soviet Union and the United States vied with each other in the race to win the good will of the potential African intellectual elite. The U.S.S.R. announced plans for a new university to provide free education in Moscow for several thousand foreign students. The United States and private groups set up scholarships and transportation assistance for several hundred African students that would bring the number of African students in the United States to about 2,000. Africans showed themselves most anxious to lower the 80% illiteracy rate and leap into the 20th century through the magic of education.

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Between East and West: The Cold War in Africa To refresh our memory, Africa had a lot of significance in the Cold War! Africa is a very large continent as such there were many different reasons that different areas of Africa were significant throughout the cold war. As such this is going to be quite a long answer. I will explain the significance of Africa in the cold war through a few of the countries of the continent in order to give some structure to the answer. If you would like to know the history of certain country please say so. In Some Respects, Africa had caught the attention of revolutionary Marxists long before the Cold War “proper”; Lenin, after all, had regarded imperialism as the “highest stage of capitalism”, and also its weakest link in that it was colonialism which would engender a death struggle between the capitalistimperialist nations, culminating in their mutual destruction. Richard J Reid, in his A Modern History of Africa states that from an ideological perspective the Marxists had every reason to want to see colonialism end, however Stalin’s isolationism somewhat limited the USSR’s involvement. It’s not until Krushchev and Brezhnev that there is large amount of activity by the USSR in Africa. Britain tried to present empire (in an appeal to the USA) as a Bulwark against communism. A strong Anglo-centric African block was much more appealing than a group of USSR aligned communist nations. With the collapse of empire, the USA took a more direct approach. Firstly to understand the Cold Wars effect on Africa some information on decolonization. At the advent of the Cold War at the end of World War II much 255

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of Africa was still part of European colonial empires. Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal were the main powers involved with the German and Ottoman African empires having been abolished after World War 1. After World War 1 it became increasingly evident that colonialism was no longer possible to Britain, France and Belgium (notably not Portugal). The two World Wars had cost the European nations a lot economically and in terms of manpower, important resources for maintaining a colonial empire. Furthermore, independence movements in the Middle East and India picked up in momentum and by the end of the 1950’s most of these countries had been granted independence. As far as British, French and Belgium Africa goes, the decolonization process happened very quickly over the period of the 1950’s to the 1960’s. These former colonies now had independence and resources that they hoped to sell to solidify their place in the global economy. Naturally the USSR and the US had interests in these African nations. I am going to deliberately ignore Ethiopia and Liberia in this part these two are anomalous to the norm in African Decolonization. The first nation on the African continent to gain independence was the Egypt. The final act that solidified independence was the Egyptian revolution of 1952 in which the Free Officers Movement overthrew King Farouk (a very pro-British monarchy) which eventually lead to Gamel Abdul Nasser rising to power. Nasser’s Regime promoted a pro-Arab style of Socialism that was staunchly nationalistic. Nasser received support from the USSR (both light and heavy armaments). An interesting example here is that the USA and the USSR both supported Egypt in the nationalization of the Suez Canal (1956) which France Britain and Israel wanted to prevent through military measures. Egypt allied itself with the Palestinian movement against Israel in the 1967 6 Day War and the 1972 Yom Kippur War. While not true proxy wars, The US supplied the Israeli side directly and the USSR supplied the Arab side through Czechoslovakia. Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat was much less sympathetic to the USSR, but certainly no more sympathetic to the USA and the west. The Algerian war for independence from France began in 1954 and ended in 1962. The main revolutionary organization in Algeria was the FLN who followed a similar Arab Socialist ideology as the Egyptians did, albeit with an Algerian flavor of nationalism. In the context of the cold war, the USSR supported the FLN’s campaign against the French and as such Algeria became a “rallying point for African nationalism” later (as Reid puts it), for Egypt and Algeria. The First Sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence (excluding Ethiopia) was the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1957. The independence movement was led by Kwame Nkrumah who was heavily influenced by Nasser’s revolution, Lenin’s revolution and the Black Nationalist movements. His aim was to create 256

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a Pan-African state in Africa in the wake of declining European colonialism. Obviously to the US and the USSR this had certain implications. Officially Ghana was a non-aligned Marxist state. However, the USSR the US was worried about the Marxist beliefs Nkrumah and his party espoused.

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The Cold War came to Africa, as Guinea gained its independence The former French colony of Guinea declares its independence on October 2, 1958, with Sekou Touré as the new nation’s first leader. Guinea was the sole French West African colony to opt for complete independence, rather than membership in the French Community, and soon thereafter France withdrew all aid to the new republic. It soon became apparent that Touré would pose a problem for the United States. He was fiercely nationalistic and anti-imperialist, and much of his wrath and indignation was aimed at the United States for its alliances with colonial powers such as Great Britain and France and its refusal to openly condemn the white minority government of South Africa. More troubling for U.S. officials, however, was Guinea’s open courting of Soviet aid and money and signing of a military assistance agreement with the Soviet Union. By 1960, nearly half of Guinea’s exports were going to eastern bloc nations and the Soviets had committed millions of dollars of aid to the African republic. Touré was also intrigued by Mao’s communist experiments in China. Toure played the Soviet Union and the United States against one another to get the aid and trade he desired. While Guinea’s relations with the United States got off to a rocky start (American newspapers routinely referred to the nation as “Red” Guinea), matters improved during the Kennedy administration when Touré refused to accommodate Soviet aircraft wishing to refuel on their way to Cuba during the missile crisis of 1962. In 1975, Touré changed course and allowed Soviet and Cuban aircraft to use Guinea’s airfields during the Angolan civil war, then he again reversed position by revoking the privileges in 1977 and moving closer to France and the United States. The concerns of U.S. officials over communist influences in Guinea, and the up-and-down relationship with Guinea were but precursors of other difficulties the United States would face in postcolonial Africa. As Guinea and other former colonies achieved independence during the post-World War II period, Africa became another battleground in the U.S.-Soviet conflict. As a routine, the French Parliament votes on the country’s military engagement in African countries after every four months. Why? Because it remains a (poorly understood) constitutional requirement that any French military intervention overseas be approved by the National Assembly after every 257

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four months. Moreover, even if President Nicholas Sarkozy and his successor, François Hollande, had sought to republicanize France’s wars in Africa – dressing them in the clothes of democratic legitimacy and UN approval – the locations and priorities underpinning those interventions speak to a post-colonial inheritance dating back to the 1950s and the era of ‘Mr. Africa’, Jacques Foccart. An event largely “forgotten” in France, the war of decolonization that began in earnest in 1955 in Cameroon against the Union des peuples du Cameroun (UPC or, in English, the Cameroon People’s Union) was not unlike the French war in Algeria. It also bore some resemblance to Britain’s ‘dirty war’ against the Mau Mau in Kenya. French operations against the UPC were constructed as a classic ‘counter-subversive’ action, a product – at least in the French military mind – of the contested end of Empire on the one hand, and the Cold war era struggle against Communist subversion on the other. And, according to the authors of Kamerun!, the war against the UPC (which traversed the formal end of French rule continuing until 1972) led to the entrenchment of a postcolonial regime, which followed the same counter-subversive logic. With France’s formal decolonization from sub-Saharan Africa substantially accomplished by the end of 1960, the advent of independent states demanded the forging of new postcolonial client relationships with France. Jacques Foccart, Charles de Gaulle’s long-serving presidential counsellor between 1958 and 1974 – and a man who soon acquired the epithet ‘Mr Africa’ – proposed a three dimensional military schema to accomplish this goal. The first entailed the signing of secret defense agreements; French assistance could then be requested by any client regime deemed to be a ‘friend of France’ should it be faced with otherwise uncontrollable disorder.

Depiction of French attack on the Baraka Camp in Libreville, February 1964, following the military Gabonese Coup against President M’Ba (6 H 49)

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The concept was tested when, in February 1964, a coup took place in Libreville, capital of the former colony of Gabon, following the kidnap of President M’Ba. Managing a crisis cell from Paris, Foccart organized a French intervention that invoked those secret accords. Power was duly restored to Léon M’Ba, paving the way for Albert-Bernard Bongo to become President after M’Ba’s death, a post that Bongo would hold from 1967 until 2009. The second aspect to Foccart’s African client politics, alongside the provision for intervention during a period of internal crisis, was that of ongoing military cooperation. French paratroop battalions were deployed throughout the pré carré (the exclusive zone of former French colonies), each of them established at permanent military bases. This longstanding military presence also presented the opportunity to promote French officers as African presidential counsellors, a notable example of which was Colonel Bocchino, a close aide to Madagascar’s President Philibert Tsiranana. Bocchino’s withdrawal figured among the first demands of Malagasy revolutionaries in 1972. The third component of Foccart’s client politics was the construction of security ties founded on privileged intelligence provision, reflecting his own training in France’s intelligence service. Colonel Robert, Head of the African Department within the French overseas security service, the SDECE (the French counterpart to MI6), envisaged an intelligence network, partly based on cooperation in matters of counter-intelligence and counter-subversion with client African intelligence services, and partly based on black operations, which were exclusively conducted by the French security services. Foccart was well aware that these military instruments counted for nothing until they were harnessed to a discreet political program. The critical change in this context took place in the late 1960s. In 1969, after a preliminary operation in August 1968 (an event largely overlooked by a French public still reeling from the events of May ‘68), France launched its first war in Africa since the end of the Algeria war — this time in Chad. Known as Operation Limousin, this intervention would last for three years. With it, an important precedent had been set. In 1978, President Giscard d’Estaing thereafter launched Operation Tacaud in pursuit of a hidden war against Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan regime. Giscard’s successor, President Mitterrand ultimately followed suit – illustrating an important continuity in what was depicted as French presidential pragmatism in African affairs. During the 1970s and on into the 1980s, France continued its efforts to undermine the Libyan regime through military actions in Chad.

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French military intelligence memo at the end of the Op. Limousin, 1972 (10 T 749)

President Giscard d’Estaing also proved that French forces considered themselves a vital strategic reserve for the conduct of the West’s Cold War actions in black Africa. In 1978 Foreign Legionnaires helped Zaire’s President Mobutu put down rebellion in the eastern province of Katanga, SDECE operatives also worked alongside their CIA counterparts during Angola’s protracted civil war, supporting the UNITA forces of Jonas Savimbi against the Marxist MPLA, which was in turn supported by Cuban forces and eastern bloc intelligence officers. Last but not least, President Giscard decided to recompose French influence in Central Africa in the late 1970s: on 21st September 1979, Operation Caban (SDECE black Operation) and Operation Barracuda (paratroops Operation) overthrew Marechal Bokassa in Bangui. This event became the symbol of French military intrusion in postcolonial Africa. As these examples remind us, there is a distinct colonial and post-colonial history that helps explain current French military policy in Africa, one whose continuities have survived seemingly decisive changes of presidency in the Fifth Republic. It took the shock of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 for the intrinsic flaws of the Foccart system to be exposed. Their exposure opened a new era and new arguments over French military interventions just after the end of the Cold War—interventions that continue to the present day.

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Foreign military interventions in Africa were claimed to be intended to achieve four goals. First, both colonial and Cold War powers attempted to control the decolonization process in ways that would advance their interests. While Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal tried to influence political and economic practices in their former colonies, France, more than any other power, engaged in military actions to protect its interests. The colonial powers hoped to establish neocolonial regimes that would function much as before, operating on behalf of external political and economic interests. The Cold War superpowers looked forward to a new international order in which they would play the leading roles. When their interests converged, the United States preferred to let European powers take the lead in their former colonies, as in the case of Belgium in the Congo and Britain in Rhodesia. However, when old-style imperialist policies threatened to provide opportunities for the Soviet Union, the United States opposed its NATO allies, as it did during the Suez Crisis and the Algerian independence war. The Soviet Union generally increased its involvement in response to intervention by the United States and its associates, as it did in the Congo and Angola. However, Moscow was sometimes drawn into regional conflicts when its African allies were threatened by outside forces, as in the case of Ethiopia after the 1977 Somali invasion. Although viewed by the West as a Soviet proxy, Cuba often navigated its own course, as it did in Angola and Eritrea. Hostile to Moscow after the Sino-Soviet split, China promoted political movements that rivaled those backed by the Soviet Union, throwing its support to ZANU in Zimbabwe and the FNLA and UNITA in Angola. The second observation suggests that conflicts during the Cold War and decolonization period, free market austerity policies imposed by international financial institutions, and weak postcolonial states led to deadly struggles over power and resources in the post-Cold War period. The cases of Liberia, Somalia, and Zaire demonstrate the ways in which Cold War era despots who repressed their citizenry and plundered their countries’ resources were vulnerable to political pressures once their sponsors abandoned them. In the case of Sudan, a weakened dictator sought support from radical Islamists, which resulted in retaliatory action by the United States. As dictators were driven from power, indigenous strongmen and neighboring states intervened to further their own interests, while international peacekeeping forces sometimes ameliorated and in other instances exacerbated the crises. The third observation is that Washington’s global war on terror resulted in increased foreign military presence on the continent and renewed support for repressive regimes. Concerned about U.S. energy and physical security, Washington focused on countries rich in energy resources and those considered 261

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vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. U.S. military aid, combined with commercial sales and arms left over from the Cold War, contributed to an escalation of violence in many parts of Africa. Rather than promoting security, American military and covert operations in the Horn and the Sahel often provoked intensified conflict and undermined the prospects for peace negotiations. A notable exception during this period was in Sudan, where international peace efforts supported by the African Union, the United States, and other international forces resulted in a fragile peace accord that led to the independence of South Sudan in 2011. Despite this success, serious differences were not resolved, and the region continued to be wracked by violence. Although American counterterrorism initiatives cast a large shadow, they were not the only foreign interventions in Africa during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Together with the UN, the African Union and various regional organizations played a growing role in diplomacy and peacekeeping initiatives, which sometimes led to multilateral military action. Emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and the Middle Eastern Gulf states, which were heavily invested in African oil, minerals, and agricultural land, exerted increased political influence. Although these countries often reinforced the powers of repressive regimes, in some instances they used their authority to promote peace and security efforts. Public pressure for “humanitarian intervention” in response to African crises also contributed to new foreign involvement. Although activist groups in Western countries put the spotlight on mass atrocities and mobilized support for action to protect African civilians, they often oversimplified complex issues and proposed the kinds of military solutions that historically have had negative effects on civilian populations. The fourth and final observation suggests that during the period under consideration (1945-2010), foreign intervention in Africa generally did more harm than good. External involvement often intensified conflicts and rendered them more lethal. Even humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, which were weakened by inadequate mandates, funding, and information and undermined by conflicting interests, sometimes hurt the people they were intended to help. At the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the merits and demerits of foreign intervention remained hotly contested, while the consequences of failure to intervene were also the subject of much debate. As the second decade opened with no clear path for moving forward, it became increasingly imperative that the voices of African civil society be heard and that in future debates over foreign involvement, the people of the affected countries set the agenda. At independence, all African countries saw the total industrialization of their states, the complete diversification and mechanization of agriculture, and a 262

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national economic planning based on the public ownership of the means of production and distribution must be the order of the day. Thus this aligned Nkrumah with the USSR economically and socially. Nkrumah was reasonably popular within the USSR and won the Lenin Prize in 1963. Despite this there was very little military intervention from the US or the USSR in the early African independence movements. South Africa was very different from the previous mentioned areas due to the fact that it was a white minority rule state. In the context of the cold war, the USA backed the nationalist South African apartheid Government while the USSR backed the outlawed ANC and the similarly outlawed South African Communist party. South Africa was viewed as a bastion against communism in the 1970’s and 80’s in southern Africa due to the fact that several of its northern neighbors (Mozambique and Angola). Mozambique and Angola became Peoples Republics heavily influenced by the USSR and it was hoped South Africa could prevent more countries falling under the influence of communism. Throughout the late 60’s to the mid 80’s South Africa was involved in the South African Border War which was a proxy conflict between the USSR and USA. The conflict took place in what is now Namibia, Angola and Zambia. If you’re not sure about Southern African Geography this should help. The USSR supported The South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) side through Cuba and the USA supported South Africa and the failing Portuguese Colonial Empire. The crux of the conflict was that the African nations wanted independence from colonialism and white minority rule. The White Minority rule countries the status quo, while the superpowers wanted as much influence with their respective dependents. This is really just scratching the surface of a very broad topic that has many books written on it. I’m willing to go into more detail on specific areas but I could be here for days expanding on the entire Cold War conflict in Africa. (See http: //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/South_Africa_Border_W ar_Map.png). From the end of World War II to the early 1990s, the Cold War was the central driving force in global politics. In addition to nuclear arms races and shifting military alliances, the Cold War years had a critical impact on many of today’s most intriguing research topics, from technology to terrorism, immigration to international politics. No other resource but The Cold War: Global Perspectives on East-West Tensions, 1945-1991, brings together primary source documents from around the world to shed new light on this crucial period in world history. 263

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The Cold War wasn’t just a long-simmering dispute between the United States and the USSR, two of the world’s greatest superpowers. It also encompassed the rise of communism in mainland China, the Cuban missile crisis, the Korean War and more. The Cold War: Global Perspectives on East-West Tensions provides a glimpse into these and many other global events through the eyes of the people who experienced them firsthand. The collection also provides international perspectives on the formation of NATO, the death of Joseph Stalin, the rise of space exploration, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Vietnam War, the development of the European Union and regional history in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The ideological and strategic positions taken by the USSR and USA led to the division of large sections of the world into alliances with one or other of the Great Powers. This bipolar situation remained in place despite the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement. Europe was the principal theatre for ideological warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. It was divided into two separate blocs by what Winston Churchill called the ‘Iron Curtain.’ Faced with threats from the Soviet military powers, the Western European nations and the United States were convinced that they had to negotiate and sign a military alliance in April 1949: the North Atlantic Treaty. The USSR and the popular democratic states in Europe countered this move with the Warsaw Pact which was signed in 1955. On 24 June 1948, following a decision by the West to introduce a single currency inside their occupied zones, Stalin launched a coup de force by setting up a tight blockade to prevent the delivery of essential supplies to the 2 million inhabitants of West Berlin. During the night of 13 August1961, thousands of soldiers were deployed to supervise the installation of fences and barbed wire around the Western perimeter of Berlin in order to prevent people from fleeing the Eastern European countries for the free world. Before long, West Berlin was surrounded by a 155-kilometre long wall. In 1977 the USSR installed its new SS20 medium-range missiles in Europe which led to a new period of tension between the East and West and sparked a huge series of peace movements. The Cold War came to Africa as Guinea gained its independence. The former French colony of Guinea declared its independence on October 2, 1958, with Sékou Touré as the new nation’s first leader. Guinea was the sole French West African colony to opt for complete independence, rather than membership in the French Community, and soon thereafter France withdrew all aid to the new republic. It soon became apparent that Sékou Touré would pose a problem for the United States. He was fiercely nationalistic and antiimperialist, and much of his wrath and indignation was aimed at the United 264

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States for its alliances with colonial powers such as Great Britain and France and its refusal to openly condemn the white minority government of South Africa. More troubling for U.S. officials, however, was Guinea’s open courting of Soviet aid and money and signing of a military assistance agreement with the Soviet Union. By 1960, nearly half of Guinea’s exports were going to eastern bloc nations and the Soviets had committed millions of dollars of aid to the African republic. Touré was also intrigued by Mao’s communist experiments in China. Touré played the Soviet Union and the United States against one another to get the aid and trade he desired. While Guinea’s relations with the United States got off to a rocky start (American newspapers routinely referred to the nation as “Red” Guinea), matters improved during the Kennedy administration when Toure refused to accommodate Soviet aircraft wishing to refuel on their way to Cuba during the missile crisis of 1962. In 1975, Touré changed course and allowed Soviet and Cuban aircraft to use Guinea’s airfields during the Angolan civil war, then he again reversed position by revoking the privileges in 1977 and moving closer to France and the United States. The concerns of U.S. officials over communist influences in Guinea, and the up-and-down relationship with Guinea were but precursors of other difficulties the United States would face in postcolonial Africa. As Guinea and other former colonies achieved independence during the post-World War II period, Africa became another battleground in the U.S.-Soviet conflict. Newly independent nations such as Angola, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) provided the stages for some of the most bloody proxy battles between “East” and “West”, as the United States, apartheid-era South Africa and China tried to prevent the spread of communism in the global south, while Cuba and the Eastern Bloc sought to support it. This month, as part of its “Red Africa” research project, Calvert 22, a London-based, Russian-financed foundation, presents “Things Fall Part”, a nostalgic exhibition of various artworks drawing on the legacy of the “friendships between Africa, the Soviet Union and related countries during the Cold War.” A closer reading of the objects on display, however, reveals a nuanced and conflicted history, the impact of which is still palpable today. From 1960, the Soviet Union became involved in several Marxist, African struggles, providing political support, weapons and military training, including to the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in their fight against the Portuguese. But, as in the neighboring DRC, Soviet support alone was not enough to secure power. In 1975, when the Portuguese made a clumsy exit from Angola, the MPLA was already embroiled in a war against two rival movements (the FNLA and 265

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UNITA), funded by the CIA, Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo), and the South African apartheid regime - none of whom were keen to see an African, Marxist party take power in oil-rich Angola. But Fidel Castro knew that the US, reeling from its messy withdrawal from Vietnam, would not be drawn openly into another foreign war. Starting then, the Cuban “Operation Carlota”, to support the MPLA, was to change the course of history in southern Africa. “The Cuban mission was represented as a noble and selfless act of internationalist solidarity with a sister state whose hard-won liberty was under threat from reactionary and, above all, racist forces,” says Christabelle Peters, the author of Cuban Identity and the Angolan Experience and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick. “Fidel Castro referred to the ties of blood and history that linked the two nations - a large percentage of the enslaved Africans brought to the island to work on coffee and sugar plantations hailed from Angola. He emphasized that these links placed a burden of debt upon Cubans that they were duty-bound to repay.”

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Foreign Interventions: France I wish to begin this section by noting that between 1960 and 2005, France launched 46 military operations in its former colonies in Africa, the most recent being the continuing French military deployment on the cease-fire line in Côte d’Ivoire. French military interventionism in its former empire appears to be a consistent policy since “decolonization”, and is coupled with an extensive network of bilateral Franco-African defense and military assistance treaties. The continuity of French military policy in Africa is a puzzle, however, since overall French defense policy and grand strategy changed significantly during the period in question. The conventional wisdom in the literature on the subject in English and French is that the continuity of French African military policy can be attributed primarily to ideological and identity factors particular to France. French capitalism has major interests in Africa, especially Sahelian Africa. Mali has important natural resources. It is the third producer of gold on the continent, and has unexploited reserves of oil and other natural resources. But above all, the importance of Mali for French imperialism derives from its geographical position. France needs to control the political and military situation in Mali because of its interests in bordering Algeria, Mauritania, and the Ivory Coast. France is a declining power in Africa, as in the rest of the world. Since 2005, it has lost no less than one fifth of its share of the world market. Within Europe, the position of France has been weakened over a long period, especially since the reunification of Germany. The overthrow of Ben Ali, Mubarak and 266

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Kaddafi, like that of Saddam Hussein, will mean a further weakening of commercial and industrial ties with North Africa. China, the Gulf States, the United States and Germany are gaining ground in Africa at the expense of France. This military intervention is part of a general strategy attempting to bolster the declining position of France. The long-established tradition of French military interventionism was reinforced by rising pressures from the ‘méso-système de l’armement’ (the military-industrial complex à la française). Along with growing economic imbalances between France and Germany, these pressures reinforce the attempts of French policy-makers to use their military leverage as a ‘competitive advantage.’ The increase in military interventions abroad is linked to the installation at home of a permanent state of emergency that threatens democratic liberties and targets foremost children of migrants from North Africa. This role is aided by France’s history of colonialism in Africa. Although a painful aspect of modern French history, the often-brutal and exploitative colonial project left France with a network of major military bases across the continent that survives into the present day, as shown below and according to Radio France Internationale.

Source: Google

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Currently, France has over 3,000 troops spread across five countries in Africa — Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad — as part of Operation Burkhane. Based in Chad, the operation aims at disrupting potential militants’ threat across the Sahel region of the continent. Aside from combatting jihadist militancy, France also pushed heavily for intervention in Libya during the country’s uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, and has been involved in peacekeeping operations in various African countries. The main motivation for imperialism has always been control of territory, resources and trade. Nationalist African leaders were concerned to show that they would make capable, respectable rulers. The end result of many anticolonial struggles in the mid-20th century was that societies changed largely at the top - black rulers replaced white rulers, and while this was a real step forward, much of the existing structure of society was left intact. The bloody history of Western imperialism in Africa has been fueled by the scramble for the continent’s resources. Let us look briefly at French imperialism and protest in Mali. When French troops entered Mali on 11 January the mainstream media and politicians heralded the intervention as a humanitarian exercise to flush out Islamic militants. The calculation was simple. West Africa was now awash with an array of Islamic terrorists, many aligned with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and they presented the region and the world with the greatest threat to security. Apparently these militants had capitalized on “ungovernable spaces” in West Africa. These bellicose declarations are mostly false and obscure what is really happening on the continent. Today there is a constellation of forces that are shaping developments in the Sahel - the semidesert region that extends across northern West Africa. This conflicting assortment of interests includes the French state, Chinese investment, structural adjustment, big business and local governments. Each of these elements forms part of a poisonous cocktail that needs to be explained. In the early 1990s Mali’s long-standing government was weakened by a significant protest movement. There were major demonstrations against the regime of Moussa Traoré, when thousands were involved in street protests demanding political reform and an end to Traoré’s 22-year rule. The government eventually fell in April 1991. The following year Alpha Konaré was elected president, expressing many of the hopes of the movement. He promised far reaching reforms. By 1995 disillusionment among those who had campaigned for the new government led to protests that were violently broken up. Students who had previously declared their love of Alpha burned campaign posters and banners of his party. Anger at him stemmed from the new government’s commitment to structural adjustment, which by the late 1990s

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had devastated living standards. Today Mali’s GDP is $669 per head of population, despite the country’s extraordinary reserves of minerals. However, behind the headlines of a region overwhelmed with Islamic activism, the real concern is the threat posed by Tuareg separatism. Who are the Tuareg? They are a largely Muslim group of about one and a half million people living across the Sahel, including Libya, Algeria, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Mali. They live in impoverished communities, often victimized, sometimes hunted down by governments, but they lay claim to a land that is rich in resources that European, American and Chinese companies and governments would hate to fall under Tuareg or Islamic control. In sum, the division between north and south in Mali stretches back to French colonialism. The French privileged the south, concentrating their efforts in areas that ensured easy resource extraction, creating massive unevenness across the colony. The French also reduced pastoral lands in the north used by Tuareg and Arab communities, triggering in the 1890s the first in a series of revolts. After independence the new government continued to fuel conflict in the north. Another guerrilla-led revolt started in 1963, though it was defeated the following year. One recent report explains that “atrocities committed in this era remained in the memories of Tuareg and certainly played into the motivation for later revolts.” Continued discrimination, poverty and droughts drove northerners to the south in the 1970s and 1980s. Konaré stepped down in 2002 and Amadou Toumani Touré (or ATT) took over. His government was overturned in a coup last March by Amadou Sanogo, who stated that Touré has failed to deal with the revolt taking place in the north. He handed government over to a civilian administration but he remains the real power behind the throne. In Mali there are different groups at work. The growth of AQIM stems from opposition to the Algerian regime during the long war in the 1990s, though there is evidence that it was also partly funded and supported by the Algerian Ministry of Interior. There is also the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, which claims to be an outgrowth of Al Qaeda, and a Tuareg-dominated Islamic movement, Ansar al-Din - which once saw itself as part of the secular Mouvement National de Liberation de l’Azawad (MNLA). Two elements have affected on the recent revolt in the north. The fall of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya is important. The uprising that started in late 2011 was influenced by the fracturing of the Libyan state where many Tuareg were co-opted into Gaddafi’s army. Arms and men moved south into a movement with old and legitimate grievances. The second element has seen the labelling of the Sahel region of West Africa as an “ungovernable space.” This has a long pedigree. In 1993 one right wing commentator described the region’s wars as 269

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symptomatic of the “coming anarchy” that would engulf the continent. Shorn of context such phrases seem accurate descriptions of the mayhem that has afflicted the region. However, they cloud the real interests and motivations that are at stake. West Africa is not replete with “ungovernable spaces” that exist on the fringes of the world. Rather it sits at the heart of capitalist globalization. For too long West Africa has been the play thing of the French. “Françafrique” is a term that was coined by the French writer FrançoisXavier Verschave to explain the entrenched post-colonial role the French state has played in Africa. Since 1960 France has pursued an extremely aggressive policy towards its ex-colonies - conducting itself in partnership with a political class of new leaders. Expressing the sentiments of the new elite, Léon M’ba, the first president of Gabon, stated at independence that though the country was independent, “between Gabon and France nothing has changed; everything goes on as before.” Over the past 50 years the French state has brought down governments, defended dictatorships and inserted its business interests. In this period there have been more than 50 military interventions by the French on the continent, all of them described as “humanitarian.”

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Elf Interest French business interests have been at the core of their “concern” for the continent. Oil has also often been involved. In 1965 Charles de Gaulle founded Elf - the state oil company. Huge “sweeteners”, normally many million US dollars, were paid to African leaders to ensure Elf secured oil contracts. But Elf also acted on its own accord, as a “sovereign” force within African states. Up to three-quarters of Gabon’s foreign investment, for example, still comes from France, while Gabon was often responsible for more than two-thirds of Elf’s profit. The pattern of intervention remains in place today. The French military recently intervened in the Ivory Coast and remains the country’s principal arbiter of political power - in what the Economist described as “France’s little Iraq.” Recent French involvement in Mali has to be seen in this context. Today there are new interests that have intruded on France’s dominion. Scramble for Resources In the past years Africa has seen what has been called the “new scramble for Africa” —an unparalleled thirst for riches only matched by the carve-up of the continent by European powers at the notorious 1884 Berlin conference. The new desire for Africa’s mineral and oil wealth has transformed the continent,

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pulling in new and old powers. The Sahel region has been one of the principal targets in the current scramble. Recently China has started to play an active role in the region. Besides various infrastructure projects, China currently controls the most important uranium mines in Niger and has signed $100 million worth in grants and loans in Mali. The involvement of Chinese businesses worries the French in a region long-regarded as their fiefdom. Other powers have also started to meddle. Under the auspices of its global “war against terror” the United States escalated surveillance across West Africa. The US Defense Department set up the new Africa Command (Africom) in 2007 to direct US strategic interests on the continent. Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) exercises conducted by units of the US Army have provided training to African armies. From 2006 US troops in Mali worked on counter-terrorism exercises with personnel from Algeria, Chad, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia. These “actions” were part of Operation Enduring Freedom Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) that links eight African countries to the United States. Given what has happened in the region since the mid-2000s, we could be forgiven for seeing these initiatives as a fantastic failure. Amadou Sanogo, last year’s coup leader, was sent under these “programs” to the United States in 2006-07. The French intervention had a decisive effect. The Islamists were out-gunned. With little local support in the north of Mali they were routed. The main Tuareg secular organization, the MNLA, felt compelled to support the French military engagement. So often Africa is referred to as ungovernable. We are told West Africa, worse even than the rest of the continent, exemplifies the chaos. These are selfserving lies that pave the way to intervention. Yet it is these interventions, direct and indirect - in the forms of structural adjustment, big-business involvement and military engagement - that have created the disorder and misery which blight the region. Yet there is another story to the familiar clichés about “fragile states” that are rarely heard. West Africa has an incredible tradition of protest that has toppled governments, brought together rival communities and frightened Western governments. Two recent examples stand out. The regime in Burkina Faso was shaken to its core in 2011 by a revolt that involved students, cotton workers, miners, and army mutinies. In Nigeria, at the beginning of 2012, a general strike gave us a tantalizing glimpse of an alternative future. Following the solidarity shown during the Egyptian revolution, in the north of Nigeria, where the worse religious violence has played out, Muslims protected local churches, while Christians guarded Muslims as they prayed. It is to these movements that we must turn.

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Foreign Interventions: Cuba Cuba’s strategy in Africa was oriented toward building an alliance with African nationalists. In the course of implementing that strategy, Cuba took independent initiatives without previously consulting the Kremlin—as in Angola—which were generally compatible with Soviet policy, thus avoiding the harsh friction that had developed in the context of the guerrilla wars in Latin America. In the case of Angola, Cuba’s strategy along with its alliance with the Soviet Empire, allowed Cuba to play a very important role in the defense of that country against Western imperialism and its right-wing agents in the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Cuba delivered a heavy military and political blow against South African apartheid state, which supported UNITA. However, Cuban aid was not free of cost to the Angolan people. Thus, for example, Cuban troops actively intervened in internal disputes within the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) like when they insured the victory of the faction led by Agostino Neto against the faction led by Nito Alves. However, Cuban policy followed a different course in the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Cuba initially supported the Eritrean struggle for independence from the Ethiopian regime headed by Emperor Haile Selassie, but radically changed its tune when Selassie was overthrown by the Dergue, a left-wing nationalist group favorable to the USSR. Fidel Castro decided to ally himself with Ethiopian nationalists against the Eritrean nationalists arguing that the Eritrean struggle would destroy the territorial integrity of Ethiopia, even though Eritrea had been a separate nation that was then colonized by Greater Ethiopia, and afterwards annexed to it. Cuba’s support for the Dergue was not just rhetorical. Cuba trained and armed Ethiopian forces and sent Cuban troops to the Ogaden in the war between Ethiopia and Somalia. The Cuban military intervention was indispensable to Ethiopia’s conduct of the Eritrean war. From the very beginning, the Cuban military intervention was very closely coordinated with the USSR. For Moscow, that region had a higher strategic priority than Angola because of the port facilities in Massawa and Assab along the Eritrean coast, overlooking Saudi Arabia, which would give the Soviet Union control of the maritime route from the western part of the USSR to Vladivostok in the Far East. It is important to note that in addition to its role in the Eritrean conflict, Cuba’s indiscriminate alliance with African nationalism also involved support for the bloody regimes of Idi Amin in Uganda and Francisco Nguema Macias in Equatorial Guinea. 272

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US interventions in East Africa: From the Cold War to the ‘War on Terror.’ On 18 November 2013, Amrit Wilson reported that during the Cold War years, while British colonialists were being driven out of East Africa, the first US intervention in the region occurred in Zanzibar. It proved to be a model - many aspects of which are being repeated in the ‘War on Terror.’ In Britain, the attack on the upmarket Westgate shopping mall in Kenya in which 130 people lost their lives, is rapidly fading from public memory, already ascribed to just another act of ‘mindless violence’ perpetrated by Islamic terrorists. But many Kenyans see things differently. Some regard it as the result of Kenya’s involvement in a proxy war being fought in Somalia on behalf of Europe. Others highlight Israeli or American involvement. The facts support these analyses: the EU provides 124 million euros for peacekeepers in Somalia; a recent Israeli arms deal with Kenya specifically mentioned fighting Al Shabaab; and as for America, its role is an overarching one, in the words of the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, it ‘leverages local and indigenous forces [for use] ...aggressively and surgically in Africa and the Arabian peninsula... in close coordination with, and in support of, geographic combatant commander and U.S. embassy country team requirements.’ What were the paths which led from the struggles against British colonialism in East Africa in the 50s and 60s to what have been called today’s new colonial wars? In my recent book, The Threat of Liberation: Imperialism and Revolution in Zanzibar, I explore this question for a small segment of the vast and diverse region of East Africa, Zanzibar. I focus particularly on the first US intervention in the region which occurred during the Cold War, looking at it partly through the experiences and memories of the members of the Marxist Umma party. Although unique in many ways, those experiences still provide a microcosm of the mechanisms through which imperialism operated, and to an extent still operates. They remind us also that a different future was, and perhaps still is, possible. Zanzibar had been a British protectorate with a population of mixed African and Arab heritage, ruled by a feudal Sultan on a wage from the colonialists. The British had done everything possible to engender ethnic tension, and when in 1963 they finally departed, they transferred power to a party representing the Sultan and his allies. Within months the Zanzibar revolution, the first revolution against neocolonialism in Africa, had swept the islands. Initially a spontaneous uprising mainly by African youth, the involvement of the multi-ethnic Umma party transformed it into a revolutionary insurrection where Arabs and Africans stood together against the neocolonial rulers. As Abdulrahman Babu Leader of the Umma Party put it, the people rose up ‘not simply to overthrow a politically bankrupt government and a caricature monarchy. They revolted in order to 273

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change the social system which had oppressed them and for once to take the destiny of their history into their own hands...It aroused hopes far beyond those of the revolutionaries themselves.’ Declassified documents of the period show that it was these hopes of the people, and the possibility of both political and economic liberation, which US and British officials in Zanzibar and other East African countries found most disturbing. They dispatched a hurricane of messages to Washington, about the fate of a NASA tracking station set up on the islands to keep an eye on the Indian Ocean, about the revolution being a ‘coup’ instigated and armed by the ‘ChiComs’ (although they could find no actual evidence of Chinese involvement), about the youth of Zanzibar who had been ‘drilling and training in what can only be described as a militant manner’ and much else. Panicking, the US State Department moved a battleship several times to and from the shores of Zanzibar, and urged the British to invade. In the next few weeks, however, they began to formulate a longer term ‘Zanzibar Action Plan.’ Under this, US officials would work on those Zanzibari leaders they thought they could manipulate to ask for a British military intervention, and so make an invasion look like an African initiative. Meanwhile, the CIA, anxious that Zanzibar might become a ‘Cuba of Africa from which sedition would spread to the continent’, began to plan an Africa-wide strategy. This involved bringing the countries of Central and East Africa under their control to prevent socialist influences from the countries of North Africa reaching Southern Africa with its host of western investments. It required, most urgently, the ‘neutralization’ of socialist influence in Zanzibar. Eventually this was done, not by military conquest, but through subterfuge, bribery and illegal means. A new country Tanzania was created by uniting Zanzibar and Tanganyika, with the connivance of the leaders of Kenya and Uganda, and presided over by Tanganyika’s President Julius Nyerere. In the days that followed, William Leonhart, the US Ambassador in Tanzania, cabled Washington reporting that ‘Nyerere’s United Republic has given us the initial political framework with which we can work’ and urging the US State Department to give Nyerere ‘the maximum quiet support from the beginning’. The US Ambassador to Kenya noted, meanwhile, that the laws of Tanganyika ‘would become supreme throughout’, adding that ‘the (colonial) Preventative Detention Act could be used to round up radicals in Zanzibar.’ This was indeed what happened. While Zanzibar was almost powerless within the Union, bound to what had been Tanganyika in a semi-colonial relationship, hundreds of Umma party members and sympathizers and others who were seen as critics, or potential critics of the regime in Zanzibar, were

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.

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arrested and locked up. Torture chambers were established on the main island where men, women, and even children, were brutally tortured. Many were killed. Nyerere, who had become an object of love and high regard for Western liberals, said and did nothing to stem the horrific violence. Abdurahman Muhammed Babu and several other leaders of the Umma party were incarcerated in mainland Tanganyika, and charged with treason. They remained there for six years in appalling conditions, until they were released following a powerful international campaign. The US intervention into Zanzibar and its aftermath brought economic decline to the islands, but people were not much better off in mainland Tanzania. The Revolutionary government of Zanzibar under Babu’s leadership had laid down the blueprint for an independent economy. This involved dismantling the colonial economy, based as it was on production for export, and replacing it with an economy geared to meeting the people’s essential needs while at the same time creating a domestic market. But these plans were forgotten. Under Nyerere, Tanzania which had once been the largest food exporter in Africa, became one of the poorest countries in the world dependent on food aid from the West. In the mid-1980s, under pressure from the IMF and the World Bank, the government, now under Nyerere’s successors, embarked on economic liberalization. Since then the country has sunk deeper into US domination. Much of mainland Tanzania’s resources, precious metals and minerals have been sold off to the robber barons of global capital, while its fertile agricultural land has been leased off to corporates for growing biofuels and food for export. This pattern of corporate land grabs was, of course, taking place all over East Africa. In the 1980s, in Somalia, then under the pro-US President Siad Barre, nearly two-thirds of the country’s oil reserves were allocated to the American petroleum giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips. After Barre was overthrown, the US invaded Somalia primarily to protect these investments. It was one of the markers of a new period, when with the fall of the Soviet Union, the US, suddenly bereft of an enemy, created and targeted a new one – Islamic terrorism. Done in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, it was in fact the launch of the ‘war on terror’ in the region. In Somalia today the US and Britain, with the help of their many proxy fighters and ’peacekeepers’ claim to be fighting Al-Shabaab. Tomorrow, it could be a different terrorist group or a different country which is targeted. In Africa, as elsewhere, the ‘war on terror’ can always find ‘terrorists’ to fight - they could be ordinary people going about their business which happens to stand in the way of corporate loot, or groups which grow under the shadow of imperialism 275

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generated by people’s anger against its injustices, or encouraged and created by imperialism itself . What is common to all recent American interventions, however, is that they occur in regions rich in resources. Contemporary US cables revealed by WikiLeaks clarify this link between the ‘War on Terror’ and America’s hunger for African land and its oil, gas and minerals. They provide some clues too about the regional context for the evolution of AFRICOM, the highly sophisticated US military command in Africa, which claims, among other things, to protect the continent from terrorism. We learn, for example, that in 2006, (at a time when the US military were already entrenched in Africa) the government of Tanzania had agreed to the establishment of a ‘Civil Affairs presence’ in Zanzibar by the US Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa. This ‘Civil Affairs team (which we have rebranded as “AFRICOM”)’, the cables tell us some three years later, is carrying out ‘humanitarian’ operations and helping build ‘Civil Military Operations (CMOs)… capacity within the Tanzania Peoples Defense Forces’. What are CMOs? The US army provides us with an explanation. They are ‘a primary military instrument to synchronize military and nonmilitary instruments of national power’. Their work includes surveillance, abduction, rendition and torture, providing bases for drone aircraft and similar operations. Only now it is to be done by the Tanzanian army, thanks to capacity building by AFRICOM. CMOs deal, the document goes on, with ‘potential challenges’ such as ethnic and religious conflict, cultural and socioeconomic differences, terrorism and insurgencies, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and most significantly perhaps - the ‘sharpening competition/exploitation of dwindling natural resources [my italics]’. In other words they can, where necessary, provide military force to secure the resources that the US wants from Africa. As for the ‘sharpening competition’, other contemporary cables make it clear that this is a reference to America’s old Cold War enemy, China. While in the 60s, the US worried about Chinese arms and influence, today it is concerned about its burgeoning imports from, and exports to, the countries of Africa. Chinese strategy in Africa today is very different from that of the US, it has been willing to obtain its resources through trade, providing light industrial goods in return for raw materials; and building and developing infrastructure – railways and bridges, for example, to facilitate this process. China’s increasing presence in Africa is, in fact, one of the strategic reasons behind the setting up of AFRICOM. One AFRICOM study even claiming with a touch of Cold War hysteria that ‘The extrapolation of history predicts that distrust and uncertainty

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will inevitably lead the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to Africa in staggering numbers’. However, US diplomatic messages make it clear, through reports on private conversations, conference briefings, and personal assessments that the structures of imperialist exploitation have changed. Corporates are far more powerful, and in this neoliberal era, they thrive on both the expropriation of resources and the ‘war on terror’. Currently, American troops are being deployed in 35 African countries. In every case there are huge profits to be made, not only from the resources taken over, but from the sale of weapons, training and armaments of all kinds. It is ultimately on behalf of big business too, as US cables show, that teams of US and EU officials, supported by donors, have been putting pressure on the politicians of Zanzibar to provide the ‘stable’ infrastructures which would make the potentially lucrative oil deposits, found in the waters of the islands not long ago, accessible. And if this requires Zanzibar to leave the Union with mainland Tanzania - so be it. As for AFRICOM, it is mainly in East Africa that relations with it have been welcomed. In 2007, the Southern Africa Development Community, made up of 14 African countries, openly denounced it; and in 2008, the African Union categorically rejected President Bush’s plan for AFRICOM to be based in Africa. But in East Africa, leaders such as Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete and intra-government organizations like the East African Community, have been ready to provide the political framework for US military penetration eagerly signing Memoranda of Understanding on joint military cooperation on ‘counterinsurgency, peace-building and peace keeping, with operations on both land and sea.’ However, despite their leader’s compliance, in East Africa too, people are angry that Africans are being killed fighting wars with other Africans on behalf of the west. People’s resistance to imperialism is growing through anti-land grab movements and in struggles against giant mining companies. With the fiftieth anniversary of the Zanzibar revolution approaching, people’s anger against the surrogates of imperialism on the islands is palpable. Will Zanzibar prevent its oil being taken over by foreign oil companies? Will it be able to use it to transform the acute poverty which stalks the islands? These are the questions which hang in the balance. Contradictions of Decolonization under Neocolonial Empire It is noteworthy that colonialism was characterized by “brutal and dehumanizing conditions” that were imposed on the colonized peoples in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific islands. In addition, “as Karl Marx noted, 277

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this imperialism represented an incorporation of these regions into the modern capitalist system.” Thus the building of colonial empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century -- by the U.S., Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands -- became “an integral part of the competition for control of global resources and markets.” The ideology that accompanied this struggle was Social Darwinism: “an evolutionary view of the world that applied Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest to races and nations and justified imperialist domination in terms of an understanding that a race or nation that did not dominate would instead be dominated.” From the perspective of the colonized, this incorporation “inevitably involved the erosion of existing communities as they experienced the deepening impact of capitalism and alien cultural values.” Often colonies became bifurcated, with a relatively developed coastal sector with close ties to the metropole, and a vast hinterland where historical “forms of social life and economic organization” continued to exist. But they did not continue to exist unchanged. Instead, the long fingers of capitalism reached far into the hinterland, to extract value (crops, minerals, labor, and so on) and to market ”modern”, finished products. This is the phenomenon known as the articulation of the modes of production, whereby modern capitalism utilizes non-capitalist modes of production and exploitation for the production of capitalist value.” The gap between the relatively modern coastal areas and the relatively traditional hinterland involved “different types of incorporation into the capitalist system.” This gap often came to “shape and bedevil the decolonization process.” Anti-imperialist nationalism typically emerged in the urban, costal sectors, “where modern capitalist forms of knowledge, technology, capital, and organization had spread more widely.” It was also in the urban, coastal areas that the colonized peoples most directly and personally experienced “constant denial and humiliation because of their color or origins. But they were also people who, like Gandhi for instance, clearly recognized the contradictions these actions presented to Western doctrines of humanism and rationality.” Finally, they were the people “who understood the modern world well enough to know how to mobilize resources to topple colonial domination.” This existential situation best explains why mass movements for decolonization were initiated by colonized nationalists. By far the most important resource to resist colonialism, and eventually to overthrow it, was the people of the colonized nations. How could the urban, modern nationalist elite reformers mobilize the people of the hinterlands and the lower classes of their society? While such mobilization was key to the success of decolonization, the answer to this question was never easy or obvious. On the contrary, the elite 278

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reformers increasingly found their compatriots in the hinterlands living in a world that was alien and distasteful. The masses, for their part hand, found that “the modern programs of secular society–national education, the nuclear family, and so on -- were quite inimical to their concept of a good society.” The task for the nationalist reformers was not merely to bridge this gap, but “to remake hinterland society in their own image. This image derived both from their conception of humanistic reform as well as the need to create a sleek national body capable of surviving and succeeding in a world of competitive capitalism.” The decolonization movement was thus confronted by two tasks: “to fulfill the promise of its humanistic ideals and modern citizenship and, [at the same time,] to create the conditions for international competitiveness.” Different nationalist movements used different methods of force or violence combined with education and persuasion. Nevertheless, in every case success seemed to hinge on the creation of nationalism. To the extent the elite reformers succeeded in generating a sense of national awakening that appealed to virtually all people, the leaders believed they had won the right to make the transformations–such a land reform–that they believed to be essential to the survival of the nation.

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Africa: Independence or Neocolonialism? In terms of theoretical situatedness, neocolonialism can be described as the subtle propagation of socio-economic and political activity by former colonial rulers aimed at reinforcing capitalism, neo-liberal globalization, and cultural subjugation of their former colonies. In a neocolonial state, the former colonial masters ensure that the newly independent colonies remain dependent on them for economic and political direction. The dependency and exploitation of the socio-economic and political lives of the now independent colonies are carried out for the economic, political, ideological, cultural, and military benefits of the colonial masters’ home states. This is usually carried out through indirect control of the economic and political practices of the newly independent states instead of through direct military control as was the case in the colonial era. Conceptually, the idea of neocolonialism can be said to have developed from the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883) in his influential critique of capitalism as a stage in the socio-economic development of human society. The continued relevance of Marxist socio-economic philosophy in contemporary times cannot be denied. The model of society as structured by an economic basis, legal and political superstructures, and a definite form of social consciousness that Marx presented both in The Capital (1972) as well as in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1977) remains important to socio279

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economic theory. Marx presents theories which explain a certain kind of evil in capitalism. Today, capitalism has produced the multinational corporations that can assemble far more effective intelligence behind their often nefarious designs than any nation’s government can assemble to try to hold multinationals at bay. As things go now with the capitalist system, there is an indication that there are some foresights in some of Marx’s prognostication. The world seems to continue to acquiesce to the vast control of economic and political resources by the wealthiest 1%. No doubt, Marx’s prognostications have been vindicated in many ways than they have been refuted. Consequent analysis by Sartre, in his critique of French economic policies on Algeria, was an attempt to combine his existentialist idea of human freedom with Marx’s economic philosophy in order to better establish his opposition to France’s economic colonization of Algeria. Proper coinage of the term neocolonialism in Africa, however, is attributed to Nkrumah who used it in his 1963 preamble of the Organization of African States (OAU) Charter and later, as the title of his 1965 book, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. In a simple context, neocolonialism is a class name for all policies, infrastructures and agents actively contributing to society, which indirectly serve to grant continuity to the practices known to the colonial era. The essence of neocolonialism is that while the state appears to be independent and have total control over its dealings, it is in fact controlled by outsider economic and political influences (Nkrumah, 1965: 7). The loss of control of the machineries of the states to the neocolonialists underlies the basis of Nkrumah’s discourse. The term has become an essential theme in African Philosophy, most especially in African political philosophy. In the book, Sartre argued for the immediate disengagement of France’s grip upon its ex-colonies and for total emancipation from the continued influence of French policies on those colonies, particularly Algeria. However, it was at one of the All African People’s Conferences (AAPC), a movement of political groups from countries in Africa under colonial rule, which held conferences in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Accra, Ghana, where the term was first officially used in Africa. At the AAPC’s “1961 Resolution on Neocolonialism,” the term neocolonialism was given its first official definition. It was described as the deliberate and continued survival of the colonial system in independent African states, by turning these states into victims of political, mental, economic, social, military and technical forms of domination carried out through indirect and subtle means that did not include direct violence. With the publication of Kwame Nkrumah’s Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism in 1965, the term neocolonialism finally came to the fore. Neocolonialism has since become a theme in African philosophy around which a body of literature has evolved and has been written and studied by scholars in 280

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sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. As a theme of African philosophy, reflection on the term neocolonialism requires a critical reflection upon the present socioeconomic and political state of Africa after independence from colonial rule and upon the continued existence of the influences of the ex-colonizers’ socioeconomic and political ideologies in Africa. Historically, towards the late nineteenth century through to the latter half of the twentieth century, some European countries, such as Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal, had colonized a large number of African nations, setting up economic systems that allowed for seemingly extensive exploitation. Decades after World War II, these European nations granted political independence to their colonies in Africa, but still found a way to retain their economic influence and power over the former colonies. From the 1950s when many African colonies began to gain independence, they soon realized that the actual liberation that they had anticipated was outlandish. So, in spite of the assumption of Africans to political leadership positions, Africans soon realized that the economic and political atmosphere were still under some form of control of the former colonial masters. By implication, post-colonial Africa continued to experience the domination of the Western styled economic model that was prevalent during the period of colonialism. It does appear that the former colonial masters only wanted to grant political independence to their former colonies, and did not want them to be liberated from colonialism by Empire. This is why it is inferred that the situation which informs the ideological implementation of neocolonialism in Africa began immediately after the political independence of most African states. The European presence, however, indeed shifted from overt and direct to more subtle forms after the continent stumbled into independence in the 1960s. While military occupation and sovereign control over African territories were claimed to be eliminated, political influence, economic preponderance, and cultural conditioning remained. Britain and France, and with them the rest of the European Community, maintained a relatively high level of aid and investment, trade dominance, and a sizable flow of teachers, businessmen, statesmen, tourists and technical assistants. Perhaps most symbolically significant of all, the long-nurtured dream of an institutionalized Euro-African community was finally inaugurated on February 28, 1975, when the convention of trade and cooperation was signed at Lomé between the European Nine and the then-37 independent Black African states, plus nine islands and enclaves in the Caribbean and the Pacific (Mentan, 1981). Thus, Euro-African relations are a matter of continuity and change, but judgments of them vary considerably, according to the importance given to one or the other of these two elements. To some, the successor of colonialism is 281

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neocolonialism and dependency; for others, what is taking place is gradual disengagement, and the multilateralization of ties to the developed nations. The first look askance at the continuing presence, comparing it with an ideal of total mastery of one’s destiny; to them the change seems trivial, or worse, insidious. The second emphasize actual changes, the moves toward independence, and see them as part of a continuing process. The best perspective obviously is the one that can encompass and provide an explanation for the largest number of facts. The dependency or neocolonialism approach is now widely used in analyzing Third World development problems. Neocolonialism can be described as the subtle propagation of socioeconomic and political activity by former colonial rulers aimed at reinforcing capitalism, neo-liberal globalization, and cultural subjugation of their former colonies. In a neocolonial state, the former colonial masters ensure that the newly independent colonies remain dependent on them for economic and political direction. The dependency and exploitation of the socio-economic and political lives of the now independent colonies are carried out for the economic, political, ideological, cultural, and military benefits of the colonial masters’ home states. This is usually carried out through indirect control of the economic and political practices of the newly independent states instead of through direct military control as was the case in the colonial era. Conceptually, the idea of neocolonialism can be said to have developed from the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883) in his influential critique of capitalism as a stage in the socio-economic development of human society. The continued relevance of Marxist socio-economic philosophy in contemporary times cannot be denied. The model of society as structured by an economic basis, legal and political superstructures, and a definite form of social consciousness that Marx presented both in The Capital (1972) as well as in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1977) remains important to socioeconomic theory. Marx presents theories which explain a certain kind of evil in capitalism. Today, capitalism has produced the multinational corporations that can assemble far more effective intelligence behind their often nefarious designs than any nation’s government can assemble to try to hold multinationals at bay. As things go now with the capitalist system, there is an indication that there are some foresights in some of Marx’s prognostication. The world seems to continue to acquiesce to the vast control of economic and political resources by the wealthiest 1%. No doubt, Marx’s prognostications have been vindicated in many ways than they have been refuted. Consequent analysis by Sartre, in his critique of French economic policies on Algeria, was an attempt to combine his existentialist idea of human freedom with Marx’s economic philosophy in order to better establish his opposition to 282

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France’s economic colonization of Algeria. Proper coinage of the term neocolonialism in Africa, however, is attributed to Nkrumah who used it in his 1963 preamble of the Organization of African States (OAU) Charter and later, as the title of his 1965 book, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. In a simple context, neocolonialism is a class name for all policies, infrastructures and agents actively contributing to society, which indirectly serve to grant continuity to the practices known to the colonial era. The essence of neocolonialism is that while the state appears to be independent and have total control over its dealings, it is in fact controlled by outsider economic and political influences (Nkrumah, 1965: 7). The loss of control of the machineries of the states to the neocolonialists underlies the basis of Nkrumah’s discourse. In his article “Philosophy and Post-Colonial Africa”, Tsenay Serequeberhan explicates the nature of neocolonialism in Africa in a manner that reveals how Europe propagates its policy of socio-economic and political dominance in post-colonial Africa. For Serequeberhan, neocolonialism in Africa is that which internally replicates in a disguised manner what was carried out during the colonial period. This disguised form constitutes the nature of the European neocolonial subjugation as it concerns the politics of economic, cultural, and scientific subordination of African states (Serequeberhan, 1998: 13). With this, we can describe the general nature of neocolonialism as a divergence in national power—political, economic, or military—which is used rather lopsidedly by the dominant power to subtly compel the dominated sectors of the dominated society to do its bidding. The method and praxis of neocolonialism lies in its guise to enjoin leaders of the independent colonies to accept developmental aids and support through which the imperial powers continue to penetrate and control their ex-colonies. Through the guise of developmental aids and support, technological and scientific assistance, the ex-colonial masters impose their hegemonic political and cultural control in the form of neocolonialism (Serequeberhan, 1998: 13). In such a situation, the leaders of the seemingly independent African states become minions to the whims and caprices of the ex-colonial lords or their multinational corporations in terms of the management of the affairs of the new states. Prima facie, it would seem that the neocolonial state is free of the influence of imperialists, and it appears to be governed completely by its own indigenes. In truth, though, the state remains under its former colonial masters and their accomplices. Being under the continued impression that the former colonialists are superior and more civilized, the leaders of the supposedly new independent states continue to practice and encourage the people to imbibe the ways and cultural practices, and more essentially the economic control, of the imperialists.

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Within a neocolonial situation, therefore, the imperialists usually maintain their influence in as many sectors of the former colony as possible, making it less of an independent state and more of a neo-colony. To this end, in politics, economics, religion, and even education, the state looks up to its imperialists, rather than improving upon its own indigenous culture and practices. Through neocolonialism, the more technologically advanced nations ensure their involvement with low income nations, such that this relationship practically annihilates the potential for the development of the smaller states and contributes to the capital gain of the technologically advanced nations (Parenti, 2011: 24). As the term neocolonialism became widespread in use—particularly in reference to Africa—immediately the process of decolonization began in Africa. The widespread use of the term neocolonialism began when Africans realized that even after independence their countries were still being subjected to a new form of colonialism. The challenges that neocolonialism poses to Africa seem to be related to the socio-economic, cultural, and political development of the people and states of the continent. These challenges have, however, been attributed both positive and negative impacts on the continent. Thomas Molnar (1965) in his paper, “Neocolonialism in Africa?”, asserts that African nations continue to depend on the Western industrial nations for economic aid, loans, investment, market, and other technical assistance because they require this dependency for their development. He acknowledges that the colonial regime in Africa left Africa in destitution, not only materially but also in terms of education and technical training. Molnar also affirms that nobody will deny that the colonialist period sanctioned abuses and exploitation on Africa (Molnar, 1965: 177). In contrast, Fieldhouse (cited by Blocker), had contended that pre-colonial Africa by itself lacked the capacity, social and economic organization to transform itself into modern states that would result in the establishment of advance economies. According to Fieldhouse, African states today would be a direct replica of what they were in the primitive days if they had not encountered the European culture and civilization. Fieldhouse’s Eurocentric orientations result from the contention that Africans are by nature irrational, incompetent, and unable to produce anything useful. These orientations have gone to great extents to undermine Africa’s indigenous culture, tradition, religion and even philosophy. Even Gene Blocker opines that ‘the more philosophical African philosophy becomes, the less African it is in content and the more African it becomes, the less philosophical it is in content’ (Blocker, 1987: 2). Concretely, Noah Echa Attah in his paper, “The historical conjuncture of neo-colonialism and underdevelopment in Nigeria” (2013), traces the root of 284

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underdevelopment in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, to the effects of neocolonialism. In his assertion, African countries have never been truly independent after colonialism had left because the idea of partnering with the ex-colonialists has continued to guide state economic policies. Foreign firms have continued to dominate the business sectors of the economy such that relatively few, but large and integrated foreign firms otherwise called multinational corporations, have made themselves indispensable to the growth or otherwise of the economy. Local industries in Africa are extensions of metropolitan firms, such that the needed raw materials for the industries depend on very high import content of over 90% from the capitalist economies (Attah, 2013: 76). Thus, the continued dependence of industrial investments in Africa on the capitalist intensive technology is strictly aimed at further developing the metropolitan economies. For Nkrumah, neocolonialism is a new form of subjugation of the economic, social, cultural, and political life of the African. His postulation is that European imperialism of Africa has passed through several stages, from slavery to colonization and subsequently to neocolonialism being the last stage of the imperialist subjugation and exploitation process. Nkrumah’s (1965) classic, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, is Nkrumah’s analysis of neocolonialism in relation to imperialism. The book emphasizes the need to recognize that colonialism had yet to be abolished in Africa. Rather, it had evolved into what he calls neocolonialism. Nkrumah reveals the methods that the West used in its shift in tactics from colonialism to neocolonialism. In his words: “without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and claims that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism” (Nkrumah, 1965). This explains the condition under which a nation is continually enslaved by the fetters of neocolonialism while being independent in theory, and yet being trapped outwardly by international sovereignty, so that it is actually directed politically and economically from the outside. Nkrumah contends that neocolonialism is usually exercised through economic or monetary means. As part of the methods of control in a neocolonial state, the imperialist power and control over the state is gained through contributions to the cost of running the state, promotion of civil servants into positions that allow them to dictate and wield power, and through monetary control of foreign exchange by the imposition of a banking system that favors the imperial system. Nkrumah further explains that neocolonialism results in the exploitation of different sectors of the nation, using different forms and methods: “[t]he result of colonialism is that foreign capital is used for 285

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the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neocolonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world” (Nkrumah, 1965).

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Imperialism, the Cold War, and the Contradictions of Decolonization Decolonization refers to a polity’s movement from a status of political dependence or subordination to a status of formal autonomy or sovereignty. In modern usage, it is generally assumed that the imperial or metropolitan center is physically separated from the dependency and that the two societies are ethnically distinct. The term refers specifically to the disintegration of Western overseas empires and their replacement by sovereign states in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The Second World War had devastated the colonial empires of Western Europe, leaving the United States as the capitalist world’s undisputed superpower. At the same time, the war demolished the colonial system that had defined the imperialist era up until that point, giving rise to a new stage of imperialism called neo-colonialism. In conjunction with this shift from colonialism to neo-colonialism, another shift occurred from intra-imperialist rivalry to intra-imperialist unity, as the former colonial empires joined together under the leadership of the United States into one imperialist world system, which I have labeled Trilateral Imperialism (in reference to the Triad: the U.S., Western Europe and Japan). To be sure, there were still contradictions among imperialist nations, but these were non-antagonistic and could be resolved without war. No longer would Western Europe devour itself in barbaric conflicts over colonial possessions; now, they would merge together and plunder the third world as one. As the last standing capitalist superpower, the United States was charged with redesigning the imperial landscape after WWII. The former colonial empires of Western Europe were in shambles and no longer had the ability to manage their colonies. The United States adopted a comprehensive aid program to help rebuild Europe and Japan, investing some of its capital surplus into the devastated economies of the capitalist world. The Marshall Plan, as it was called, was no altruistic gesture stemming from America’s noble spirit, but rather a way for American capital and products to penetrate European markets. In the end, the Marshall Plan pumped $13 billion into the reconstruction of Europe, reviving capitalism on a world scale. The recovery of capitalism in fact began at the onset of WWII in the United States, with the war effort stimulating production on a massive scale. The New Deal government of Franklin D. Roosevelt also began implementing Keynesian 286

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economic policies, which would come to characterize the post-war capitalist economy. Keynesianism argued that capitalism, due to its inherent tendency towards underconsumption, required government intervention in the economy to stimulate aggregate consumption through government spending and progressive taxation. Similar measures were adopted in capitalist Europe after the war, resuscitating the economy and creating welfare states that limited the worse social consequences of capitalism, such as poverty, unemployment, and economic insecurity. Along with the Marshall Plan, the U.S. pressured Britain and France to dismantle their colonial empires so that the whole third world could be opened up to American capital. Although the decolonized countries were seemingly independent, U.S. policy makers believed that these countries’ only purpose was to “provide raw materials, investment opportunities, markets and cheap labor” to “complement the industrial countries of the West” (Chomsky, 1992). Thus, the primary threat to the U.S.-led order were “‘nationalist regimes” that dared to use their national resources to attain the “immediate improvement of the low living standard of the masses’” (Chomsky, “On Foreign Policy). The so-called “Cold War,” then, was conceived to be a war for U.S. control over the third world. Formal colonies were no longer necessary to ensure the continuous transfer of wealth from the periphery to the metropolis and that is why the United States pushed for the abolition of colonialism. As one scholar of imperialism noted, “colonialism, considered as the direct application of military and political force, was essential to reshape the social and economic institutions of many of the dependent countries to the needs of the metropolitan centers. Once this reshaping had been accomplished economic forces – the international price, marketing, and financial systems – were by themselves sufficient to perpetuate and indeed intensify the relationship of dominance and exploitation between mother country and colony” (Magdoff, 139). Thus neo-colonialism was just as effective as colonialism. The Cold War is often misinterpreted as a global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two contending world powers, with the U.S. working to contain Soviet ambitions of world domination. However, as declassified U.S. policy documents make clear, the primary threat posed by the Soviet Union was its willingness to supply military and economic support to third world regimes that were targets of U.S. aggression and subversion (NSC 68). The Soviet Union thus served to deter and restrain U.S. actions in the third world, which was unacceptable to U.S. imperial ambitions. Further, the Soviet system with its “autarkic command economy interfered with U.S. plans to construct a global system based on (relatively) free trade and investment, which, 287

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under the conditions of mid-century, was expected to be dominated by U.S. corporations and highly beneficial to their interests, as indeed it was” (Chomsky, 1992). To be sure, the Soviet Union betrayed the cause of socialism after the death of Stalin, becoming a social imperialist power in its own right. However, its imperial aims were limited to the region allotted to it under the Malta agreements and the threat it posed to the U.S. was its willingness to support nationalist third world regimes resistant to U.S. imperial demands. Throughout the Cold War, the military-industrial-complex became a major part of the U.S. economy, and thus a catalyst for sustained growth, albeit sluggish starting in the 1970’s. For the Soviet Union, however, the “arms race” had the opposite effect of bleeding the Soviet economy and intensifying its internal contradictions until it imploded in 1989. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the Cold War came to an end, and with it, according to some, so did history. The triumph of the United States and Western Europe over the Soviet system proved to most people the superiority of free markets and capitalism. Free market euphoria swept the globe, giving birth to the new world order of neo-liberal capitalism. Neo-liberalism, in stark contrast to Keynesianism, argued that economic growth required an end to government intervention in the economy (except in the military and prison sectors). Now the “invisible hand” of the market should rein unhindered, naturally allocating economic resources fairly and efficiently, creating a healthy equilibrium between supply and demand. Thus the era of Keynesianism and welfare capitalism came to an abrupt end, once again transforming the imperialist landscape. The shift to neo-liberalism in the metropolis did not end neo-colonialism in the third world however. In fact, the neo-liberal onslaught began in the third world much earlier than it began in the developed world, starting with the U.S.instigated coup in Chile in 1973. The third world was always encouraged to adopt trade liberalization and free market policies in order to facilitate the transfer of wealth from the third world to the U.S. and Europe. The shift to neo-liberalism in the metropolis only changed how neo-colonialism was enforced on the third world. Now international institutions, representing the collective economic will of the imperialist powers, emerged to impose neocolonial policies on third world countries. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund gave third world countries “development loans” on the condition that they adopted “structural adjustment programs” designed to open their economies to western markets. Of course these policies did not lead to development, but only more intense underdevelopment for third world nations. The neo-liberal empire of today is not the empire of one imperialist nation, but the empire of transnational corporations, based in the Triad, and enforced 288

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through U.S. and NATO military force. Neo-liberalism will not lead to the liberation or development of third world nations, but only their further underdevelopment and exploitation, as recent events in Iraq, Afghanistan and, most shamefully, Libya have proven. The empire of today is the most destructive and dangerous empire that has ever confronted the human race. In the name of freedom, democracy, and economic prosperity, it is pillaging the third world, especially Africa, at an unprecedented rate, leading to devastating wars of terror and occupation. The failures of capitalism should be clear to everyone not on its payroll, and the choice facing humanity today should be even clearer: Socialism or Barbarism. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his thinking, believes that decolonization can only take place in Africa when the “cultural bomb” is diffused. This process begins when “writing” is done in the various indigenous African languages. Such writings, which would enhance the renaissance of African cultures, must also carry with it the spirit and content of anti-imperialist struggles. This would ultimately help in liberating the mind of the people from foreign control (Wa Thiong’o, 1986: 29). For total decolonization to occur, Wa Thiong’o enjoins writers in African languages to form a revolutionary vanguard in the struggle to decolonize the mind of Africans from imperialism.

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References Ake C. (1983). A Political Economy of Africa. Longman Group Ltd, London. Attah, Noah Echa. (2013). “The historical conjuncture of neo-colonialism and underdevelopment in Nigeria”. Journal of African Studies and Development. Vol.5 (5): 70-79. A historical analysis of the effect of colonialism in Africa. Blocker, Gene. (1987). “African Philosophy”. African Philosophical Inquiry. Vol. 1(2): 1- 12 A critical discussion on the idea and content of African Philosophy. Chomsky, Noam, “Deterring Democracy,” (1992), retrieved online at http: //books.zcommunications.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c01-s07.html. Chomsky, Noam, “What Uncle Sam Really Wants,” retrieved online at http: //books.zcommunications.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c01-s07.html. David Wise and Thomas B. Ross. (1964). The Invisible Government. Random House, New York. Fairchild, H. H., ‘Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth in Contemporary Perspective,’ Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1994), pp. 191-199. Fanon, F., The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington (London: Penguin, 2001). 289

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Fanon, F., ‘Algeria Unveiled,’ in P. Duara, Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (London: Routledge, 2004). Gasper, Phil .2010). “The legacy of Stalinism,” International Socialist Review 69, January 2010. http: //isreview.org/issue/69/legacy-stalinism. Gibson, N. C., Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003). Haag D. (2011). Mechanism of Neo-Colonialism. Publishing in Barcelona pp: 22. Lewis, Patricia. (2014). Heather Williams, Benoît Pelopidas and Sasan Aghlani, “Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy,” Chatham House Report, April 2014. http: //www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/199200. Magdoff, Harry. Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present. Monthly Review Press (1978). Mentan, Tatah. (1981). “Africa and the European Economic Community: The Political Economy of Africa’s International Relations” (Unpublished M.Sc. Dissertation, University of Nigeria, Nsukka). Molnar, Thomas. (1965). “Neocolonialism in Africa?” Modern Age. Spring an analysis of nature of neocolonial economy in Africa and its positive impacts. Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Curreys, A discourse on cultural imperialism and on written African languages as a vehicle for Africa’s decolonization. Nkrumah, Kwame. (1965). Neo-Colonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism. London: Heinemann. An analysis of the nature of neocolonial economy and its relationship with Imperialism. Parenti, Michael. (2011). The Face of Imperialism. New York: Paradigm Publishers. An exposition of the role of multinational corporations in the imperialist conquests. Rabaka, R., Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon’s Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization (Langham: Lexington Books, 2010). Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1964). Colonialism and Neocolonialism, translated by Steve Brewer, Azzedine Haddour, Terry McWilliams; Paris: Routledge. A critical analysis of French colonial policies on Africa, especially in Algeria. Serequeberhan, Tsenay. (1998). “Philosophy and Post-Colonial Africa” in E. Chukwudi Eze (ed) African Philosophy: An Anthology. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. A discussion on the nature of neocolonialism in Africa. Spiegel, SL et al. (2012). World Politics in a New Era. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Warf, B. (2006). Neocolonialism. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human geography (pp. 329-331). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

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Chapter 7 Africa in the Neoliberal Colonial Age of Empire

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Overview Africa is endowed with human and material resources yet, it faces serious economic challenges and that has hindered in no small way the spate of the continent’s development. The continent is regarded as third world because of its inability to compete in terms of development with the so-called Western world. When we think of Africa, we typically conjure the images of poverty, starvation, civil war, and most recently disease. Since the 1960s, a large number of African countries went through devastating civil wars; while some including Angola, Mozambique and Nigeria, seem to be on the mend, the democratic republic of Congo and Sudan remain perilously unstable. Some African countries end up with dictator leadership which really affects the growth and development of African states. Poverty, over population, unemployment, technological backwardness, lack of infrastructural facilities, low GDP, low income earning, low life expectancy, dependent economy are other vises distorting the African continent. Political crisis and leadership problem are worth mentioning in African case. Kwame Nkrumah the first president of Ghana asserted that Africa only got political independence but not economic independence. The economy of post-colonial African society is dependent on the foreign aid for survival. The economic problem of Africa could be attributed to globalization. For instance, many believe it is a curse to Africa, while to some it is a blessing to Africa. The negative trend of globalization has further deepened the gap between Africa and developed world. With its emergence Africa became impoverished. The activities of the international financial institutions of the world have also compounded the problem. The structural adjustment policy introduced by the world bank to remedy Africa economic problems end up extorting Africa’s resources for the benefit of the western states. The neoliberal mantra has not proven its saviorism to Africa, either. Introduction: Emergence of Neoliberalism as Ideology of Colonial Empire Neoliberalism is not simply globalization. It is rather the current era that seems less the result of uncontrollable natural forces than the newest stage of class struggle under capitalism. The underlying neoliberal ideology and power 291

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agenda have their origins in the political debates of the eighteenth century and earlier. Through an analysis of neoliberalism from a world-historical and global perspective, indications are seen that the international development agenda has more to do with political and economic interests than with benevolent pro-poor development. This leads to the debate about redistribution of resources and State-led Development versus Free-market Development. Distorted forms of capital accumulation and class formation associated with neoliberalism continue to amplify Africa’s crisis of combined and uneven development. A new, supposedly home-grown strategy, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), corresponds to neoliberalism and relies upon compliant African politicians and their client states. There is little prospect that other mild-mannered global-scale initiatives being promoted by ‘postWashington consensus’ reformers – for example, lower US and European Union agricultural subsidies, a little more debt relief, or slightly better access to brand-name anti-retroviral medicines to fight AIDS – have improved the lot of Africans, aside from increasing African elite acquiescence in the structures of power that keep the continent under servitude. Neoliberal ideology emerged as a result of the economic thunderstorm that brought the great postwar boom to an end. In 1973-74 we saw the first generalized crisis of world capitalism. The preceding period from 1948 to 1973 had proved to be a golden age for world capitalism. Production went up year after year, as did living standards. In this situation of full employment the capitalist could afford to make concessions to keep the wheels turning and the profits rolling in. After all, the working class, at least in the advanced capitalist countries, had a very favorable bargaining position. The ideology associated with the golden age was Keynesian economics. Now it is not true that Keynesian remedies caused or prolonged the great boom. This was explained at the time by Ted Grant (Will there be a Slump? 1960). However the era was such a contrast with the interwar period of mass unemployment and struggle that the perception of all classes of the population was that capitalism had changed fundamentally. Booms and slumps, it was generally believed, had been banished to the history books. Clearly the 1973-74 recession came as an enormous political shock. The working class internationally mobilized to defend the gains of the postwar period. The ruling class, for their part, was determined to drive down living standards and restore the rate of profit. As a result of this clash, a revolutionary wave swept across the capitalist world. All the earlier certainties were thrown up in the air and called into question. In addition to rapidly rising unemployment the world economy experienced spiraling prices. The immediate trigger for inflation was the oil price crises of 1973 and 1979. Never before had we 292

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experienced inflation together with recession. This was called stagflation. This was the crucible that produced neoliberalism. A handful of right-wing economists, of whom Milton Friedman was the most well-known, had never swallowed the Keynesian myth that capitalism has been tamed. They received more and more ruling class backing as Keynesian economics went into crisis. By the end of the 1970s they dominated economics faculties in the universities. Their ideas were widely received, including by Labor Prime Minister James Callaghan, who told Labor Party Conference in 1976, “We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candor that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.” This represented a rejection of any attempt at reflationary policies in the face of growing unemployment. It was an acceptance of monetarist economics and of capitalist ascendancy. Monetarism, which is part of the canon of neoliberalism, is not just a dry economic theory. It is a calculated assault weapon on the working class. The monetarists harked back to the time before Keynes when economists admonished governments not to interfere in the economy, but just keep a tight grip on the money supply. If, as they sneered, the Keynesians were ‘yesterday’s men’, then they were ‘the day before yesterday’s men.’

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Neoliberalism triumphant Why should the government not interfere in the economy? Because the doctrinaires believed the market (capitalism), left to itself, would produce ‘optimal’ results. Markets get it right! This smug revival of nineteenth century laisser faire ideology was a weapon against the nationalized industries fought for by the working class, against the mixed economy that gave workers some protection against the rigors of the market, against the welfare state and all the gains made by the workers in nearly a century of struggle against unfettered capitalism. According to neoliberal principles even an attempt at redistribution should be abandoned as an attack on the ‘natural’ outcome of market forces since the existing division of income and wealth is produced by the market. In effect the market was god. If there is unemployment, then wages must be too high. Cut them to restore full employment. This is madness, but madness that serves the ruling class well.

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Associated with neoliberalism was talk of ‘globalization.’ Tariff barriers were coming down all over the globe. Capital was expanding everywhere. Its proponents argued that ‘globalization’ meant that resistance was futile. Because capital was endlessly mobile, nation states were becoming powerless. They had to reduce taxes on profits and obey the multinationals’ every wish or they would simply move their money elsewhere. Regulation had to be torn up. Workers would be blackmailed into accepting lower and lower wages or they would lose their jobs altogether. It was a race to the bottom. Resistance was futile! Neoliberal triumphalism got an echo because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the associated Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe. Capitalism had won the Cold War! So it seemed there was no alternative to capitalism (or ‘the market,’ as apologists came to call it). Neoliberalism was at first believed to be so obviously opposed to the working class interests that it could not be applied in a political democracy. The workers would vote against it. So they imposed it as an ‘experiment’ in Pinochet’s Chile, under conditions of military dictatorship. After the 1973 coup, the military felt itself strong itself to destroy free trade unions, sweep away the welfare safety net, privatize many industries, open up all the county’s resources to imperialist exploitation and massively impoverish the working class. That was just what big capital wanted! Neoliberal policies like privatization were pushed through by means of threats, doomsday false predictions, torture and assassination of dissenting leaders.

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Neoliberalism on the International Scene While Western countries like the United States and Britain have experimented with neoliberalism in their own economies, they have also aggressively – and often violently – forced it on the postcolonial world, and in even more extreme measures. The history of neoliberalism on the international scene begins in 1973. Responding to the OPEC oil embargo that year, the US threatened military action against the Arab states unless they agreed to circulate their excess petrodollars through Wall Street investment banks, which they did. The banks then had to figure out what to do with all of this cash and, since the domestic economy was stagnating, they decided to spend it abroad in the form of highinterest loans to developing countries that needed funds to ease the trauma of rising oil prices, particularly given the high inflation rates of the time. The banks thought this was a safe investment because they assumed that governments would be very unlikely to default.

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They were wrong. Since the loans were made in US dollars, they were linked to fluctuations in US interest rates. When the Volcker Shock hit in the early 1980s and interest rates skyrocketed, vulnerable developing countries – beginning with Mexico – slid to the edge of default, setting off what is now known as the “Third World debt crisis.” The debt crisis looked set to destroy Wall Street banks and thus undermine the entire international financial system. In order to prevent such a crisis, the United States stepped in to make sure that Mexico and other countries could repay their loans. They did this by repurposing the IMF. In the past, the IMF had used its own money to assist countries in addressing balance of payments problems, but now the United States was going to use the IMF to ensure that third world countries would repay their loans to private investment banks. According to David Harvey, during this same period – beginning in 1982 – the Bretton Woods institutions were systematically “purged” of Keynesian influences and became mouthpieces of neoliberal ideology. This is how the plan was supposed to work: the IMF offered to roll over the debts of developing countries on the condition that they would agree to a series of “structural adjustment programs”. Structural adjustment programs promote radical market deregulation on the assumption that this will automatically enhance economic efficiency, increase economic growth, and thus enable debt repayment. They do this by cutting government subsidies for things like food, healthcare, and transportation, by privatizing the public sector, by curbing regulations on labor, resource use, and pollution, and by cutting trade tariffs in order to create “investment opportunities” and open new consumer markets. They also aim to keep inflation low so that the value of third-world debt to the IMF does not diminish, even though this reduces governments’ ability to spur growth. Many of these policies are specifically designed to promote the interests of multinational corporations, which are often given the freedom to buy up public assets, bid on government contracts, and repatriate profits at will. These same neoliberal principles are pushed on developing countries through the World Bank, which gives loans for development projects that come attached with economic “conditionalities” that entail forced market liberalization (this was particularly true during the 1980s). In other words, the IMF and World Bank leverage debt as a tool for manipulating the economies of sovereign states. The World Trade Organization – along with various bilateral Free Trade Agreements, such as NAFTA – also promotes neoliberalism by granting developing countries access to Western markets only in exchange for tariff reductions, which have the effect of undermining local industry in poor countries. None of these institutions are democratic. Voting power in the IMF 295

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and World Bank is apportioned according to each nation’s share of financial ownership, just like in corporations. Major decisions require 85% of the vote, and the United States, which holds about 17% of the shares in both corporations, wields de facto veto power. At the WTO, market size determines bargaining power, so rich countries almost always get their way. If poor countries choose to disobey trade rules that hurt their economies, rich countries can retaliate with crushing sanctions. The ultimate effect of this neoliberal phase of globalization has been a widespread race-to-the-bottom: since multinational corporations can rove the globe in search of the “best” investment conditions, developing countries have to compete with one another to offer the cheapest labor and resources, often to the point of granting extended tax holidays and free inputs to foreign investors. This has been fantastic for the profits of Western (and now Chinese) multinational corporations. But instead of helping poor countries, as they were supposedly designed to do, neoliberal structural adjustment policies have basically destroyed them. Prior to the 1980s, developing countries enjoyed a per capita growth rate of more than 3%. But during the neoliberal era growth rates were cut in half, plunging to 1.7% (Chang, 2007: 27). Sub-Saharan Africa illustrates this downward trend well. During the 1960s and 70s, per capita income grew at a modest rate of 1.6%. But when neoliberal therapy was forcibly applied to the continent, beginning with Senegal in 1979, per capita income began to fall at a rate of 0.7% per year. The GNP of the average African country shrank by around 10% during the neoliberal period of structural adjustment (Ibid.: 28). As a result of this, the number of Africans living in basic poverty has more than doubled since 1980 (World Bank, 2007). Graph 3 illustrates how the same thing has happened in Latin America. Former World Bank economist William Easterly has shown that the more structural adjustment loans a country receives, the more likely its economy is to collapse (Easterly, 2007). It is clear that the African share of proceeds in the world privatization process is by far the smallest. Between 1988 and 1995 in terms of average value of privatization as percentage of GDP, it was, for the 88 countries about 0.5%, and for Africa 0.1 %. Neo-liberalism was imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World. It is raging all over Africa. In fact, neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Africa. A form of globalization and global trading where all nations prosper and develop fairly and equitably is probably what most people would like to see. It is common to hear of today’s world economic system as being free trade or globalization. Some describe the historical events leading up to today’s global free trade and the existing system as inevitable. The UK’s former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was famous for her TINA acronym. Yet, the 296

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modern world system has hardly been inevitable. Instead, various factors such as political decisions, military might, wars, imperial processes and social changes throughout the last few decades and centuries have pulled the world system in various directions. Today’s world economic system is a result of such processes. Power is always a factor.

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Source: World Bank, Privatization Database (corrected)

The economic crisis currently confronting African countries has led to an almost universal embrace of neo-liberalism, both in terms of explanation of causes and as a solution. At the core of neo-liberalism is the assumption that the crisis can only be understood within the context of the role of the state and the functioning of markets. In short, the neoliberal paradigm posits that the fundamental explanation responsible for the economic crisis in African economies is the excessive state regulation of the economies which, among other things, distorts the process of economic development and leads to inefficiency in the allocation of economic resources. It was further argued that this existential situation could only be overcome through the reduction in the role of the state and allowing market forces a free reign in the allocation of resources (Dibua 1998). 297

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As a result, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) became the primary instruments for the implementation of the neo-liberal agenda in Africa. The neo-liberal prescriptions are embodied in the stabilization and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of these institutions. There is no doubt that the worsening economic crisis in Africa, particularly the unsustainable debt burden, has created the opportunity for the Western capitalist nations and the IFIs to collaborate in imposing neo-liberal policies on African countries. For example, both the I.M.F. and the World Bank demand that African countries adhere to the implementation of stabilization and adjustment programs before they can obtain loans from these institutions or have their debts rescheduled or forgiven. Confronted with unfair terms of trade with developed capitalist countries occasioned by the unfair trade practices and unequal terms of trade and protectionists tendencies, the majority of African countries south of the Sahara have been forced to embrace neoliberalism as a panacea to their debilitating economic problems. It is important to note that externally imposed neoliberal policies have been portrayed as the only credible solution to the African crisis. In spite of the fact that for several decades the implementation of structural adjustment programs have resulted in the worsening of the economic crisis of African countries, the proponents of the programs insist that there are no alternatives to them. Even when they acknowledge some of the flaws of SAPs (Stiglitz, 2002), they instead place most of the blame on African countries, which are accused of either not having the “political will” or creating “the enabling environment” necessary for the successful implementation of the programs (World Bank 1989; Hussain and Faruqee 1994). However, while the adverse impacts of structural adjustment have made it difficult for even the most optimistic proponents to ignore their shortcomings and have clearly exposed their inadequacies, the question of their relevance has remained contentious. Some proponents have continued to blame internal factors for the failure of structural adjustment programs. They have insisted, for example, that African countries are so “hemmed in” (Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993) or so “lost between the state and the market,” (Callaghy, 1994) that they have no credible alternative to SAPs. There is now a kind of joint acceptance among liberal scholars and policy-makers that the absence of an alternative to structural adjustment is an ideological triumph of neo-liberalism throughout the world, (Biersteker, 1992), a situation which Francis Fukuyama has described as ‘the end of history’(Fukuyama, 1991). A review of the African privatization experience to end 1997, shows that the number of transactions was in the rise up to a peak of 472 in 1995, declining gradually, thereafter, to 357 in 1996 and 102 in 1997. Meanwhile, the sales value of privatization transactions increased constantly both in total ($ 2.2 billion net 298

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increase in 1997) and in average (more than a $1 million in 1997 against $0. 3 million up to end 1996. Such divergent evolution demonstrates that there is no correlation between the number and the value of sales. The increase in average unit sale is an indication that Africa is privatizing larger State Owned Enterprises. The sectoral distribution of transaction shows a move toward substantial sectors of telecommunications, water and electricity, transportation and also mining and with some resistance on both governments and some donors, the agri-business sector. World-wide revenues from those sectors and manufacturing are the most important with around $65 billion from infrastructure, $31 billion from telecommunications, $37 billion from manufacturing, $25 billion from the primary sector, $20 billion from the power sector at end 1996. According to Global Development Finance (The World Bank, 1998: 109), neoliberalism dominates the African political horizon at the moment both for the powers that be and for the movements that challenge them. It has established a new sociopolitical matrix that frames the conditions for political transformation across the entire continent. This chapter examines the political impact of neoliberalism, but also the politics of neoliberalism itself, something less often focused on. It begins with an examination of the political making of the free-market system, contrary to what we might call the ‘naturalist’ views of the neoliberal ideologues. It continues with a critical review of the ways in which the capitalist state has been sustained in Africa by the kleptocratic client politicians at the expense of the development of the people.

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Dissecting Neoliberalism as Ideology of Colonial Empire Preliminary considerations of neoliberalism thrust four questions to the fore: what? why? how? And, where? What is neoliberalism? What distinguishes it from the form of capitalism that preceded it? Why did capital impose this reorganization of capitalism? These questions are particularly important to address (Mentan, 2010) in that capital’s central concern, its rate of profit, generally performed worse in the 1980s and 1990s than it did under the previous Keynesian-compromise organization of the 1950s and 1960s. How was this reorganization achieved? What changes in policies, practices and institutions constituted the change? And finally, where is neoliberalism going in Africa? The concept of neoliberalism first arose out of the left in November 1999, amidst the cataclysmic protests surrounding the World Trade Organization, though it had been pursued as a policy for some years before this. From the beginning, the leftist understanding of the term was bound up in anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements (Interview in Socialist Review 242, June, 2000). 299

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Despite this, there was a section of the movement that saw neoliberalism not as an outgrowth of capitalism, but as something different from it entirely. Susan George, who spoke about “the harmful consequences of globalization,” is one such thinker (Bourdieu, 1998: 6-7). I want to outline what exactly neoliberalism is, and then explain how it is connected to capitalism. Ultimately, I will argue, Marxist political economy is the only lens through which we can properly understand-and fight against-neoliberalism. In order to understand why this is the case, we need to familiarize ourselves with some basic aspects of Marxist political economy. Chiefly, we need to understand contradictions. Essentially “a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another” (“Contradiction-” Dictionary.com). It is “a…situation in which inconsistent elements are present” (Ibid). For Marxists, capitalism itself is founded on a number of important contradictions: the contradiction between the social character of production in large scale machine production by collective labor in factories on the one hand and the private appropriation of the product of labor due to private ownership of the means of production on the other hand. A small part of the new material values created by the workers goes to them as wages for their subsistence. The surplus value is divided among the capitalists as profit, the banks as interest on loans, and the landlord as rent. To maximize profits, the capitalists keep on enlarging the constant capital for equipment and raw materials and keeping down the variable capital for wages. Every commodity contains the old material values (previously congealed labor) from the use of the raw materials and depreciation of equipment and new material values that only living labor power (expressible in average socially necessary labor time) can create (Engels, 1935). The drive of the capitalists to maximize profits by enlarging constant capital and pushing down wages is that it results in the crisis of relative overproduction. It becomes more difficult for workers to buy what they produce as the capitalist class takes in more profit and the real purchasing power of the working class declines. As such, workers become increasingly immiserated while capitalists accumulate more and more wealth. In common parlance, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” (Franken, 2006: 153). Capitalism, therefore, is based on exploitation. Workers operate machines collectively, and they are all paid wages for doing so. This wage, however, amounts to only a fraction of the value the workers produced. It is just enough to keep them coming to work the next day, and to ensure that the next generation of workers can survive to sell their labor power in the future. The rest of the value is appropriated-stolen-by the capitalist who owns the machines the worker used to produce the value.

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This existential situation best explains the claim made by John Saul and Colin Leys (1999) that if we define sub-Saharan Africa as excluding not only north Africa but also bracket off, for the moment, the continent’s southern cone, dominated by South Africa, the key fact about the rest—the greater part of the continent—is thrown sharply into relief: after 80 years of colonial rule and almost four decades of independence, in most of it there is some capital but not a lot of capitalism. The predominant social relations are still not capitalist, nor is the prevailing logic of production. Africa south of the Sahara exists in a capitalist world, which marks and constrains the lives of its inhabitants at every turn, but is not of it. This is the fundamental truth from which any honest analysis must begin. This is what explains why sub-Saharan Africa, with some 650 million people, over 10 percent of the world’s population, has just 3 percent of its trade and only 1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product; and why income per head—averaging 460 dollars in 1994—has steadily fallen, relative to the industrialized world, and is now less than a fiftieth of what it is in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. It also explains why sub-Saharan Africa’s economies have responded worse than others to the market-oriented development policies urged on it by the World Bank and other outside agencies since the 1980s. Now the aid flow is declining, while population growth is still racing towards a barely imaginable 1 to 1.2 billion in the year 2020. This is where the collective-private contradiction makes itself clear. The process of producing value-the labor process-is performed by large masses of people packed into factories, side by side. They are forced to interact with one another in order to produce value. Under capitalism, there is no such thing as individual labor. Even small business owners, Marx argued, would undergo a process known as proletarianization, in which market mechanisms drove small owners out of market competition and into factories. For Marx, the growth of capital meant the growth of the working class. As capitalism develops, as the means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, small owners would be stripped of their own means of production. They would eventually be left with nothing to sell but their labor power. As such, social labor would proliferate-become more and more common. In this sense, social labor is a defining characteristic of the capitalist mode of production (Engels, Op. Cit.). Despite this, means of production under capitalism are not owned by workers as a class. They are operated by workers (note the plural) but are owned by a singular capitalist. The process of value production is collective, but the process of value extraction is private. This is what makes exploitation possible. The value stolen from the worker goes to the capitalist, who can dispose of it 301

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however they desire. They can reinvest it into their business to make it more competitive, or (as is becoming increasingly more common) they can consume it themselves. Regardless of what the capitalist chooses to do, the value produced by the working class (in a collective fashion) will never go to benefit that class. It will always benefit the private capitalist (or small group of private capitalists) who owns means of production. Value produced collectively goes to benefit individuals. This is the contradiction at the heart of capitalism. How does this relate to neoliberalism? David Harvey, in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, provides just such a definition. Neoliberalism, Harvey writes, is “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms…within an institutional framework [of] strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (1989: 2). He goes on to write that neoliberalism “seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market” (Ibid.: 3). In short, neoliberalism offers a set of market-based solutions to social ills. It supposes that problems experienced collectively can be conquered by individuals. An important aspect of this an antipathy to state intervention. The state, in the neoliberal understanding, only gets in the way of individual entrepreneurs who want to alleviate problems. Hence, deregulation is a prime aspect of neoliberal practice. To quote Steger and Roy in Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction, “the state is to refrain from interfering with the economic activities of self-interested citizens” (2010: 3). Neoliberalism therefore presents a profound hatred of collective action in favor of individual motivation. This does not mean, however, that the state under neoliberalism is impotent, ineffectual, or meaningless. On the contrary, although the regulatory and public service components of the state will be stripped bare under neoliberalism (we will examine this in more detail later), the military and police-the repressive state apparatus-will be inflated to new heights. Harvey writes that the state must “secure private property rights and…guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist [in water, healthcare, and education, for example] then they must be created, by state action if necessary” Harvey, Op. Cit.: 4). Neoliberalism, then, is not against the state. It is against the state when it interferes with market mechanisms. But, it is perfectly happy to lean on the state when the neoliberal order is resisted or challenged. Under neoliberalism, the state must protect the interests of the aforementioned entrepreneurial individuals (the capitalists). It will not hesitate to use violence to do this. It should be noted that this process of violent state intervention has been common, literally, since the very beginning of capitalism. An important part of the development of capitalism in England, for instance, was the land enclosure. Rich landowners 302

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used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class that provided the labor required in the new industries developing in the north of England. EP Thompson writes, “in agriculture the years between 1760 and 1820 are the years of wholesale enclosure in which, in village after village, common rights are lost” (1991: 217). He goes on to say, “Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery” (Ibid). A particularly important feature of neoliberalism is a hatred of regulation and, therefore, a desire to privatize key industries or sectors of the economy. This stands in sharp contrast to the Keynesianism of the 1920s and 30s. During the Great Depression, state intervention was deemed necessary as an instrument for countering crisis and reviving demand, production and employment. The Roosevelt administration established the New Deal and created the Works Progress Administration in order to re-employ large numbers of the unemployed in public works projects intended to “pump-prime” the economy. Subsequently, the use of fiscal policy and public works projects would become known as Keynesianism under Keynes’ theory of general equilibrium (Tobin, 1975: 195-202). The use of Keynesianism in civil construction projects did not solve the crisis, but it did hold off fascism in America. In Nazi Germany, the use of public works to stimulate the economy glided into feverish military production. The worst consequences of the Great Depression were fascism and World War II. In the United States, expanded and intensified civil and military production for the war effort overcame the crisis and stagnation brought about by the Great Depression (Campbell, 2005). Neoliberalism did not arise until much later, in the 1970s and 1980s. Up to the 1970s, Keynesianism was touted as the economic policy of state intervention that countered the Great Depression, strengthened the US as a bulwark of capitalism, guided the reconstruction of the war-devastated capitalist economies under the Marshall Plan, and maintained equilibrium in capitalist economies. But this could not hold out for long. There was always some resistance to the new Keynesian orthodoxy. A minority of economists, notably Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, continued to hold on to the old doctrine. Campbell claims that “most finance capital never accepted the Keynesian compromise” (Ibid.), but that it accounted for only fifteen percent (15%) of capital (Ibid.: 189). Governments and big corporations accepted Keynesian ideology, not because it was imposed upon them by working class strength, but because increased economic activity by the state was accompanied by much higher levels of profitability in the US and major European states than under the pre-war ideology of economic liberalism (Ibid.).

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In Africa, a neo-Liberal philosophy has been overtaking economic policy. The neo-liberal ideology asserts that all human activities can be essentially considered as “commodity and the best way (leading to the greatest satisfaction possible) is to organize these activities through a market” (Caffentzis, 2002: 89). Throughout the 1980’s, the major international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank began pushing for major market reform overhauls across the globe, mainly in “developing countries” like those in Africa. The primary aim of such overhauls was the liberalization of the world economy. Success of such policies is subject to debate even in developed countries that have the necessary resources and infrastructure at their disposal to implement them. However, the rapid implementation of neoliberal economic policy in African countries that lack such resources and infrastructure are even more problematic. (MacEwan, 2000) Neo-liberal philosophy, in particular, frowns upon government intervention in the economy and considers such an intervention as rent-seeking behavior, therefore creating a burden on the economy. In concrete terms the neo-liberal policies which have been widely implemented in Africa over the last decades are: •

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•

•

Removal of state control over prices and money. This has meant that subsidies on basic goods such as food and fuel have been removed. In some countries even the most basic foodstuffs have become too expensive for the poor. The liberalization of currency regulations allows capital to invest and disinvest in the country much more easily. This creates the possibility of capital flight and speculative attacks on the currency. Significantly Uganda and Ghana who have been model citizens in implementing IMF reforms both suffer from rampant devaluation of their currency causing inflation of prices and other economic problems. Large cuts in public spending. This has had several drastic effects. Firstly there must be massive layoffs of public sector workers in many countries. Other cutbacks in public spending have seen reduced social programs and increased charges. Privatizations of state owned corporations such as electricity, water and transport. These privatizations have often merely replaced a state monopoly with a private monopoly which has generally led to price rises and the effective barring of the services to vast numbers of the poor. *Policies to promote a ‘flexible’ workforce. This essentially means the large scale subcontracting of labor and a reduction in workers’ rights, wages and conditions. Workers at Wits University in Johannesburg 304

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recently saw their salaries cut by almost 70% and lost all of their benefits under a restructuring plan. • Policies to promote competitiveness. This involves reducing tariff barriers and reducing taxes on businesses and the rich to attract investment. As a result of this, local industries can be undermined by cheap imports Sales taxes (VAT) are introduced as alternatives to company and income tax. This causes increases in prices of goods for workers and big increases in profits for bosses It is without doubt that neoliberalism has shaped African development for the past decades. As such, it is not an economic ‘shock’ or a ‘structural adjustment.’ But, it is rather a historic shift in Africa’s development politics and policy. As an ideology, neoliberalism projects an end-point not simply of a market economy but of a market society. After decades of so-called projects, aid disbursement, technical assistance, and conditionality, it is essential to map out the extent to which African states have cleaved to neoliberal directives and succeeded or failed. In other words, the main points of neo-liberalism include: 1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side “and “trickle-down” economics -- but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much. 2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business. 3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job. 4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs. 305

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5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.” Market Deregulation Africa has been infected by a disease we call “free market ideology”. But, what is free market ideology of deregulation? Free market ideology asserts that markets are always good and government regulation - or even government in general - is always bad. Exceptions are made for the military and the police, and free-market economists concede that there are environmental impacts and other side-effects of markets which they term “externalities”. But even then, they dismiss or ignore these imperfections, arguing that the side-effects could be fixed by defining property rights better, or building yet more markets. Only a small minority of people are true ideologues, but a fuzzier version of free market ideology is accepted broadly enough that our political discourse has been taken over. For instance, a market system called “Cap and Trade” is promoted to solve the market-created global warming crisis while concepts such as publicly-funded universal health insurance or increased social welfare programs are dismissed as “socialist.” Several tenets underlie what we call Free Market Ideology: • • • • •

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• •

Markets create a meritocracy where everyone has an equal opportunity. Success goes to those producing the most value for society. Given unlimited choice, people will act in their own best interests and to their ultimate benefit. Individualistic choices will also maximize growth of the economy as a whole. It’s good to promote business and growth because “a rising tide lifts all boats” Selfishness is glorified, and companies are naturally expected to maximize profits. To the extent things are not perfect today, or that growth is stagnant, it is because of government interference in markets.

Whatever the problem might be—climate change, poverty, educational reform—free markets are promoted as an answer. We are told that markets are the greatest anti-poverty program, that if we just leave things alone, companies will lift up the poor. Don’t worry, we are told, innovation will solve global warming if only we give entrepreneurs the right incentives. Trade agreements 306

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are promoted as the solution to spur economic growth both at home and abroad, and privatization will solve governmental inefficiencies. These arguments, however, are based on logical fallacies and a misunderstanding of both economics and history. I am not arguing here that markets are always pernicious. In fact, markets can be very useful. No one should doubt the hugely significant role that international trade could play in tackling poverty. In terms of income, trade has the potential to be far more important than aid or debt relief for developing countries. For example, an increase in Africa’s share of world exports by just 1% could generate around £43bn - five times the total amount of aid received by African countries. But, the observation that markets are good, in moderation, has been morphed into an extreme ideology that markets are beneficial always and everywhere and that regulating markets is bad. We also don’t assert that most people explicitly agree with free market ideology, in its purist form. But, the ideology has permeated public discourse in ways we are not even aware of implicitly influences most public policy. The answer to all problems is economic growth. That is, “if you have any problem, on the personal level, the solution is to buy something.” These implicit beliefs have come to predominate public discourse and policy.

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Fallacies of Market Deregulation Robotics also leads us to face squarely three fallacies of the market: a).The first is the fallacy of the lump of labor doctrine that holds that the new machines will displace huge numbers of workers and people will remain jobless forever. Yes, the shorter our time-horizon, the more that proposition seems reasonable. Because in the short term the number of jobs is limited and if more jobs are done by machines fewer jobs will be left for people. But as soon as we extend our gaze toward longer-time horizons, the number of job becomes variable. We cannot pinpoint what they would be (because we do not know what new technologies will bring) but this is where the experience of two centuries of technological progress becomes useful. We know that similar fears have always existed and were never justified. New technologies ended up creating enough new jobs, and actually more and better jobs than were lost. This does not mean that there would no losers. There will be workers replaced by the new machines (called “robots”) or people whose wages will be reduced. But however these losses may be sad and tragic for individuals involved they do not change the entire society. b).The second “lump” fallacy which is linked with the first, namely our inability to pinpoint what new technology will bring, is that human needs are 307

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limited. The two are related in the following way: we imagine (again, looking only at any given moment in time) that human needs are limited to what we know exists today, what people aspire to today, and cannot see what new needs will arise with a new technology. Consequently we cannot imagine what will be the new jobs to satisfy the newly created needs. Again history comes to the rescue. Only ten years ago we could not imagine the need for an intelligent cell phone (because we could not imagine it could exist) and thus we could not imagine the new jobs created by the iPhone (from Uber to ticket sales). Only 40 years ago, we could not imagine the need to have our own computer in every room and we could not imagine millions of new jobs created by the PC. Some 100+ years ago we could not imagine the need for a personal motor car and thus we could not imagine Detroit and Ford and GM and Toyota and even things like Michelin restaurant guide. Even best among the economists, like Ricardo and Keynes (in “The economic prospects of our grandchildren”) thought that human needs are limited. We should know better today: the needs are unlimited and because we cannot forecast the exact movements in technology, we cannot forecast what particular form such new needs will take. But we know that our needs are not finite. c).The third “lump” fallacy (which is not directly related to the issue of robotics) is the lump of raw materials and energy fallacy, the so called “carriage capacity of the Earth”. There are of course geological limits to raw materials simply because the Earth is a limited system. But our experience teaches us that these limits are much wider than we generally think at any point in time because our knowledge of what earth contains is itself limited by our level of technology. The better our technology, the more reserves of everything we discover. Yet accepting that X is an exhaustible energy source or a raw material and that at the current rate of utilization it will run out in Y years is only a part of the story. It neglects the fact that with the rising scarcity and price of X, there will be greater incentive to create substitutes (as inventions of sugar beet, synthetic rubber or fracking show) or to use a different combination of inputs to produce the final goods that now use X. Indeed, the cost of the final good may go up but here again we are talking about a change in some relative prices, not about the a cataclysmic event. Earth carriage capacity which does not include development of technology and pricing in its equation is just another “lump” fallacy. Some famous economists like Jevons who collected tons of paper in the expectation that the trees would run out entertained the same illogical fears. Not only did it turn out that, with many thousand (or million?) times greater use of paper, the world did not run out of trees—Jevons simply, and understandably, 308

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could not imagine that technology would enable recycling of paper and that electronic communications would substitute for much of what paper was used for. We are not smarter than Jevons because we too cannot imagine what might replace fuel oil or magnesium or iron ore, but we should be able to understand the process whereby these substitutions come about and to reason by analogy. Fears of robotics and technology respond, I think, to two human frailties. One is cognitive: we do not know what the future technological change will be and thus cannot tell what our future needs will be. The second is psychological: our desire to get a thrill from the fear of the unknown, from that scary and yet alluring prospect of metallic robots replacing workers in factory halls. It responds to the same need that makes us go and watch scary movies. When we do not go to a movie theater we like to scare ourselves with the exhaustion of natural resources, limits to growth and replacement of people by robots. It may be a fun thing to do but history teaches us that it is not the one that we should rationally fear. Flattering examples are not far to seek. In countries with state control of the economy, opposition tends to weaken. Those who disagree with the ruling party soon find themselves without a job and without an income. In contrast, a free economy provides for diffusion of wealth and power. It also provides for higher rates of growth. Thus, between 1966 and 2006, Botswana’s average annual growth rate was 7.22 percent — among the world’s highest. Its income per capita adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity rose from $671 in 1966 to $10,813 in 2005. That is the way that the disease of free market ideology is infecting us and harming our society. Nobody seeks to know: whose market? Who are the winners and losers? Let us look at some examples. Taiwan and South Korea are often held out as being good illustrations of the benefits of trade liberalization. In fact, they built their international trading strength on the foundations of government subsidies and heavy investment in infrastructure and skills development while being protected from competition by overseas firms. In more recent years, those countries which have been able to reduce levels of poverty by increasing economic growth - like China, Vietnam, India and Mozambique - have all had high levels of intervention as part of an overall policy of strengthening domestic sectors. On the other hand, there are an increasing number of countries in which full-scale trade liberalization has been applied and then failed to deliver economic growth while allowing domestic markets to be dominated by imports. This often has devastating effects. Zambia and Ghana are both examples of countries in which the opening up of markets has led to sudden falls in rates of growth with sectors being unable to compete with foreign goods. Even in those 309

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countries that have experienced overall economic growth as a result of trade liberalization, poverty has not necessarily been reduced. This has led some African leaders like President Museveni of Uganda to say: “Africa does need development assistance, just as it needs debt relief from its crushing international debt burden. But aid and debt relief can only go so far. We are asking for the opportunity to compete, to sell our goods in western markets. In short, we want to trade our way out of poverty.” The World Bank estimates that reform of the international trade rules could take 300 million people out of poverty. Reform is essential because, to put it bluntly, the rules of international trade are rigged against the poorest countries. Rich nations may be pre pared to open up their own markets, but still keep in place massive subsidies. The quid pro quo for doing this is that developing countries open up their domestic markets. These are then vulnerable to heavily subsidized exports from the developed world. The course of international trade since 1945 shows that an unfettered global market can fail the poor and that full trade liberalization brings huge risks and rarely provides the desired outcome. It is more often the case that developing countries which have successfully expanded their economies are those that have been prepared to put in place measures to protect industries while they gain strength and give communities the time to diversify into new areas.

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“Free market” program boosts world poverty In June, 1999, Nick Beams reported in the World Socialist Web Site that world poverty was on the increase as a result of the global financial crisis and the free market “structural adjustment” measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund. This was the inescapable conclusion of the latest report on global poverty issued by the World Bank. The Bank found that the number of people forced to live on less than $1 a day was increasing and could reach 1.5 billion by the end of this year. As many as 200 million people have joined the ranks of those in abject poverty since the last estimate in 1993. Presenting the report, World Bank president James Wolfensohn declared: “The financial turmoil of the last two years has dealt a blow to the expectations we had for reducing poverty. Just a short time ago we had confidence that the international development goal of halving poverty would be met in the next 20 years in most areas of the world. Today, countries that until recently believed they were turning the tide in the fight against poverty are witnessing its reemergence along with hunger and the human suffering it brings.” The World Bank report implied that some of the increase in poverty occurred as a result of measures imposed by the IMF, but was careful not to 310

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mention its sister organization by name, saying only that these measures bore down most heavily on the least well-off sections of the population and should be more carefully designed in the future. But even by its own calculations, the report showed that “free market” program which forms the basis for the policies of the World Bank and IMF has created a social disaster for hundreds of millions of people. It found that Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea had experienced “significant increases in poverty”. In Indonesia alone, the proportion of people forced to live on less than $1 per day increased from 11 percent in 1997 to 19.9 percent in 1998, implying an increase of 20 million in the ranks of the “newly poor”—equivalent to a medium-sized nation such as Australia. In Korea, the incidence of urban poverty went from 8.6 percent in 1997 to 19.2 percent last year. The rise in poverty is not confined to those countries most directly affected by the global financial turmoil. The report found that the number of people below the $1 per day level in India had increased to 340 million, from an estimated 300 million in the late 1980s. Recent data on the stagnation in rural wages suggested a further increase in poverty rates in that country. The report described the prospects for Africa as “worrisome” as a result of falling prices for many commodities, slower world trade growth and the prospect of increasing competition from countries with depreciated exchange rates.

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Africa’s Miseries and Poverty in the Neoliberal Empire

Africa’s miseries and abject poverty are due to “The combined effect of lower commodity prices, conflict, and in some cases, bad weather has been to 311

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cut growth in Sub-Saharan Africa; GDP growth in 1998 appears to have been below the rate of population growth, implying a decline in per capita income.” Sharp declines in growth and increases in poverty were anticipated in Russia, the Ukraine and Romania. Despite growth in some areas of Eastern Europe, the growth in per capita GDP for the region as a whole was expected to be zero. In the Middle East and North Africa, per capita GDP growth was expected to be negative. Summing up the situation, World Bank Director of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Michael Walton said: “The global picture that emerges at the end of the 1990s is one of stalled progress as a result of the East Asian crisis, rising numbers of poor people in India, continued rises in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a sharp worsening in Europe and Central Asia.” IMF’s role documented Another recent study has presented a devastating indictment of the IMF’s so-called “structural adjustment” measures. Relying largely on IMF data, the report by Robert Naiman and Neil Watkins (http: //www.preamble.org/IMFinAfrica.htm) showed how the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) regime has led to declining growth rates and reduced spending on health and education, while at the same time increasing international indebtedness. The report’s main findings were: •

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•

Developing countries worldwide operating under ESAF programs experienced lower economic growth than those which did not, with African countries the worst hit. It would be years before their populations returned to the per capita incomes they had prior to structural adjustment. While African countries urgently need to increase spending on health care, education, and sanitation, IMF structural adjustment measures have forced them to cut such spending—with per capita spending on education actually declining between 1986 and 1996.

The basis of the IMF ESAF program is to open the way for the increased penetration of international capital and the reduction of government regulation through cuts in spending, the elimination of subsidies on food and other items of popular consumption, the privatization of government-owned enterprises and the reduction in barriers to trade and investment with the stated objective of fostering “sustainable economic growth.” 312

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But as the study noted, annual per capita growth for countries under the ESAF regime was zero for 1991-95, whereas as non-ESAF poor countries recorded a 1 per cent per capita growth rate. Sub-Saharan African countries operating under ESAF policies experienced an average decline of 0.3 percent in per capita incomes over the same period. The report noted that according to World Bank projections the decline in real income in African countries means they will take years to reach the same levels of per capita income that were achieved in the early 1980s.

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“The World Bank forecasts that per capita incomes will grow by 1.2 percent annually for the next decade in Sub-Saharan Africa. Given the past record of achievement under IMF/World Bank adjustment, such projections may be overly optimistic. But even under these projections, it will take until 2006 merely to return to 1982 (pre-structural adjustment) levels of per capita income in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

The proponents of structural adjustment claimed that it was aimed at reducing external debt. But here too the IMF’s own figures show that the debt burden of ESAF countries has increased significantly. The total external debt as a share of gross national product for all ESAF countries increased from 71.1 percent to 87.8 percent between 1985 and 1995, with the proportion of debt for Sub-Saharan Africa rising from 58 percent in 1988 to 70 percent in 1996. The total amount of debt outstanding for the region rose from $150.5 billion in 1988 to $227.1 billion in 1996. The study found there was a net transfer of payments of more than $1 billion from African governments to the IMF in 1997 and 1998. However, despite these increased repayments, total African debt continued to increase, rising by 3 per cent. The social impact of these measures is graphically demonstrated by the case of Zimbabwe. After experiencing real growth of about 4 percent per annum in the 1980s, Zimbabwe entered an ESAF program in 1991 supposedly to “jump start economic growth. The arrangements required the government to cut the fiscal deficit, reduce tax rates and deregulate financial markets. Protection for the manufacturing sector was dismantled and labor markets were “deregulated”. The results were disastrous. Between 1991 and 1996 manufacturing output contracted by 14 percent, real GDP per capita fell by 5.8 percent. Real GDP fell by 1 percent between 1991 and 1995, in contrast to IMF forecasts of an 18 percent increase over the same period. Private per capita consumption dropped by 37 percent between 1991 and 1996.

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The combination of reduced protection of the manufacturing sector, the reduction in public spending, and labor market deregulation led to higher unemployment and lower real wages. Between 1991-96, formal sector employment in manufacturing fell 9 percent and real wages declined by 26 percent. Meanwhile, food prices rose much faster than other consumer prices; this disproportionately affected the rural poor who spend a larger proportion of their income on food. Expenditure on health care declined from 3.1 percent of GDP to 2.1 percent during a period of increasing need resulting from the spread of AIDS. Consequently between 1988 and 1994 wasting in children, a phenomenon linked to AIDS, quadrupled and the number of tuberculosis cases also increased fourfold between 1986 and 1995. Government spending on education also declined rapidly, with primary and secondary education experiencing per capita declines of 36 percent and 25 percent respectively between 1991 and 1994.

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Free Trade or Fair Trade? I must start by admitting that capitalism has been successful in nurturing technological innovation, in promoting initiative, and in creating wealth (and increasing poverty). Many economists are agreed that in general capitalism can be a powerful engine for development. But, political interests and specific forms of capitalism can have different results. The monopoly capitalism of the colonial era for example was very destructive to Africa. Likewise, there is growing criticism of the current model of corporate-led neoliberalism and its version of globalization and capitalism that has resulted. This criticism comes from many areas including many NGOs, developing nation governments and ordinary citizens. Free trade and free markets are essentially about making trade easier by allowing the market to balance needs, supply and demand. Within a nation, it can be a positive engine for development. With the Cold War over, politicians, economists and others have been promoting unfettered free trade and free market ideology, pushing it to an even wider international arena to facilitate international trade. Though, as will be suggested below, the current system in its reality is hardly the free trade that the theories describe. Ideas such as markets being self-balancing to meet supply and demand, while increasing prosperity for those who participate freely sounds very appealing, in theory. However there are increasing concerns that go to the heart of the system itself such as, • What about the reality of the current form of globalization, compared to the theory? 314

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How has it affected various segments of society around the world? • What has been the impact on the environment? • Is it even free trade? • How have the functions of power and politics (which cannot be ignored) affected the process of globalization? Have the old imperial powers just managed to (intentionally or unintentionally) devise a more sophisticated way of appropriating the world’s wealth? •

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The costs of trade liberalization in Africa According to the IMF and World Bank, one of the sources of Africa’s crisis is its inward-looking trade system, characterized by the protection of domestic markets, subsidies, overvalued exchange rates and other “market distortions” that made African exports less “competitive” in world markets. In place of this system, they propose an open and liberal trading system in which tariff and nontariff barriers are kept to a minimum or even eliminated. Such a system, combined with an export-led growth strategy, would put Africa on a solid path to economic recovery, according to both institutions. The costs associated with trade liberalization have largely offset any potential “benefits” African countries were supposed to derive from that liberalization. First of all, trade liberalization has translated into substantial fiscal losses, since many countries depend on import taxation as their main source of fiscal revenues. Therefore, the elimination of, or reduction in, import tariffs has led to lower government revenues. But one of the most negative impacts of trade liberalization has been the collapse of many domestic industries, unable to sustain competition from powerful and subsidized competitors from industrialized countries. In fact, Africa’s industrial sector has been among the biggest victims of structural adjustment. From Senegal to Zambia, from Mali to Tanzania, from Cote d’Ivoire to Uganda, entire sectors of the domestic industry have been wiped out, with devastating consequences. Not only has the industrial sector contribution to domestic product continued to fall, but also the industrial workforce has continued to shrink dramatically. In Senegal, more than one third of industrial workers lost their jobs in the 1980s. The trend was accentuated in the 1990s, following sweeping trade liberalization policies and privatization imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, especially after the 50% devaluation of the CFA Franc, in 1994. In Ghana, the industrial workforce declined from 78,700 in 1987 to 28,000 in 1993. In Zambia, in the textile sector alone, more than 75% of workers lost their jobs in less than a decade, as a result of the complete dismantling of that sector by the Chiluba presidency. In other countries, such as 315

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Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Zambia, Tanzania, etc. similar trends can be observed. In several annual and special reports, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has documented the devastating impact of SAPs on employment and wages. The African Union seems to have come to grips with that devastation. It organized a special Summit on Employment and Poverty, in the capital of Burkina Faso, September 9 and 10, 2004. It was revealed during that Summit that only 25% of the African workforce is employed in the formal sector. The rest, 75%, is either in the subsistence agriculture or in the informal sector. In light of this reality, the Summit issued a Plan of Action aimed at exploring strategies to foster job creation. But such a Plan will only be credible if African countries are ready to move away from IMF and World Bank recipes, which were harshly criticized during the Summit. UNCTAD has reported that more than 70% of Africa’s exports are still composed of primary products, more than 62% of which are non-processed products. This helps justify the need for more liberalization and deregulation to make African exports more “competitive.” The second objective is to help justify the need for more liberalization and deregulation to make African economies more “competitive” and “attractive” to foreign direct investments. This also explains the push for more privatization. In the name of “comparative advantage,” the export-led growth strategy forces African countries to compete fiercely for market shares, leading them to flood the same markets with more of their commodities. As a result, trade liberalization has accentuated the volatility of African commodities, whose prices experienced twice the volatility of East Asian commodity prices and nearly four times the volatility that industrial countries experienced in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This has contributed to worsening Africa’s terms of trade. According to UNCTAD, if Africa’s terms of trade had remained at their 1980 level:  Africa’s share in world trade would have been twice its current level - the investment ratio would have been raised by 6.0% per annum in non-oil exporting countries,  it would have added to annual growth 1.4% per annum,  it would have raised GDP per capita by at least 50% to $478 in 1997 compared with the actual figure of $323 during that year.

The costs of financial liberalization

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According to Demba Moussa Dembele (2004), one of the main objectives of financial liberalization is to make African countries “attractive” to foreign direct investments. But as the experience of development shows, foreign direct investments follow development, not the other way around. In addition, despite all “the right financial policies,” foreign investments continue to elude Africa, with less than 2% of flows to developing countries, despite having among the highest rates of return on investments in the world. And these flows are concentrated in a few oil-producing and mineral-rich countries, according to UNCTAD and the World Bank. In reality, financial liberalization has yielded little gains. For most African countries, it has been associated with huge costs. First, it entails higher levels of foreign exchange reserves to protect domestic currencies against attacks resulting from speculative short-term capital outflows. Second, financial liberalization has increased the likelihood of capital flight, in part as a result of a greater volatility of domestic currencies. The high costs of trade and financial liberalization further weakened African economies and opened the way to the privatization of the continent.

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The privatization of Africa Privatization, like financial liberalization, is seen by the IMF and World Bank as an instrument to promote private sector development, which has been elevated to the status of “engine of growth”. The privatization of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), including water and power utilities, has been one of the core conditionalities imposed by the two institutions, even in the context of “poverty reduction.” Most of the foreign direct investments registered by African countries in the 1990s came as a response to privatization of SOEs. No sector was spared, even those considered as “strategic” in the 1980s, such as telecommunications, energy, water and the extractive industries. In 1994, the World Bank published a report assessing the process of privatization in SSA. After complaining about the slow pace of privatization throughout the region, it issued a warning to African governments to accelerate the dismantling of their public sector, accused of being “at the heart of Africa’s economic crisis.” The process of privatization peaked in the late 1990s and ever since has leveled off, despite more deregulation, liberalization and all kinds of incentives offered to would be investors. To date, it is estimated that more than 40,000 SOEs have been sold off in Africa. However, the “gains” from privatization, projected by the World Bank and the IMF, have been elusive. In fact, many privatization schemes have failed and contributed to worsening economic and social conditions. Almost 317

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everywhere in Africa, privatization has been associated with massive job losses and higher prices of goods and services that put them out of reach of most citizens.

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Building a neoliberal State The concept of “good governance” was promoted by the IMF and World Bank to explain the failure of SAPs. It tends to convey the idea that SAPs have failed, in large part, because African States are “corrupt”, “wasteful” and “rentseeking” and because of the “poor implementation” of policies. In other words, SAPs were basically “sound,” it is the combination of “rampant corruption” and lack of qualified personnel that led to the failure of these policies. Thus, “good governance” means nothing else than the need to build a neoliberal State, subservient to the IFIs, able to effectively implement, “sound policies” and to protect the interests of foreign investors. Indeed, one of the main goals of the IMF and World Bank has been to discredit State-led development strategies in favor of market-led strategies. This is why one of the main targets of these institutions has been the role of the African State in economic and social development. To discredit that role, a twotrack strategy was adopted. The first track was to attack the credibility of the African State as an agent of development. To achieve that goal, an abundant literature has been published by the two institutions, highlighting the “corrupt,” “predatory,” “wasteful” and “rent-seeking” nature of the African State. To justify these epithets, the IFIs pointed to the “mismanagement” of the public sector, accused of being an obstacle to economic growth and development. These attacks helped make the case for the sweeping restructure of the public sector, which, in many cases, led to its dismantling in favor of the private sector. The second track in weakening the role of the State in development was to deprive it of financial resources. Trade and financial liberalization achieved in part that goal. As already indicated, trade liberalization not only led to a greater loss of fiscal revenues, following lower tariff barriers, but it also led to huge trade losses. This was compounded by financial liberalization which entailed further fiscal losses resulting from tax holidays and low income tax rates. To make up for these losses, the African State had to resort to more and more multilateral and bilateral loans and credits, which further alienated its sovereignty. As a result, many African States have been stripped of all but a handful of their economic and social functions. Cuts in spending mostly fell on social sectors. State retrenchment primarily aimed at eliminating subsidies for the poor, removing social protection, and abandoning its role in fighting for social 318

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justice through income redistribution and other social transfers to the most disadvantaged segments of society. This explains, among other things, the degradation of many basic social services and the explosion of poverty in Africa, since 1981, as the World Bank itself has acknowledged. While dismantling or weakening the economic and social roles of the State, the IMF and World Bank have sought to build or strengthen the functions most useful to the implementation of neoliberal policies and the promotion of private sector development. This explains the insistence on “capacity building” or on “institution building”, heard over the last few years. However, the institutions that the IMF and World Bank talk about are not for development, but for markets. In other words, they propose building institutions supportive of neoliberal policies and in the service of the private sector, especially foreign investors. Thus, the “institution building” agenda promoted by the IMF and the World Bank has nothing to do with promoting democracy and protecting human rights. In fact, the neoliberal conception of governance undermines both since it deprives representative institutions of their role in formulating public policies following open and democratic debates. They are reduced to implementing what the IMF and World Bank and their G 8 masters decide for African countries and their people.

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Path from structural adjustment to poverty “reduction” After producing poverty and deprivation on a massive scale in Africa and elsewhere, the IFIs’ focus on “poverty reduction” since 1999 could not be more suspect. But to make this shift a bit more credible, the IMF’s Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) was renamed “Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility” (PRGF) and the World Bank has set up a “Poverty Reduction Support Credit” (PRSC). There is no doubt that the shift in the rhetoric of the IFIs amounts to an admission of failure of past policies, which put too much emphasis on correcting macroeconomic imbalances and “market distortions” at the expense of economic growth and social progress. The disastrous record of SAPs and the continued deterioration in the economic and social situation of countries subjected to IMF and World Bank programs put into question the credibility and even the legitimacy of these institutions. Their crisis of legitimacy was exacerbated by stepped up attacks by the Global Justice Movement and growing criticism from mainstream economists, especially from Joseph E. Stiglitz, former World Bank Chief Economist. The nature of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are supposed to provide more freedom to developing countries in formulating their policies. 319

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This is what the Bank and the Fund call “national ownership.” Representatives from the government, the private sector, civil society organizations - and even the poor - are supposed to “participate” in drafting the PRSP of each country to decide on how to use the proceeds released by “debt relief” to achieve “poverty reduction.” In reality, the macroeconomic framework that underpins the PRSPs is the same as that which underpinned the now discredited SAPs. That framework is non-negotiable and includes fiscal austerity, trade and financial liberalization, privatization, deregulation and State retrenchment, etc. In essence, despite the disastrous outcome of their past policies, the IMF and the World Bank still believe that those policies are in the “interests of the poor.” In particular, they think that trade liberalization and openness are the best - if not the only - road to growth, which they see as a “prerequisite” for poverty reduction. Hence the export-led growth strategy advocated by the two institutions, but which has been a big failure in African and other developing countries. A survey of 27 African PRSPs by UNCTAD in 2002 has demonstrated that all of them, without exception, contain the policies outlined above. Policies which are at odds with both the wishes and the interests of the poor, observes the document. It is this straight jacket that ties up developing countries’ hands and prevents them from achieving any substantial gain in poverty “reduction.” Most of the time, countries have failed to implement these conditions, leading to the suspension of their programs. In fact, the IFIs’ conception of poverty views it as an isolated aspect of overall economic and social development that should be dealt with by short-term measures. Hence, the emphasis in the PRSPs on more spending for primary education and health, among others. Thus, PRSPs contain some short-term measures aimed at mitigating the negative impact of macroeconomic policies and structural reforms on the most vulnerable groups, notably the poor. However, the tools the World Bank and the IMF have proposed to achieve this goal are the same as those already tested in the past and that have aggravated poverty and deprivation in much of Africa. It is correct to state that in reality, PRSPs are SAPs with more conditionalities and less resources. As already indicated, a new “generation” of conditionalities have been added to old conditionalities, with the concept of “good governance,” analyzed above. UNCTAD (2002) has revealed that between 1999 and 2000, 13 African countries had signed programs containing an average of 114 conditionalities, 75% of which are governance-related conditionalities. One can imagine the enormous human and financial resources needed to deal with such a number of conditionalities. For this reason, the degree of compliance with IMF and World Bank-sponsored programs has significantly declined since the mid-1990s. For instance, the rate of compliance 320

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was estimated at about 28% of the 41 agreements signed between 1993 and 1997, according to UNCTAD. With the PRSPs, the IMF and the World Bank pursue three objectives. First, mislead world public opinion, especially in Northern countries, in making believe that they are really serious about “reducing poverty.” And the World Bank alone counts on a huge and sophisticated propaganda machine to achieve this. With the more than 300 staff of its External Relations Department Propaganda Department, one should say - the Bank has all the means it needs to “explain” effectively its policies. It has achieved some success, since some big Northern NGOs, once very critical of SAPs, see the PRSPs as a “positive shift” in the IFIs’ policies. The second objective of the PRSPs is to enlist a broad support within each country to help rehabilitate discredited and failed policies. This is what “national ownership” and “participation” of civil society organizations are supposed to achieve. While insisting on the “participation” of civil society organizations, their most vocal critics, the IMF and World Bank tend to sideline representative institutions, like National Assemblies. This is another illustration of these institutions’ contempt for the democratic process in Africa. Finally, with PRSPs, the IMF and the World Bank seek to shift the blame to African countries and citizens for the inevitable failure of these “new” policies.

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Conclusion The IMF and World Bank have utterly failed in “reducing poverty” and “promoting development”. In fact, they are instruments of domination and control in the hands of powerful states whose long-standing objective is to perpetuate the plunder of the resources of the Global South, especially Africa. In other words, the fundamental role of the Bank and Fund in Africa and in the rest of the developing world is to promote and protect the interests of global capitalism. This is why they have never been interesting in “reducing” poverty, much less in fostering “development” in Africa. As institutions, their ultimate objective is to make themselves “indispensable” in order to strengthen and expand their power and influence. They will never relinquish easily that power and influence. This explains why they have perfected the art of duplicity, deception and manipulation. In the face of accumulated failures and erosion of their credibility and legitimacy, they have often changed their rhetoric, but never their fundamental goals and policies. This is why they cannot be trusted to bring about “development” in the continent. If the experience of the last quarter of a century has taught Africa one fundamental lesson it is that the road to genuine 321

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recovery and development begins with a total break with the failed and discredited policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. In fairness to both institutions, we must recognize, however, the complicity of African leaders in the disastrous outcome of neoliberal policies. Many governments and senior civil servants have bought into the agenda promoted by the IMF and World Bank. Therefore, they bear a great responsibility in the current state of the continent. Thus, to put an end to the influence of these institutions, African social movements and progressive forces must explore strategies aimed at promoting a new kind of leadership able and willing to challenge these institutions in favor of genuine alternative development policies. Many in the developing world have been welcome to the ideas of globalization, but are wary of the realities as well. For example, on November 16, 2000, during a lecture at the British Museum Nelson Mandela said, “We welcome the process of globalization. It is inescapable and irreversible.…” However, he added, “…if globalization is to create real peace and stability across the world, it must be a process benefiting all. It must not allow the most economically and politically powerful countries to dominate and submerge the countries of the weaker and peripheral regions. It should not be allowed to drain the wealth of smaller countries towards the larger ones, or to increase inequality between richer and poorer regions.” These types of concerns have given rise to many criticisms of the current form of free trade globalization, and given a bad name to free trade and free market capitalism in various circles. The implementation of overly simplified theories and ideologies are meeting growing criticisms. For example, former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz in his popular book, Globalization and its Discontents (Penguin Books, 2002), heavily criticizes the IMF for pursuing an ideology of neoliberal market fundamentalism which is overly simplistic, without paying attention to real human needs while also being influenced by, and meeting the needs of, the finance community. At the same time, Stiglitz makes a great case for market economics, but without the ideology, recognizing the complexities, and the roles society and democracy must play. In addition, the definition of progress and success is measured in material terms, and other concerns such as environmental issues, or human perspectives of emotional richness or social well-being, are not necessarily factored in. For example, • Different cultures also have a different meaning of progress and poverty, etc., as hinted to in the poverty section of this web site. • Exporting one culture’s definition via such an ideology can risk causing societal problems if not done in an open and democratic way. (See Stiglitz, mentioned above for more details of why institutions such as the IMF and World Bank are not doing this in a very democratic way, even if it is claimed so. 322

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Also, see for example, John Gray’s False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, (The New Press, 1998). Gray was an influential conservative political thinker, influencing Margaret Thatcher and the New Right in Britain. Yet, he has argued that the current form of global capitalism is not a naturally occurring process, but an imposed Anglo-American political project. Where the market has become so detached from society and does not meet its needs, this project is doomed for failure he suggests. Those cultures that realize the market works best when it is embedded in society will, if given the chance by the powerful countries, be likely to succeed.) • Environmental concerns are typically not taken into account of directly. It is argued that the environment will benefit indirectly because the same process of individual greed will create markets that address environmental problems. Yet, this creates unnecessary jobs (which also uses more resources) because sustainable development that would not have to adversely affect the environment in the first place would be a more efficient form of development. This site’s section looking deeper behind consumerism and consumption highlights how economic interests do not match or deliver on environmental concerns or human needs and also leads to wasted labor. Another stunning criticism is that of protectionism for the rich and open markets for the poor. For instance, most developing nations, especially those in Africa, complain that the western nations themselves are very protectionist but want the developing countries to completely remove barriers to free trade which would cause an imbalance in the favor of the industrialized countries. While there have been recent statements to address such concerns, nothing has really happened. This further suggests that the current world system being pushed is not free trade in the sense that is typically understood. To some degree, the mounting criticism from Stiglitz and other quarters has had an impact. IMF officials recently acknowledged the potential risks of capital market liberalization, and both the IMF and World Bank have begun speaking more openly about debt relief and poverty reduction. But while the rhetoric has changed, Stiglitz maintains that a doctrinaire ideology of free-market fundamentalism continues to shape policy. The IMF and World Bank are pushing developing countries to privatize their pension systems, for example, which is highly controversial in the First World. The IMF demanded fiscal austerity in Argentina, where unemployment had reached 20 percent and, in December, sparked riots that led to the government’s collapse. It preaches the gospel of free trade to developing countries--even though most Western countries built their economies by protecting certain industries and continue to subsidize some domestic producers. The blind push to privatize and deregulate has not only failed to fuel sustainable development, Stiglitz contends, but 323

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reflects an idealized vision of how markets function that neither economic theory nor concrete experience supports.

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Some African Responses to Brexit The decision by British voters to quit the EU (Brexit) had implications far beyond its own nation. With Britain being the largest former colonial power which controlled vast territories of the world in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, North and South America, its economic and cultural influence is immense. The Commonwealth of Nations, which was established by the British monarchy, still encompasses 53 countries linked by economic relations. Consequently, numerous African states had various responses to the Brexit referendum and its potential impact on their political and economic affairs. Throughout the leading African states there has been an economic downturn over the last years resulting from the decline in commodity prices, the devaluation of currencies, a reduction in foreign direct investment along with the effects of El Nino in the southern region as well as the escalation of social and labor unrest in states such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana. South African leaders stressed the need to limit the impact of the outcome. The EU is the largest economic bloc trading partner with South Africa requiring the government to renegotiate trade agreements with both the UK and Brussels. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan attempted to reassure the people that the country was capable of dealing with the effects of the Brexit vote. An article published by Business Day Live noted “Gordhan urged business, labor and the government to continue co-operating to support investor confidence. Business Unity SA (Busa) CEO Khanyisile Kweyama said the long-term implications of Brexit on the local economy were yet to be fully understood. Of particular concern was Brexit’s immediate effect on the rand and local markets, she said. The rand tumbled more than 7% to R15.67/$ following the news, but has since recouped some of those losses.” (June 24). Zimbabwe welcomed the outcome citing London as the main culprit in the sanctions regime that had crippled its economy for the last decade-and-a-half. The state-run Herald newspaper acknowledged that the UK, EU and the United States were united in their economic sanctions against the government of President Robert Mugabe, the leader of the Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ruling party. (June 26). ZANU-PF Foreign Affairs secretary Ambassador Joey Bimha emphasized that the government was looking forward to an EU policy shift on Zimbabwe. Bimha said: “We will wait and see developments after this. It is not something that we can make a judgment at this 324

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point in time. In the EU, there were a number of countries which supported it (Britain) in maintaining those sanctions and those countries remain in the bloc and can still push a policy that the sanctions remain in place. It is not anything we can celebrate about in terms of removal of sanctions. Government will for now monitor the situation.” (June 26). The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mwanananga Mwawampanga, took an historical approach saying the abuse some African states endured under the control of Britain, the break-up was welcome. “Briefly, I can say it might be sad for Britain and Europe, but Brexit is good for Africa, it is good for Zimbabwe.” Former Zimbabwe Ambassador to the EU Christopher Mutsvangwa said since Britain was departing from the EU, “Brussels should return to unfettered productive engagement.” He went on to say “Constructive multi-dimensional engagement was fettered by neo-colonial pretensions of post imperial nostalgia.” Nigeria facing an economic downturn like South Africa with currency devaluations, foreign exchange liquidity problems and rising unemployment, expressed regret over the vote but will struggle to deal with the potential negative consequences of the historic decision. According to News24, the news agency “reported that the decision of Britain to pull out of the European Union will undoubtedly have a negative impact on Nigerians as the country is a member of the British Commonwealth. Nigeria has strong economic ties to Britain with it being the second largest trading partner in Africa, behind South Africa.” The Egypt Daily News reported that Brexit was having a negative impact on its financial markets already strained due to domestic unrest and the lack of capital inflows. The paper said “Brexit impacted the Egyptian Exchange’s (EGX) performance on Sunday (June 26), with stocks dropping by 5.54%, closing at 6,851.6 points. As a result, the EGX lost any profits achieved throughout 2016, and its performance turned from a positive to a negative, registering losses of 2.2% since the beginning of 2016.” (June 27). Therefore, the definition of free trade in free markets has become ambiguous. At times, it means a market without any regulation. In other cases it means markets in which prices are free to reflect supply and demand. Sometimes it means competitive markets free of monopoly or con-centration. “Free market” economists have made a mistake by elevating an economy that is free of regulation or government as the ideal. This ideological position overlooks that regulation can increase economic efficiency and that without regulation external costs can offset the value of production.

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Before going further, let’s be clear about what is regulated. Economists reify markets: the market did this, the market did that. But markets don’t do anything. The market is not an actor; it is a social institution. People act, and it is the behavior of people that is regulated. When free market economists describe the ideal as the absence of any regulation of economic behavior, they are asserting that there are no dysfunctional consequences of unregulated economic behavior. If this were in fact the case, why should this result be confined to economic behavior? Why shouldn’t all human behavior be unregulated? Why is it that economists recognize that robbery, rape, and murder are socially dysfunctional, but not unlimited debt leverage and misrepresentation of financial instruments? The claim, as expressed by Alan Greenspan along with others, that “markets are self-regulating” is an assertion that unrestrained individuals are self-regulating. How did anyone ever believe that? When Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt browbeat Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Future Trading Commission, and prevented her from doing her duty to regulate over-the-counter derivatives, they committed one of the most stupid policy mistakes in economic history. The financial crisis that resulted spread its devastating effects everywhere in Africa. The explosions in public debt and money creation, resulting from efforts to bail out the financial system from its own stupidity, have brought the U.S. dollar and the euro, the two reserve currencies of the international financial system, under pressure, undermining confidence in the reserve currency status of the currencies and the international financial system, as the price of gold indicates. Obviously, the lack of financial regulation was dys-functional in the extreme, and the social costs of the policy error are enormous. In an article in the Journal of Monetary Economics (August 1978), “Idealism in Public Choice Theory,” Paul Craig Roberts developed a model to assess the benefits and costs of regulation. He argued that well-thought-out regulation could be a factor of production that increases GNP. For example, regulation that contributed to the quality and safety of food and medicines contributed to specialization in production and lower costs, and regulations enforcing contracts and private property rights add to economic efficiency. On the other hand, bureaucracies build their empires and extend their regulations into the realm of negative returns. Moreover, as regulations increase, economic man-agers spend more time in red tape and less in productive activity. As rules proliferate, they become contradictory and result in paralysis. He hoped that his analysis would result in a more thoughtful approach to regulation, but to no avail. Liberals continued to argue that more regulation was better. The 326

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financial crisis gave us a taste of what the absence of regulation can produce. Despite the enormous cost, the financial system remains unregulated. As soon as Wall Street devises a new financial instrument and finds new suckers, it will happen again. The ambiguous concept of freedom in economics has laid other minefields. I wish to note here that until the Clinton administration, economic concentration was seen as impinging on economic freedom. As late as the Reagan administration, AT&T was broken up. The Clinton administration permitted the concentration of the media. Formerly, this concentration would not only have been considered “in restraint of trade,” but also contrary to the American tradition of a diverse and independent press. Today mergers and concentration of economic power are no longer seen as encroachments on competitive markets but as necessary to maintain global competitiveness. In the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, we have witnessed enormous financial concentrations. One consequence has been that financial corporations can no longer be held accountable as they “are too big to fail.” Thus, the economists’ story of how the market weeds out the failures can no longer be told. The failures accumulate and are subsidized with public money. This is the antithesis of economic efficiency. The dispersed power that made the market a socially functional institution is disappearing. For example, capital is free to concentrate, but labor unions, a “countervailing power” to capital, are being destroyed. Jobs offshoring has destroyed the manufacturing unions, and now politicians are using the state and local budget crises to destroy public sector unions. Developments since the collapse of the Soviet Union have therefore confused economists and produced results that threaten the edifice of economic theory. Economists have confused jobs offshoring with free trade. However, jobs offshoring is not trade at all. It is labor arbitrage. Free trade theory is based on comparative advantage. Labor arbitrage is the pursuit of absolute advantage. Profits resulting from jobs offshoring raise questions about economic theory’s justification of profit maximization. Theoretically, profits are justified, because they are evidence that resources were efficiently used in producing consumer satisfaction and are a measure of the economic welfare of the society. This conclusion no longer holds when profits are produced by rendering a country’s work force unemployed. Offshoring separates consumers from the incomes and careers associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume. The profits from offshoring reflect the economic welfare of the foreign country. Therefore, the edifice that neoliberal economists have built that justifies market capitalism as the deliverer of economic welfare to society no longer stands. 327

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More Consequences of market deregulation in Africa A New World Order has been installed destroying national sovereignty and the rights of African citizens. Under the new rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) established in 1995, “entrenched rights” were granted to the world’s largest banks and multinational conglomerates. Public debts have spiraled, state institutions have collapsed, and the accumulation of private wealth has progressed relentlessly in Africa. Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances are “below average” in comparison to speculation – rather: speculation – wins. The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit economy and administration, is “slimmed” and its “profitable” parts (“gems”) handed to corporations (“privatized”). As a consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses – which, until recently, employed 80% of the workforce and provided “normal working conditions” – are affected by these developments as well. The alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses, jobs are lost (Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 7ff). If there are any new jobs, most are “precarious”, meaning that they are only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make a living (Ehrenreich, 2001). This means that the working conditions in the North become akin to those in the South and the working conditions of men akin to those of women – a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor without “union affiliation”. This has already been happening since the 1970s in the “Free Production Zones” (FPZs, “world market factories” or “maquiladoras”), where most of the world’s computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are produced (Fröbel/Heinrichs/Kreye, 1977). The FPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of the cheap labor needed (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies/Werlhof 1988). The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is a particularly troubling development (Chossudovsky, 2003). It is not only commodity production that is “outsourced” and located in the FPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called “Third Industrial Revolution”, meaning the development of new information and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to 328

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computerization, also in administrative fields (Fröbel et al. 1977). The combination of the principles of “high tech” and “low wage”/”no wage” (always denied by “progress” enthusiasts) guarantees a “comparative cost advantage” in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to “Chinese salaries” in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian. The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset value ever more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through the “clearance” of public property and the transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded from the logics of profit – e.g. education, health, energy, or water supply/disposal. New forms of so-called “enclosures” emerge from today’s total commercialization of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the “commons”, and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc. (Isla 2005). As far as the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic efforts to bring these under private control as well (Hepburn 2005). All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a modified continuation of the history of so-called “original accumulation” (Werlhof, 1991, 2003a) which has expanded globally following to the motto: “Growth through expropriation!” Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the South. We are witnessing the latest form of “development”: namely, a world system of underdevelopment (Frank 1969). Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand (Mies, 2005). This might even dawn on “development aid” workers soon. It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the 329

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household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1988). Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work (Werlhof, 2004). Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution (Isla 2003, 2005), one of today’s biggest global industries. This illustrates two things: a) how little the “emancipation” of women actually leads to “equal terms” with men; and b) that “capitalist development” does not imply increased “freedom” in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time (Wallerstein, 1979). If the latter was the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely. Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist in the “world system” (Bales 2001). The authoritarian model of the “Free Production Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing. It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new “colonization of the world” (Mies 2005) points back to the beginnings of the “modern world system” in the “long 16th century” (Wallerstein, 1979, Frank 2005, Mies 1986), when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and “development” of Europe. The so-called “children’s diseases” of modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity’s latest stage. They are expanding instead of disappearing. Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery, there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in any case no “Western” – civilization (Werlhof 2007a). Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate colony (particularly of German corporations). This, however, does not keep it from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East (Hofbauer, 2003, Salzburger, 2006). Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources that we still have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have turned into objects of “utilization”. Rapid ecological destruction through depletion is the 330

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consequence. If one makes more profit by cutting down trees than by planting them, then there is no reason not to cut them (Lietaer, 2006). Neither the public nor the state interferes, despite global warming and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining rain forests will irreversibly destroy the earth’s climate – not to even speak of the many other negative effects of such action (Raggam, 2004). Climate, animal, plants, human and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is no renewable resource and that the entire earth’s ecosystem depends on it. If greed – and the rationalism with which it is economically enforced – really was an inherent anthropological trait, we would have never even reached this day. Indeed, today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist in the “world system” (Bales 2001). The authoritarian model of the “Free Production Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing. It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new “colonization of the world” (Mies, 2005) points back to the beginnings of the “modern world system” in the “long 16th century” (Wallerstein, 1979, Frank 2005, Mies, 1986), when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and “development” of Europe. The socalled “children’s diseases” of modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity’s latest stage. They are expanding instead of disappearing.

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African Union Agenda 2063 The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union runs counter to the goals of the African Union Agenda of 2063. Even organs representing billionaires such as Mo Ibrahim grasp the detrimental implications of signing the EPA. According to their calculation: The EPAs include only sub-Saharan African countries, excluding North African members of AMU. It potentially creates a split between North African and sub-Saharan African countries. The EPA cements an unequal trading relationship in which sub-Saharan Africa exports raw unprocessed goods and imports EU manufactured goods. A reduction in tariffs will reinforce low value-added activities and reduce 331

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manufacturing output. EPAs will favor trade in the direction of Europe. EPAs have rules of origin that differ from those in the RECs, which are simpler and have lower value-added requirements. EPAs seek to eliminate export taxes, thus depriving African governments of crucial potential revenue. If East Africans want to see the full implications of signing the Partnership agreement with the EU, then they need only to look at the impact of the West Africa EU/EPA on the future of West African integration. The regional integration process in West Africa is being held back by the active role of France in both (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). France is working overnight to ensure that there is no move towards harmonizing trade and monetary relations in West Africa. Tanzanians will have to ask themselves how Tanzanian and East African firms will be developed to the point where they can compete on equal grounds with EU firms. This is pie in the sky. This agreement is like the Europeans telling the peasants in Sukuma-land that they have to wait for fixed landlines before they can join the information highways. The EPA is more than just a trade agreement: it commits–or carries the potential of committing—the region to a path of economic retrogression. If this is the path the East African region wishes to follow, then it should do so with full knowledge of the consequences and prepare to deal with them. If not, then it might wish to pause and take stock. But the choice should be a conscious one, and fully informed.

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Deregulation of Markets and the State Deregulation of markets from rules imposed by governments is a way of freeing companies from restrictions and allowing greater competition. This can create situations where companies are not subject to reasonable safeguards, and has in the past caused environmental catastrophe. Drilling for oil is a major economic activity that takes place in the marine environment, and can be potentially disastrous if drilling companies are not subject to proper environmental regulations. Deregulation was particularly blamed for the recent Deepwater ‘Horizon Oil Spill (Eley, 2011). Deregulating the financial system left banks free to speculate, and they did so with reckless enthusiasm. The result was a build-up of toxic assets that threatened the entire banking system. The government was forced to step in to save the system from self-destruction, but only at the cost of becoming itself hugely indebted. As a result, the state has a greater stake in the financial system than it did in the time of Clement Attlee. Yet the government is reluctant to use its power, even to curb the gross bonuses that bankers are awarding themselves from public funds. The neoliberal 332

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financial regime may have collapsed, but politicians continue to defer to the authority of the market. Finalization and deregulation of the economy in all countries is designed to support the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few (tiny percent of financial and political oligarchy), and to facilitate the redistribution of wealth up toward top 1%. Hardcore Thatcherites, and their fellow-travelers, sometimes question whether there was ever a time when neoliberal ideas shaped policy. Has public spending not continued to rise over recent decades? Is the state not bigger than it has ever been? In practice, however, neoliberalism has created a market state rather than a small state. Shrinking the state has proved politically impossible, so neoliberals have turned instead to using the state to reshape social institutions on the model of the market - a task that cannot be carried out by a small state. An increase in state power has always been the inner logic of neoliberalism, because, in order to inject markets into every corner of social life, a government needs to be highly invasive. Health, education and the arts are now more controlled by the state than they were in the era of Labor collectivism. Onceautonomous institutions are entangled in an apparatus of government targets and incentives. The consequence of reshaping society on a market model has been to make the state omnipresent. The principal of comparative advantage in relations of so-called free trade serves to hide the true desire of those who espouse liberalism and free-trade “to maintain an international division of labor that is unfavorable” to the Third World (Spero, Hart: 176). The term is used to legitimize the unfair terms of trade between strong and weak markets (spoken of earlier) as well as the discrepancy between the low price of raw materials from developing markets and the high price of industrialized goods from developed markets. In the context of Economies of Scale, an increase in the level of exploitation (by a Capitalist foreign investor) of a poor country’s natural resource signifies a decrease in the cost of using that natural resource in the production of an industrial product. The comparative advantage of the Capitalist then, comes from his ability to import inexpensive raw materials and export a more expensive finished product. This causes a “net outflow” of capital from underdeveloped to developed countries. Underdeveloped countries export their product at a low price but are forced to import the finished goods from developed countries at much higher prices, a cycle which steadily enlarges the gap between rich and poor nations, and perpetuates Capitalist expansion. The liberalism at the heart of the GATT also served as the foundation for the Institutions coming out of Bretton Woods, namely the IMF and World Bank (IBRD). “The IMF was founded on the belief that there was a need for collective action at the global level for economic stability” because the actions of one 333

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country spill over onto others (Stiglitz, 12). In a liberal international economy, the economic downturn of one nation would have negative effects in the markets of other nations. The major goal of the IMF is to provide liquidity to governments who did not have the financial ability to bail out their national economy in times of hardship. This liquidity is offered in the form of loans carrying with them specific “conditionalities.” These loans deal largely with macroeconomic issues such as budget deficits and inflationary issues. The issue is that these loans are made only upon the acceptance of certain “conditions” by the recipient country. The acceptance of the conditionalities of an IMF loan is essentially a promise (made by a recipient nation) to adhere to the liberal economic policies of the IMF which often focus on government deregulation and cutting subsidies to domestic industries and/or agriculture (Stiglitz 2002). Though the World Bank was initially created to finance the reconstruction of the war-torn countries of Europe, its overwhelming mission over the past sixty years has been to provide aid to developing countries. Whereas the IMF considers macroeconomic issues, the World Bank is focused on structural issues such as the creation of infrastructure and the development of financial systems. Similarly to the IMF, the World Bank promotes liberal policy as the solution to such issues. However, it maintains a greater focus on increasing economic activity within domestic markets, often devising projects which encourage foreign investment by private international firms. Funds from the World Bank are given through what are called Structural Adjustment loans. Similarly to the conditionalities of the IMF, Structural Adjustment loans necessitate that the recipient country agree to privatize its economy in order to allow for the creation of new domestic firms as well as the influx and investment of foreign capital. The IMF and World Bank fit well within a Marxist model of international political economy. The impacts of the policies advocated by the International Monetary Fund in sub-Saharan Africa are coming under increased scrutiny. For many years nongovernmental organizations concerned with African development asked whether the policies imposed by the IMF in Africa actually helped or hindered the objective of increasing living standards for the majority of Africans. But increasingly the credibility of the IMF has been damaged in wider circles by its role in the Asian financial crisis. Moreover, debate in Congress over U.S. trade and economic policy in Africa focused attention on whether the economic model promoted in Africa by the IMF was really in the interest of most Africans. The international call for cancellation of Third World debt grew louder, highlighting the question of whether IMF policies contributed to increasing the external debt burden of these countries. The movement for debt cancellation also focused increasing attention on the impacts of economic policies which the 334

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IMF imposed on African countries, since the IMF’s power over these countries is greatly magnified because of their indebtedness. Table 1. IMF relationship with Sub Saharan Africa, 1991-1998 (in millions of US$)

IMF Purchases IMF Repurchases IMF Charges Balance

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998*

579

527

1146

918

2994

652

524

837

614

530

455

467

2372

596

1065

1139

228

186

138

170

559

124

101

88

-263

-189

553

281

63

-68

-642

-390

*Preliminary The Balance shows the net transfer of funds from the IMF to Sub-Saharan Africa; the negative sign indicates a net transfer from the countries to the Fund. IMF Purchases represent new resources (loans) taken out from the IMF IMF Repurchases represent repayments of the principal of IMF loans IMF Charges represent repayments of the interest on IMF loans.

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Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance 1999, in Jubilee 2000 Coalition, “IMF takes $1billion in two years from Africa,” April 1999.

As Table 1 shows, repayments by African governments to the IMF outpaced new resources in the past two years, resulting in a net transfer from Africa to the IMF of more than $1 billion in 1997 and 1998. This figure is attained by subtracting IMF purchases, which represent loans taken out from the IMF, from IMF repurchases and IMF charges, which represent repayments of the principal and interest, respectively, on IMF loans. Meanwhile, despite increasing repayments to the IMF, total African debt continued to rise: between 1997 and 1998, Africa’s debt increased by 3% to $226 billion. This occurred even as African countries paid back $3.5 billion more than they borrowed in 1998. As was stated earlier, institutionally-allocated foreign aid only acts to further Capitalist expansion into developing markets. The IMF and World Bank serve as perfect examples of this. The IMF and World Bank embody the liberal 335

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economic ideology of the GATT and its creators, the world’s developed Capitalist Market economies. After power had been restored to the economies of Western Europe, the following decades saw the focus of the IMF and World Bank shift to the further expansion of the reestablished liberal economic oligarchy, now led by the United States. Great wealth was offered to developing countries if they were willing to adopt the liberal policies of the donors. Policies of government deregulation and market privatization allowed for the entrance of foreign capital and investment. This investment was made by firms in the dominant Capitalist economies of the US and Western Europe. The IMF and World Bank are in essence the institutionalization of the expansionist characteristic inherent in the Capitalist system. They are the tools of neocolonialism. The Marxist model offers the best explanation of the meeting at Bretton Woods and the formation of the post war international economic system. In order to assert the dominance of the (liberal) Capitalist free-market system and facilitate its need for expansion throughout the world’s untapped markets, the United States necessitated a powerful ally. After restoring power to the economies of Western Europe, The two Capitalist economic powers were then able to shift their focus to the spread of liberal economic policy throughout the undeveloped markets of the Third World. The ideals embodied in the GATT, calling for the reduction and elimination of tariffs and other barriers of trade, had to be adopted by the governments of these new markets in order to allow for an influx of capital and investment from firms in the US and Western Europe. In order to speed this process, they turned to the institutions that had initially been used to reconstruct war-torn Europe, the IMF and World Bank. Under the guise of massive loans providing governments with liquidity (IMF) and foreign aid (World Bank), these institutions were able to force developing nations to adopt the liberal ideology which they embody, an ideology which serves the interests of their creators, the developed Capitalist economies of the north. Thus, over the last sixty years we have seen the continued development of the First World, facilitated by the forced underdevelopment and dependency of the Third. In sum, the core model of neoliberal Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) undoubtedly reflects a revival of neo-liberal orthodoxy in mainstream economics as well as in popular global economic policy debates in the 1980s. In this sense, SAPs are an application of the neo-conservatism of the ThatcherReagan era to development economics- a product of the neo-liberal ‘counterrevolution’. The legitimacy of ‘development economics’ as a distinct subject discipline was seriously challenged in the process. The ascendancy of the neoliberal school in development economics has not only impoverished the 336

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development policy debate with its monolithic understanding of the essentially multi-dimensional process of socio-economic development, but also inflicted irrecoverable costs and pains to low-income countries by imposing its doctrine in the form of conditionality to Structural Adjustment Loans. While its supremacy as applied to developed and emerging market economies has been gradually questioned after a series of global financial crises in the 1990s, its application to low income developing countries has been surviving as the core component of loan conditionality. Indeed, since the early 1980s, the economic policy and development debate in Africa, especially SubSaharan Africa, have been singularly dominated by SAPs. The debate concerning the appropriateness of SAPs for SSA countries continues to be unabated despite nearly several decades of ‘adjustments’. The accumulated evidence generally points to the weak link between adjustment and performance in Africa (UNCTAD, 1998). After decades of reform efforts, the region’s growth performance remains far too low to lead the economies along a path of economic development, which would counter growing levels of poverty. The incidence of poverty is estimated to be in the range of 40 to 66 percent. In short, much of Africa today is still mired in ‘a crisis in development’, i.e., an economy seized by the general incapacity to generate a sustained improvement in the standard of living.

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Spending or Cutting on Public Goods The Millennium Development Goals recognize the importance of goods that are commonly provided through public intervention, with goals relating to education, drinking water, sanitation and health care. However, there is general consensus that the targets of the Millennium Development Goals are unlikely to be met in some regions of the world, notably Sub-Saharan Africa. One key factor may be ethnic diversity, which is generally very high in the region, both at the national and local levels. An extensive literature has developed over the past decade that focuses on the role of ethnic diversity in limiting effective governance. While this literature started at the national level, there has also been extensive research demonstrating the difficulty of providing public goods to diverse groups at sub-national scales. If more government spending goes mainly into social transfers and welfare, that will cut profitability, as it is a cost to the capitalist sector and adds no new value to the economy. If it goes mainly into public services like education and health (human capital), it may help to raise the productivity of labor over time, but it won’t help profitability. If it goes mainly into government investment in infrastructure, it may boost profitability for those capitalist sectors getting the 337

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contracts, but if it is paid for by higher taxes on profits, there is no gain overall. And even if it is financed by taxes on wages or cuts in other spending it will only raise overall profitability if it goes into sectors with a lower ratio of capital to labor (not usual in infrastructure projects, and if it is financed by more borrowing, profitability will constrained by rising interest rates. So there is no assurance that more spending means more profitability - quite the contrary. Economic inputs to human well-being are classified as either private or public goods (Cornes R, Sandler T., 1996). Private goods are things such as bread, garments, and shoes, whose consumption can be withheld from other individuals (i.e. they are “excludable”, according to economists). Typically, private goods have clear property rights attached to them. Individuals who desire excludable goods are willing to reveal their preference for them and the price they are prepared to pay. Because of this, most economists believe that private goods are best provided through market supply and demand. Public goods, by contrast, are non-excludable and individuals cannot be prevented from partaking of them. They constitute goods in the public domain, available for all to enjoy. Examples include the lighthouse, peace and security, and law and order. Many goods are not only public in consumption but also in provision, since they depend on the contributions of many individuals. For example, peace depends on the relations we have with our neighbors, both within the country and abroad; and enjoying law and order often depends less on one’s own attitudes and behaviors than on the general level of respect that others have for social norms and institutions. However, providers of public goods may not be adequately compensated through market-based negotiations, since individuals could hide their preferences to avoid claims that they benefit from the goods, which could oblige them to pay. As a result, there would be no natural incentive for their production. To avoid this, the state often implements policies that ensure cooperation and equitable burden-sharing, such as taxes to finance parks, roads, or other public facilities. Global public bads (GPBs), like GPGs, can also be non-excludable, although their prevention is desirable, rather than their production. Examples include global atmospheric pollution, cross-border drug smuggling, international warfare, and the global spread of communicable diseases and the emergence of drug- resistant microbial strains. The current approach of most GPG policies is to wait for the emergence of a GPB and then to respond on an emergency basis. This is exemplified by the belated world focus on AIDS at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly special session this year, 20 years after the disease was first identified, and after incidence rates soared as high as 15% in several southern African countries. Given the current trend towards increasingly porous borders and growing cross-border activities, many public 338

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goods can no longer be achieved through domestic policy action alone and depend on international cooperation. Yet policy-making is still largely organized on a country-by-country basis and there is no international equivalent of the state. As a result, GPGs are increasingly underprovided and GPBs are increasingly overprovided.

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Cutting Expenditure for Social Services In recent decades, there have been disagreements on whether neoliberalism can be considered beneficial or harmful to domestic policies. As a policy that favors free trade, limited involvement by the government, and capitalist approaches to economy, neoliberalism is generally supported by powerful financial institutions, state owned enterprises, and private investors. These institutions, as the organization Corp Watch (n.d.) argues, only benefits a small portion of the world’s community while the rest of the populace suffers the consequences it presents. Because of this, the rich continue to become richer and the poor poorer. Neoliberalism, under this framework, have shaped the domestic policy of the different nations of the world in a way that has led room for abuse. Neoliberalism may look appealing on paper for some, but the effects of the policies influenced by neoliberalism tell a different story. The distinguishing principals behind neoliberalism are establishing a free market by not placing any government imposed regulations on private enterprises despite the social consequences it may create, the cutting of public expenditures for social services, deregulation, privatization of once state-owned enterprises to private investors, and the rejection of the concept of “the public good” and instead indorsing “individual responsibility” (Corp Watch (n.d.)). What these principals ultimately support is private institutions and/or a minority group having the majority of control of a nation’s economy. This is, of course, damaging to the majority of the populace that are not included in the former group, specifically the lower class. Under neoliberalism, much of the working class are severely limited in how they are able to perform in their nation’s economy. They are the ones who bares the blunt of the consequences of neoliberalism, as they are the ones who predominately suffer from the lack of adequate health care, education, and social security that neoliberalism helps in an extent to create. Neoliberalism has affected the domestic policies of nations in the global north, and brought about adverse circumstances for the nations’ citizens. As Giroux explains, neoliberalism policies allot for the disbanding of public life for private gain in countries such as The United States, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. He writes, “Along with health care, public transportation, Medicare, 339

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food stamp programs for low-income children, and a host of other social protections, public goods and social provisions are being defunded or slashed as part of a larger scheme to dismantle and privatize all public services, goods and spheres” (2015). The domestic policies at work in these countries do not help lower class citizens’ live sustainable lives. This is particularly true in Greece where its austerity programs, shaped from neoliberalism policy, have cut funding for public programs that had led many citizens to feel like their wellbeing is being destroyed simultaneously as the country tries to overcome its debt crisis (Smith, 2016). This proves that neoliberalism influenced domestic policy does leave unfortunate room for the deterioration of the public services needed by lower class citizens. The negative effects of neoliberalism are not limited to the global north where there is a growing deviation between the poor and wealthy, but also in the nations of the global south. India, for example, has used neoliberalism ideas to redefine its political policies to attract outside investments and corporations, which hasn’t exactly worked. Instead, neoliberalism has given India an illusion of economic growth — establishing a higher GPD — without actually increasing production or moving forward (Shingavi, (n.d.)). The outcome of this, again, negatively effects the lower and working class. This effects is very visible in India where many workers have gone on strike to protest wages and working conditions (Shingavi, (n.d.). Like the global north, domestic policy influenced by neoliberalism can be damaging to many of the populace. In sum, neoliberal colonialism of Empire has been a disaster for the environment though it is a concept that many African nations have used to establish their domestic policy. It does benefit private and financial institutions, but ultimately sets everyday citizens up for failure. Unless change is made, there is little hope that countries and institutions will become more concerned with the principles of human life over making a profit. Despite the growing awareness in the late eighties that the rate of fossil fuel consumption at that time would cause global warming and many other forms of unpredictable and dangerous environmental changes, energy consumption has continued to increase at an alarming rate. This has been facilitated by neoliberal deregulation of environmental protections championed by corporate puppets such as Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay. In their continued quest for windfall profits, for example, corporations such as Ford and GM aggressively marketed (and continue to do so) highly polluting sports utility vehicles (SUVs) while ignoring cleaner and more efficient technologies. This was made possible by loop holes in environmental laws allowing SUVs to be sold that do not meet the emission standards imposed on passenger cars. Consumer Reports Magazine (Nov. pg. 54) noted in 1997, that “the growing popularity of SUVs, has helped make the 1997 340

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automotive model year the least fuel-efficient in the last 16 years”. Due to the subservience of government to large corporations, these loop holes are still in place. Today, the qualitative predictions of a decade ago are starting to manifest themselves. The average temperature of the world has risen over the last decade and for the first time, water has been observed on the polar caps. One industry that has benefited significantly from neoliberal policies is the biotech industry, though not without potentially catastrophic costs for the majority of the population. While large biotech corporations such as Monsanto and Dupont are aiming for massive profits, the environment and our food supply is irreversibly being altered in the process, creating a situation where large portions of the population and all future generations are subjected to potentially severe and unpredictable health risks. As a way to promote the nascent biotech industry, the Bush administration in the early nineties adopted a policy which held that regulations should not be created in such a way as to be a burden on the industry. The Clinton administration has continued this policy, and today approximately 60% of our food is genetically modified. This transformation of our food supply has occurred with scant public knowledge or oversight. And although genes from viruses, bacteria or arctic fish with anti-freeze properties are inserted into crops, the federal regulatory agencies, with heavy industry influence, maintain that genetically modified foods are no different from crops obtained with traditional breeding techniques and therefore do not need to be approved (unless the transported genes are known to induce a human allergen). Studies investigating the long term health and environmental effects of genetically modified crops are not required by any federal agency and are rarely performed. In this atmosphere of deregulation and concentrated corporate control, it is only a matter of time before a serious biological catastrophe occurs. John Gershman and Alec Irwin state in “Dying for growth” have said it all: 100 countries have undergone grave economic decline over the past…decades. Per capita income in these 100 countries is now lower than it was 10, 15, 20 or in some cases even 30 years ago. In Africa, the average household consumes 20 percent less today than it did 25 years ago. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people saw their real incomes fall during the period 1980-1993. Meanwhile, according to the United Nations Development Program’s 1998 Human Development Report, the 15 richest people in the world enjoy combined assets that exceed the total annual gross domestic product of sub-Saharan Africa. At the end of the 1990’s, the wealth of the three richest individuals on earth surpassed the combined annual GDP of the 48 least developed countries.

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Indeed, neoliberal economic policies initiated by international institutions in the days following WWII, were supposed to have a positive influence on the long term growth of national economies. Indeed, the international community believed that through the development of trade, it would guarantee peace in the world, secure supplies and favor the development of poor countries like those in Africa. These arguments, strongly suggested by economic literature are still put forward by the WTO to justify its strategy. But as the United Nations Conference on Commerce and Development (CNUCED), published in September 2008, can verify it, the results for Africa are quite from those expected. For a start, liberalization policies haven’t allowed African agricultural production to increase. Globally, agriculture’s contribution to Sub-Saharan global production hasn’t changed since 1980, running at approximately 19% of GIP. Then, exports haven’t increased in the proportions expected. Indeed, the increase of African exports has been 5 times lower than that observed in the other developing countries, particularly Asian countries. Finally, liberalization policies haven’t developed alongside a diversification of the export products offer. The African exports concentration index in fact increased by 80% between 1995 and 2006, making the continent depend on an ever decreasing number of basic products. This evolution hasn’t helped Africa’s rise in international trade: in fact Africa lost half of its market share in exports, dropping from 6 to 3% in 2006. From there onwards, if production stagnates and exports peak while demography expands, a general impoverishment follows reinforced by the highly destabilizing role of price volatility verified in the agricultural sector. For, contrary to the other international institutions’ belief that prices will remain high for a prolonged period of time, thereby benefitting farmers in developing countries, CNUCED highlights the volatile character of agricultural raw material prices. « The basic products price take-off is generally a cyclic phenomenon and it would be quite surprising if the current increase continued forever. » The latter factor, not of a direct nature compared to the previous three, is fundamental however, to explain the inadequacy of the neoliberal policies when applied to the agricultural sector. Based on this assessment, CNUCED recommends a commercial development strategy for African agriculture better adapted to its needs based on six objectives: 1/ Remove the constraints affecting the offer of African products, by setting up fiscal advantages and subsidies, aimed at encouraging investments in the agricultural sector to improve export productivity and competitiveness ;

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2/ Diversify the offer, in favor of products with greater added-value, so as to allow Africa to be more profitable on production and agricultural products and be less vulnerable to basic products’ price fluctuations; 3/ Improve the access to developing and emerging countries’ markets, by adapting especially production to specific quality, health and environmental regulations, as well as to consumer tastes and preferences; 4/ Promote private-public partnerships to strengthen those areas of agriculture which enjoy competitive advantage while respecting the “public property” character; 5/ Promote regional integration to benefit from trade advantages on larger but more homogeneous markets; 6/ Maintain aid for Sub-Saharan agriculture, given the important role of public aid for development in the area of public investment financing. As long as these different points are not taken into account in the international negotiations led by the WTO, the CNUCED considers it essential not to conclude the Doha round. If, confronted with the world food crisis, the majority of international institutions are restricted by commercial recommendations, CNUCED goes further and puts forward the need for a complementary and more global approach than the one which prevails today. As the World Development Report of the World Bank points it out3, CNUCED reaffirms the importance of government regulation and adequate governance, to favor the development of this so essential sector for economic development. We must indeed, not forget, that in a majority of developing countries 75% of the population depend directly on agriculture and that 70% of agricultural production is for local consumption. On the other hand, as international commerce today only concerns 10% of the world’s agricultural production, it is limiting and dangerous to consider agriculture exclusively from a commercial side for developing countries as well as for developed countries. Indeed, an essential question remains: if the African countries supposedly the main beneficiaries of international trade liberalization are in fact the losers, what about other countries such as those from the European Union, supposed to suffer slight losses? Could these in fact be much higher? From a “win-win” situation, we would find ourselves in a “lose-lose” situation, hard to justify. It is not difficult to see why a new strategy is long overdue. The data on poverty in Africa strongly suggests that the internationalization of market forces over the past quarter century has kept Africa impoverished, whilst simultaneously creating unimaginable wealth for a relative minority in the global north. The ‘trickle-down effect’, which claims that financial returns from commercial exports and growth will eventually benefit lower socio-economic 343

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groups, seems to have been reduced to an ‘intermittent-drip effect’ in the case of Africa. This is unsurprising given that domestic production is increasingly geared toward exporting cash crops to the international market, a sector dominated by agribusiness giants. As a consequence of this arrangement, which is in line with international free trade rules for developing countries, local producers and economies loose out as corporate profits are repatriated abroad or paid out in executive salaries and shareholder dividends. Any economist can confirm that a market economy will increase inequality by disproportionately rewarding those with greater economic, financial or political power. Only government intervention to redistribute wealth can remedy this basic flaw, yet redistributive mechanisms are absent both in the global economy and in many African countries where economic adjustment is geared to debt repayment and not welfare, courtesy of the IMF. AFRICAN DEBT 1994--SELECTED STATES Total debt

Debt

(US$ billion)

as % of GNP

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Congo

5.3

454

Mozambique

5.5

450

Guinea-Bissau

0.8

340

Ivory Coast

18.5

339

Angola

11.2

275

Dem Rep of Congo

12.3

232

Tanzania

7.4

230

Madagascar

4.1

225

Zambia

6.6

204

Sierra Leone

1.4

187

Malawi

2.0

160

Togo

1.5

157

[Source: World Bank, World Development Report 1996]

PROFIT AND INTEREST: OUTFLOWS FROM THE THIRD WORLD (US$ BILLION) 1970 1980 1990 1994 Interest 2.4 35.1 59.4 64.5 Profit 6.5 24.0 17.8 25.4 344

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Source: World Bank With commodity prices falling, and the trade liberalization of the Uruguay Round of negotiations on tariffs further penalizing Third World economies, such countries might have expected relaxation of payment conditions. But in 1998 the US stalled on its Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC). Countries such as Tanzania, which was told to wait until 2002 to qualify for promised ‘debt relief’ under HIPC, face crushing burdens. According to one aid agency, the country’s debt is rising so rapidly that development projects are hardly feasible. A Christian Aid official illustrates a problem which is causing anxiety to even the most conservative aid bodies: rigorous enforcement of repayments by the World Bank for borrowing on projects which the institution designed and which could never have achieved its own target results. Thus the money is simply going round in circles. The good news about economic growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa is further compromised by the fragility of booming commodity prices. Being primarily an agricultural continent, Africa relies on the export of a small number of commodities to create the growth that can eventually finance welfare services. Not only is this dependency on exports to global markets a risky way to underwrite the social safety net, but it undermines the simple logic of prioritizing food security. Instead of securing food for African children, a third of whom are underweight, the free trade regime redistributes domestic food production to other parts of the world. Given the urgent needs of the continent, such measures defy economic, social and moral sense.

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Conclusion Africa has, for the past decades under the Neoliberal Colonial Empire, provided a clear demonstration of the dislocation between economic growth and the provision of basic human needs. The case reveals overwhelming evidence of the need for an alternative principle upon which to organize the global economy, yet this fact continues to be ignored by key policy makers in the US and EU. The explanation is that the production of commodities in a capitalistic state is the major source of income for the citizens. It also signifies the wealth of a country in terms of machinery, raw materials, skilled and unskilled labor and consumption of the final products thereof. Thus, the surplus value is very significant to investors and the government. If the surplus value in a particular industry is large then the government will tend to offer more subsidies in order to attract foreign investors. The surplus value also helps the 345

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developers of commodities to improve them in order to meet the specific tastes and preferences of the consumers. Africa is virtually excluded from such benefits in the Neoliberal Colonial Empire. Any significant shift in international economic policy away from a purely market based system will inevitably be difficult to implement given the political and financial dominance of the G8 nations. However, a total lack of willingness to even accept that there may be a more efficient way to organize resource distribution is negligent in the extreme. This conservative view is likely to be expounded by those who gain most from a competitive economy, namely the strongest and fittest nations, their ministers and corporations. For these vested interests, sharing the resources which they have ownership or control over would simply mean diluting their strength, reducing their profits and curtailing their economic growth. The decision that humanity as a whole must make is whether Africans are prepared to serve the needs of their majority populations or perpetuate a system that perverts economic democracy and dismisses any sense of common unity and morality for alleviate poverty and enhance development.

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References Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Mies, Maria und Werlhof, Claudia von, 1988, Women, the Last Colony, London/ New Delhi, Zed Books. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Holzer, Brigitte und Müller, Christa (Hg), 1999, Das Subsistenzhandbuch. Widerstandskulturen in Europa, Asien und Lateinamerika, Wien, Promedia. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika and Mies, Maria, 1999, The Subsistence Perspective. Beyond the Globalised Economy, London, Zed Books. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Mies, Maria and Werlhof, Claudia von (Eds.): There is an Alternative. Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization, London, Zed Books. Biersteker, T. (1992), ‘The Triumph of Neo-Classical Economics in Developing Countries’, in J.N Rosenau and E.O. Cziempiel (eds), Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. (1998). In Strange, Susan (1998) ‘What theory? The theory in mad money’, Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalism, working paper, 18.

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Caffentzis, George, (2002).Neoliberalism in Africa, Apocalyptic Failures and Business as Usual Practices. Turkish Journal of International Relations. Volume 1, no. 3, Fall. From: http: //www.alternativesjournal.net/volume1/number3/georgecaffentzis.htm. Callaghy, T.M (1994). ‘Lost Between State and Market: The Politics of Economic Adjustment in Ghana, Zambia and Nigeria’, in Joan M. Nelson (ed.), Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Callaghy, T.M (1994), ‘Political Passions and Economic Interests. Economic Reform and Political Structure in Africa’, in T.M Callaghy and R. Ravenhill (eds.), Hemmed In: Responses to Africa’s Development, New York: Columbia University Press. Campbell, Al, 2005, The Birth of Neoliberalism in the United States, in Alfredo Saad Filho and Deborah Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism, A Critical Reader (Pluto). Chang, Ha-Joon. (2007). Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity. London: Random House. Chossudovsky, Michel, 2005, Americas „War on Terrorism”, Ottawa Chossudovsky, Michel, 2002, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins Chossudovsky, Michel, 2003, War and Globalization. The Truth behind September 11th, Ottawa Chossudovsky, Michel, 2006, Nuclear War against Iran, in Global Research.ca, Center for Research on Globalization, Ottawa 13.1. Cornes R, Sandler T. (1996).The theory of externalities, public goods and club goods, 2nd ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Deregulation of Markets and the StateCorp Watch (n.d.). What is neoliberalism?: A brief definition for activists. San Francisco, Ca: Martinez, E. & Garcia, A. Retrieved from: http: //www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376 Demba Moussa Dembele. (2004). “The International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Africa: A ‘disastrous’ record.” Dakar, Senegal, Center for African Alternatives. Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2001, Arbeit poor. Unterwegs in der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, München, Kunstmann. Easterly, William. (2007). The White Man’s Burden. Penguin Books. Eley, T. (2011). One year since the BP oil spill: A colossal failure of the “free market”. Published on the ‘World Socialist website’ on 21st April 2011. Accessed on 15/04/2013. 347

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http: //www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/04/bps2-a21.html Engels, Friedrich. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science Anti-Dühring. CH Kerr & Company, 1935. Franken, Ingmar HA, et al. (2006). “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer: On risk aversion in behavioral decision-making.” Judgment and decision making 1.2. Frank, Andre Gunder, 1969, Die Entwicklung der Unterentwicklung, in ders. u.a.: Kritik des bürgerlichen Antiimperialismus, Berlin, Wagenbach Frank, Andre Gunder, 2005, Orientierung im Weltsystem. Von der Neuen Welt zum Reich der Mitte, Wien, Promedia. Fukuyama, F (1991), ‘The End of History’, The National Interest, no. 16. Giroux, H. A. (2015, January 5). Authoritarianism, class warfare and the advance of neoliberal austerity policies. Truthout. Retrieved from http: //www.truthout.org/news/item/28338-the-shadow-of-fascism-and-the-poison-ofneoliberal-austerity-policies Fröbel, Folker, Heinrichs, Jürgen und Kreye, Otto, 1977, Die neue internationale Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt Hepburn John, 2005, Die Rückeroberung von Allmenden – von alten und von neuen, übers. Vortrag bei “Other Worlds Conference”; University of Pennsylvania; 28./29.4.; verbreitet von greenhouse@jpberlin, 14.11. Hofbauer, Hannes, 2003, Osterweiterung. Vom Drang nach Osten zur peripheren EU-Integration, Wien, Promedia. Hussain, I and Faruqee, R (1994), Adjustment in Africa: Lessons from Country Case Studies, Washington, D.C: World Bank. Isla, Ana; 2003, Women and Biodiversity as Capital Accumulation: An EcoFeminist View, in Socialist Bulletin, Vol. 69, Winter, p. 21-34 Isla, Ana, 2005, The Tragedy of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution in Costa Rica , Man., Brock Univ., Sociology Dpt.., St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada Lietaer, Bernard, 1999, Das Geld der Zukunft. Über die destruktive Wirkung des existierenden Geldsystems und die Entwicklung von Komplementärwährungen, München, Riemann Lietaer, Bernard, 2006, Jenseits von Gier und Knappheit, Interview mit Sarah van Gelder, www.transaction.net/press/interviews/Lietaer0497.html MacEwan, Arthur, (2000). Free Markets, International Commerce and Economic Development. Dollars and Sense. November.

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Mentan, T. (2010). The New World Order Ideology and Africa: Understanding and Appreciating Ambiguity, Deceit and Recapture of Decolonized Spaces. Langaa RPCIG. Bamenda. Mies, Maria, 1986, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Women in the International Division of Labor, London, Zed Books Mies, Maria; 2001, Globalisierung von unten. Der Kampf gegen die Herrschaft der Konzerne, Hamburg, Rotbuch Mies, Maria, 2005, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa Mies, Maria und Werlhof, Claudia von (Hg), 2003 (1998); Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen “MAI”. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA Raggam, August 2004, Klimawandel. Biomasse als Chance gegen Klimakollaps und globale Erwärmung, Graz, Gerhard Erker Salzburger, Andrea, 2006, Zurück in die Zukunft des Kapitalismus. Kommerz und Verelendung in Polen, Frankfurt- New York, Peter Lang Verlag Saul, John J. and Colin Leys. (1999). Sub-Saharan Africa in Global Capitalism. Monthly Review, Volume 51, Issue 03 (July-August). Shingavi, S. (n.d.). Austerity, neoliberalism, and the Indian working class. International Socialist Review. Received from http: //isreview.org/issue/103/austerity-neoliberalism-and-indianworking-class-0 Smith, H (2016, May 9). Greek MPs approve toughest austerity measures yet amid rioting. The Guardian. Retrieved from https: //www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/08/rioters-take-to-thestreets-ahead-of-greek-austerity-vote Spero, Joan E. Hart, Jeffrey A. (003). The Politics of International Economic Relations. Thompson Learning: California. Southall, R., Simutanyi, N and Daniel, J (2006), ‘Former Presidents in Africa Politics’, in Roger Southall, R and Henning Melber (eds.), Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics, Cape Town and Uppsala: Human Sciences Research Council and Nordiska Afrikainstutet. Spero, Joan E. Hart, Jeffrey A. (003). The Politics of International Economic Relations. Thompson Learning: California. Stiglitz, Joseph E.2003). Globalization and its Discontents. W.W. Norton: New York. Stiglitz, J (2002), Globalization and Its Discontents, New York and London: WW Norton & Company. Stiglitz, Eyel Press, Rebel with a Cause, The Nation, June 10, 2002. 349

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Jim Yong Kim, Joyce V. Millen, Alec Irwin, and John Gershman. (2000). Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor. Monroe. Me: Common Courage Press. Stiglitz, Eyel Press, Rebel with a Cause, The Nation, June 10, 2002. Jim Yong Kim, Joyce V. Millen, Alec Irwin, and John Gershman. (2000). Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor. Monroe. Me: Common Courage Press. Thompson, E. P. (1991). The Making of the English Working Class. Penguin. Tobin, James. 1975). “Keynesian models of recession and depression.” The American Economic Review 65.2. Wallerstein, Immanuel, 1979, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Wallerstein, Immanuel (Hg), 2004, The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, Boulder/ London; Paradigm Publishers Werkstatt Frieden und Solidarität, 2005, Brief zum Vereinsjahr 2004-2005, Linz Werlhof, Claudia von, 1991, Was haben die Hühner mit dem Dollar zu tun? Frauen und Ökonomie; München, Frauenoffensive Werlhof, Claudia von, 1997, Schöpfung aus Zerstörung? Die Gentechnik als moderne Alchemie und ihre ethisch-religiöse Rechtfertigung, in Baier, Wilhelm (Hg), Genetik. Einführung und Kontroverse, Graz, p. 79-115 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2001 a, Losing Faith in Progress: Capitalist Patriarchy as an ´Alchemical System´, in: Bennholdt-Thomsen et.al. (Eds.): There is an Alternative, p. 15-40 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2001 b, Globale Kriegswirtschaft oder Earth Democracy?, in Grüne Bildungswerkstatt (Hg.) Die Gewalt des Zusammenhangs. Neoliberalismus – Militarismus – Rechtsextremismus, Wien, Promedia, p. 125-142 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2003 a, MAInopoly: Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof, p. 148-192 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2003 b, GATS und Bildung, in Frauennetzwerk, p. 42-45 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2004, Frauen und Ökonomie. Reden, Vorträge …20022004, Themen GATS, Globalisierung.., Mechernich, Gerda-Weiler-Stiftung Werlhof, Claudia von, 2005 a, „Speed kills!”, in Dimmel/Schmee, 2005, p. 284292 Werlhof, Claudia von 2005 b, Vom Wirtschaftskrieg zur Kriegswirtschaft. Die Waffen der „Neuen-Welt-Ordnung”, in Mies 2005, p. 40-48

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Werlhof, Claudia von, 2005 c, Wider die Vernichtung unserer Existenzgrundlagen, in Dietl, Claudia und Krondorfer, Birge (Hg), Widerstand – quo vadis?; Wien; AUFedition, p. 48-52 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2006, The Utopia of a Motherless World. Patriarchy as “War-System”, in Göttner-Abendroth, Hieide (Hg.): Societies of Peace. Contributions to the 2nd World Congress of Matriarchal Studies, Toronto, Inanna (planned for 2008) Werlhof, Claudia von, 2007a, Questions to Ramona, in: Corinne Kumar (Ed.): Asking, we walk. The south as new political imaginary, Vol. 2, Bangalore, Streelekha, p.2149-268 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2007b, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Negation of Matriarchy: The Struggle for a “Deep” Alternative, in: Genevieve Vaughan (Ed.): Women and the Gift Economy, a radically different world view is possible, Toronto, Inanna, p. 139-153 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2007c, The Interconnectedness of All Being: A New Spirituality for a New Civilization, in: Corinne Kumar (Ed.): Asking, we walk. The south as new political imaginary, Vol.2, Bangalore, Streelekha, p. 379-386. World Bank. (2007). World Development Indicators.

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Chapter 8 Africa in the Colonial Age of Neoliberal Globalization of Empire

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Overview Contemporary globalization retains many of the key features of the earlier phases of globalization: the driving forces are centered in the imperial state and the Multi-national Corporation and banks, backed by the international financial institutions. What is significantly different are the scale, scope and speed of the circulation of capital and commodities, particularly financial flows between deregulated economies. The technological changes, especially in communications (computers, fax, etc.), have been a prime factor in shaping the high velocity of movements of capital. This current technology-driven globalization policies and programs have failed to improve the situation of the largest part of African humanity. These failures are crucial to policymakers and development practitioners and indicate the urgent need to embark on a critical and informed rethinking for Africa to understand the defects inherent in the discourse on globalization and to present viable alternatives beyond the ‘new dependency.’ Globalization is a polemical issue that continues to be the subject of unending debates, with some critical approaches defending its effects. In its current form and practice, it has proved to be inimical to the vulnerable majority especially in the poor sub Saharan African countries. Development is participatory, direct and inclusive, external factors may not institutionalize the much needed sustainable development in Sub Saharan Africa. Globalization has permeated the interest of strong States over the weak States, with increasing trade regimes propagated by the World Bank led institutions through WTO and IMF. These have deleterious effects for African and indeed Third World development, no passive attempt could be effectual in redirecting the poverty situation of Africa. Introduction Over one hundred years ago, in 1902, the eminent British scholar and liberal Member of Parliament, John A. Hobson, published a controversial book titled Imperialism: A Study (Hobson 1964 [1902]). A few years later, in 1916, relying in good part on Hobson’s insightful observations on British imperialism, as well as Karl Marx’s historical analysis of the development of capitalism through its 353

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various stages of concentration and centralization of capital and its accumulation on a world scale, Vladimir I. Lenin published a provocative exposé of global capitalism in the age of imperialism, titled Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, to explain the dynamics of monopoly capitalism operating on a global scale in the early twentieth century (Lenin 1971 [1916]). Today, nearly a century later, we find ourselves in the midst of an intense debate on the relationship between capitalist imperialism of the early- to mid-twentieth century and neoliberal capitalist globalization of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (Berberogiu 2005; 2009). Globalization is therefore a powerful real aspect of the new world system, and it represents one of the most influential forces in determining the future course of the planet. It has manifold dimensions: economic, political, security, environmental, health, social, cultural, and others. Globalization has had significant impacts on all economies of the world, with manifold effects. It affects their production of goods and services. It also affects the employment of labor and other inputs into the production process. In addition, it affects investment, both in physical capital and in human capital. It affects technology and results in the diffusion of technology from initiating nations to other nations. It also has major effects on efficiency, productivity and competitiveness (Intriligator, 2003, 1: 7). Globalization has generally proceeded either by completely ignoring or by banalizing localized concerns, histories, problems, and the “social pacts” designed to address them. Indeed, globalization processes and the ideological paraphernalia that go with them have given the impression that these concerns were provincial, dated, and idiosyncratic (Mkandawire, 1999). In the 1990s ‘globalization’ has become a particularly fashionable way to analyze changes in the international economy and in world politics. Advances in technology and modern communications are said to have unleashed new contacts and intercourse among peoples, social movements, transnational corporations, and governments. The result is a set of processes which have affected national and international politics in an extraordinary way (Ngaire, 2000). Thus, globalization is a trend that impacts everyone more and more each day. One can comfortably claim that in the age of globalization, the links between political economy and society are forged through terms like governance. An old word in the English language with a new lease on life, governance plays a role that on the surface appears benign but on closer scrutiny becomes more sinister. One of the perspectives for examining these links and penetrating below the surface appearance of a term like governance is political economy, an interdisciplinary tradition that spans the social sciences and humanities from sociology and geography to communications and education (Sumner, 2008). In 354

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the words of Canadian political economist Harold Innis, the task for engaged intellectuals involves “questioning the pretensions of organized power” (Neufeld & Whitworth, 1997: 198). Conceptual Dilemmas

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The corporate driven, free market globalization of the 1990s and 2000s generated a deep historical moment of transformation that was rooted in changing structures of daily life associated with globalization’s time-space compression, especially as it pertained to the communication revolution. The process called to mind Marx’s ‘all that is solid melts into the air’, and gave rise to social science explorations into the meanings and significance of the experience. The dramatic transformative impacts of contemporary globalization, and all of its associated baggage on the lives of people worldwide, can hardly escape even the most cursory observer. The outcomes of the ensuing changes are neither smooth nor unilinear; rather, they are dialectical, dynamic, multifaceted, uneven, and sometimes chaotic, pointing in several different directions at once, and occurring at varying speeds and timescales in different parts of the world. And, as one might expect, the past, present, and foreseeable impacts of this transformation have elicited controversial responses that at once grab the analytical attention of both opponents (e.g., Klein 2000; Chomsky 2001; Hoogvelt 2001; Stiglitz 2003; Harvey 2007) and supporters (e.g., Sachs 2005; Norberg 2003; Wolf 2004) alike. At the heart of these controversies lies the ideology of neoliberalism, which seeks to further expand global capital accumulation through free trade, financial deregulation, privatization, and other tenets of the so-called Washington Consensus, spearheaded by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), and kindred organizations (Harvey 2007; De Rivero 2001). Summary of 8 Theories of Globalization I am putting all theories of globalization under eight categories: liberalism, political realism, Marxism, constructivism, postmodernism, feminism, Transformationalism and eclecticism. Each one of them carries several variations. 1. Theory of Liberalism: Liberalism sees the process of globalization as market-led extension of modernization. At the most elementary level, it is a result of ‘natural’ human desires for economic welfare and political liberty. As such, Trans planetary 355

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connectivity is derived from human drives to maximize material well-being and to exercise basic freedoms. These forces eventually interlink humanity across the planet. They fructify in the form of: (a) Technological advances, particularly in the areas of transport, communications and information processing, and, (b) Suitable legal and institutional arrangement to enable markets and liberal democracy to spread on a Trans world scale. Such explanations come mostly from Business Studies, Economics, International Political Economy, Law and Politics. Liberalists stress the necessity of constructing institutional infrastructure to support globalization. All this has led to technical standardization, administrative harmonization, translation arrangement between languages, laws of contract, and guarantees of property rights. But its supporters neglect the social forces that lie behind the creation of technological and institutional underpinnings. It is not satisfying to attribute these developments to ‘natural’ human drives for economic growth and political liberty. They are culture blind and tend to overlook historically situated lifeworlds and knowledge structures which have promoted their emergence. All people cannot be assumed to be equally amenable to and desirous of increased globality in their lives. Similarly, they overlook the phenomenon of power. There are structural power inequalities in promoting globalization and shaping its course. Often they do not care for the entrenched power hierarchies between states, classes, cultures, sexes, races and resources. 2. Theory of Political Realism: Advocates of this theory are interested in questions of state power, the pursuit of national interest, and conflict between states. According to them states are inherently acquisitive and self-serving, and heading for inevitable competition of power. Some of the scholars stand for a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states. Another group suggests that a dominant state can bring stability to world order. The ‘hegemon’ state (presently the US or G7/8) maintains and defines international rules and institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts between other states. Globalization has also been explained as a strategy in the contest for power between several major states in contemporary world politics. They concentrate on the activities of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, the USA and some other large states. Thus, the political realists highlight the

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issues of power and power struggles and the role of states in generating global relations. At some levels, globalization is considered as antithetical to territorial states. States, they say, are not equal in globalization, some being dominant and others subordinate in the process. But they fail to understand that everything in globalization does not come down to the acquisition, distribution and exercise of power. Globalization has also cultural, ecological, economic and psychological dimensions that are not reducible to power politics. It is also about the production and consumption of resources, about the discovery and affirmation of identity, about the construction and communication of meaning, and about humanity shaping and being shaped by nature. Most of these are apolitical. Power theorists also neglect the importance and role of other actors in generating globalization. These are sub-state authorities, macro-regional institutions, global agencies, and private-sector bodies. Additional types of power-relations on lines of class, culture and gender also affect the course of globalization. Some other structural inequalities cannot be adequately explained as an outcome of interstate competition. After all, class inequality, cultural hierarchy, and patriarchy predate the modern states. 3. Theory of Marxism: Marxism is principally concerned with modes of production, social exploitation through unjust distribution, and social emancipation through the transcendence of capitalism. Marx himself anticipated the growth of globality that ‘capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier to conquer the whole earth for its market’. Accordingly, to Marxists, globalization happens because trans-world connectivity enhances opportunities of profit-making and surplus accumulation. Marxists reject both liberalist and political realist explanations of globalization. It is the outcome of historically specific impulses of capitalist development. Its legal and institutional infrastructures serve the logic of surplus accumulation of a global scale. Liberal talk of freedom and democracy make up a legitimating ideology for exploitative global capitalist class relations. The neo-Marxists in dependency and world-system theories examine capitalist accumulation on a global scale on lines of core and peripheral countries. Neo-Gramscians highlight the significance of underclass struggles to resist globalizing capitalism not only by traditional labor unions, but also by new social movements of consumer advocates, environmentalists, peace activists, peasants, and women. However, Marxists give an overly restricted account of power. 357

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There are other relations of dominance and subordination which relate to state, culture, gender, race, sex, and more. Presence of US hegemony, the Westcentric cultural domination, masculinism, racism etc. are not reducible to class dynamics within capitalism. Class is a key axis of power in globalization, but it is not the only one. It is too simplistic to see globalization solely as a result of drives for surplus accumulation. It also seeks to explore identities and investigate meanings. People develop global weapons and pursue global military campaigns not only for capitalist ends, but also due to interstate competition and militarist culture that predate emergence of capitalism. Ideational aspects of social relations also are not outcome of the modes of production. They have, like nationalism, their autonomy. 4. Theory of Constructivism: Globalization has also arisen because of the way that people have mentally constructed the social world with particular symbols, language, images and interpretation. It is the result of particular forms and dynamics of consciousness. Patterns of production and governance are second-order structures that derive from deeper cultural and socio-psychological forces. Such accounts of globalization have come from the fields of Anthropology, Humanities, Media of Studies and Sociology. Constructivists concentrate on the ways that social actors ‘construct’ their world: both within their own minds and through intersubjective communication with others. Conversation and symbolic exchanges lead people to construct ideas of the world, the rules for social interaction, and ways of being and belonging in that world. Social geography is a mental experience as well as a physical fact. They form ‘in’ or ‘out’ as well as ‘us’ and they’ groups. They conceive of themselves as inhabitants of a particular global world. National, class, religious and other identities respond in part to material conditions but they also depend on inter-subjective construction and communication of shared self-understanding. However, when they go too far, they present a case of social-psychological reductionism ignoring the significance of economic and ecological forces in shaping mental experience. This theory neglects issues of structural inequalities and power hierarchies in social relations. It has a built-in apolitical tendency. 5. Theory of Postmodernism: Some other ideational perspectives of globalization highlight the significance of structural power in the construction of identities, norms and knowledge. They all are grouped under the label of ‘postmodernism’. They too, 358

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as Michel Foucault does strive to understand society in terms of knowledge power: power structures shape knowledge. Certain knowledge structures support certain power hierarchies. The reigning structures of understanding determine what can and cannot be known in a given socio-historical context. This dominant structure of knowledge in modern society is ‘rationalism’. It puts emphasis on the empirical world, the subordination of nature to human control, objectivist science, and instrumentalist efficiency. Modern rationalism produces a society overwhelmed with economic growth, technological control, bureaucratic organization, and disciplining desires. This mode of knowledge has authoritarian and expansionary logic that leads to a kind of cultural imperialism subordinating all other epistemologies. It does not focus on the problem of globalization per se. In this way, western rationalism overawes indigenous cultures and other non-modem life-worlds. Postmodernism, like Marxism, helps to go beyond the relatively superficial accounts of liberalist and political realist theories and expose social conditions that have favored globalization. Obviously, postmodernism suffers from its own methodological idealism. All material forces, though come under impact of ideas, cannot be reduced to modes of consciousness. For a valid explanation, interconnection between ideational and material forces is not enough.

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6. Theory of Feminism: It puts emphasis on social construction of masculinity and femininity. All other theories have identified the dynamics behind the rise of trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity in technology, state, capital, identity and the like. Biological sex is held to mold the overall social order and shape significantly the course of history, presently globality. Their main concern lies behind the status of women, particularly their structural subordination to men. Women have tended to be marginalized, silenced and violated in global communication. 7. Theory of Trans-formationalism: This theory has been expounded by David Held and his colleagues. Accordingly, the term ‘globalization’ reflects increased interconnectedness in political, economic and cultural matters across the world creating a “shared social space”. Given this interconnectedness, globalization may be defined as “a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power.” While there are many definitions of globalization, such a definition seeks to bring together the many and seemingly contradictory theories of globalization 359

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into a “rigorous analytical framework” and “proffer a coherent historical narrative”. Held and McGrew’s analytical framework is constructed by developing a three part typology of theories of globalization consisting of “hyper-globalist,” “sceptic,” and “transformationalist” categories. The Hyperglobalists purportedly argue that “contemporary globalization defines a new era in which people everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global marketplace”. Given the importance of the global marketplace, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) which regulate their activity are key political actors. Sceptics, such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) ostensibly argue that “globalization is a myth which conceals the reality of an international economy increasingly segmented into three major regional blocs in which national governments remain very powerful.” Finally, transformationalists such as Rosenau (1997) or Giddens (1990) argue that globalization occurs as “states and societies across the globe are experiencing a process of profound change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain world”. Developing the transformationalist category of globalization theories. Held and McGrew present a rather complicated typology of globalization based on globalization’s spread, depth, speed, and impact, as well as its impacts on infrastructure, institutions, hierarchical structures and the unevenness of development. They imply that the “politics of globalization” have been “transformed” (using their word from the definition of globalization) along all of these dimensions because of the emergence of a new system of “political globalization.” They define “political globalization” as the “shifting reach of political power, authority and forms of rule” based on new organizational interests which are “transnational” and “multi-layered.” These organizational interests combine actors identified under the hyperglobalist category (namely IGOs and MNEs) with those of the sceptics (trading blocs and powerful states) into a new system where each of these actors exercises their political power, authority and forms of rule. Thus, the “politics of globalization” is equivalent to “political globalization” for Held and McGrew. However, Biyane Michael criticizes them. He deconstructs their argument, if a is defined as “globalizations” (as defined above), b as the organizational interests such as MNEs, IGOs, trading blocs, and powerful states, and c as “political globalization” (also as defined above), then their argument reduces to a. b. c. In this way, their discussion of globalizations is trivial. Held and others present a definition of globalizations, and then simply restates various elements of the definition. Their definition, “globalizations can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation 360

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in the spatial organization of social relations” allows every change to be an impact of globalizations. Thus, by their own definition, all the theorists they critique would be considered as “transformation lists.” Held and McGrew also fail to show how globalization affects organizational interests. 8. Theory of Eclecticism: Each one of the above six ideal-type of social theories of globalization highlights certain forces that contribute to its growth. They put emphasis on technology and institution building, national interest and inter-state competition, capital accumulation and class struggle, identity and knowledge construction, rationalism and cultural imperialism, and masculinize and subordination of women. Jan Art Scholte synthesizes them as forces of production, governance, identity, and knowledge. Accordingly, capitalists attempt to amass ever-greater resources in excess of their survival needs: accumulation of surplus. The capitalist economy is thoroughly monetized. Money facilitates accumulation. It offers abundant opportunities to transfer surplus, especially from the weak to the powerful. This mode of production involves perpetual and pervasive contests over the distribution of surplus. Such competition occurs both between individual, firms, etc. and along structural lines of class, gender, race etc. Their contests can be overt or latent. Surplus accumulation has had transpired in one way or another for many centuries, but capitalism is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It has turned into a structural power, and is accepted as a ‘natural’ circumstance, with no alternative mode of production. It has spurred globalization in four ways: market expansion, accounting practices, asset mobility and enlarged arenas of commodification. Its technological innovation appears in communication, transport and data processing as well as in global organization and management. It concentrates profits at points of low taxation. Information, communication, finance and consumer sectors offer vast potentials to capital making it ‘hyper-capitalism’. Any mode of production cannot operate in the absence of an enabling regulatory apparatus. There are some kind of governance mechanisms. Governance relates processes whereby people formulate, implement, enforce and review rules to guide their common affairs.” It entails more than government. It can extend beyond state and sub-state institutions including supra-state regimes as well. It covers the full scope of societal regulation. In the growth of contemporary globalization, besides political and economic forces, there are material and ideational elements. In expanding social relations, people explore their class, their gender, their nationality, their race, their religious faith and other aspects of their being. Constructions of identity provide 361

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collective solidarity against oppression. Identity provides frameworks for community, democracy, citizenship and resistance. It also leads from nationalism to greater pluralism and hybridity. Earlier nationalism promoted territorialism, capitalism, and statism, now these plural identities are feeding more and more globality, hyper-capitalism and polycentrism. These identities have many international qualities visualized in global diasporas and other group affiliations based on age, class, gender, race, religious faith and sexual orientations. Many forms of supra-territorial solidarities are appearing through globalization. In the area of knowledge, the way that the people know their world has significant implications for the concrete circumstances of that world. Powerful patterns of social consciousness cause globalization. Knowledge frameworks cannot be reduced to forces of production, governance or identity. Mindsets encourage or discourage the rise of globality. Modern rationalism is a general configuration of knowledge. It is secular as it defines reality in terms of the tangible world of experience. It understands reality primarily in terms of human interests, activities and conditions. It holds that phenomena can be understood in terms of single incontrovertible truths that are discoverable by rigorous application of objective research methods. Rationalism is instrumentalist. It assigns greatest value to insights that enable people efficiently to solve immediate problems. It subordinates all other ways of understanding and acting upon the world. Its knowledge could then be applied to harness natural and social forces for human purposes. It enables people to conquer disease, hunger, poverty, war, etc., and maximize the potentials of human life. It looks like a secular faith, a knowledge framework for capitalist production and a cult of economic efficiency. Scientism and instrumentalism of rationalism is conducive to globalization. Scientific knowledge is non-territorial. The truths revealed by ‘objective’ method are valid for anyone, anywhere, and anytime on earth. Certain production processes, regulations, technologies and art forms are applicable across the planet. Martin Albrow rightly says that reason knows no territorial limits. The growth of globalization is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future. However, Scholte is aware of insecurity, inequality and marginalization caused by the present process of globalization. Others reject secularist character of the theory, its manifestation of the imperialism of westernist-modernist-rationalist knowledge. Anarchists challenge the oppressive nature of states and other bureaucratic governance frameworks. globalization neglects environmental degradation and equitable gender relations.

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Globalization and Imperialism The dominant idea of contemporary bourgeois thinking is that increasing international integration of economic activity, or “globalization” will lead to prosperity and peace for all. But globalization is not a concept that helps us understand the world around us. It is an ideological construct used to trumpet capitalist victory – to conceal the crisis-ridden nature of the system and its perpetual failure to meet the needs of the world’s working class. Contrary to popular usage by the media and various political and economic commentators, ‘globalization’ is not an objective or neutral term which simply describes the contemporary world economy. In many ways it is the ‘big idea’ of modern apologists of capitalism. globalization is closely linked to the ideology of neo-liberalism. The two concepts share a sort of division of labor. While globalization asserts the inevitable victory of market forces over everything that stands in their way, neoliberalism tells us this is all to the good. Globalization is quite a slippery notion – more of a buzzword than an explanatory concept.

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Concepts of Imperialism It was left to a later generation of Marxists to assess how the global reach of capital had impacted on the world economy and relations between the classes. In the years before the First World War they came up with the concept of ‘Imperialism, the latest stage of capitalism’, the original title of Lenin’s 1916 pamphlet. Lenin argued that the competitive capitalism of Marx’s time had been replaced by an economy dominated by monopolies likewise the era of free trade described by Marx had been replaced by the erection of tariff walls. One way to vault over tariff walls was to invest in other countries to produce goods there rather than exporting the commodities into that country. So the export of capital supplemented the export of goods. Those tariff walls were erected to defend hostile national capital blocs arrayed against each other. The imperialist powers divided the rest of the world among themselves as colonies and spheres of influence. All these trends were rooted in the changing ways in which surplus value was produced in the heartlands of capitalism: “(W)e must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: 1. the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;

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2. the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this ‘finance capital’ of a ‘financial oligarchy’; 3. the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; 4. the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and; 5. the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.”

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Forward to the past! Globalizers present the present era of capitalist development as entirely new. Capitalism is progressively eliminating barriers to its unfettered development. Trade is becoming more and freer, and therefore more important in driving all the national economies forward. The ‘factors of production’ have been freed to go wherever they can be used to the optimum. We’ve been here before. The period from about 1870 to 1914 was one when all the advanced countries embraced free trade, and trade was said to be an ‘engine of growth’. Millions of people left Europe and opened up the interiors of North America, Latin America and Australasia. Capital was free to go where it willed. And lots went abroad. The UK’s foreign investments were reckoned to be £4,000 million by 1914. In that year Britain, the leading imperialist power of the time, was receiving a fantastic 9% of its national income from earnings on capital invested abroad - £200 million a year. After the First World War the open economy seemed to implode. “The 1913-50 period saw a relapse into neo-mercantilism, with the blockades involved in two wars, the discriminatory policies, higher tariffs, quantitative restrictions, exchange controls and other autarchic measures that were sparked off by the Great Depression of 1929-32. As a result, trade grew at half the pace of output from 1913 to 1950.” (Angus Maddison Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development: a long-run comparative view, Oxford University Press, 1991) Arguably the period since 1950 has only seen the slow and painful removal of the barriers to capitalist penetration that had been erected since 1913. Maddison, a formidable economic statistician, is quite clear that the ‘Golden Age’ of capitalist development was the period 1950-73, when much of the paraphernalia of state intervention was still in place. Certainly growth in the ‘glorious era’ of globalization that followed has been less impressive. In a book, ironically entitled Why Globalization Works, Martin Wolf shows in his Table 8.1 that the economy grew twice as fast in the Golden Age as in the succeeding ‘era of globalization’ (cited in Saul: 20). 364

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Finance capital and capital export For the Globalizers the explosion of global financial flows shows capitalism has at last created one world. Certainly the figures are impressive. Over the last ten years the trade in foreign exchange on the London market has gone from $464 billion to $753 billion per day! London is a bigger forex market than New York or Tokyo. This is called the ‘Wimbledon effect’ – we stage the most impressive tennis tournament in the world. The only trouble is, we never win it. Over the same period the turnover of those arcane financial instruments, derivatives, has shot up from $74 billion to $643 billion a day. Looking at the financial markets, globalization appears as an accomplished fact. Vast funds can be shifted in nano-seconds. Central Banks have little control over their exchange rate, which is mainly driven by the whim of the markets. Economists usually distinguish between direct and portfolio foreign investment. Portfolio investment means buying shares or other pieces of paper in firms operating abroad, without taking a controlling stake. But this changes nothing of the underlying economic reality. The same workers get up and go in to the same factory. The only difference is that some of the surplus value is spirited abroad. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is the work of multinationals, a much more significant feature of the world economy than in Lenin’s time. But how important is it, and in any case does it change the rules of the game? Andrew Glyn concludes, “(I)f FDI flows continued at the current rate, the share of capital stock represented by FDI would rise to around 13 per cent in both the developed and developing countries. “There are a number of reasons why the significance of FDI may be less than these figures suggest. One is that recent flows of FDI to developing countries have been concentrated in very few of them; one-third of the higher figure is accounted for by China alone. And much FDI into China comes not from developed countries but from other overseas Chinese capitalists in other Asian developing countries, so it does not correspond to the common image of FDI as Western multinationals expanding throughout the world. In addition, not all FDI consists of the construction of new production facilities by overseas companies, which typically represents a clear increase in competition. Well over half of FDI inflows into OECD countries represent cross-border mergers and acquisitions…” (The assessment: how far has globalization gone? in Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2004: 6) The explosion in world trade may also be less important than it looks if ‘trade’ between countries is actually semi-finished goods passing between different branches of the same multinational. According to Sutcliffe and Glyn’s 365

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careful survey, “Intra firm transactions may account for about one third of international trade, a figure which has been circulating for at least 30 years, though with very little empirical backing.” (ibid.: 73). What about free movement of labor? Can they move to where the living is easier, in the way the yuppies move money? Control over the migration of labor is a universal fact of life in the advanced capitalist countries. For the working class, the world is not our oyster.

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Capitalist rationality and world poverty Yes, it is in the interests of the system to turn four billion hungry people in the third world into ‘consumers’. Why, then is there no sign of the system being able to achieve this? What do our opponents say? The World Bank begins by patting itself on the back that many have been lifted out of poverty over the past decade or so. It goes on to admit, “Still inequality, and the absolute numbers of people living in poverty, has grown. But most of these poor live in rural areas and in countries that are only weakly connected to the rest of the world.” (http: //rru.worldbank.org/spotlight/globalization.aspx) The World Bank seems to believe that all things come to those who wait. Our argument is that capitalism will cherry pick profit opportunities in certain areas around the world that will be bombarded with investment funds, while the rest (for instance Africa, population 850 million) can go and rot. Africa is poor because it is kept poor and underdeveloped by imperialism. The World Bank argues that there are conflict-ridden areas where capital dares not venture. ‘Globalizers’ say that if we just pack in the violence and invite in foreign investment, we’ll all be rich! This is the opposite of the truth. The former Yugoslavia became an economic ruin wracked by civil wars that led to 250,000 deaths. This did not happen because the country was ignored by global finance, but precisely because Yugoslavia came to its attention. In a doomed effort to develop the economy in a small backward country, the ruling bureaucracy invited in the foreign banks. During the 1980s, Yugoslavia became a happy hunting ground for finance capital. Public sector firms borrowed in a futile attempt to build ‘socialism in one country.’ Ten years later the country was on the rack of austerity, in the maw of global capital. Unable to strike an oppressor they could not see, tragically the peoples of Yugoslavia were turned against each other by nationalist politicians backed by rival imperialist powers. The result was a horrible civil war. Backwardness is often not a result of economic isolation but a consequence of capitalist meddling, not a natural result but a creation of imperialism. 366

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Capitalism and the nation state Globalizers argue that ‘market forces’ (capitalism) are now sweeping all before them. What used to get in the way? The main power in any land apart from the capitalists is the state. Now, the Globalizers say, the government has to bow the knee. First they do not explain why the balance between the two basic powers that affect the way we live our daily life has fundamentally changed. Why, if states could pass laws thirty years ago that regulated firm behavior, can they no longer do it now? In fact they can. The globalization theorists start with a lazy juxtaposition between capitalist economy and state. Actually the state is a creation of the needs of the capitalist class and is constantly reshaped by their changing needs. In turn the state is itself an economic actor, a power affecting economic behavior. The two are not polar opposites. They interpenetrate each other. This relationship, which continues to the present day, was fully explained by the Bolsheviks. As Bukharin points out, “The fact is that the very foundation of modern states as definite political entities was caused by economic needs and requirements. The state grew on the economic foundation; it was an expression of economic connections; state ties appeared only as an expression of economic ties.” (Imperialism and world economy, p. 63) But the relationship is a contradictory one. “If we thus consider the problem in its entirety, and take thereby the objective point of view, i.e. the point of view of the adaption of modern society to its conditions of existence, we find that there is here a growing discord between the basis of social economy which has become world-wide and the peculiar class structure of society, a structure where the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) itself is split into ‘national’ groups with contradictory economic interests, groups which being opposed to the world proletariat, are competing among themselves for the division of surplus value created on a world scale.” (ibid.: 106). Capitalists resent the extortions of the state. Nevertheless, the capitalist class need the state to defend its interests. “We have seen above that capital’s connection with the state is transformed into an additional economic force. The stronger state secures for its industries the most advantageous trade treaties, and establishes high tariffs that are disadvantageous for the competitors. It helps its finance capital to monopolize the sales markets, the markets for raw materials and particularly the spheres for capital investment.” (ibid.: 137) Let’s fast forward to the present day. We see this interaction between economic power and state power is still a central feature of modern imperialist rivalry. Hirst and Thompson are correct to, “conclude that globalization in the 367

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sense conceived by extreme economic liberals and their radical critics has not happened. The world, far from being an integrated system dominated by ungoverned market forces divides into three major trading blocs dominated by nation states. NAFTA is centered in the USA, Japan is a bloc-sized national economy and the European Union is an association of states. Each bloc follows distinctive policies and has distinctive problems and institutions of economic management. Most major companies hail from one of the three main blocs, and most companies have the bulk of their assets and a majority of their sales within one of the blocs.” (Hirst and Thompson ibid. p.23) Hirst and Thompson had earlier produced two editions of an important book called globalization in question (Polity Press, 1996 and 1999). Though they are social democrats, Lenin and Bukharin would have had no problem understanding the world they describe. Modern capitalist commentators will argue that this stuff about the economic importance of the state is all old hat. The era of globalization (usually dating from the 1970s) has seen a withdrawal of the state from capitalist economy. The ideology of neo-liberalism, which became dominant about the same time, advocates privatization and a return to nineteenth century laissezfaire. The rule of naked force in international relations, we are told, has been replaced by the rule of law through multilateral institutions – the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. On the contrary. If wretched “third world” governments have been forced to privatize their utilities (giving ownership up to imperialist firms) and to cut down tariff barriers (opening home markets to advanced country products and impoverishing local producers), that is not through ‘choice’. The irony is that the withdrawal of the state from economic intervention in poor countries has been achieved though the naked economic power of the imperialist countries, buttressed by the threat of armed force. This transformation is a triumph of state power, not its negation. The multilateral institutions in turn propose a world governance of rules all right – rules that are formulated precisely in order to disarm poor countries and strip away their defense against imperialist exploitation. Nor has the withdrawal of the state from economic ‘interference’ been an unqualified success. The period since the Second World War can be divided into two parts. As mentioned before, the period from 1950 to the first global recession in 1973 can be regarded as a Golden Age for capitalism. Yet it was an era where the state intervened extensively in economic life. For instance all countries operated strict exchange controls until Thatcher scrapped Britain’s in 1979. Till then, the dizzy speculation in national currencies was kept under control. Advanced capitalist countries without exception were 368

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said to be operating economic policy according to a Keynesian consensus, determined to let the state step in when markets failed. So an extensive public sector underpinned capitalist profiteering. As we pointed out earlier, Martin Wolf shows that the economy grew twice as fast before the era of ‘globalization.’ The present period does not exhibit the peaceful, harmonious settlement of imperialist disputes visualized in Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism and in globalization theory. It is true that the USA became an economic hegemon no other imperialist can challenge. That supremacy is already under threat from China. But US hegemony since the Second World War has not guaranteed peace and harmony, and imperialist rivalry has not been snuffed out. Bukharin’s analysis of the impossibility of rival imperialist powers developing a stable system of world governance and Lenin’ portrayal of contradiction and crisis as the way capitalism necessarily develops, hold up a mirror to the present – and the future. J.R. Saul’s book is titled The Collapse of Globalism. But this is not what is actually happening. Saul is making the point that capitalist domination of the globe is increasingly encountering resistance. This resistance calls itself ‘the anti-globalization movement’, but is essentially a movement against capitalism, or at least environmental degradation, superexploitation, third world debt and other symptoms of modern capitalism in all its glories. Capitalism has come up against its own contradictions, contradictions the Globalizers were anxious to deny existed. Poor capitalist nations such as India and Brazil are using the forum of the World Trade Organization to advance their own national interests. But the whole point of the WTO for world imperialism is that it is used as a steamroller against the interests of poor nations. Put simply, capitalism cannot deliver the goods globalization theory promised. That is why the theory is coming apart at the seams. To conclude, globalization is not a concept that helps us understand the world around us. In part it has been stretched out of shape by theorists who have tried to fill the concept with different contents. It is an ideological construct used to trumpet capitalist victory – to conceal the crisis-ridden nature of the system and its perpetual failure to meet the needs of the world’s working class.

Neoliberal Globalization and Africa

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Africa, a continent endowed with immense natural and human resources as well as great cultural, ecological and economic diversity, remains underdeveloped. Most African nations suffer from military dictatorships, corruption, civil unrest and war, underdevelopment and deep poverty. The majority of the countries classified by the UN as least developed are in Africa. Numerous development strategies have failed to yield the expected results. Although some believe that the continent is doomed to perpetual poverty and economic slavery, Africa has immense potential. Is neoliberal globalization Africa’s redeemer from the corporate capitalist empire? Let us take a synoptic view of the hard realities. A spin-off of 19th century liberal economic ideas propounded by Adam Smith, advocates of neoliberal globalization support their arguments by highlighting many of its supposed benefits, which they argue include: a) production of higher growth, b) provision of better returns on investments, c) innovation in technology, d) promotion of democratic values, e) creation of more opportunities for jobs and businesses, f) facilitation of movement of labor, g) consolidation of global economic stability, h) reduction of poverty, i) acceleration of development, j) promotion of democracy and human rights, and k) accumulation of wealth. Our concern here is to dissect how this globalized neoliberalism has fared in Africa. In other words, let us examine the ways in which Africa and its people interlace with the phenomena of neoliberal globalization and their associated discursive practices. As with other regions of the world, internal and external forces are exacting considerable pressure on the economies, societies, and cultures of Africa. The recurrent narratives suggest that African countries were relatively better-off in the immediate post-independence period up until the early 1970s, after which many of them went into economic tailspin. The decade of the 1980s was particularly horrendous in the continent’s modern development history, with some calling it “the lost decade” (Chazan et al., 1992). To the extent that the rise of contemporary globalization is often tied to the 1980s and beyond, one can argue that the emerging world order, couched in neoliberalism, is not beneficial to Africa and its people. Africa’s poor performance under contemporary global capitalism is not a mere coincidence, given some of the structural causalities that confront the states.

Africa’s Pulse: Global Economic Weakness Continues to be a Drag on Africa’s Economic Growth

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Amid falling commodity prices and continuing weakness in global growth, Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth decelerated to an estimated 3.0% in 2015 from 4.5% in 2014, according to the latest World Bank projections. This low pace of growth, which translates into an increase in the region’s GDP per capita of less than 0.5%, was last seen in 2009 following the global financial crisis, and contrasts sharply with the robust 6.8% average annual GDP growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2003-2008. These latest figures are outlined in the World Bank’s new Africa’s Pulse, the twice-yearly analysis of economic trends and the latest data on the continent. The analysis shows that the slowdown comes amidst a sharp drop in global commodity prices, weak global growth that was underpinned by a slowing of growth in emerging market economies, including China, and volatile financial markets.

These latest figures are outlined in the World Bank’s new Africa’s Pulse, the twice-yearly analysis of economic trends and the latest data on the continent. The analysis shows that the slowdown comes amidst a sharp drop in global commodity prices, weak global growth that was underpinned by a slowing of growth in emerging market economies, including China, and volatile financial markets. The fall in commodity prices represents a significant shock for the region, as fuels, ore and metals account for more than 60% of the region’s exports. The impact is seen most in oil-exporting countries, where average growth is estimated to have slowed from 5.4% in 2014 to 2.9% in 2015. Growth fell 371

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sharply in Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, and Equatorial Guinea. Activity also weakened significantly in non-energy mineral-exporting countries, including Botswana, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zambia. In several commodity exporters, adverse domestic developments, such as electricity shortages, severe drought conditions, policy uncertainty, and security threats, exacerbated the direct impact of declining commodity prices. There were some bright spots, mostly among oil importers, where economic activity remained robust. Côte d’Ivoire saw broad-based growth, supported by a favorable policy environment, rising investment, and increased consumer spending. Ethiopia and Rwanda continued to post solid growth, supported by public infrastructure investment, private consumption, and a growing services sector. Elsewhere, growth remained buoyant in Kenya, amid improving economic stability; Tanzania registered strong growth, underpinned by expansion in construction and services sectors. Africa’s Pulse finds that the recent commodity price drops have deteriorated the region’s terms of trade in 2016 by an estimated 16%, with commodity exporters seeing large terms-of-trade losses. Some 12 countries, housing nearly 36% of the region’s population and representing about half of its economic activity, are considered vulnerable in terms-of-trade losses that are expected to exceed 10%. About 17 countries with more than 25% of SSA’s population, fall into the group of countries with terms-of-trade gains. With commodity prices expected to remain low for longer amid a gradual pickup in global activity, the Pulse forecasts that average growth in the region will remain subdued at 3.3% in 2016. For 2017–18, growth is projected to average 4.5%. The projected pickup in activity in 2017–18 reflects a gradual improvement in the region’s largest economies—Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa—as commodity prices stabilize and policies become more supportive of growth: “With external conditions likely to remain less favorable than in the past, African countries need to accelerate the pace of structural reforms aimed at boosting competitiveness and diversification,” said Punam Chuhan-Pole, World Bank Africa acting chief economist and author of the report. “In most countries this will mean improving the business climate, reducing the cost of cross-border trade, reforming the energy sector to ensure affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy services, and making the financial sector more inclusive.”

Indeed, the rapid decline in oil and commodity prices has signaled an urgent need for economic diversification in Africa. Africa’s Pulse examines the spatial development of African cities, and finds that well-managed cities provide a 372

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major opportunity for much needed economic diversification. Today cities in Africa are crowded, disconnected, and costly for families and for companies, according to World Bank research. To build cities that work policy makers will need to direct attention toward the deeper structural problems that misallocate land, fragment development, and limit productivity. Despite the drum beat for globalization, trade costs are, on average, higher for African countries than for other developing countries. This is revealed by a review of data and research on trade costs for Sub-Saharan African countries. The review covers: border-related costs, transport costs, costs related to behindthe border issues, and the costs of compliance with rules of origin specific to preferential trade agreements. Using gravity-model estimates, the authors compute ad-valorem equivalents of improvements in trade indicators for a sample of African countries. The evidence suggests that the gains for African exporters from improving the trade logistics half-way to the level in South Africa is more important than a substantive cut in tariff barriers. As an example, improving logistics in Ethiopia half-way to the level in South Africa would be roughly equivalent to a 7.5 percent cut in tariffs faced by Ethiopian exporters. Production of higher growth in Africa

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According to Martin Hart-Landsberg, economists continue to celebrate the free movement of goods, services, and capital. However, faced with slowing economic conditions in core countries, it is now third world growth that is highlighted as proof of the gains from unregulated globalization. As the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development points out: “The crisis and its fallout have accelerated the trend toward a greater role of developing countries in the world economy. Between 2006 and 2012, 74 per cent of world GDP growth was generated in developing countries and only 22 per cent in developed countries. This is in sharp contrast to their respective contributions to global growth in previous decades: developed countries accounted for 75 per cent of global growth in the 1980s and 1990s, but this fell to a little over 50 per cent between 2000 and 2006.”

Africa, in particular, has become the new toast of investors. A 2011 African Development Bank report celebrating the rise of the African middle class offers the following reason: “Strong economic growth in Africa over the past two decades has been accompanied by the emergence of a sizeable middle class and a significant

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reduction in poverty. Also rising strongly has been a robust growth in consumption expenditures as a result of this growing middle class.”

The report estimates that Africa’s middle class reached “nearly 350 million people” in 2010. And, as Jacques Enaudeau comments: “Since then the estimated number of middle class Africans has been arbitrarily set at 350 million, sometimes delivered as the more dramatic sound bite ‘one in three Africans.’ The African Development Bank goes on to explain that, given their higher revenues from salaried jobs or small business ownership, and the ensuing economic security, ‘Africa’s emerging consumers are likely to assume the traditional role of the U.S. and European middle classes as global consumers’.”

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Marketing is everything, well almost everything. There are two big problems with this growing celebration of African progress and the free trade process said to be responsible. The first problem concerns the African Development Bank’s definition of middle class. The Bank defines the middle class as those with a daily consumption of between $2 and $20 in 2005 PPP (purchasing power parity) dollars. At the lower end we are talking about a U.S. life style based on a yearly expenditure of $730! It takes quite a stretch of imagination to see that as a middle class life style. It turns out, according to Bank statistics, that 61 per cent of Africans still live below the $2 a day poverty line. Approximately 21 per cent more live just above that amount, between $2 and $4 a day. The Bank, while including them in the middle class, also calls them a “floating class.” If we are being honest we would have to acknowledge that after decades of growth, more than 80 per cent of Africa’s population still struggles with poverty. Moreover, as Enaudeau also points out: “Also sobering is the geographical dispersion of the African Development Bank’s middle class: most of the African upper middle class (spending $10-$20 per day) lives in North Africa, which does not bode well with all the talk of frontier markets stimulated by a new white collar generation south of the Sahara.”

The second problem concerns the forces driving Africa’s recent growth. Africa remains highly dependent on the export of primary commodities. China’s massive drive to export manufacturers has turned the country into a major consumer of primary commodities, pushing up their prices and serving as Africa’s main source of growth. As the Asian Development Bank explains:

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“Developing Asia became a major commodity-consuming region during the last decade, turning the region into a net commodity importer. Its relative importance has increased even more since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis started, as the economies of the major industrial countries slowed significantly. . . . “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] is Asia’s largest commodity consumer by far. It even overtook the U.S. in the consumption of major metals and agricultural commodities in the late 2000s, making it the world’s largest consumer of many commodities. The PRC consumed in 2011 about 20 per cent of nonrenewable energy resources, 23 per cent of major agricultural crops, and 40 per cent of base metals.” “The PRC’s share of consumption of agricultural products, such as oilseed soybeans, doubled over the past decade, driven by a change in diet to foods richer in oil.”

Unfortunately, growth based on the export of primary commodities tends to create few jobs. Take Nigeria as an example. As Jumoke explains:

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“While the last decade was marked by higher economic growth, the unemployment rate actually increased from 5.8 per cent in December 2006 to 23.9 per cent in January 2012. Note that this number measures the percentage of workers actively looking for work, and does not include the rate of the chronically unemployed who have stopped looking, and the underemployed working poor. Tellingly, the poverty rate actually doubled over the last five years and now affects 112 million Nigerians, meaning that 112 million Nigerians are consistently without food, clean water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education.”

If economists are looking to Africa and the third world to lead the way growth-wise, we are all going to be disappointed. In fact, with Africa firmly integrated into the international financial order of labor and mineral exploitation at the expense of the much-need improvements in the salaries and living conditions of the majority of people, there is almost no potential within the existing political arrangements for substantial advancements in the socioeconomic status of the workers, farmers and youth. The rising expectations of working people related to the FDI-led policy orientations will undoubtedly prompt social unrest through strikes, mass demonstrations and other forms of resistance. If the notions of phenomenal growth within the neo-colonial African states cannot produce hope for the people then the much coveted political stability will remain unrealized. Considering the tremendous reservoir of oil, natural gas and strategic minerals in Africa, there is no reason for the continent to remain trapped in the 375

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cycle of economic dependency on the imperialist states. Resources which belong to Africa must be effectively utilized for the betterment of the people. This much-needed shift in economic and political policy formulation and implementation must take place within a continental socialist framework. If there is no serious effort to foster and mandate the equitable distribution of wealth and power, then the AU member-states will surely fail in their mission to accelerate the living standards on the continent. Hence, the reported discussions about an African Monetary Zone and military Stand by-force cannot be implemented until the extraction, trade and distribution of resources of the continent can serve to benefit the stillimpoverished masses. As long as African leaders look to the West for direction and fair treatment the existing class divisions will accelerate precipitously and the unity of the continent remains a far distant objective.

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Neoliberal Globalization and provision of better returns on investments In 2003-2004, the prices of raw materials and agricultural products began to rise |5|. This situation enabled the developing countries exporting such products to increase their revenues, especially in strong currencies (dollar, euro, yen, and pound). For raw materials, the price of a barrel of oil dropped significantly from May to November 2014. On 9 November 2014, the price of a barrel of oil was $105 on 1 May, 2014 and reached its lowest level in 13 years on 7 November 2014 ($83 dollars). As for interest rates, since June 2014 the US Federal Reserve has been suggesting they will soon increase. Although the Fed’s key rate is very low today (0.25%), the situation must be monitored closely. To that effect, see point 17 about what happened in 2013 when the economies of certain emerging countries were strongly shaken up. It should be noted that the terms used to designate the countries targeted for World Bank development loans have changed throughout the years. At first, they were known as ‘backward regions’, then ‘under-developed countries’, and finally, ‘developing countries’, some of which are now called ‘emerging countries’. Nonetheless, it is important to recall the ideological and Westerncentric connotations of this terminology. Indeed, essentially it takes into account only the economic dimension of development, and implies that there is only one model of development (the Western industrial and ‘extractivist’ capitalist model), and that certain countries are ‘behind’ and must catch up with other countries who are ‘further ahead’. The Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) vehemently rejects this vision of the world. Likewise, when we make use of the terms such as ‘Southern countries’ and

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‘Northern countries’, we are conscious that they are incorrect from a strictly geographic point of view. Certain developing countries used the additional revenues to increase social spending, while most of them accumulated foreign exchange reserves | or purchased US Treasury Bonds—thus contributing to financing the leading world power. In other words, they increased their loans to the world’s principal economic power, thus contributing to maintaining its domination by providing it with the means to continue living on credit and maintaining a large trade deficit. An explanation for this is that the US borrows large amounts from countries that are prepared to purchase its debt instruments (US Treasury Bonds), as indicated by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 84th Annual Report 2014, Basel, June 2014, p. 102, table V.1. Annual changes in foreign exchange reserves.

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Overview of the evolution of public/private debt Debt is one of the core concerns in Northern countries, where it is considered to be the consequence of the crisis that erupted in 2007-2008. Private and public debt have skyrocketed in an extremely dangerous way since the beginning of the 2000s. First, there was an enormous increase in private debt (of financial corporations (banks in particular), non-financial corporations, and households), principally in the most industrialized countries. Then public debt literally exploded because of how the crisis was managed in the interest of Big Capital. In the most developed countries, public debt has increased by about 40% since 2007. Meanwhile, the debt of non-financial corporations has risen 30% throughout the world. Household debt has decreased (in response to attacks on buying power, jobs, and general living conditions, those ‘at the bottom’ have paid off their debts). The debts of financial corporations (major private banks in particular) remain the highest (they are much great than public debt), because their books have not really been cleaned up contrary to the reassuring speeches delivered by government leaders. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which is a forum for the principal central banks on the planet, launched an alert in its Annual Report published in June 2014 by speaking of the ‘debt trap’! Obviously, we are not astonished to learn that the BIS recommends we should continue pursuing neoliberal policies|, whereas in reality we must make a radical break with them. The evolution of the external public debt of developing countries from 1980 to 2012 (in billions of dollars).

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Source: Bank of International Settlements (BIS), June 2014

Some poor African countries issue and sell external debt bonds on international markets. Rwanda and Senegal, two poor and heavily indebted countries, have sold public debt bonds on the financial markets of the North. This has never been seen before in the last 30 years. The Ivory Coast, having emerged from a situation of civil war just a few years ago, has also issued bonds although it is also one of the poor and heavily indebted countries. Kenya and Zambia have also issued debt bonds. This testifies to a highly peculiar international situation: the financial investors of the North hold huge cash assets, and faced with very low interest rates in their region, are on the lookout for higher yields. Senegal, Zambia, and Rwanda promise a yield of 6 to 8% on their bonds. They therefore attract financial companies, which seek to place their cash on a provisional basis even if the risks are high. The governments of these poor countries become euphoric and try to make their people believe that happiness is just around the corner although the situation may take a dramatic turn. These leaders are accumulating debt in a completely irresponsible way, and when the economic situation deteriorates, it will be their people who will have 378

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to foot the bill. Furthermore, the bonds they issue are linked to contracts including clauses that could be real time bombs. We must require public authorities to make the contents of these contracts accessible to the public. The Fed destabilizes emerging market economies When the US Federal Reserve System (the Fed) hinted in May 2013 that it would gradually normalize its policy, there was an immediate negative impact on the ‘emerging’ economies. What changes were proposed?

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1. Reducing purchases of toxic assets |33| from the US banks, made to relieve them of this burden. 2. Reducing the acquisitions of US Treasury Securities from these banks, which the Fed does in order to give them cash injections. By October 2014, the Fed was holding US Treasury Securities worth $2.45 trillion. Please note, contrary to popular belief, the Fed does not buy Treasury Securities directly from the Treasury, it buys them through open market operations from private banks which had acquired them previously. See the US laws on this matter: http: //www.federalreserve.gov/about… 3. Raising interest rates (0.25% today). This announcement itself was enough to lead major financial companies in the US and other countries (banks and their satellites in the shadow banking system, mutual funds, etc.) to pack-off some of their liquid investments from the emerging market economies (EMEs). This destabilized those economies: plunge in stock markets and currency depreciation (Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, India, South Africa …). The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) describes this situation as follows: – ‘The first episode was abrupt and generalized in nature, with sharp asset price movements ending a period of fairly stable interest and exchange rates. As the sell-off spilled over from advanced economies, EMEs experienced a sharp reversal of portfolio flows, especially in June 2013. . . EME equities fell by 16% before stabilizing in July, and sovereign bond yields jumped more than 100 basis points, driven by rising concerns over sovereign risk… At first, the indiscriminate retrenchment from EMEs affected many currencies simultaneously, leading to correlated depreciations amid high volatility. The currencies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey depreciated by more than 10% against the US dollar during the first episode…. Brazil, India, Indonesia and Russia each lost more than $10 billion in reserves. Countries with rapid credit growth, high inflation or large current account

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deficits were seen as more vulnerable and experienced sharper depreciations.’ (BIS, 84th Annual Report, 2014, pp. 27-28). http: //www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar201… In fact, the low interest rates prevailing in the US and Europe, combined with the central banks’ massive cash injections in the economy, have always set financial companies on the trail of maximum profit by investing in the EMEs, which offer better returns than the North. The outflow of financial investment from the EMEs towards the most industrialized economies can be explained by the fact that the financial companies expected attractive returns in the North as soon as the Fed hiked interest rates |36|. These companies thought that other ‘investors’ would withdraw their capital from these countries and it was better to act first. A herd mentality response resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Finally, the Fed did not raise interest rates and waited till the end of 2013 to reduce purchases of structured securities and treasury bills from banks. The dust has almost settled. The situation in June 2013 gives some idea of what might happen if the Fed increases interest rates significantly. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central banks’ central bank, says ‘Capital flows could reverse quickly when interest rates in the advanced economies eventually go up or when perceived domestic conditions in the host economies deteriorate. In May and June 2013, the mere possibility that the Federal Reserve would begin tapering itsasset purchases led to rapid outflows from funds investing in EME securities’ (BIS, 84th Annual Report, 2014, p. 76, http: //www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar201…) The BIS brings to light a worrying trend: financial companies that invest part of their assets in EMEs do so in the short term. They can swiftly withdraw their funds if they discover other profitable avenues. The BIS says, ‘A higher proportion of investors with short-term horizons in EME debt could amplify shocks when global conditions deteriorate. Highly volatile fund flows to EMEs indicate that some investors view their investments in these markets as shortterm positions rather than long-term holdings. This is in line with the gradual shift from traditional open or close-end funds to exchange- traded funds (ETFs), which now account for around a fifth of all net assets of dedicated EME bond and equity funds, up from around 2% 10 years ago… ETFs can be bought and sold on exchanges at a low cost, at least in normal times, and have been used by investors to convert illiquid securities into liquid instruments.’ (BIS, 84th Annual Report, 2014, p. 77, http: //www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar201…). In short, the wellbeing of the EMEs depends a great deal on the policy followed by the most industrialized economies (especially the US, Europe, and 380

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Japan). A hike in interest rates in the US may result in a significant outflow of volatile capital invested in EMEs with higher returns in mind. ‘In addition, roughly 10% of the debt securities maturing from 2020 or later are callable, and an unknown proportion have covenants that allow investors to demand accelerated repayment if the borrower’s conditions deteriorate.’ (BIS, 84th Annual Report, 2014, p. 76. http: //www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar201…) This means that financial companies that purchased debt securities maturing in a relatively distant future (2020 or later) can demand accelerated and full repayment from a crisis-hit country. Obviously, this can only aggravate the situation of an indebted country: all inflows will stop simultaneously. This is another reason why the populations of developing nations need to be aware of the serious dangers posed by their country’s public debt. Payment of the illegitimate portion of the debt must be challenged immediately. The decline in revenues from raw material exports is another factor that might lead to a fresh and acute debt crisis in developing countries, since China – a major consumer of raw materials for its manufacturing industry – has reduced its huge imports. A drop in the price of raw materials can be fatal to the economic health of developing countries, which depend mainly on exports. In this respect, raw materials prices might also drop if the Fed increases interest rates, as this reduces speculation responsible for high prices. The combined effect of a hike in interest rates and a decline in raw material prices could produce a situation similar to what happened in the early 1980s, when the debt crisis exploded in developing countries. It is imperative to learn from that crisis and to act, so that the Southern people do not have to foot the bill again. Public debt has become the target of the speculative strategies of ‘litigating creditors, known as ‘vulture funds’. These are private investment funds, most of them located in tax havens, which specialize in buying up debt securities from States that are in default or on the verge of default. They then sue these States in the courts of English-speaking countries, demanding that they reimburse their debt at its nominal value, with the addition of interest, penalties for late payment, and court costs. Unlike traditional creditors, they refuse to participate in any negotiation and restructuring operation, preferring judicial solutions, and in case of non-payment, seizure of debtors’ assets (diplomatic properties, revenues from exports, and various assets invested abroad). Since the 2000s, some twenty States that are among the most heavily indebted on the planet have fallen prey to these strategies, in South America (Argentina, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Peru) and Africa (Sierra Leone, the Republic of the Congo, and Uganda), during major judicial-financial battles that are still in progress today. Since 2007, the phenomenon has been directed against countries in Southern Europe (Greece, Spain, and Portugal). In the future, vulture strategies are likely 381

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to prosper in the South and North. Newly issued debts continue to be placed under American or British law, which is favorable to creditors, and certain countries are again contracting debt on the international capital markets and show a preference for indebtedness to China, which will encourage future debt repurchases on secondary markets. Argentina was in the spotlight in 2014, when the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the Argentine government, and ruled in favor of the vulture funds NML and Aurelius, forcing Argentina to pay them $1.33 billion. Argentina adopted a law on 10 September 2014 aimed at providing it with a mechanism to defend itself against vulture funds. The CADTM would like to point out, however, that the best defense against them consists in refusing to recognize the competence of foreign courts in settling claims with creditors and inserting a clause in contracts stipulating that the local courts have jurisdiction. In recent years, movements have developed to work towards conducting a citizen audit to identify illegitimate, odious, and illegal debts. These movements in several countries like In recent years, movements have developed to work towards conducting a citizen audit to identify illegitimate, odious, and illegal debts. These movements in several countries like Brazil, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, and others provide an opportunity for interesting and enriching reflection to clarify which parts of public debt should not be paid. With no claim to being exhaustive, we can propose the following definitions: a) Illegitimate public debt: debt contracted by government authorities with no concern for the general interest or in such a way as to be detrimental to it. b) Illegal public debt: debt contracted by the government authorities in flagrant violation of the prevailing legal order. c) Odious public debt: credits extended to authoritarian regimes or which impose conditions for reimbursement that violate fundamental social rights. d) Unsustainable public debt: debt whose reimbursement condemns the people of a country to impoverishment and deterioration of health and public education, increased unemployment, or problems of malnutrition. In other words, debt whose reimbursement makes it impossible for government authorities to guarantee fundamental human rights. A citizen audit of public debt, combined in certain cases with unilateral sovereign suspension of its payment, can enable the illegitimate, unsustainable, and/or illegal part of the debt to be abolished/repudiated and the remaining part to be greatly reduced. It is also a way of discouraging this type of indebtedness in the future. The ‘debt system’ as a whole exploits public resources to pay creditors, to the detriment of people’s needs and fundamental rights. The relationship 382

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between creditors and debtors is therefore terribly unbalanced in favor of the former. One aspect common to the Latin American external debt crisis that erupted in 1982 and the euro crisis since 2010 is that in both cases the first reaction was to deny the evidence and do nothing. Subsequently, the measures taken are set up in favor of the creditors’ interests. In order to try to inverse the public deficit trend and thus be able to pay off the debt, adjustment or austerity policies are applied, whatever the price to be paid by the people, who are victims of the crisis? The creditors, supported by local elites, demand that the debt be reimbursed and that the adjustments be made to prioritize this repayment instead of all social needs, thus negatively affecting people’s most basic rights. The measures put in place also prove to be counter-productive, because they only make the problem worse. Excessive indebtedness becomes a structural problem. The ‘debt system’ aggravates inequalities. Debt enables a privileged minority to monopolize a series of financial revenues that enable it to increase its wealth permanently. By consequence, the State loses resources necessary to satisfy people’s fundamental needs. The richest minority accumulates wealth, inequalities grow, and the increased power of the few enables them to exert greater pressure on public authorities with regard to policies. The rise in debt, and its concentration in a few hands, leads to a redistribution of income in favor of the richest members of society, which in turn is both the cause and consequence of heavier exploitation of labor and natural resources. In response, the CADTM, together with other organizations, argues that it is essential to audit public debt under citizen control in order to clarify its origins and determine which part should be considered illegitimate and/or illegal and therefore cancelled. However, the CADTM is denouncing the entire debt system. It is the same mechanisms of domination and exploitation that govern public debts and illegitimate private debts, respectively subjugating people as collective subjects and as lower social class individuals (indebted small-scale farmers, families expelled from their homes by banks, women trapped by the micro-credit system in Southern countries, over-indebted students, etc.) Of course, cancelling all illegitimate debts needs to be backed by other measures. For example, the socialization of the banking and insurance sector to transform it into a public service, a radical reform of the tax system in favor of the overwhelming majority of the population, the expropriation of the energy sector and transformation into a public service, a radical reduction of working hours combined with job creation and increases in salary and social benefits, the improvement and extension of public services, the improvement of redistributive retirement pension systems, effective equality between men and 383

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women, and radical political reforms including changed constitutional processes. The aim is for these measures to be part of a vast plan for social, ecological, and political transition in order to get out of the devastating capitalist system. The struggle against the ‘debt system’ as a whole, more necessary than ever in both southern and northern countries, is part of the much broader-based struggle for a world freed from all forms of impoverishment, oppression and exploitation. Neoliberal Globalization and growth-driven innovation in technology In a recent report issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) entitled “Catalyzing Investments for Transformative Growth in Africa,” it reveals that the rate of FDI in Africa is significantly lower than what exists in other so-called developing regions. These figures indicate that the reliance on western capital to fuel growth and development absent of a program for national reconstruction, will not work. According to Ghana Web “Africa’s investment rate is low compared to the average for developing countries and relative to what is considered necessary to achieve development goals, the 2014 Economic Development in Africa report has established.” Therefore based on an annual average,

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“the investment rate for Africa was about 18 per cent over the period 1990– 1999 as compared to an average of 24 per cent for developing economies as a whole. The report said similarly, in the period 2000–2011, the average investment rate for Africa was about 19 per cent as compared to 26 per cent for developing economies generally.”

These statistics could represent a lag in overcoming the development challenges which have been imposed by colonialism and neo-colonialism. Nonetheless, the consistently expanding oil and natural gas industry in various regions of Africa should translate into higher levels of investment as well as growth rates being discussed in the financial media. Other factors may also include unresolved and burgeoning civil conflicts and inter-state border disputes. The Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast of Nigeria has led to the intervention of United States intelligence and military interests. Since late 2010, the North African nations of Tunisia and Egypt have not stabilized economically since the uprisings in those states. The Horn of Africa country of Somalia and the eastern regional state of Kenya are both embroiled and inter-connected in a counter-insurgency campaign with the high level interventions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Pentagon and the 384

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European Union (EU). All of these factors influence whether or not Africa will achieve genuine development or merely economic growth that does not fundamentally alter the international division of economic power and labor. If Africa cannot effectively stabilize its own internal situation then no one can honestly say that actual progress is being made which is sustainable. Events in several African states clearly make the case for re-examining the notion of Western investment-led growth. From Southern Africa to the West African state of Ghana and the North African country of Egypt, socioeconomic problems are escalating requiring a new approach to the organization of society and its economic structures. The reason is that the political ideology of neoliberalism is widely recognized as having influenced the organization of national and global economies and public policies since the 1970s. It is therefore important to examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science in Africa. To do so, we should develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the sociology of social movements, and economic and organizational sociology that draws attention to patterns of increasing and uneven industrial influence amid several countervailing processes. Specifically, we should explore three fundamental changes since the 1970s in Africa: the advent of the knowledge economy and the increasing interchange between academic and industrial research and development signified by academic capitalism and asymmetric convergence; the increasing prominence of science-based regulation of technology in global trade liberalization, marked by the heightened role of international organizations and the convergence of scientism and neoliberalism; and the epistemic modernization of the relationship between scientists and publics, represented by the proliferation of new institutions of deliberation, participation, activism, enterprise, and social movement mobilization. Africa, in particular, has become the new toast of investors. A 2011 African Development Bank Report celebrating the rise of the African middle class offers the following reason: “Strong economic growth in Africa over the past two decades has been accompanied by the emergence of a sizeable middle class and a significant reduction in poverty. Also rising strongly has been a robust growth in consumption expenditures as a result of this growing middle class.” Unfortunately, growth based on the export of primary commodities tends to create few jobs. Take Nigeria as an example. As Jumoke explains: “While the last decade was marked by higher economic growth, the unemployment rate actually increased from 5.8 per cent in December 2006 to 23.9 per cent in January 2012. Note that this number measures the percentage of workers actively looking for work, and does not include the rate of the chronically 385

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unemployed who have stopped looking, and the underemployed working poor. Tellingly, the poverty rate actually doubled over the last five years and now affects 112 million Nigerians, meaning that 112 million Nigerians are consistently without food, clean water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education.”

Moreover, the steady decline in U.S. growth has meant a decline in Chinese exports to the United States and a fall in key commodity prices (see chart). Thus, Africa’s boom, such as it was, appears nearing the end. Relying on market forces is not going to do it for Africa, or for that matter Latin America, whose growth was also fueled by primary commodity exports to Asia and is now declining, quickly undermining the economic gains of the past decade. As the Wall Street Journal reports: “A decade long commodity boom in Latin America that lifted millions out of poverty is showing signs of fatigue, as fading demand in China hits consumers and corporate earnings from Bogotá to Brasilia.” If economists are looking to the third world, Africa in particular, to lead the way growth-wise, we are all going to be disappointed. Despite recent crises, Africa’s reputation as an economically vibrant continent remains strong. Yet while broader economic and financial indicators improve, Africa is still lagging behind other countries in the global knowledge economy, defined as an economic environment ‘where knowledge-intensive 386

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activities contribute to an accelerated pace of technical and scientific advancement’. In general, the Global South is being drained of resources by the rest of the world and it is losing far more each year than it gains. In particular, Africa alone loses $192 billion each year to the rest of the world. This is mainly in profits made by foreign companies, tax dodging and the costs of adapting to climate change. Whilst rich countries often talk about the aid their countries give to Africa, this is in fact less than $30 billion each year. Even when you add this to foreign investment, remittances and other resources that flow into the continent, Africa still suffers an overall loss of $58 billion every year. The idea that we are aiding Africa is flawed; it is Africa that is aiding the rest of the world. Why? One may ask! Development aid to Africa serves as a mere smokescreen to cover up illicit financial flows, unfair trade policies and costs of adapting to climate change that drain the continent of its resources. The report “Honest Accounts? The true story of Africa’s billion dollar losses”, published by Health Poverty Action and co-authored by a range of other civil society organizations, contrasts both inflows to and outflows from Africa and comes to an enlightening result. The continent records an annual net loss of US$ 58.2 billion mostly flowing into the pockets of Western governments or transnational corporations, according to the report.

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Globalization, Democracy and Human Rights in Africa Today I do not know any responsible person who would admit to being opposed to democracy and human rights. For one thing, it is a testament to the almost Darwinian hardiness of the word “democracy.” In the fierce struggle among ideas for survival, “democracy” and human rights have not only survived but thrived. This is despite the fact that political thinkers from Plato and Aristotle through Cicero and down to modern times have been deeply suspicious of democracy. Aristotle thought democracy the worst form of government, all but inevitably leading to ochlocracy or mob rule, which is no rule. Nearly everyone wants to associate himself with the word “democracy.” Totalitarian regimes like to describe themselves as the “Democratic Republic” of wherever. Conservatives champion the advantages of “democratic capitalism.” Central planners of all stripes eagerly deploy programs advertised as enhancing or extending “democracy.” Even James Madison came down on the side of a subspecies of democracy, one filtered through the modulating influence of a large, diverse population and an elaborate scheme of representation that softened the influence of “the people in their collective capacity.” 387

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“Democracy,” in short, is a eulogistic word, what the practical philosopher Stephen Potter in another context apostrophized as an “OK word.” And it is worth noting, as Potter would have been quick to remind us, that the people pronouncing those eulogies delight in advertising themselves as, and are generally accepted as, “OK people.” Indeed, the class element and the element of moral approbation—of what some genius has summarized as “virtue signaling”—are key.

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Does Corporate Capitalism Destroy Democracy and Human Rights in Africa Today? Democracy does not come from the top. It comes from the bottom. Theoretically, the definition of “republic” is rule (or government) by elected representatives—not quite the same thing as “government by the people.” But certainly even an imperfect democracy is better than rule over the people by a government that decides it knows what is best for them. Many African rightwingers today claim this is the goal of socialism. Such a claim is intended to please the West and get aid for squandering. Yet one of the tragedies of the twenty-first century is that so many selfproclaimed partisans of socialism plugged themselves into that lie, leaving “rule by the people” out of the socialist equation. They defined socialism as government ownership and control of the economy, and government planning for the benefit of the people, who someday (but not yet!) would be permitted to have a decisive say in the decisions affecting their lives. At the center of both old and new economic liberalism lies “self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and economic affairs, in other words: a process of ‘de-bedding’ economy from society; economic rationality as a mere costbenefit calculation and profit maximization; competition as the essential driving force for growth and progress; specialization and the replacement of a subsistence economy with profit-oriented foreign trade (‘comparative cost advantage’); and the proscription of public (state) interference with market forces” (Mies 2005, p. 34). Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in its global claim. Today’s economic liberalism or corporate capitalism functions as a model for each and every one, all parts of the economy, all sectors of society, yes, of life/nature itself. As a consequence, the once “de-bedded” economy now claims to “im-bed” everything, including political power, not democracy or rule by the people. Furthermore, a new, twisted “economic ethics” (and with it a certain idea of “human nature”) emerges that mocks everything from so-called “do-

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gooders” to altruism to selfless help to care for others to a notion of responsibility (Gruen 1997). This goes as far as claiming that the common good depends entirely on the uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially, on the prosperity of transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary “freedom” of the economy – which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of corporations – hence consists of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society. In turn, the rational cost-benefit calculation aiming at maximized profit not only serves as a model for corporate production and the associated service industry and trade, but also for the public sector that has so far been exempted from such demands (in fact, it has historically been defined by this exemption). The same goes for the sector of reproduction, especially the household. The maximization of profit itself must occur within the shortest possible time; this means, preferably, through speculation and “shareholder value”. It must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global economic interests outweigh not only extra-economic concerns but also national economic considerations since corporations today see themselves beyond both community and nation (Sassen 2000). A “level playing field” is created that offers the global players the best possible conditions. This playing field knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national “barriers” (Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 24). As a result, economic competition plays out on a market that is free of all non-market, extra-economic or “protectionist” influences – unless they serve the interests of the “big players” (the corporations), of course. The corporations’ interests – their maximal “growth” and “progress” – take on complete priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their well-being means the well-being of small enterprises and workshops as well. The difference between the new and the old economic liberalism can first be articulated in quantitative terms: After capitalism went through a series of ruptures and challenges – caused by the “competition of systems”, the crisis of capitalism, post-war “Keynesianism” with its social and welfare state tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called “Fordism”), and the objective of full employment in the North – the liberal economic goals of the past are now not only euphorically resurrected but they are also “globalized”. The main reason is indeed that the “competition of systems” is gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of “capitalism” and the “golden West” over “dark socialism” is only one possible interpretation. Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the “modern world system” (which contains both capitalism and socialism, Wallerstein 1979, 2004) as having hit a general crisis which causes total and merciless competition over global resources while leveling the way for “investment” opportunities, i.e. the valorization of capital. 389

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The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates which interpretation is right. Not least, because the differences between the old and the new economic liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative terms but in qualitative ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new phenomena: Instead of a democratic “complete competition” between many small enterprises enjoying the “freedom of the market”, only the big corporations win. In turn, they create new market oligopolies and monopolies of previously unknown dimensions. The market hence only remains free for them, while it is rendered “unfree” for all others who are condemned to an existence of dependency (as enforced producers, workers and consumers) or excluded from the market altogether (if they have neither anything to sell or buy). About 50% of the world’s population fall into this group today, and the percentage is rising (George 2001). Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the transnational corporations set the norms. It is the corporations – not “the market” as an anonymous mechanism or “invisible hand” – that determine today’s rules of trade, for example prices and legal regulations. This happens outside any political control. Speculation with an average 20% profit margin (Altvater 2005) edges out honest producers who become “unprofitable”. Money becomes too precious for comparatively non-profitable, long-term projects, or projects that “only” – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead “travels upwards” and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more what the markets are and do (Altvater/Mahnkopf 1996). In fact, it has by now – through Nixon’s separation of the dollar from the gold standard in 1971 – “emancipated” from productive capital und forms its own “fiscal bubble” multiplying the money volume that is covered by the production of the many (Lietaer 2006, Kennedy 1990). Moreover, these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is financial capital that has all the money – we have none (Creutz 1995). The consequences of neoliberalism are: Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances are “below average” in comparison to speculation – rather: spookulation – wins. The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit economy and administration, is “slimmed” and its “profitable” parts (“gems”) handed to corporations (“privatized”). As a consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses – which, until recently, employed 80% of the workforce and provided “normal working conditions” – are affected by these developments as well. The alleged correlation between economic growth

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and secure employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses, jobs are lost (Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 7ff); If there are any new jobs, most are “precarious”, meaning that they are only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make a living (Ehrenreich 2001). This means that the working conditions in the North become akin to those in the South and the working conditions of men akin to those of women – a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor without “union affiliation”. This has already been happening since the 1970s in the “Free Production Zones” (FPZs, “world market factories” or “maquiladoras”), where most of the world’s computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are produced (Fröbel/Heinrichs/Kreye 1977). The FPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of the cheap labor needed (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies/Werlhof 1988). The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is a particularly troubling development (Chossudovsky 2003). It is not only commodity production that is “outsourced” and located in the FPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called “Third Industrial Revolution”, meaning the development of new information and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to computerization, also in administrative fields (Fröbel et al. 1977). The combination of the principles of “high tech” and “low wage”/”no wage” (always denied by “progress” enthusiasts) guarantees a “comparative cost advantage” in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to “Chinese salaries” in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian. The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset value ever more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through the “clearance” of public property and the transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded from the logics of profit – e.g. education, health, energy, or water supply/disposal. New forms of so-called “enclosures” emerge from today’s total commercialization of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the “commons”, and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc. (Isla 2005). As far as the new virtual spaces and communication

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networks go, we are witnessing frantic efforts to bring these under private control as well (Hepburn 2005). All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a modified continuation of the history of so-called “original accumulation” (Werlhof 1991, 2003a) which has expanded globally following to the motto: “Growth through expropriation!” Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the South. We are witnessing the latest form of “development”: namely, a world system of underdevelopment (Frank, 1969). Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand (Mies 2005). This might even dawn on “development aid” workers soon. It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al., 1988). Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work (Werlhof, 2004). Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution (Isla 2003, 2005), one of today’s biggest global industries. This illustrates two things: a) how little the “emancipation” of women actually leads to “equal terms” with men; and b) that “capitalist development” does not imply increased “freedom” in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time (Wallerstein 1979). If the latter was the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely. Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist in the “world system” (Bales, 2001). The authoritarian model of the “Free Production Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – 392

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from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing.

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Neoliberal Politics in Action The logic of neoliberalism does not remain in the economic sphere alone. Instead, it enters and transforms politics and hence – since the events in Chile in 1973 – creates global injustice. The injustice’s executors are Western governments, corporate entities (like the International Chamber of Commerce, ICC, the European Round Table of Industrialists, ERT, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, the European Services Network, ESN, the US Coalition of Service Industries, USCSI, etc.), and the post-WW-II Bretton-Woods institutions like the World Bank (WB) the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO – the continuation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, abolished in 1994) (Perkins 2004). The theory of capitalism embodying a “natural law” receives massive support in the neoliberal era. This helps not only to globalize capitalism’s power, but also to accelerate the globalization of neoliberalism. “Speed kills” is the obscene slogan used to describe this development by many Western politicians. This confirms that they are aware of what is going on and of what they are doing. The slogan hints at the fact that once neoliberal “reforms” (which actually “deform”) gain a certain momentum, it becomes impossible for the people affected to keep up with what is happening – the reforms are decided above their heads and implemented behind their backs. Once the consequences kick in – which usually happens with a short delay – those responsible are long gone and/or there is no legal way to “rectify” anything (Werlhof, 2005a). Due to such foul play, protest and resistance are always late. Once they arise, everything has already become irrevocable reality – it appears as if a “natural” catastrophe has taken place. It is the same politicians who tell us that there is no stopping globalization and that their “reform politics” are the solution and not the problem, and who have, in fact, introduced and enforced the global neoliberalism they describe as an inescapable part of history. They have done this within nation state policies as well as through participation in the bodies of the EU and the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. Of course we have never heard any proper explanation as to why they have done this (and, in fact, continue to do so). This goes seemingly for all political parties – without exception (?) – that retain some kind of power or nestle in its proximity (Dimmel/Schmee 2005). Some of them even appear to have forgotten that just a short while ago they still knew 393

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alternatives and held opposite views. What has happened to them? Were they bought? Threatened? Extorted? “Brainwashed”? One thing is clear: “The politicians do not suffer from the misery they create and justify every day. They act as employees of corporations and take care of the everyday political business the corporations cannot or do not want to take care of themselves. But again, let us take one step at a time…” Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs, SAPs, of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements (which are cynically labeled as “IMF uprisings”), and facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction (Chossudovsky 2002, Mies 2005, BennholdtThomsen/Faraclas/Werlhof, 2001). The reason is that: “Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights” (Einstein, 1949).

Hence, it is an orientation that still makes sense for us today. Let’s see how Lenin mapped that out prophetically in a 1915 polemic: “The proletariat cannot be victorious except through democracy, i.e., by giving full effect to democracy and by linking with each step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the most resolute terms. . . . We must combine the revolutionary struggle against capitalism with a revolutionary program and tactics on all democratic demands: a republic, a militia, the popular election of officials,

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equal rights for women, the self-determination of nations, etc. While capitalism exists, these demands—all of them—can only be accomplished as an exception, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. Basing ourselves on the democracy already achieved, and exposing its incompleteness under capitalism, we demand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as a necessary basis both for the abolition of the poverty of the masses and for the complete and all-round institution of all democratic reforms. Some of these reforms will be started before the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, others in the course of that overthrow, and still others after it. The social revolution is not a single battle, but a period covering a series of battles over all sorts of problems of economic and democratic reform, which are consummated only by the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It is for the sake of this final aim that we must formulate every one of our democratic demands in a consistently revolutionary way. It is quite conceivable that the workers of some particular country will overthrow the bourgeoisie before even a single fundamental democratic reform has been fully achieved. It is, however, quite inconceivable that the proletariat, as a historical class, will be able to defeat the bourgeoisie, unless it is prepared for that by being educated in the spirit of the most consistent and resolutely revolutionary democracy” (Lenin, 2006: 233-234).

This uncompromising struggle for the most thoroughgoing and genuine democracy and human rights is one of the glories of the genuine Leninist tradition. It is something that can resonate with the needs, the aspirations, and the present-day consciousness of millions of African people—and at the same time it leads in a revolutionary socialist direction.

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Conclusion The “globalization project” is deeply intertwined with the rise of neoliberal thought, and their dual ascendency has had a dramatic effect on livelihoods throughout the Global South. While much contemporary critical writing focuses on the implications of these intertwined forces for urban populations– contributing directly to the creation of what Mike Davis (2006) has called the “Planet of Slums”–globalization has been equally devastating to rural populations pushed off their lands in order to make way for extractive industries, export-oriented cash crops and/or national development plans as demonstrated by land-grabs in Africa. In other words, international factors affecting governments, states and politics in Africa today have exogenous components which can be regarded as playing a significant role (positively and negatively) in the unfolding of socio-economic and political developments on 395

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the continent. That is, the political and economic relationship between postcolonial Africa and the West have the same underpinnings and meet the same objective like the relationship of the colonial period. This relationship was based on absolute control over Africa and its human and material resources and the nourishment of Western industries and economies with Africa’s produce and markets. The exploitative and asymmetric character of this relationship has far reaching effects which weighs down the development on the continent negatively. The consequential adverse impacts of Western Old Colonial age of Empire are international factors and actors impacting Africa’s political, economic and socio-cultural developments negatively. Centuries of slavery, racism, colonialism and apartheid have left a legacy of institutional racism, whereby dark skins are often instinctively prejudiced in societies across the globe (Macpherson, 1999). Racism is also endemic in global relations between nations: nations seen as ‘white’ are invariably higher in the pecking order than black ones. ‘White privilege’ also means growing up with the implacable assumption that one’s view of the world, social understanding and ways of looking is the ‘normal’ – which is also replicated in companies, international culture – whether in films or thought, quality universities and global media. Those of color have to adapt to ‘whiteness’, or play by ‘whiteness’ rules. Racism has infused the DNA of almost every institution in society and racist practices have often become so part and parcel of habits and routine, and social and professional interaction that it is often not even recognized as such. Racism has a terrifying impact on individuals. The US-based Institute for Peace Justice described some aspects of racism as a “rejection or neglect as well as attack — a denial of needs, a reduction of persons to the status of objects to be broken, manipulated, or ignored. The violence of bombs can cripple bodies; the violence of miseducation can cripple minds. The violence of unemployment can murder self-esteem and hope. The violence of a chronic insecurity can disfigure personalities as well as persons.” Institutionalized racism and apartheid have left Africans and African Americans, with massive ‘existential insecurity’. Their cultures were under attack, they were physically dislocated, they were deprived materially, and they were deprived from equitable access to public goods such as education and healthcare. Chronic insecurity caused by humiliation scars the individuals. Slavery, colonialism and apartheid have caused ‘dislocation’ of “familiar and trusted social benchmarks”– whether cultural, individual or social. This leaves a void within many individuals. The challenge for both the US and SA is how to help broken individuals fill that void.

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Frantz Fanon (1967) points out how institutional racism scars the black “psyche”: causing inferiority complexes, low self-esteem, aggression, anxiety, depression, and often “a defensive romanticization of indigenous culture”, whether emphasizing fundamentalist Zulu-ness or Africanness, or nostalgic African communal development ideologies. In our globalized world individual self-esteem, identity and value are increasingly measured in how much an individual in terms of material possessions. Since a big part of the legacy of institutional racism is that blacks are invariably mostly poorer off, this stereotype reinforces ‘existential insecurity’, among the poor blacks, be it in Africa or elsewhere. In sum, the ultimate paradox of neoliberal globalization is that it works best when it is not pushed too far. This paradox must be reflected in new global economic arrangements that are based on democratic deliberation where it really occurs – within national states. Let me begin by framing my argument with three key ideas. One is the idea that markets need to be coterminous with institutions of governance and regulation that underlie them. This is a corollary to Adam Smith’s notion that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. My corollary is the idea that the extent of the market is, in turn, limited by the scope of workable, and I emphasize workable, regulation and governance. A lesson that we keep learning is that markets are institutions that require the support of other non-market institutions. Any kind of long-distance market requires non-market institutions to create it. Markets are not self-creating, they’re not self-regulating, they’re not self-stabilizing, and they’re not, fundamentally, self-legitimizing. That is why well-functioning domestic markets always operate amidst an alphabet soup of regulatory institutions that deal with market failure, with informational asymmetries, and with incentive problems. The requisite rules are embedded in macroeconomic institutions – institutions of monetary and fiscal stabilization – and in broader governance, in political institutions that also provide safety nets, social protection, the welfare state, and ultimately, of course, in political democracy, in terms of ensuring that markets operate within a set of rules that operate through legitimate modes of public choice. So, the first key idea is that we run into problems when markets go beyond the limits of the governance institutions that we need to support them.

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Photo: Iva Zimova/Panos

The second idea is that the main locus of legitimate governance today remains the nation state. There is a lot of creative new thinking about mechanisms of governance that go beyond the nation state: various mechanisms of global governance, whether those are the traditional multilateral or international organizations, along the lines of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization (WTO), or the newer forms of ‘network’ governance around networks of regulators; or the various forms of crossborder, non-governmental organizations; or the Corporate Social Responsibility movement. However, even though all of these are very interesting, important, and innovative methods of transnational governance that are trying to deal with some of the consequences of the fact that markets go beyond national governments, these structures are weak, and they’re likely to remain weak. On their own, they’re unlikely to support anything but a relatively limited version of globalization because the focus of democratic deliberation still resides largely with the nation state. The third idea is that different nation states have different preferences over the shape that these institutions of governance ought to take. Because they differ in their historical trajectories, because of their cultural background, because of their levels of income and development, they have different preferences, and they have different needs. So, when we’re talking about the shape of a social protection mechanisms, or the shape that financial regulation ought to take, or the shape that labor-market institutions ought to take, or the form that consumer health and safety standards ought to take, there is going to be much 398

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variation across different parts of the world in terms of what is a locally desired form for these institutions. This diversity is natural. There is nothing in either theory or practice that suggests that capitalism, or a market-based system more generally, maps into a unique form of governance, into a unique set of regulations that ought to be globally harmonized, or that, necessarily, different countries will have similar preferences for the shape that these different regulatory institutions ought to take. A patchwork

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When you put these three ideas together, you end up with the conclusion that we have to contend with a world economy that is, and is likely to remain, a patchwork in terms of governance. We need to internalize the idea that the world economy is always going to be divided into different polities, and that jurisdictional boundaries will be there. This conclusion really puts a damper on how far we can go in terms of envisaging a truly global market, in terms of how far we can strive for what I call ‘hyper-globalization’, which refers to this ideal of a world economy where national borders don’t matter in the sense that they don’t impose any transaction costs on economic exchange. When we get the balance between the reach of the market, and the reach of the ‘workable’ regulation wrong, then we tend to run into one of two kinds of problems: 1. We run into problems of legitimacy when we try to push the global rules too far, and try to harmonize institutional arrangements beyond what domestic political considerations would allow. I think the best example of this is the difficulty in which the current world trade regime finds itself. In fact, the WTO is one of the least popular institutions in the world. To a large extent, the reason for this is that we have overreached in terms of rule-making in the world trade regime. 2. On the other hand, when we don’t have these rules, when the global governance regime remains weak, or when the rules are highly country specific, then we get into problems of inefficiency and instability, and that has been the curse of financial globalization. I think that our experience with financial crises and problems of contagion and financial volatility globally, reflect, in part, the fact that we have a world in which financial markets are increasingly global, while the regulatory arrangements and the stabilizing arrangements are still based within nation states. We don’t have anything like a global regulator, or a global lender of last resort, or global fiscal policies.

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The nation state Coming full circle, my argument is not just that we have to rein in our ambitions because of the continuing power of the nation state, but also that it’s not necessarily a bad thing if we recognize the centrality of nation states in the world economy. We’re more likely to contribute to a healthy global economy when we recognize the validity of the constraints than when we try to eviscerate them. Weakening domestic governance arrangements ultimately benefits no one. Whether or not you buy my argument about the inherent desirability of a world economy that’s divided across different national polities, we’re likely to move into a world where the balance of political forces is becoming significantly more centrifugal. This is, in part, because of the declining role of the United States in the global economy, and also because the European Union will likely remain highly preoccupied with its own financial crisis and its own unification process.

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Rising powers As for the rising powers, led of course by China, but also others like Brazil, India, Turkey, South Africa and Russia – even though they differ on a lot of different dimensions – there is one thing that is common to all of them, which is that all these rising powers tend to put a huge weight on the value of national sovereignty. So, these new powers are going to be standing for a world where in fact the nation state does matter, and there’s going to be much less willingness to transfer sovereignty to transnational or global governance mechanisms. The supply of global leadership is likely to be in short supply in any case. Now, this might be a very pessimistic prospect if you think that, in order to maintain a healthy world economy, we require a lot of global cooperation, a lot of global governance, and a lot of global rule-making. It might suggest that we’re looking toward a somewhat bleak future. But I don’t think that’s that right way to look at it, because to maintain a healthy global economy, you basically need to ensure that countries do whatever is good for themselves. They need to look out for their own interests, not those of the global economy. This is a point that is not very well understood. Semi-private goods We often think of the global economy using the analogy of a global commons – we think that the world economy is like a global ecosystem. This is 400

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the wrong way to think about trade and financial policies, in the sense that trade and finance policies are what we would call ‘semi-private goods’ from the perspective of each individual nation. When we economists teach the benefits of trade, and the virtue of comparative advantage, we teach it from the perspective that this is good for each country in and of itself. We don’t teach that trade is good because this is how you provide benefits for the rest of the world. We say instead that trade is good because it enables you to allocate your own resources more efficiently. This is very different from a true global commons, for example, in the area of climate change, where in a world where each nation is doing whatever is good just for themselves, we would collectively all go to hell because nobody would have any incentive to invest in climate control. Trade and financial policies aren’t like that, because these are semiprivate goods, and if countries adopt policies that are good for themselves, they will have open economic policies. So, fundamentally, subject to a couple of caveats, an open economy is in fact in each individual country’s own interest. There are spillovers of course. There are spillovers in terms-of-trade effects, and potentially mercantilist effects, and this is why I call open trade and financial policy, semi-private goods, not purely private goods from the standpoint of individual countries. When a country, let’s say, follows protectionist policies, and if it is true that it is following these in order to ‘protect’ itself for economically inappropriate reasons, most of the bulk of the costs are actually borne not by the rest of the world, but by particular groups within that country. The corollary of that is that when nation states in fact do have the maneuvering room to select their own trade and financial policies and their own institutional arrangements that might potentially impose transaction costs on cross-border trade and financial relationships, the outcome need not be the slippery slope to protectionism.

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Agricultural subsidies I’m not making a claim that democratic politics are always going to result in the kind of economics with desirable outcomes, but the point is that when democratic politics do malfunction, the costs in the world economy are paid mostly by the locals, and not by the rest of the world. Of course, agricultural subsidies are a great example of that, because we say “here is a fundamental failure of the world economy or world governance arrangements” with respect to trade rules, and that countries like the United States, or those in Europe, or Japan, or Korea, with high rates of subsidies or agricultural protection, generate adverse consequences for countries that are agricultural exporters. But, of 401

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course, the fundamental economic logic of this is that when countries are subsidizing their agricultural products, if anything they’re providing a benefit to the rest of the world, because of the terms-of-trade gains that the rest of the world derives. But even leaving that aside, the answer to the question, “Who pays the cost of those policies?” is that the costs are paid for by domestic consumers and domestic tax payers. So, the ultimate failure here is not failure of global rules per se. It’s a failure of domestic deliberation, of domestic democracy. These are very costly policies from the standpoint of each individual country, and if a democracy ends up saying that despite those costs, we want these policies nonetheless, it is not because they want to impose costs on others, it’s because democracies are entitled to make their own mistakes. Bigger gains The point is that since the costs of ‘bad’ trade and financial policies are borne mostly at home, improved deliberation (and improved mechanisms of decision-making in these areas) is likely to be a much more powerful discipline, a much more powerful stick, than external constraints. After all, the bulk of the costs fall not abroad, but at home. And in any case, the mechanisms of governance within which we can sensibly address these issues are mostly national to begin with. So, this way of thinking about where we’re going has implications for how we think about the design of global institutions, how we think about where we should focus our energies. In other words, where are the bigger gains for international cooperation and rule-making? One of the policy areas where one can apply some of these broader principles is with respect to what, in some sense, is the burning macroeconomic issue of the day which is, how do you deal with global macroeconomic imbalances?

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China Now this is an area where cross-border spillovers are large because you can argue, quite reasonably, that China’s mercantilist policies have costs for others. What I mean by China’s mercantilist policies is its currency and other policies that create a large trade surplus. These have costs elsewhere in the world economy, because they aggravate unemployment in the United States and elsewhere, and also have costs for economic growth in developing and emerging market economies because of the relationship between exchange-rates and economic growth. However, I think that what this debate has not taken on board sufficiently is that China also has valid concerns about the potential 402

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employment and social consequences of a rapid currency appreciation. So, for the last ten years, China’s growth model has relied extensively on an undervalued currency, and what one might call exchange-rate protection, which has increasingly replaced the kind of trade and industrial policies that China used to rely on, prior to joining the WTO in 2001. In fact, it’s quite striking that both the external imbalance and the exchange-rate undervaluation started to rise in 2001, just as China joined the WTO. So, I think that one way of squaring the circle is to accept that if the rest of the world – the United States in particular – is going to come down hard on China to do something on the exchange rate front, it’s also incumbent on us to think whether China needs any insurance policy against the potential downside of loss of employment and significant reduction in economic growth that could be socially costly. And the kind of insurance policy that economic logic suggests we ought to provide China with is much greater freedom to employ sectoral policies in case particular sectors, or particular sets of firms, are adversely affected by a rapid appreciation of what Professor Dani Rodrik of Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA, calls Renminbi, potentially causing unemployment problems. The suggestion here is that greater discipline on macroeconomic and exchange-rate policies imposed on China is really viable only if is matched by significantly relaxed discipline on sectoral, or microeconomic, or industrial policies. In a way, the quid-pro-quo here is to look the other way if China is going to violate the agreement on subsidies of the WTO, and use sectoral policies in order to potentially pre-empt the employment costs of a rapid appreciation of the Renminbi. In exchange, the rest of the world can ask for greater global discipline over macroeconomic and currency policies. Labor mobility The second area is one area where globalization has advanced way too little. In international trade and international finance, we need to ask how we can mitigate the consequences of globalization having gone too far. But with respect to the world labor regime, we’re in a world where globalization has not gone far enough. The world labor regime today is roughly where the trade regime stood in the 1950s. We live in a world in which there are very high barriers to labor mobility, very inconsistent policies – quantitative restrictions all over. Now, what this means economically is that because we’re starting from a position where the size of barriers is so large, the relative balance between the total global efficiency gains and potentially adverse distributional effects of relaxing those barriers is highly skewed on the positive side. It is skewed in the direction of the net efficiency gains. For any dollar of redistribution we get from relaxing these 403

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temporary worker mobility barriers, the surplus we generate for the world economy, the extent by which we would increase the global pie, is much greater than from almost any other area of reform. Even a relatively small increase in the temporary work visa allocations of rich countries would produce net gains that are several times those produced by the removal of trade barriers, or anything else that’s currently under discussion regarding the world trade regime. This is really the unexplored frontier of globalization, and I suggest that if the trade negotiators, who are wasting their time with Doha, really want to do something useful, and really expand the size of the global pie, this – and not the existing agenda – would be the area that they should be targeting.

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Global rules With respect to the nature of the global rules, I suggest that the main contribution that global rules can make is through their effect on improving the quality of domestic deliberation. If there is a shift in emphasis in places like the WTO or the G20, instead of trying to enact global rules that try to harmonize on substance in pursuit of the objective of minimizing transaction costs across borders, these global rules should instead focus on procedural safeguards that ensure that the domestic deliberation on regulatory matters affecting trade and finance benefit from some key qualitative improvements. The key principle here would be to ensure things like transparency, accountability, representativeness, and the use of scientific or economic evidence in domestic deliberations with respect to trade and industrial and financial policies. And international rules could set procedural standards, require the application of these principles, and, through such a mechanism, could actually make a contribution to the quality of domestic deliberation. The idea here is that there is much to be gained by legitimizing national differences and regulatory structures, but doing that subject to procedural safeguards that can potentially improve the quality of such deliberation. To sum up, it is safe to believe that democratic deliberation is still largely organized around nation states, and it is in the right of countries to protect their own regulatory arrangements and institutions. However, one needs to distinguish this very sharply from the right to impose those arrangements on others. The right to have your own institutions doesn’t give you a right to impose them on others. We should reasonably strive for as much economic globalization as we can get what is consistent with maintaining this space for diversity in domestic as well as international arrangements.

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Policy space Our emphasis here on creating policy space is based on the argument that all kinds of countries need that policy space; the rich nations need it to provide social safety nets and social insurance programs, to address concerns about the labor, environmental or health and safety consequences of trade, and ultimately to shorten the chain of delegation whereby decisions are made by a group of judges in Geneva. And developing countries need the policy space, because the record shows us that it’s those countries that use the policy space to restructure their economies, and to diversify their economies, that ultimately benefit from globalization the most, and can leverage globalization the most. Providing countries of both the North and the South – both rich and poor countries – with this kind of policy space, and understanding that this policy space is needed to maintain the integrity of domestic institutions, is something that is not just desirable from the narrow perspective of national economic management. It will actually produce a global economy that is workable and that is healthier.

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Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Mies, Maria and Werlhof, Claudia von (Eds.): There is an Alternative. Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization, London, Zed Books. Berberoglu, Berch. (2009). Class and Class Conflict in the Age of Globalization. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Chazan, Naomi, et al. (1992): Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Free trade and free market: Pretense and practice. In The culture of globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 356–70. Chossudovsky, Michel, 2005, Americas „War on Terrorism”, Ottawa Chossudovsky, Michel, 2002, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins Chossudovsky, Michel, 2003, War and Globalization. The Truth behind September 11th, Ottawa Chossudovsky, Michel, 2006, Nuclear War against Iran, in Global Research.ca, Center for Research on Globalization, Ottawa 13.1. Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: a political biography, 188819, New York, Vintage Books 1975, 1973. Davis, D, (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. De Rivero, Oswaldo. 2001. The myths of development. Dhaka: University Press. Dimmel, Nikolaus und Schmee, Josef (Hg), 2005, Politische Kultur in Österreich 2000-2005, Wien, Promedia Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2001, Arbeit poor. Unterwegs in der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, München, Kunstmann Fröbel, Folker, Heinrichs, Jürgen und Kreye, Otto, 1977, Die neue internationale Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt Fanon, F. (1967). Black Faces, White Masks. New York: Grove Publishers; Rajab, D. (2012). Zuma out of touch with reality in South Africa. The Mercury, Durban, January 10 Galtung, Johan; 1993, Eurotopia. Die Zukunft eines Kontinents, Wien, Promedia Genth, Renate. (2006). Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3. George, Susan, 2001, im Vortrag, Treffen von Gegnern und Befürwortern der Globalisierung im Rahmen der Tagung des WEF (World Economic Forum), Salzburg 406

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Mies, Maria, 1986, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Women in the International Division of Labor, London, Zed Books. Mkandawire, Thandika (1999) “Globalization and Africa’s Unfinished Agenda,” Macalester International: Vol. 7, Article 12. Mies, Maria; 2001, Globalisierung von unten. Der Kampf gegen die Herrschaft der Konzerne, Hamburg, Rotbuch Mies, Maria, 2005, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa Mies, Maria und Werlhof, Claudia von (Hg), 2003 (1998); Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen „MAI”. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA Neufeld, M., & Whitworth, S. (1996). Imag(in)ing Canadian foreign policy. In W. Clement (Ed.), Understanding Canada: Building on the new Canadian political economy (pp. 197-214). Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Ngaire, W (2000). “The Political Economy of Globalization”. In Ngaire, W (ed). The Political Economy of Globalization. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Norberg, Johan. 2003. In defense of global capitalism. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. Perkins, John, 2004, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, San Francisco, Berret-Koehler. Sachs, Jeffrey. 2005. The end of poverty. New York: Penguin. Sarkar, Sharal, 2001, Sustainable Development: Rescue Operation for a Dying Illusion, in: Bennholdt-Thomsen/Faraclas/Werlhof, p. 41-54 Sassen Saskia, 2000, Machtbeben. Wohin führt die Globalisierung?, StuttgartMünchen, DVA. Stiglitz, Joseph. 2003. Globalization and its discontent. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Available at: http: //digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintl/vol7/iss1/12. Sumner, J (2008). “Governance, Globalization, and Political Economy: Perspectives from Canadian Adult Education”, Adult Education Quarterly Volume 59 Number 1 November 2008 22-41. Wallerstein, Immanuel, 1979, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Wallerstein, Immanuel (Hg), 2004, The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, Boulder/ London; Paradigm Publishers Werlhof, Claudia von, 1991, Was haben die Hühner mit dem Dollar zu tun? Frauen und Ökonomie; München, Frauenoffensive 408

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Werlhof, Claudia von, 1997, Schöpfung aus Zerstörung? Die Gentechnik als moderne Alchemie und ihre ethisch-religiöse Rechtfertigung, in Baier, Wilhelm (Hg), Genetik. Einführung und Kontroverse, Graz, p. 79-115 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2001 a, Losing Faith in Progress: Capitalist Patriarchy as an ´Alchemical System´, in: Bennholdt-Thomsen et.al. (Eds.): There is an Alternative, p. 15-40 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2001 b, Globale Kriegswirtschaft oder Earth Democracy?, in Grüne Bildungswerkstatt (Hg.) Die Gewalt des Zusammenhangs. Neoliberalismus – Militarismus – Rechtsextremismus, Wien, Promedia, p. 125-142 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2003 a, MAInopoly: Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof, p. 148-192 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2003 b, GATS und Bildung, in Frauennetzwerk, p. 42-45 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2004, Frauen und Ökonomie. Reden, Vorträge …20022004, Themen GATS, Globalisierung.., Mechernich, Gerda-Weiler-Stiftung Werlhof, Claudia von, 2005 a, “Speed kills!”, in Dimmel/Schmee, 2005, p. 284292 Werlhof, Claudia von 2005 b, Vom Wirtschaftskrieg zur Kriegswirtschaft. Die Waffen der „Neuen-Welt-Ordnung”, in Mies 2005, p. 40-48 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2005 c, Wider die Vernichtung unserer Existenzgrundlagen, in Dietl, Claudia und Krondorfer, Birge (Hg), Widerstand – quo vadis?; Wien; AUFedition, p. 48-52 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2006, The Utopia of a Motherless World. Patriarchy as “War-System”, in Göttner-Abendroth, Hieide (Hg.): Societies of Peace. Contributions to the 2nd World Congress of Matriarchal Studies, Toronto, Inanna (planned for 2008) Werlhof, Claudia von, 2007a, Questions to Ramona, in: Corinne Kumar (Ed.): Asking, we walk. The south as new political imaginary, Vol. 2, Bangalore, Streelekha, p.2149-268 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2007b, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Negation of Matriarchy: The Struggle for a “Deep” Alternative, in: Genevieve Vaughan (Ed.): Women and the Gift Economy, a radically different world view is possible, Toronto, Inanna, p. 139-153 Werlhof, Claudia von, 2007c, The Interconnectedness of All Being: A New Spirituality for a New Civilization, in: Corinne Kumar (Ed.): Asking, we walk. The south as new political imaginary, Vol.2, Bangalore, Streelekha, p. 379-386 Wolf, Martin. 2004. Why globalization works. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Part IV Back to the Future and Exiting the Colonial Ages of Empire Preview

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Capitalism as a mode of production has always required some kind of exogenous support to keep its accumulation going. For a very long time, slavery of Africans and colonial relations provided the exogenous support. In the inter-war period, this disappeared and in the post-war period, you have the state providing the exogenous support. Financial capital does not like state intervention, it wants to directly stimulate investment to generate employment and growth. Now the state itself in Africa is confined to balancing the budget or having a 3% fiscal deficit. So the state does nothing. You have globalized finance and you have the nation state. If the individual nation state is doing anything against globalized finance, then finance will leave. Coordinated action on the part of nation states in Africa, which could challenge globalized finance to stimulate the world economy, is something which is not even talked about. So capitalism at the moment has run out of options. It is yet to become clear how it will come out of this. This provides a very good opportunity, some kind of revolutionary possibilities. That revolutionary possibility can come about and be realized only if there is commitment on the part of African revolutionaries to support the petty producers, peasants etc. It is essential in African countries to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance.

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Chapter 9 Reprise, Summary, & Conclusion Overview Linking with so-called modernity, which is neoliberal policies and globalization, is responsible for the emergence of fascism in Africa. In other words, fascism is not separate from neoliberalism. It is pro-communal liberalism. We have a peculiar combination of globalization on the one side and the most backward, obscurantist, reactionary, communal, fascist agenda on the other side. These two are not separate. Globalization is not fighting against it. On the contrary, globalization is sustaining it. They sustain globalization. Modernity in African society came with anti-colonial struggle, and the anti-colonial struggle was delinking from the European colonial Empires. Indeed, globalization has created an enormous amount of inequality everywhere in the world. There is stagnation or worsening in the conditions of workers. Where there is a progressive agenda like Bernie Sanders’s campaign program in the United States of America for instance, people turn to that agenda. So people want to get out of this globalization. Africans cannot wait to get out of this Colonial Empire.

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Theoretical Reprise Our concern in this book has been to examine Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire. The Colonial Empire is that of capitalism. In his work, especially the Grundrisse (1857–1858) and the first volume of Capital (1867), Marx defined capitalism as a mode of production characterized by the separation of the direct producers, the working class, from the means of production or the productive assets, which are controlled by the bourgeoisie as private property. Ownership of the means of production enables the bourgeoisie to organize the industrial labor process, where individual workers are driven to seek employment by the needs of their own reproduction. Contrary to previous modes of production such as slavery and feudalism, the laborer is compelled to enter an employment relation not by external compulsion, but by economic necessity. As a result, the employment relation is formally claimed to be an individual contractual transaction between bourgeois capitalists and workers, who are juridically free. Once they enter the capitalist labor process, workers are remunerated with a wage, a monetary sum representing the “exchange value” with which the capitalist purchases the worker’s labor power. The wage is 413

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expressed in terms of the duration of the working day, and is calculated on the basis of the goods that workers need to reproduce their ability to work. Therefore, the wage does not recognize specific forms of labor or skills, it only compensates “abstract” labor power. In the productive process, workers operate machines and other means of production with which they create commodities whose values exceed workers’ remunerations. When capitalists sell commodities on the market, “realizing” their value, they therefore appropriate the difference between the value of such goods and the value of the labor power used to produce them. Marx calls this difference “surplus value,” which for him is the defining feature of the exploitative nature of capitalism. The money capitalists earn from realizing their surplus value contains a profit, which capitalists reinvest to restart the productive cycle in what Marx calls “extended reproduction” of capital. Marx saw the origins of profit and surplus extraction in the very process of production, not in market dynamics of supply and demand, as in the “bourgeois” political economy of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Ricardo (1772–1823). Nonetheless, Smith and Ricardo influenced Marx’s concept of the division of labor and his “labor theory of value,” respectively. Marx, however, regarded the market not as a realm of free individual initiative, but as an institution that materializes human exploitation and alienation. Marxism, as theory and practice, constantly evolves as material circumstances change. The experience of the theory put into practice has to be evaluated. Based on that assessment, the theory needs to be updated and modified. Marxism has to be seen as a developing theory. It is not a given corpus of knowledge which needs only to draw upon and to be interpreted. This needs to be stressed because of the legacy of Soviet style Marxism in the 20th century. Marxism was seen to be a corpus of classical texts by Marx, Engels, Lenin and so on. Based on these classics, developments in the various fields of knowledge were analyzed and sought to be incorporated into an a priori framework. This ossified theory and resulted in dogmatic practices or inertia. The working class remains central to any revolutionary challenge to capitalism. Despite assertions of the ‘post-Marxists’ to the contrary, the working class has grown in its size and strength globally. Deindustrialization and off shoring of industrial activities into the developing world has led to the shrinking size of the industrial workforce in the advanced capitalist world. However, the size of the proletariat has grown in the developing world and the world as a whole. Moreover, those employed in the services sector are also exploited workers. The changes that have come about are in the forms of employment and labor exploitation, under the rubric of ‘labor market flexibility’. Across the world, organized formal sector employment has been increasingly replaced by 414

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casual and contract based work. Alongside the institutionalization of a hire and fire regime, economic growth under the neoliberal regime has also led to a ballooning informal economy characterized by intense exploitation and selfexploitation of labor. A key challenge before the Marxists in the 21st century is to devise new forms of organizing the capsulized and informal workforce, who bear the brunt of intensified exploitation. Perhaps the greatest churning process occurring in the world today is in the countryside, particularly in the rural areas of the less developed countries – in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Over the last three decades, policies of so-called stabilization and structural adjustment have systematically been imposed on the working people of the third world by international capital, domestic bourgeoisie and landed rural elites. These policies accentuate agrarian crisis, impoverish and worsen the incomes and livelihoods of the peasantry. Rural unrest on issues of land, livelihood and access to resources is a widespread phenomenon across the developing world today. Organizing the peasantry and rural laborers and building an alliance with the urban working class poses the main challenge in these societies.

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Historical Perspective Contemporary capitalist globalization retains many of the key features of the earlier phases of globalization: the driving forces are centered in the imperial state and the multi-national corporation and banks, backed by the international financial institutions. What is significantly different are the scale, scope and speed of the circulation of capital and commodities, particularly financial flows between deregulated economies. The technological changes, especially in communications (computers, fax, etc.), have been a prime factor in shaping the high velocity of movements of capital. The scope and scale of movement of capital and commodities however, are due less to technological than to political changes. The demise of socialism in the former Communist countries of Europe and Asia, the conversion of nationalist-populist third-world regimes to unregulated capital and the demise of the welfare state in the West have opened vast areas for accumulation of profits (and surplus capital) and new markets for sales and investment. These political victories are central to the advance of the contemporary process of globalization in relation to the historical period immediately following World War II, and certainly in relation to the inter-war period. The conflict between globalizing imperialist forces and the third world--what was erroneously referred to as the Cold War--was evident in the 23 million people who died in 143 wars, overwhelmingly in the third world, between 1945 and 1992. The contemporary 415

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phase of globalization was a consequence of what sub-commander Marcos refers to as the Third World War, which continues to this day. A historical analysis of the phases of globalization allows one to refute some of the ideological claims of its proponents. A retrospective analysis reveals that globalization has been cyclical in world historical development. There were periods of high globalization, moments of crises and periods in which economic flows turned inward. There is no universal inevitable tendency toward globalization. Inter-imperial wars resulting from global competition, internal crises of overproduction and more important social and political revolutions have all affected the trajectory of globalist nations and classes. The cyclical nature of globalization allows analysts to identify the internal/external weaknesses of the globalist project and identify the alternative strategies that emerged from the crises of global projects in earlier times. The very idea of globalization as a historical necessity is questioned by its cyclical history. The notion that we enter a new period is also dubious: foreign trade and overseas income were a greater percentage of GNP in Europe during the late 19th century that at the end of the 20th century. The idea that technology drives globalization omits the point that most of the new technologies emerged before the current globalist phase and are compatible with expanding domestic production and popular consumption. The globalization idea is itself suspect. In its most widely expressed usage, it argues for a universal incorporation to the world marketplace and the spread of benefits throughout the world. The empirical reality is neither universal incorporation nor the spread of benefits: there are wealthy creditors and bankrupt debtors, super-rich speculators and impoverished unemployed workers, imperial states that direct international financial institutions and subordinate states that submit to their dictates. A rigorous comparative analysis of contemporary world social-economic realities would suggest that the globalist concept of interdependence is far less useful in understanding the world than the Marxist concept of imperialism. A sense of the dialectical complexity of the interpretations of imperialism advanced by Lenin, Bukharin, and Luxemburg can be seen by looking at the constellation of categories they employed (allowing for considerable variation among these thinkers), including: (1) monopoly capital/finance capital; (2) surplus monopoly profits; (3) the international division of labor and internationalization of capital; (4) the division of the world among the great powers; (5) nation-states as promoters of the global interests of their monopolistic firms; (6) inter-capitalist competition; (7) currency and trade wars; (8) colonies, neo-colonies, and dependencies; (9) economic crisis and imperialist expansion; (10) export of capital; (11) the search for new markets; (12) the 416

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struggle to control key raw materials; (13) integration of non-capitalist areas; (14) international wage inequality; (15) labor aristocracy in the imperialist core; (16) militarism and war; and (17) international hegemony. Naturally, the classical theorists differed considerably in their respective emphases. The theory of imperialism presented in Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital, as distinct from Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy, was based on a specific theory of economic crisis. The problem of the realization of surplus value and the relation of this to the incorporation of rapidly disappearing non-capitalist areas were thus central to Luxemburg’s analysis, but not Lenin’s and Bukharin’s. Lenin (1939, 1973) and Bukharin placed heavy emphasis on the growth of monopoly capitalism, which was largely missing in Luxemburg’s account. Bukharin’s approach was distinguished by its focus on what he termed “the international division of labor” and the “internationalization of capital.” It was Bukharin who, going back to Marx, highlighted the surplus profits of monopoly capitalist firms derived from the much higher rate of exploitation of cheap labor in the periphery. The most influential of the classical theories of imperialism was that of Lenin, who contended that “imperialism, in its briefest possible definition is the monopoly stage of capitalism,” thereby tying the new phase of imperialism in his day to changes in the accumulation process. Prefiguring many of the concerns of our own day, Lenin stated in his “Introduction” to Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy: At the stage that was reached approximately at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, commodity exchange had created such an…internationalization of capital, accompanied by such a vast increase in large-scale production, that free competition began to be replaced by monopoly. The prevailing types were no longer enterprises freely competing inside the country and through intercourse between countries, but monopoly alliances of entrepreneurs, trusts. The typical ruler of the world became finance capital, a power that is peculiarly mobile and flexible, peculiarly intertwined at home and internationally, peculiarly devoid of individuality and divorced from the immediate processes of production, peculiarly easy to concentrate, a power that has already made peculiarly long strides on the road to concentration, so that literally several hundred billionaires and millionaires hold in their hands the fate of the whole world. These classical analyses of imperialism were responses to a period of international instability, marked by the decline of Britain as the hegemonic power in the world economy and the rise of competing nations, particularly Germany and the United States, leading in the ensuing struggles to the First and 417

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Second World Wars. Lenin’s theory was erected specifically on the hypothesis of the uneven development of monopoly capitalism and the rivalry of the various world powers for geopolitical “hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of [or ascendancy over] territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony. (Belgium is chiefly necessary for Germany as a base for operations against England; England needs Bagdad as a base for operations against Germany, etc.).” In this view, individual countries, while remaining independent, were seen as subordinated to the great powers, functioning as intermediate actors within the larger empires. For Lenin the struggle for hegemony over parts of the world economy was a historical product of the conflict between nation-states over the political, and even more importantly, economic partition of the globe—urged on by their respective monopolistic corporations. He therefore rejected on historical grounds Kautsky’s abstract thesis of what he called the “next phase” of imperialism or “ultra-imperialism,” which pointed to the development of a general world cartel, and thus a coming together of the great industrial powers for the common exploitation of the agrarian sectors of the globe.

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Rise of Globalist Ideology The rise of “globalist ideology” is found originally in the business journals of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The major expansion and conquest of markets by the multi-nationals was described as globalization by business journalists searching for an alternative to the existing Marxist vocabulary, since they sought to present the process in a favorable light. Gradually the term was taken over by the mainstream academic world and became the acceptable framework for talking about international capitalist expansion without having to deal with its origins, power relations and exploitative outcomes. What emerged from the academic recycling of the concept was “globaloney”: the embellishment of the concept by linking it to what was called the third technological revolution and imputing to it a historical inevitability and degree of interdependence that was remote from reality. From the business, journalistic and bourgeois academic world, the term was incorporated into the vocabulary of the Left intelligentsia. They too began to parrot the same properties and arguments in the context of a mindless flight from critical socialist paradigms. Thus globalization seems to have become a universal category of analysis, through which the imperial ruling classes exercise power and paralyses mass popular opposition. The retreat of the Left intellectuals from the imperialist theoretical approach toward globalization is intimately related to the defeat and decline of revolutionary socio-political movements and the ascendancy of the financial and 418

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export elites. There is a dialectical interplay between imperialist power, globalist ideology and revolutionary socialist politics: the ascendancy of imperialism is directly related to the circulation of the globaloney discourse and the eclipse of the revolutionary paradigm. The retreat of the Left intellectuals and the subsequent theoretical disarray of the popular movement contributed to the further strengthening of the imperial ruling classes: objective shifts in power resulting from political and economic successes were amplified by the ideological capitulation of the exLeftist intellectuals and the confusion sown in the popular movement. Left intellectuals and influential political leaders, having lost their conceptual anchorage, drifted from an imperialist conceptual framework to a technological determinism that undercut any notion of systemic transformative politics. The underlying political bases for the ascendancy of neo- liberalism (the ideological derivative of the globalization hypothesis), including the political and military defeats of the left, were slighted in favor of pseudo-explanations that pointed to historical economic imperatives. The political and ideological hegemony of the globalist-neo-liberal project was further enhanced by the combined rigidity and flexibility of the neo-liberal state: opportunities for upward mobility for private-sector professionals and exLeftist intellectuals ensconced in well-heeled NGOs and downward mobility for the mass of peasants, and wage-salary workers, particularly in the public social services. The project provided massive flows of capital, cheap mass-consumer imports in the expansive phase and crises, collapse and unprecedented rates of bankruptcy and unemployment in the deflationary phase. The Asian experience is a prototype of this process: political-economic victories for imperialism, the ascendancy of globalist neo-liberal political economic power, capitulation and integration of the ex-Left, followed by crisis, collapse and mass immiseration.

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Globalization Parabola Here are five facts of life in 2014 that Marx’s analysis of capitalism correctly predicted more than a century ago: 1. The Great Recession (Capitalism’s Chaotic Nature) The inherently chaotic, crisis-prone nature of capitalism was a key part of Marx’s writings. He argued that the relentless drive for profits would lead companies to mechanize their workplaces, producing more and more goods while squeezing workers’ wages until they could no longer purchase the products they created. Sure enough, modern historical events from the Great Depression to the dot-com bubble can be traced back to what Marx termed 419

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“fictitious capital” – financial instruments like stocks and credit-default swaps. We produce and produce until there is simply no one left to purchase our goods, no new markets, no new debts. The cycle is still playing out before our eyes: Broadly speaking, it’s what made the housing market crash in 2008. Decades of deepening inequality reduced incomes, which led more and more Americans to take on debt. When there were no subprime borrows left to scheme, the whole façade fell apart, just as Marx knew it would.

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2. The iPhone 5S (Imaginary Appetites) Marx warned that capitalism’s tendency to concentrate high value on essentially arbitrary products would, over time, lead to what he called “a contriving and ever-calculating subservience to inhuman, sophisticated, unnatural and imaginary appetites.” It’s a harsh but accurate way of describing contemporary America, where we enjoy incredible luxury and yet are driven by a constant need for more and more stuff to buy. Consider the iPhone 5S you may own. Is it really that much better than the iPhone 5 you had last year, or the iPhone 4S a year before that? Is it a real need, or an invented one? While Chinese families fall sick with cancer from our e-waste, megacorporations are creating entire advertising campaigns around the idea that we should destroy perfectly good products for no reason. If Marx could see this kind of thing, he’d nod in recognition. 3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism) Marx’s ideas about overproduction led him to predict what is now called globalization – the spread of capitalism across the planet in search of new markets. “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe,” he wrote. “It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” While this may seem like an obvious point now, Marx wrote those words in 1848, when globalization was over a century away. And he wasn’t just right about what ended up happening in the late 20th century – he was right about why it happened: The relentless search for new markets and cheap labor, as well as the incessant demand for more natural resources, are beasts that demand constant feeding. 4. Walmart (Monopoly) The classical theory of economics assumed that competition was natural and therefore self-sustaining. Marx, however, argued that market power would actually be centralized in large monopoly firms as businesses increasingly preyed upon each other. This might have struck his 19th-century readers as odd: As 420

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Richard Hofstadter writes, “Americans came to take it for granted that property would be widely diffused, that economic and political power would decentralized.” It was only later, in the 20th century, which the trend Marx foresaw began to accelerate. Today, mom-and-pop shops have been replaced by monolithic big-box stores like Walmart, small community banks have been replaced by global banks like J.P. Morgan Chase and small famers have been replaced by the likes of Archer Daniels Midland. The tech world, too, is already becoming centralized, with big corporations sucking up start-ups as fast as they can. Politicians give lip service to what minimal small-business lobby remains and prosecute the most violent of antitrust abuses – but for the most part, we know big business is here to stay. 5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor) Marx believed that wages would be held down by a “reserve army of labor,” which he explained simply using classical economic techniques: Capitalists wish to pay as little as possible for labor, and this is easiest to do when there are too many workers floating around. Thus, after a recession, using a Marxist analysis, we would predict that high unemployment would keep wages stagnant as profits soared, because workers are too scared of unemployment to quit their terrible, exploitative jobs. And what do you know? No less an authority than the Wall Street Journal warns, “Lately, the U.S. recovery has been displaying some Marxian traits. Corporate profits are on a tear, and rising productivity has allowed companies to grow without doing much to reduce the vast ranks of the unemployed.” That’s because workers are terrified to leave their jobs and therefore lack bargaining power. It’s no surprise that the best time for equitable growth is during times of “full employment,” when unemployment is low and workers can threaten to take another job. Crucial to the task of constructing the socialist alternative is to recognize the globalization parabola in the current period: the ascendancy in the seventies, its consolidation in the eighties and early nineties and its decline over the last several years, beginning in Asia, Latin America and spreading to North America and Western Europe. The second-biggest capitalist economy, Japan, is in a terminal tailspin, accompanied by its Asian clients. In China, stagnation and mass unemployment has set it. The Russian economy has collapsed. The U.S. and European economies will soon feel the reverberations as corporate earnings decline, and exports collapse and speculative capital cannot find new lucrative outlets. Globalization works in reverse. The extraordinary profits based on capitals appropriation of speculative returns no longer fuel the American and European stock market and giant financial monopolies. The worldwide bankruptcy of 421

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capitalism--its inability to reproduce itself-poses a major opportunity to argue for a socialist transformation and against strategies focused on adaptation and merely defensive struggles. Adaptation to austerity leads to new, regressive policies. The argument for one more adjustment is an unending melody. There is only more pain, not prosperity, in this never-ending tunnel. Defensive struggles, while necessary for sustaining elementary living conditions in the face of the economic collapse, provide short-term victories yet prepare strategic defeats, given the non-viability of the historic capital-labor partnership under present circumstances.

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The impetus of war It is notable that the main development in technology and innovation came not from capitalism and the competition of the free market, but from the state control over industry and the planning that capitalist nations were forced to adopt for the purposes of war. Nationalization and public control of the key sectors of research and development were introduced in the advanced capitalist countries during the Second World War in order to innovate and develop new technologies. Aircraft, plastics, synthetic rubber, medicines, telecommunications, nuclear energy, etc., all of these technologies and many more were either invented or given an enormous boost due to WW2, alongside a general development of industry and the introduction of new production techniques for the purpose of the war. This rapid period of development in terms of the research and application of new technologies and techniques, along with the destruction caused during the war itself and the expansion of world trade that followed, in turn led to the post-war economic boom – the so-called “Golden Age” of capitalism.” This was based on the stimulus from special historical factors such as (1) a high level of consumer liquidity immediately after the war; (2) the rebuilding of the wardevastated European and Japanese economies; (3) a second great wave of automobilization (which included the impetus to the rubber, steel, and glass industries, the building of the interstate highway system, and the suburbanization of the country); (4) the growth of the sales effort in the form of the expansion of advertising and other forms of sales-related waste; and (5) high military spending associated with two regional wars in Asia. But by the 1970s these countervailing factors to the tendency to stagnation were mostly on the wane. The result was a rapid slowing down of the economy. Net investment in the United States declined, with the investment that was taking place being fed largely out of corporate depreciation funds. In this situation, a new outlet for the surplus (profits) of corporations was needed. Suddenly, whole nations, 422

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whose industrial base had been flattened during the war, were given Marshall Aid from the USA – which came out of the war greatly strengthened with its industry and economy almost untouched – and were able to import and implement the most modern industrial methods, providing a great leap forward in terms of productivity. Thus, the tremendous qualitative development of the productive forces as a result of state control and planning during the war, and not the Keynesian policies of the reformists, was the real secret behind the post-war boom. Since the war, the military-industrial complex – both in terms of the war machine and the Apollo program – continued to play an important role; today, total global military spending (at almost $1.8trn), outstripping estimates for total spending on R&D (between $1.0-1.4trn). This is not to mention the important research that takes place in universities – publically funded and nominally not for profit, although big business is increasingly dictating research agendas. But, capitalism cannot even use the knowledge and technology that society has discovered and invented over millennia of history: innovation is not realized in any practical application because of the private ownership over ideas themselves, whilst new technologies are not introduced for fear of the further excess capacity, unemployment, and fall in demand that they would generate. Under capitalism, the individual capitalist introduces technology and improves productivity in order to increase their own individual profit, without any regard for the living standards of workers or the needs of society. Hence the fear of bourgeois commentators, such as the authors of “Race against the Machine”, that it is technology that is responsible for unemployment and inequality. The problem is that under capitalism, such technological progress is riddled with contradictions. The result is that the vast majority are alienated from the fruits of society’s innovation. Technology, far from liberating us, is used to enslave us. Mass unemployment exists alongside those working 50-60 hours per week; meanwhile, the rich get even richer. Inequality widens, with a greater accumulation of profits at one end and increasing misery and toil at the other: “Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productivity of labor are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker; all means for the development of production undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become means of domination and exploitation of the producers; they distort the worker into a fragment of a man; they degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual contact of his labor by turning it into a torment; they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they deform the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his 423

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life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation, and every extension of accumulation becomes, conversely, a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. Finally, the law which always holds the relative surplus population or industrial reserve army in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.” (ibid.: 799). In particular, young people today have suffered from the crisis. The Economist th (27 April 2013) estimates that, “Around the world almost 300m 15- to 24-yearolds are not working... almost a quarter of the planet’s youth”, with advanced capitalist countries such as Spain and Greece seeing youth unemployment rates of over 60%. The Economist recognizes the crisis as being a factor in this high youth unemployment, but again points to “supply-side problems”, complaining about “the mismatch between the skills that young people offer and the ones that employers need”. But the question must be asked: who is providing training? Which governments are increasing the funding for education? And what problems are there in terms of “labor flexibility”? In Britain, where the youth unemployment rate is over 20%, more than double the national average across all age groups, real wages have been stagnant at best and even business leaders state that the country has one of the most flexible labor markets. The reality is that capitalism has nothing to offer the youth of today except a future, as Marx said, of “misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation.” A system that cannot provide a future to young people is a system that has outlived itself; a system that needs to be overthrown. Ebbs and flows Innovation and technological progress are not a linear march onwards and upwards. Like all developments in history, the development of the productive forces – of science, industry, and technique – moves in ebbs and flows. In certain periods, technological progress and economic growth can feedback upon each other to create a virtuous circle of development: economic growth 424

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fuels the demand for labor, absorbing the “surplus population”; the demand for labor strengthens the working class and their demands for better wages; the increased cost of wages creates a greater incentive for labor-saving techniques; and new machinery boosts productivity and thus economic growth also.

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Capitalist rationality and world poverty Yes, it is in the interests of the system to turn four billion hungry people in the third world into ‘consumers’. Why, then is there no sign of the system being able to achieve this? What do our opponents say? The World Bank begins by patting itself on the back that many have been lifted out of poverty over the past decade or so. It goes on to admit, “Still inequality, and the absolute numbers of people living in poverty, has grown. But most of these poor live in rural areas and in countries that are only weakly connected to the rest of the world.” (http: //rru.worldbank.org/spotlight/globalization.aspx) The World Bank seems to believe that all things come to those who wait. Our argument is that capitalism will cherry pick profit opportunities in certain areas around the world that will be bombarded with investment funds, while the rest (for instance Africa, population 850 million) can go and rot. Africa is poor because it is kept poor and underdeveloped by imperialism. The World Bank argues that there are conflict-ridden areas where capital dares not venture. ‘Globalizers’ say that if we just pack in the violence and invite in foreign investment, we’ll all be rich! This is the opposite of the truth. The former Yugoslavia became an economic ruin wracked by civil wars that led to 250,000 deaths. This did not happen because the country was ignored by global finance, but precisely because Yugoslavia came to its attention. In a doomed effort to develop the economy in a small backward country, the ruling bureaucracy invited in the foreign banks. During the 1980s, Yugoslavia became a happy hunting ground for finance capital. Public sector firms borrowed in a futile attempt to build ‘socialism in one country.’ Ten years later the country was on the rack of austerity, in the maw of global capital. Unable to strike an oppressor they could not see, tragically the peoples of Yugoslavia were turned against each other by nationalist politicians backed by rival imperialist powers. The result was a horrible civil war. Backwardness is often not a result of economic isolation but a consequence of capitalist meddling, not a natural result but a creation of imperialism.

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Capitalism and the nation state In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a number of movements arose which in different ways, opposed the status quo. At the time, many of people in their exuberance thought these events signaled the end – or at least the beginning of the end – of capitalism. Yet from London to Oakland to Madrid to Athens to Cairo, each of these movements were met and outmaneuvered by an institution which was generally neglected in analyses of the final crisis, and the calls to communize everything by abolishing the value-form: the state. This was doubly surprising, for the crisis was also said to be a crisis of neoliberalism, a new regime of financialized accumulation that had emerged in the 1970s and had transformed capitalist society through what Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore, and Neil Brenner (2012: 265-288) have described as “post-1970s patterns of institutional and spatial reorganization” consisting in “the tendential extension of market-based competition and commodification processes into previously relatively insulated realms of social life.” While many explanations of how and why this process of neoliberalization occurred abound, Philip Mirowski perceptively notes that “many authors of a Marxist bent want to portray neoliberalism as the simple deployment of class power over the unsuspecting masses, but encounter difficulty in specifying the chains of causality stretching from the elusive executive committee of the capitalist class down to the shopper at Wal-Mart.” Globalizers argue that ‘market forces’ (capitalism) are now sweeping all before them. What used to get in the way? The main power in any land apart from the capitalists is the state. Now, the Globalisers say, the government has to bow the knee. First they do not explain why the balance between the two basic powers that affect the way we live our daily life has fundamentally changed. Why, if states could pass laws thirty years ago that regulated firm behavior, can they no longer do it now? In fact they can! The globalization theorists start with a lazy juxtaposition between capitalist economy and state. Actually the state is a creation of the needs of the capitalist class and is constantly reshaped by their changing needs. In turn the state is itself an economic actor, a power affecting economic behavior. The two are not polar opposites. They interpenetrate each other. This relationship, which continues to the present day, was fully explained by the Bolsheviks. As Bukharin points out, “The fact is that the very foundation of modern states as definite political entities was caused by economic needs and requirements. The state grew on the economic foundation; it was an expression of economic connections; state ties appeared only as an expression of economic ties.” (Imperialism and world economy,: 63) 426

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But the relationship is a contradictory one. “If we thus consider the problem in its entirety, and take thereby the objective point of view, i.e. the point of view of the adaption of modern society to its conditions of existence, we find that there is here a growing discord between the basis of social economy which has become world-wide and the peculiar class structure of society, a structure where the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) itself is split into ‘national’ groups with contradictory economic interests, groups which being opposed to the world proletariat, are competing among themselves for the division of surplus value created on a world scale.” (ibid.: 106) Capitalists resent the extortions of the state. Nevertheless, the capitalist class need the state to defend its interests. “We have seen above that capital’s connection with the state is transformed into an additional economic force. The stronger state secures for its industries the most advantageous trade treaties, and establishes high tariffs that are disadvantageous for the competitors. It helps its finance capital to monopolize the sales markets, the markets for raw materials and particularly the spheres for capital investment.” (ibid.: 137) Let’s fast forward to the present day. We see this interaction between economic power and state power is still a central feature of modern imperialist rivalry. Hirst and Thompson are correct to, “conclude that globalization in the sense conceived by extreme economic liberals and their radical critics has not happened. The world, far from being an integrated system dominated by ungoverned market forces divides into three major trading blocs dominated by nation states. NAFTA is centered in the USA, Japan is a bloc-sized national economy and the European Union is an association of states. Each bloc follows distinctive policies and has distinctive problems and institutions of economic management. Most major companies hail from one of the three main blocs, and most companies have the bulk of their assets and a majority of their sales within one of the blocs” (Hirst and Thompson ibid.: 23). Hirst and Thompson had earlier produced two editions of an important book called Globalisation in question (Polity Press, 1996 and 1999). Though they are social democrats, Lenin and Bukharin would have had no problem understanding the world they describe. Modern capitalist commentators will argue that this stuff about the economic importance of the state is all old hat. The era of globalization (usually dating from the 1970s) has seen a withdrawal of the state from capitalist economy. The ideology of neo-liberalism, which became dominant about the same time, advocates privatization and a return to nineteenth century laissezfaire. The rule of naked force in international relations, we are told, has been replaced by the rule of law through multilateral institutions – the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. 427

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On the contrary. If wretched “third world” governments have been forced to privatize their utilities (giving ownership up to imperialist firms) and to cut down tariff barriers (opening home markets to advanced country products and impoverishing local producers), that is not through ‘choice’. The irony is that the withdrawal of the state from economic intervention in poor countries has been achieved though the naked economic power of the imperialist countries, buttressed by the threat of armed force. This transformation is a triumph of state power, not its negation. The multilateral institutions in turn propose a world governance of rules all right – rules that are formulated precisely in order to disarm poor countries and strip away their defense against imperialist exploitation. Nor has the withdrawal of the state from economic ‘interference’ been an unqualified success. The period since the Second World War can be divided into two parts. As mentioned before, the period from 1950 to the first global recession in 1973 can be regarded as a Golden Age for capitalism. Yet it was an era where the state intervened extensively in economic life. For instance all countries operated strict exchange controls until Thatcher scrapped Britain’s in 1979. Till then, the dizzy speculation in national currencies was kept under control. Advanced capitalist countries without exception were said to be operating economic policy according to a Keynesian consensus, determined to let the state step in when markets failed. So an extensive public sector underpinned capitalist profiteering. As we pointed out earlier, Martin Wolf shows that the economy grew twice as fast before the era of ‘globalization.’ The present period does not exhibit the peaceful, harmonious settlement of imperialist disputes visualized in Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism and in globalization theory. It is true that the USA became an economic hegemon no other imperialist can challenge. That supremacy is already under threat from China. But US hegemony since the Second World War has not guaranteed peace and harmony, and imperialist rivalry has not been snuffed out. Bukharin’s analysis of the impossibility of rival imperialist powers developing a stable system of world governance and Lenin’ portrayal of contradiction and crisis as the way capitalism necessarily develops, hold up a mirror to the present – and the future. Global Imperial Instability All of the foregoing has to be seen in terms of capitalism as a world system. Capitalism came into being in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, spreading out from a little corner of Europe, and was from its inception a globalizing economy. But its globalization took the form of a division, from the start, 428

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between center and periphery, and thus was imperial in nature. The system was geared from the first to the needs of accumulation in the center, or the top of the world-hierarchy. As time has gone by more and more external areas have been incorporated into the world-capitalist economy so that globalization, in the sense of the global ascendancy of capital, is now more or less complete. The most dramatic case in recent decades has been China’s rapid integration into the world economy (and the breakdown of the Soviet bloc and subsequent integration of most of these states as dependent satellites of Western capitalism). Yet, globalization taken in itself is not a very useful way of understanding the accumulation dynamic of the system at this specific stage of its development, which is better characterized, as Sweezy argued, in terms of the three elements of slow growth (in the center and in the world economy as a whole), monopolization via multinational corporations, and financialization. Continuing globalization, coupled with financialization (Friedman, 2005), has created the illusion, propagated by some ideologues of the system, that “the world is flat.” Yet, capitalism remains a world economic system divided into separate nation states with differing power resources—a contradiction that is impossible to transcend within the system. Meanwhile, the growth of multinational corporations based in the center countries has served historically to channel global surpluses away from the peripheries toward the centers. The concentration of power (economic, military, financial, communications) at the center is intrinsic to capitalism as a world system, although the specific nations that constitute the center and periphery (and semi-periphery) may change. The world economy is therefore disproportionately focused on the needs of accumulation at the core. The capitalist world system is most stable when governed by a single hegemonic power, such as Britain for most of the nineteenth century, and the United States for most of the twentieth. In periods of hegemonic instability and world economic crisis the system approaches conditions of total crisis, as witnessed by the First and Second World Wars. The worldwide economic and planetary ecological disasters, already discussed, are occurring at a time when there is a tectonic geopolitical shift occurring within capitalism. The United States is continuing to decline in relative power, while no single power or group of powers can directly challenge it at present, particularly with the downfall of the Soviet Union. Under these circumstances, the U.S. state has sought to gain control of those strategic resources and geopolitical positioning that will generate a “new American century” in what is clearly an era of “naked imperialism” (Foster, 2006). This has resulted in a new official doctrine of preemptive war, and the launching of such wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, Washington has been the leading force in promoting neoliberal policies, imposing a Hayekian capitalism 429

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on the world—not in order to create a flatter world, but in order to consolidate the power of those states already at the top. Such global ambitions of a single state, however, inevitably transmute from a source of hegemonic stability into a source of hegemonic instability for the world system. Despite its globalizing tendencies capitalism is unable to integrate politically to form a truly global governance. Instead the attempts of Washington to restore and expand its global hegemony, using its military power to enhance its economic position, are creating what is potentially the deadliest period in the history of imperialism. The United States has recently expanded its bases around the world to as many as seventy countries and territories, while U.S. troops are operating on an even wider field. U.S. military spending in 2007, according to acknowledged figures, is $552 billion, approximately equal to the estimated military spending of all the other nations in the world put together, while actual U.S. military spending in 2007 was $1 trillion (Foster, 2008). Amiya Kumar Bagchi (2005), one of India’s most distinguished economists, has called this a “third axial age,” in which “the United States has emerged as the superimperialist, and its government has claimed that no international law or organization can deter it from any material action it considers to be in the national interest (meaning, of course, the interest of big U.S. capital). At the same time that big capital, backed by the military might of the superimperialist, pursues its murderous course, the bargaining power of workers all over the world is pushed down to low levels through a combination of measures—totally deregulating finance, enfeebling the state, and depriving workers of all rights vis-à-vis capital through legislation. There is no doubt that the national security apparatus in the United States, in this period, sees China, as the great Marxist philosopher István Mészáros (2001) has said, as its “ultimate target.” This has been most evident in the last few years in: (1) report after report by the U.S. national security establishment warning of China’s growing influence in Africa and access to African petroleum reserves, control of which are seen as vital to U.S. “national security” (2) continual fears within the U.S. intelligence community of a Chinese-Iranian or Chinese-Russian-Iranian alliance; (3) U.S. efforts to form a military pact with India; (4) concerns raised about Chinese advances in space; and (5) conflict regarding Tibet, Taiwan, North Korea, and the China Sea. Although the United States is economically bound to China at present through the production of multinational corporations and intensive trade and currency exchanges—so much so that the two economies appear to be in a kind of symbiotic embrace— increased geopolitical rivalry associated with declining U.S. hegemony and the rise of China as a world power create the possibility of a more explosive relationship arising. 430

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Summary So far we have examined the ways in which Africa and its people interlace with the phenomena of slavery, racism, colonialism, and independence as neocolonialism, recolonization as neoliberalism, and neoliberal globalization as the consummation of the process of neoliberalism and globalization and their associated discursive practices within colonial ages of Empire. As with other regions of the world, internal and external forces have been exacting considerable pressure on the economies, societies, and cultures of Africa. Africa received tremendous attention to “make poverty history,” to provide relief from crushing debt loads, to double aid, and to establish a “development round” of trade. And yet, at best, only piecemeal critiques of imperial power emerged amid the cacophony of all-white rock concerts and political grandstanding. By 2007, one of the G8 group of nations’ court jesters, Bob Geldof, finally became so frustrated that he called those attending the Heiligendamm summit “creeps,” and their work, a “total farce” (Blair 2007). Geldof had earlier summed up the achievements of the G8’s 2005 meeting at the Gleneagles Summit as “On aid, 10 out of 10. On debt, eight out of 10,” a ridiculous formulation (Hodkinson 2005). The Geldof campaign “achieved next to nothing” because its “design allowed it to accept inappropriate markers for success that were never real proxies for justice, empowerment or accountability. And also because its demands were never in fact audacious enough” (Hertz 2005). Non-governmental organization (NGO) strategists of peacebuilding and Popular resistance to the various colonial ages of Empire in Africa has been increasing both in scale and intensity. The polyarchic (Robinson, 1996) African regimes have responded to this increasing popular resistance by relying on two types of measures: (1) tactical measures aimed at suppressing eruptions of popular resistance; and (2) more strategic measures aimed at preventing or at least maintaining within manageable limits the growing resistance to their policies. The United States Government and the main international financial institutions operating in the region have played a major role in both developing the second type of measures and assisting most of the African governments to implement these measures. This book has attempted to examine the increasing popular resistance to imperial policies and capitalist globalization in the continent; the responses of the existing regimes and their backers to this increasing resistance; and the alternatives to polyarchy, neoliberalism and capitalist globalization that are emerging in the region. The dramatic transformative impacts of contemporary globalization, and all of its associated baggage on the lives of people worldwide, can hardly escape even the most cursory observer. The outcomes of the ensuing changes 431

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are neither smooth nor unilinear; rather, they are dialectical, dynamic, multifaceted, uneven, and sometimes chaotic, pointing in several different directions at once, and occurring at varying speeds and timescales in different parts of the world, especially Africa,. And, as one might expect, the past, present, and foreseeable impacts of this transformation have elicited controversial responses that at once grab the analytical attention of both opponents (e.g., Klein 2000; Chomsky 2001; Hoogvelt 2001; Stiglitz 2003; Harvey 2007) and supporters (e.g., Sachs 2005; Norberg 2003; Wolf 2004) alike. At the heart of these controversies lies the ideology of neoliberalism, which seeks to further expand global capital accumulation through free trade, financial deregulation, privatization, and other tenets of the so-called Washington Consensus, spearheaded by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), and kindred organizations (Harvey 2007; De Rivero 2001). Examples are not far to seek. Since the 1980s, there has been a proliferation of academic discourse on globalization emanating from virtually all visages of the social sciences and humanities, with disciplines such as sociology, economics, political science, geography, and cultural studies taking the lead in this intellectual project (Held et al. 1999; Waters 1995). Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the sprawling literature is neither the enormous size, nor the diversity of disciplinary perspectives from which analysts have approached the subject, but rather the perfunctory attention given to Africa to date. As the South African economic historian David Moore (2001, 909) laments: “Globalization literature … is devoted largely to the advanced capitalist portion of the global economy where all the indices of production integration, shrinking distance, and the advance of the informationalization mode of production’ are on the increase. Where attention is devoted to the ‘Third World,’ it concentrates on the rise and fall … of the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Africa seems off the map” (emphasis added). The few studies on Africa have come from three main points of departure. First, there are those who are convinced that Africa has little, if anything, to contribute to globalization because the continent, in their view, is made up of nothing more than dysfunctional, “non-viable economies” (de Rivero, 2001) infused with insurmountable corruption and ethno-tribal conflicts. Through their propaganda machines, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank institutions highlighted their “assistance” to Africa. But in reality, since the 1970s, these institutions have gradually become the chief architects of policies, known as “the Washington Consensus,” which are responsible for the worst inequalities and the explosion of poverty in the world, especially in Africa. Yet, when they began to intervene on that continent in the 432

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late 1970s and early 1980s, their stated goal was to “accelerate development,” according to a World Bank document, familiarly known as the “Berg Report.” published in 1981. But as the following editorial will show, the actual record is just disastrous. The main pretext for their intervention was to “help solve” the debt crisis that hit African countries in the late 1970s, following the combination of internal and external shocks, notably sharp fluctuations in commodity prices and skyrocketing interest rates. The remedy they proposed, known as stabilization and structural adjustment programs (SAPs), achieved the opposite, and contributed to worsening the external debt and exacerbating the overall economic and social crisis. In 1980, at the onset of their intervention, the ratios of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) and exports of goods and services were respectively 23.4% and 65.2%. Ten years later, in 1990, they had deteriorated to respectively 63.0% and 210.0%! In 2000, the debt to GDP ratio stood at 71.0% while the ratio of debt to exports of goods and services had “improved” somewhat, at 80.2%, according to the World Bank’s Global Development Finance. The deterioration in debt ratios is reflected in the inability of many African countries to service their external debt. As a result, accumulated arrears on principal and interests have become a growing share of outstanding debt. In 1999, those arrears accounted for 30% of the continent’s debt, compared with 15% in the 1990s and 5.0% for all developing countries. To compound the crisis, African countries are getting very little, in terms of new loans, except to pay back old debts. As a result, since 1988, the part of accumulated arrears in “new” debt is estimated at more than 65%. Between 1980 and 2000, Sub-Saharan African countries had paid more than $240 billion as debt service, that is, about four times the amount of their debt in 1980. Yet, despite this financial hemorrhage, SSA still owes almost four times what its owed more than twenty years ago! One of the most striking illustrations of this apparent paradox is the case of the Nigerian debt. In 1978, the country had borrowed $5 billion. By 2000, it had reimbursed $16 billion, but still owed $31 billion, according to President Obasanjo. The case of Nigeria demonstrates eloquently the structural nature of Africa’s debt crisis and of the power imbalance that characterizes world economic and financial relationships. It is this general context that allowed the IMF and World Bank to increase their influence in African countries. One good illustration of this has been the rapid rise in the share of the World Bank and its affiliate, the International Development Association (IDA), in SSA’s debt. The combined share of both, which was barely 5.1% of SSA’s total debt in 1980, had jumped to 25.0% in 1990 and to more than 37% in 2000, according to the World Bank. In other words, the World Bank group has become the principal “creditor” of 433

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many Sub-Saharan countries, which explains the enormous sway it holds over these countries’ policies. One way they exercise this influence is through the imposition of stiff conditionalities on African countries in exchange for loans and credits. Financial liberalization, aimed at attracting more foreign investments to compensate for shortfalls in export revenues, instead fostered more instability, due to the volatility of exchange rates resulting from speculative short-term capital flows. This, combined with higher interest rates, “crowded” out both public and private investments. For instance, investments as a percentage of gross domestic production (GDP) fell from an annual average of 23% between 1975 and 1979 to an average of 18% between 1980 and 1984 and 16% between 1985 and 1989. They recovered somewhat in the 1990s, but averaged only 18.2% between 1990 and 1997, according to UNCTAD. These statistics are consistent with those given by the World Bank, which show that the annual investment ratio averaged 18.6% and 17.2% in 1981-1990 and 1991-2000, respectively. These low investment ratios resulted in a contraction of output. Real GDP growth, which averaged 3.5 % in the 1970s, fell to 1.7%, between 1981 and 1990, according to the World Bank. However, this masks the sharp declines recorded in the 1980s, dubbed “the lost decade” for Africa. This is better illustrated by the negative growth rates of both GDP and consumption per capita. They fell respectively by 1.2% and 0.9% a year between 1981 and 1990. It is estimated that in 1981-1989, the cumulative loss of per capita income for the continent as a whole was equivalent to more than 21% of real GDP. In a report released in September 2001, UNCTAD indicated that the average income per capita in SSA was 10% lower in 2000 than its 1980 level. In monetary terms, average income per capita fell from $522 in 1981 to $323 in 1997, a loss of nearly $200. The same report said that rural areas experienced an even greater decline in income. These statistics were confirmed by the World Bank, which says that income per capita in Sub Saharan Africa contracted by a cumulative 13% between 1981 and 2001. The 2004 edition of the World Development Indicators says that SSA is the only region in the world where poverty has continued to rise since the early 1980s, that is at the onset of IFIs’ intervention. According to that document, in 1981, an estimated 160 million people lived on less than $1 a day. In 2001, the number had risen to 314 million, almost double its 1981 level. This means that approximately 50% of Africa’s population lives in poverty. When the threshold is $2 a day, the numbers rise from 288 million to 518 million, during the same period. As contemporary neoliberal globalization has intensified and consolidated since the 1980s, its hegemonic and exploitative nature has provoked new waves 434

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and modalities of contestation and resistance in the African continent. The contested and politicized nature of neoliberal globalization, which Arturo Escobar (2004, 207) aptly refers to as “a new US-based form of imperial globality, an economic military-ideological order that subordinates regions, peoples, and economies world-wide,” has drawn attention to the challenge of resisting the global dominance of this process. The key political tension exists between the forces of globalization and the forces of resistance, and at the heart of this is a paradox: globalization both weakens and simultaneously reinvigorates the forces of contestation and resistance. Put another way, imperial globality is provoking the emergence of new grassroots-based social movements, which are engaged in counterhegemonic struggles that represent both a challenge and alternative to this new form of colonialism, especially specific African popular struggles and manifestations of the deglobalization of capital orientation. Indeed, the proliferation of these social movements and civil society groups, beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing to the present, has posed serious challenges to the hegemonic discourse and project of neoliberalism. For instance, Sub-Saharan Africa tourism reflects one of the many contradictions of the subcontinent—the fact that its rich natural and sociocultural ecologies do not translate into meaningful socioeconomic development. Sub-Saharan African countries capture a disproportionately miniscule portion of the global tourism business, despite their substantial potentialities for tourism resources. To date, analysts have put little emphasis on the links between neoliberal political economy of globalization and indigenization, mediated by the legacy of colonization, in their explications of this contradiction. Instead, the focus has been either? On factors internal to? External to sub-Saharan Africa, without implicating the connections between these apparent disparate factors. Empirically, the globalization-indigenization dialectic and its colonial legacy interface are missing from the search for answers for sub-Saharan African tourism development. Likewise, the existing paradigms of tourism development, articulated by Jafari (1989) as the advocacy platform, the cautionary platform, the adaptancy platform?, and the knowledge-based platform?, are virtually silent on these dynamics. Conclusion The period since the Second World War has been one of uninterrupted turmoil in the underdeveloped capitalist countries. The people of Africa, Asia and Latin America, amounting to two thirds of the human race, derived little benefit from the fireworks display of economic growth in the industrialized 435

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West. They remained hungry spectators at the feast of world capitalism. Even the relative development of industry made possible by the world economic upswing of 1948-73 did not prevent a fall in national income for most of these countries, leading to a general economic and social crisis. The case of Africa is worth lamenting over in that the African people had undergone enslavement, racial abuse and heartless colonization, exploitation and dehumanization for centuries. Nominally independent, African countries became even more enslaved than before. The economies of these countries are tied by a million chains to the chariot of world imperialism, which exercises its domination through international trade and the mechanisms of the world market based on the exchange of more labor for less. According to figures published by the UN Development Programme for 1992, the gap between rich and poor countries has increased inexorably over the past decades. Since 1960 the share of the world’s gross product of the richest 20% grew from 70.2% to 82.7%. This means that the industrialized capitalist countries are now 60 times wealthier than those countries where the poorest 20% live. The gap between the two has doubled in the last thirty years. However, even these figures understate the reality. In the advanced countries of capitalism, millions live in poverty, while the Third World has its share of wealthy parasites and exploiters. The same report reveals that the difference of income between the world’s richest billion and the world’s poorest billion is more than 150 to one. In the last decade of the 20th Century, despite all the wonders of modern science, two thirds of humanity live on the border line of barbarism. Common diseases, such as diarrhea and measles kill seven million children a year. Yet this can be prevented by a cheap and simple vaccination. 500,000 women die each year from complications during pregnancy, and perhaps another 200,000 die from abortions. The ex-colonial countries spent only 4% of their GDP on health—an average of $41 a head, compare with $1900 in the advanced capitalist countries. According to United Nations reports, more than 6 billion people will inhabit the earth by the year 2,000. About half of them will be under the age of 20. Yet most suffer from unemployment, lack of basic education and health care, overcrowding and bad living conditions. An estimated 100 million children aged 6 to 11 are not in school. Two thirds are girls. Incidentally, even in the USA UNICEF estimates that 20% of children live below the national poverty line. However, the situation in third world countries has reached a horrific level. As many as a 100 million children live on the streets. In Africa, this problem has been “solved” by a campaign by the police and murder squads to exterminate children for the crime of being poor. Similar atrocities are being 436

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carried out against homeless people. One million children have been killed, 4 million seriously injured, and 5 million have become refugees or orphaned as a result of wars in the past decade. In many ex-colonial countries, we have the phenomenon of child labor, often amounting to slavery. The hypocritical protests in the Western media do not prevent the products of this labor from reaching Western markets and increasing the capital of “respectable” western companies. A typical example was the recently published case of a match factory where children, mostly girls, work a 6 day-60 hour-week, with toxic chemicals, for three dollars. A letter to the Economist of the 15th September 1993 pointed out that: “Parents do realize the value of education for the future of their children but often their poverty is so desperate that they cannot do without the wages of their laboring children.” The main reason for the grinding poverty of the third world is the two-fold looting of the resources through the terms of trade, and the trillion dollars debt owed by the third world to the big western banks. Just to pay the interest on the debt, these countries have to export food needed by their own people and sacrifice the health and education of the people. According to UNICEF, debt repayments have caused incomes in the third world to fall by a quarter, health expenditure by 50% and educational expenditure by 25%. Despite the hypocritical outcry against the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, Brazilian economists have proved that this is mainly motivated by the need to raise cash for agricultural exports, such as beef, raised on reclaimed land. The financing for such export projects comes from the World Bank and other international financial organizations. The plight of the third world was vividly expressed in the 1989 UNICEF report: “Three years ago, former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere asked the question, “must we starve our children to pay our debt?” That question has been answered in practice. And the answer has been “yes”. In those three years hundreds of thousands of the world’s children have given their lives to pay their countries’ debts, and many millions more are still paying the interest with their malnourished minds and bodies.” Impasse of Capitalism Capitalism is a chaotic system of production beyond the control of humanity. It is doomed to plunge society into ever greater crises. But why does it enter a crisis and what is the alternative? 2007-08 saw the beginnings of a world economic crisis unlike any other we have seen. Since the end of the Second World War there have been seven official recessions, but each of these was followed by a period of relatively fast recovery. This time the situation is different though. There is no recovery or growth to be seen. All over Europe 437

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(including Britain), wages are stagnating, unemployment is rising, and the cost of living is rapidly increasing. All of this is occurring simultaneously with government austerity and spending cuts to public services. There is no other option we are told; we’re all in it together, and must therefore share the burden. But it isn’t all bad news – if you’re rich! At the other end of the social scale wealth is increasing at an exponential rate. A report from Oxfam estimates that globally, the incomes of the top 1% have increased 60% over the past two decades. The contradiction of “poverty amidst plenty” here is enormous. How can this be the case when life for the vast majority of people is getting harder? The question goes to the very root of the capitalist system, and to date, there has only been one form of economic analysis that can fully explain it, and that is Marxism. Marx explained that economic crises are not simply the result of a mechanical cycle of boom and bust, like a pendulum that swings one way and then the other, as many bourgeois economics would have us believe. Rather, crises occur because of the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system. In Marx’s own words: “The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself” (Capital vol.3). A historical revisit might be helpful in explaining the impasse further. Before the war, Trotsky referred to the capitalist class “tobogganing towards disaster with its eyes closed.” The same could be said of capitalism today, after an interval of more than half a century. Since World War Two, bourgeois governments have tried everything from Keynesianism to Monetarism, and every conceivable combination in between. The Keynesian experiment was responsible for an explosion of inflation at the end of the 1970s and forced them to beat a hasty retreat. Since then, we have seen the monetarist reaction, which was allegedly going to restore sound finance and balanced budgets. What was the result? In Britain, the application of monetarist policies under Thatcher led to a collapse of industry, from which it has still not recovered. From 28.4% of GDP in 1971, manufacturing industry fell to 23.1% in 1989. Those employed in manufacturing fell from 8.4 million in 1969 to 5.1 million in 1990. On the other hand, the parasitic banking sector increased from 9.3% in 1971 to 18.7% in 1989. At the same time, in all the advanced capitalist countries, there has been an inexorable rise in budget deficits, and this in spite of sharp cut-backs in state expenditure. Last year, the average budget deficit of the OECD countries stood at 4.2% of GDP—a huge increase from 1% of GDP in 1989. Worse still, their total public sector debt rocketed to about 63% of GDP (up from 42% in 1980). The interest on this debt alone represents a colossal drain on the resources of society. 438

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In the European Union, the average budget deficit increased from 3% of GDP in 1989 to about 7% in 1993—the highest level since the Second World War, and even bigger, proportionately, than America’s (4.4%). Moreover, the OECD reckons that as much as three-quarters of America’s budget deficit, and two-thirds of Europe’s is “structural,” and will persist even when the economy picks up again. Given this situation, a return to Keynesian methods of deficit financing would provoke an explosion of inflation. On the other hand, attempts to cut the deficit will decrease demand, thereby aggravating the crisis. The fact that these staggering deficits were piled up during the boom of 1982-90 is a further indication of the sickness of the system. In the past, deficits were used by the Keynesians to get out of slumps by “creating demand.” Now Western governments cannot do this because the deficit was allowed to get out of hand in the previous period. Far from increasing public spending, they are continually cutting back, despite the fact that in countries such as Britain, the infrastructure (health, schools, roads, railways, housing) is falling to pieces. Even the meagre “benefits” of the unemployed, invalids, single parents and old age pensions are singled out for attack. And still the budget deficit continues to grow, as a result of the fall in production and huge interest repayments. The bourgeois economists contradict themselves continually. On the one hand they argue that there is “not sufficient demand” in the economy, while simultaneously arguing in favor of a cut in demand in the form of wage cuts and slashing public expenditure. Wherever they turn, they are trapped between the twin evils of inflation and deflation. In other words, whatever they do will be wrong. In the long term, the outlook for capitalism in general is hopeless. However, that does not mean that it will automatically disappear. Capitalism always moves through booms and slumps. It is like breathing in and out. It accompanies capitalism from the cradle to the grave. However, the vigorous respiration of a healthy child is not the same as the painful wheezing of senile decrepitude. The capitalist system is sick, and the sickness is terminal. Karl Marx explained over a hundred years ago that the final barrier to capitalist production is capitalism itself. It is true there is no “final crisis” of capitalism. It is true that, until it is overthrown by the working class, it will always find a way out. But, in finding a way out, the bourgeois always increase the contradictions of the system and ultimately make matters worse. For reasons which we have outlined above, the capitalist system, after four decades of expansion, is now reaching its limits. The long period of relative peace and prosperity in the advanced capitalist countries is drawing to a close. Halfway through the last decade of the twentieth century—a century already characterized by two world wars and untold calamities for the human race—the 439

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world is faced with a new period of wars, civil wars, revolution and counterrevolution. In the course of this period, the destiny of humanity will be settled, one way or another. What “way out” can there be for capitalism? As Lenin used to say, the truth is always concrete. The bourgeois have tried Keynesianism and Monetarism. Both ultimately failed—the second far more quickly than the first. They can try a mix of both these witches brews. That will bring them the worst of all worlds—a mixture of inflation and deflation, which will rapidly provoke new social and political convulsions. Over many decades, all the contradictions have been piling up. Now they must pick up the bill. In 1914 and 1939, they took to the path of war to attempt to resolve their problems. But the existence of terrifying weapons of destruction—nuclear, chemical, biological—means that an all-out war between the major powers would necessarily end in mutual annihilation. Since the capitalists do not wage war for the fun of it, but in order to conquer markets, raw materials, territory and spheres of influence, this road is effectively blocked, at least as long as the working class and its organizations remain intact. This means that the contradictions of capitalism must express themselves in an ever sharper conflict between the classes. The bourgeois of every country are agreed on one thing: it is necessary to drive down living standards, to slash state expenditure, to destroy the welfare state because “we” (that is to say, the capitalist system) cannot afford it. That means that they threaten to eliminate all those things which make life bearable for the majority of people, all those elements which make for at least a semi-civilized existence. “The revolution needs the whip of counter-revolution,” Marx used to say. The counter-offensive of capital will have a profound effect on the working class, which has accumulated colossal power over the past few decades. The general strikes in Spain, Belgium and Italy are a warning that the workers will not stand idly by to watch their living standards destroyed. The next period will see big battles between the classes that will put the struggles of the past in the shade. Once again, the workers will begin to move through the mass organizations of the class, beginning with the trade unions, to attempt to transform society. Sooner or later, they will take power in one country or another, as they did in Russia in 1917. When that happens, it will transform the world far more quickly than in 1917-21. The basis will be laid for the victory of socialism on a world scale.

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References Amiya Kumar Bagchi. (2005). Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), xvii. Blair, D. (2007). Geldof and Bono Blast G8 for Betraying Africa. Telegraph (London), June 9. Bukharin, Nikolai. 1929). “Imperialism and World Economy,” International Publishers 1929 Chomsky, Noam. (2001). Free trade and free market: Pretense and practice. In The culture of globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 356–70. De Rivero, Oswaldo. (2001). The myths of development. Dhaka: University Press. Escobar, Arturo. 2004. Beyond the Third World: Imperial globality and antiglobalisation social movements. Third World Quarterl? 24 (1): 207. Foster, John Bellamy. (2006). Naked Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press. Foster, John Bellamy.2008). Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 1–19; Foster, Naked Imperialism, 55–66; Chalmers A. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004); István Mészáros, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008), 105–07. Friedman, Thomas L. (2005). The World Is Flat (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Harvey, David. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Held, D., A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, and J. Perrato. (1999). Global transformations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hoogvelt, Ankie. (2001). Globalization and the postcolonial world: The new political economy of development. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Klein, Naomi. (2000). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. Toronto: Vintage Canada. Hertz, N. (2005). We Achieved Next to Nothing. New Statesman (London), December 12. Hodkinson, S. (2005). Oh no, they didn’t! Bono and Geldof: “We Saved Africa!” Counterpunch, October Norberg, Johan. (2003). In defense of global capitalism. Washington, DC: Cato Institute http: //www.counterpunch.org/hodkinson10272005.html. Jafari, J. (1989). Socioeconomic dimensions of tourism: An English language literature review. In Tourism as a factor of change: A sociocultural stud?, ed. J. 441

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Bystrzanowski, 19–32. Vienna: Center for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences. Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore, and Neil Brenner, “Neoliberalism Resurgent? Market Rule after the Great Recession” South Atlantic Quarterly 11, no. 2 (2012): 265-288, 268. Mészáros. (2001). The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time, 124–26. Moore, David. 2001. Neoliberal globalization and the triple crisis of modernisation in Africa: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Africa. Third World Quarterly 22: 909–29 Robinson, William. (1996) Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stiglitz, Joseph. (2003). Globalization and its discontent. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. New York: Routledge.

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Chapter 10 Which Way Africa-Towards Africa-Exit from Colonial Empire? Overview For some five centuries, European colonial empire builders, namely Portugal, Holland, France, England, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain employed different strategies and tactics in Africa to make money through the ownership of human beings, exploration, evangelization, colonization, commercialization, banditry, robbery, and theft. The processes of merchandizing some Africans, dominating and controlling of trade, destroying African cultures and religions, imposing Christianity, destroying African leadership and sovereignties through establishing colonial governments, and dispossessing lands and other economic resources, and transforming Africans into coerced laborers involved war and terrorism. To use different forms of violence in merchandising Africans and taking over the homelands and resources of the indigenous peoples is an act of terrorism. Terrorism and other forms of violence enabled these empire builders to enrich themselves and their collaborators at the cost of Africans; consequently, they established themselves as powerful countries, claimed racial superiority, and imposed their cultures and Christian religion on Africans.

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Introduction Colonial imperialism may be defined as the process of establishing colonial and neocolonial relationships. In a colonial relationship, the people and resources of one country called the colonized country are subjected to the power, authority and control of another of country called the colonial master. The relationship is essentially one between servants or slaves whose human and material resources primarily serve the interest of the master. A neocolonial relationship is not very different from a colonial relationship except that it is more subtle. In a neocolonial relationship, the people and resources of a country that has the outward appearance and trappings of an independent country but poor and relatively weak are subjected indirectly and informally to the power, authority and control of the rich and powerful states of the world. Thus, whereas the colonized country recognizes only one master but its resources may serve the interests of imperialism as a whole, the neocolonized country is compelled by its weak position and its very survival in the international arena to recognize 443

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several masters as its resources are exploited to serve the interests of the whole imperialist camp. Imperialism is nothing new or a unique character of the West. In ancient times the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Huns, Turks and Mongols engaged in imperialism. However, in modern times, Western countries have been identified as the champions of imperialism although Soviet era imperialism including its Afghanistan experience cannot be denied. There are several motives of imperialism including strategic, cultural, settlement of surplus population, economic, and prestige reasons, but the economic motive was principally what provided the impetus for Western colonization of Africa and for the establishment of neocolonialism instead of decolonization. Because of the economic imperative, imperialism is essentially exploitative. As imperialism is driven by an exploitative motive so is capitalism which exploits labor to generate profit to the benefit of capital. When monopoly capitalism expands globally, its exploitative interest and that of imperialism become so fused that the two become integrated into an inseparable entity. Indeed, because imperialism has both political and economic motives, it becomes the political prerequisite for the expansion of capitalism and simultaneously capitalism becomes the economic aspect of imperialism. It is because of this inseparable relationship between advanced capitalism and imperialism that Lenin (1983) conceived of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. However, since imperialism predates capitalism, capitalism may as well be the highest stage of imperialism in its exploitative characteristics. The exploitative character of imperialism suggests that it can never be established without the shedding of blood, for no dominated society willfully embraces it, and African societies are no exceptions. Since the 19th century, African countries have been the victims of this bloody imperialism through both its colonialist and neocolonialist expressions and there seems to be no end in sight. When the European slave trade in Africans was stopped finally in the nineteenth century, Africa did not enjoy sufficient breathing space to recover and embark upon its own development. In the same century, European imperialism raised its head with Africa as its primary target leading to a European scramble for Africa through which the continent was partitioned among European powers. Decolonization did not take place precisely because it was not in the economic and geopolitical interests of the colonial masters for that to happen. These interests demanded the existence of African states weak enough politically and economically to be dominated so that the exploitative colonial relationship might continue. To the former colonial masters, the logic of the cold war at the time demanded the continued tutelage of independent African 444

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countries to ensure that they did not fall into the communist camp. It was in the context of the combination of these economic and geopolitical rationalities that on the eve of independence African countries, deliberately rendered economically, politically, and economically weak by imperialism, did not become decolonized states but neocolonies heavily dependent for their survival on the same imperialists they so condemned in the independence struggle. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba (the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo), and the overthrow of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (the President of the Republic of Ghana) in the 1960s who were both committed to genuine decolonization of the African continent, and the conspicuous propping up of Mobutu in power by the West in the Republic of the Congo were steps in the direction of maintaining the economic and geopolitical interests of Western imperialism. Africa’s role as a price-taker in the oligopolistic international market means the fluctuation of the prices of its goods to satisfy imperialist interests. The economic stresses arising from these fluctuations are easily translated into political crises by demagogues who turn themselves into leaders of rebellions. The harsh structural adjustment conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have aggravated these economic and political crises and deepened the scramble to sell arms to Africa for economic gain. When it is considered that the states of the former Soviet Union were not involved in the first scramble for Africa, their involvement in the second scramble means that the suffering of the African in bearing the White-man’s burden has increased. Abundant evidence shows that the strategy of imperialism to shed African blood for its economic gain using African recruits and puppets remains essentially unchanged in this second scramble. By their deeds, Mobutu of the Republic of the Congo, Museveni of Uganda, Savimbi of Angola, Generals Kotoka and Afrifa and Flight Lieutenant Rawlings of Ghana, Colonel Ojukwu and General Abacha of Nigeria, Colonel Mengistu of Ethiopia, Generals Siad Barre and Aidid of Somalia, and Foday Sanko of Sierra Leone through whom much African blood has been shed are knowingly or unknowingly puppets or agents of either Western or Soviet imperialism. Through clever manipulation and effective use of its forked tongue, imperialism is able to deceive leaders of Africa’s rebellions into thinking of themselves as patriots and nationalists pursuing some noble cause. In reality, these leaders shed African blood to satisfy imperialist interests. The agents of imperialism include multinationals and other private enterprises. As capitalist private enterprise, acting as the agent of imperialism, was deeply involved in the first scramble for Africa during the nineteenth 445

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century so is it deeply involved in this second scramble by corporate and financial capitalism called globalization. Despite the outward condemnation of armed conflict in Africa by the Security Council, private companies from the same countries that effectively constitute the Council are deeply involved in supplying arms, trainers, and mercenaries to both sides of most conflicts. In sum, ideologically, the first scramble for Africa was disguised as the white-man’s burden of a historically civilizing mission in Africa. The colonial experience however showed that the African had to suffer dearly to bear the “whiteman’s burden.” African human and material resources contributed to the development of Europe while continent was continuously underdeveloped. A second bloody scramble for Africa began during the cold war when the Soviet Union extended its imperialist interests to Africa. The demise of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union did not end this scramble. Instead, the imperialist camp for the scramble for Africa has enlarged leading to a flood of arms from both East and West to the continent and blood bath. Of great interest is the fact that in both the first and second scrambles, African Christians have been disillusioned into thinking that the secular developed countries of the West are Christian countries. This has enabled the Church to be used as an ideological apparatus of imperialism to soften the hearts of Africans and direct them to look at the Cross while imperialists “gather the riches of the land.” Until Africans recognize and accept the reality that neither imperialism nor capitalism is fundamentally Christian, humanitarian, or goodSamaritan, stop fighting against one another or among themselves, and in unity resolve to direct the human and material resources of the continent to their own development, Africa’s future will be very bleak.

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Revisiting Africa’s Victimhood in Colonial Ages of Empire The noun imperium initially signified the legitimate power of princes, magistrates, and officials to command and punish their subjects (Weber 1978, pp. 650, 839). The concept of imperium was then “extended by analogy to mean Rome’s right to command obedience from the peoples it had subjected” (Lieven 2000, p. 8, cited under Modern Territorial, Land-Based Empires). During the medieval and early modern eras the concept of empire took on three dominant meanings in western Europe (Folz 1969; Lieven 2000, pp. 13–17, cited under Modern Territorial, Land-Based Empires): the German idea of Reich, as in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation; the Carolingian empire of Charlemagne; and the “universal” empire of the pope and Latin Christendom. In the 19th and 20th centuries empire came to refer to large territorial political organizations formed by conquest and to the collected overseas possessions of 446

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a single ruler or polity (Doyle 1986; Pagden 2003). Some empires, as exemplified by early modern Spain, 20th-century Britain, and the current United States, exist on a scale that is truly global; other empires have encompassed a single overseas colony (e.g., Belgium before World War I) or a handful of colonies (as in the German and Portuguese colonial empires). See also Burbank and Cooper (2010, Mann 1986–2012, and Münkler 2007). Our study, however, is based on the Colonial Ages of Empire as the overarching concept in all discussions of imperialism and colonialism in Africa. In this book we defined colonial empire minimally as a relationship “of political control imposed by some political societies over the effective sovereignty of other political societies” (Doyle 1986, p. 19). An empire usually involves a core polity governing peripheral spaces and populations; peripheries are typically subjected to different legal and administrative practices than the core. As Suny (Suny 2001, p. 25) writes, an empire is “a particular form of domination or control between two units set apart in a hierarchical, inequitable relationship, more precisely a composite state in which a metropole dominates a periphery to the disadvantage of the periphery.” As Max Weber (Weber 2010, cited under Premodern Empires) pointed out in his study of the Roman Empire, and as historians of European colonial empires and the Russian empire have shown, imperial centers usually deploy a variety of policies in the regions they dominate rather than applying a single uniform approach (Steinmetz 2007, cited under Colonies and Colonial Empires). Although the concept of empire is capacious, it is neither hopelessly vague nor blurred, nor artificially restrictive—as long as we follow a historical approach in defining it (Ab Imperio). We can then exclude definitions that reduce empire narrowly to economics as well as definitions that are impossibly broad, equating empire with any form of hegemonic domination or influence (Darwin 2008). We can also disregard, for present purposes, all metaphorical usages of the words: empire and imperialism. The ideological imperialism by Western Europe was extensively employed across African countries in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively in order to justify the economic and political activities across their borders. In general, “War capitalism” was the violent exploitation of the non-West through piracy, enslavement, theft of natural resources, and the physical seizure of markets. It was not caused by superior technology or organization. Nor did it rest on “offering superior goods at good prices”, such as you find in the la-laland of economics textbooks, but on the “military subjugation of competitors and a coercive European mercantile presence in many regions of the world” like Africa. Europe had little to offer the world other than some itchy fabrics. And oats. So Europeans profited as the global mafioso middleman skimming the 447

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freight between Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Europeans shoved aside Asian merchants and controlled Asian producers directly as both political rulers and monopsonist-buyers. The precious goods from the now-impoverished Asian artisans were paid for (at laughable prices) with the only thing of value the Europeans offered, the gold and the silver stolen from the dispossessed natives of the Americas. The Asian goods were then exchanged for millions of African slaves, who themselves would produce in the Americas the only non-bullion stuff that anyone ever wanted from Europeans. At the same time, increasingly powerful and interventionist European states practiced import substitution industrialization, with protectionist measures shielding domestic infant industries from the stiff competition of superior Asian goods who were subjected to industrial espionage. “War capitalism” was a precondition for the Industrial Revolution. It created markets abroad. It supplied essential raw materials made by slaves and other bonded labor. It accumulated capital which funded the new industries. And it was the foundation on which were built the institutions public and private which led to the Industrial Revolution (IR). Even the new technologies invented during the IR would have been for nought without the markets first seized and opened by “war capitalism”. Equally crucial to the Industrial Revolution was a domestic “war capitalism” — a powerful state compelled self-sufficient peasants and cottage industrialists in the countryside into becoming a wage proletariat. Without this there would have been no labor for the capitalists. Therefore it was not technology but the role of the powerful state which was the distinguishing feature of the Industrial Revolution. New social relations — the transition from personal relations & customary rules to impersonal exchange and anonymous institutions — would have been impossible without this political intervention. As the industrial revolution progressed, “war capitalism” transitioned to industrial capitalism, at least at home, with its rule of law and formal commercial relations. But “war capitalism” continued abroad. Industrial growth required the power of the imperial state to open markets across the world as the vent for surplus production. The violent opening of foreign markets deindustrialized the Rest by destroying their traditional industries. The imperial state also crucially aided industrial capitalism by “enclosing the global countryside.” The domestic commodification of labor had to be followed by an international commodification of labor for this process to work. Just as the “market society” had been created in Europe by the powerful hegemonic state, so the powerful imperial state introduced capitalist social relations to the rest of the world. My understanding of “relations of production” 448

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is what we can refer to as the social organization of production. Basically, it means who owns the productive forces, or how they are controlled. For instance in a slave society masters force slaves to do the work, and in a feudal society serfs are obliged to work for the lord a certain number of days each year. In capitalist society capitalists own society’s productive resources and employ workers to operate these for a wage when capitalists think profits can be made. In the new international division of labor, previously self-sufficient peasants in the rest were ripped from their traditional modes of living. Risk-averse peasants preferred growing subsistence crops and supplementing their income with handicrafts. They were unwilling to become an agricultural wage proletariat. So the imperial state taxed them; made them tenants and sharecroppers; turned their commons into private plots; built railroads and ports on top of them; and wiped out the market for handicrafts through mechanized competition. Peasants were compelled to become monocultural suppliers of raw materials to the metropolitan manufacturers. At the same time, they would also become consumers of the manufactured output of the metropolis. The result was dependence on low wages, predation by rural loan sharks, and subjection to the vagaries of the international commodities market. Thanks to this coerced integration with global capitalism, millions fell victim to famine in the late 19th century. None of this global “great transformation” was some ‘natural’ outcome of market forces. It was an invention, a deliberate ‘reimagining’, accomplished by powerful western states. Western colonial powers then “kicked away the ladder” of economic development by imposing “free trade imperialism” on the colonies and thus foreclosing any possibility of infant industry protection. Import competition did not spur colonial industries to mechanise and compete with imports. Many parts of the non-European world had once had the prerequisites for an industrial revolution, but the missing element was state capacity. It was destroyed by European “war capitalism”. The colonized peoples could not benefit from the support of an indigenous “developmental state”. When nascent capitalists did finally appear in the colonies thanks to the advantage of low wages, they were actively undermined by the imperial state who catered to the interests of the metropolitan manufacturers. The Rest remained poor and backward. The emergence of industrial capitalism in the West was therefore fundamentally zero-sum, coming at the expense of its emergence in the Rest. But this could not remain true forever. Workers in the “Global North” struggled against capitalists to improve their wages and working conditions. It was their political struggle and collective action which led to the improvement in their living standards. This in turn increased labor costs for metropolitan 449

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manufacturers, and made the products of the “Global South” more competitive as the wage gap widened further. But the most important event in the economic resurrection of the Rest was decolonization. Indigenous capitalists, who had played a crucial role in independence movements, were finally able to get a “developmental state” of their own to look out for their interests. Now the “Global South” could at last practice import substitution and infant industry protection. This precedent had already been powerfully suggested by Japan in the late 19th century, which was never colonized, and whose government could plan and steer the country toward industrialization, especially by practicing “war capitalism” in Africa.

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Highlight of British Free Trade as Imperialism in Africa Free trade imperialism was a nineteenth-century English political movement that advocated a primary focus on commercial domination, rather than formal colonization and territorial expansion. Over time, the phrase came to refer to the use of military and diplomatic power to force underdeveloped, or militarily weaker, countries to grant access to their markets to more powerful states. The result of this policy was the rise of an informal economic control that stopped short of outright colonization, but significantly curtailed the sovereignty of weaker countries. Free trade imperialism was practiced by many colonial states, but was primarily associated with British policies, especially in Latin America and Asia. As economic expansion became increasingly intertwined with empire, critics of imperialism, including Karl Marx and his later adherents, focused on the economic implications and motivations of imperialism and neocolonialism. The advocates of free trade imperialism, who were initially referred to as “Little Englanders,” rejected broader arguments in favor of imperialism that were based on the supposed strategic or cultural advantages associated with the acquisition of new areas. The increasing emphasis on accruing national economic benefits on the part of leading figures such as Richard Cobden resulted in the growth of the “informal” empire, and caused both pro-and anticolonial factions to support commercial expansion into underdeveloped regions of the world. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, the older, less formal era of British colonialism came to an end with the loss of North American colonies and the subsequent acquisition of new colonies and territories as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Concurrently, mercantilism, the dominant economic theory of the early imperial period, also gave way to a greater emphasis on free trade and laissez-faire economics. Adam Smith’s concept that markets could regulate themselves through competitive equilibrium, combined with the lessons of the 450

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post—American Revolution period, led to a shift in British policy. When England continued to dominate trade with the new United States and to control markets following the loss of the North American colonies, many English supporters of anticolonial free trade pointed out that England continued to reap many of the economic benefits it had previously enjoyed, but without the costs of administering and defending the colonies. Pro-free trade factions also allied themselves with the antislavery Whig faction in Parliament to promote the eradication of slavery and the slave trade. With the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807, free traders argued that the ban needed to be applied universally in order to ensure that other countries did not gain an advantage over British goods because of lower labor costs. Similar arguments were used against the institution of slavery itself (namely that it resulted in unfair labor costs) and in 1834 Britain abolished slavery outright, although various forms of indentured servitude continued. There was, however, a strategic dimension that linked colonialism and free trade. From the early formation of the empire onward, Britain sought colonies as a means to protect other colonies. For instance, the acquisition of Cape Colony was motivated by a desire to control sea-lanes around the bottom of Africa and thus ensure that goods from India would flow freely. Expansion of the empire within the Indian subcontinent (including conquest of Indian territories and the later expeditions in Afghanistan) was viewed as a means to protect the profitable coastal colonies. The nexus between free trade and imperialism became highly apparent toward the end of the 1830s. By this time, the British and other European powers had developed commercial interests in China. A particularly profitable trade for British merchants was the importation and sale of opium. The British East India Company cultivated opium in India, shipped the drug to China, and then traded it for highly sought-after goods, such as silk or tea. In 1839 a new Chinese customs official sought to enforce his government’s ban on the import of opium (a ban that corrupt officials had previously been bribed to ignore). In response, England used naval power in 1840 to forcefully open Chinese ports. The Chinese eventually bowed to British pressure and in 1842 signed the Treaty of Nanking, which granted England most-favored-nation trade status, opened new ports to British merchants, and granted extraterritoriality to the British, making Britishers accused of crimes in China subject not to Chinese but to British law and courts. From the 1840s through the 1870s, the so-called Manchester school of free trade advocates held political and economic sway in England. Supported by factory owners, as well as many in the working class, adherents to this style of free trade emphasized the importance of exports and the need for the 451

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government to undertake action to remove foreign impediments to British products. Free trade was seen both as a means to enhance the nation and as a mechanism to promote universal values (in this case, British values). However, while the Manchesterites believed it was the government’s role to champion free trade, they sought to limit government expenditures on the military or on colonial administration, as they considered such expenditures to be a diversionary use of resources. One of the early leaders of the free trade movement was Richard Cobden (1804-1865). Cobden earned a fortune early in life through trade and became a staunch advocate of imperial retrenchment and commercial expansion. Cobdenism was a strong belief in the market and opposition to state intervention in the economy. Cobden himself believed that free trade would promote peace and provide the best means to improve the social conditions of England’s poor. With John Bright (18111889), Cobden led the Anti-Corn Law League, an anti-tariff organization that was able to force a repeal of England’s strict agricultural protectionist laws in 1846. As British markets were opened to foreign competition, London increasingly pursued policies designed to force other states to adopt reciprocal trade policies. Cobden was also an early campaigner for arms reductions and international arbitration as an alternative to war (Cobden and his supporters believed that war was an unnecessary waste of resources and manpower). Cobden’s opposition to armed conflict and his sense of ethics led him to join Bright and other liberals of the time in opposing British military action during the Second Opium War in 1857, and he worked with other parliamentarians to bring down the government of Lord Russell over the conflict. Cobden made several visits to France to argue in favor of free trade and against tariffs and is generally credited with fostering reforms in French economic policy during the period. In 1860 Cobden negotiated a major tariffreduction treaty with France. Cobden was a vocal supporter of the Union during the American Civil War, but died of bronchitis in 1865 before the war had ended. By the 1840s the free trade movement could claim credit for several significant accomplishments. The repeal of major protectionist legislation within England spurred the expansion of the popularity of free trade principles. By 1860 some tariffs on around four hundred items had been removed. Income from tariffs fell from 25.3 percent of government revenues in 1846 to 11.5 percent in 1865 and 5.3 percent in 1900. The lower tariffs led to reduced consumer prices for the growing British middle class, as well as for the working class. The result was widespread political support for free trade. Victorian voters embraced Cobdenism and supported the efforts of successive governments to open markets to British goods and products. However, whereas Cobden 452

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supported means that would promote international peace, other British politicians believed that free trade could be spread through military and diplomatic coercion. In addition, British governments mainly supported only those free trade policies that benefited England and the empire. The costs of empire constrained British expansion from the 1840s through the 1860s. Though new territory was added, successive governments sought to exercise control through informal means rather than outright colonization. Nonetheless, the 1840s saw significant growth in both the formal and informal empires. During the period, the British expanded into, or took some degree of control over, areas such as Hong Kong, the Gold Coast, Natal, New Zealand, the Punjab, and Sierra Leone. The return of Lord Palmerston as foreign secretary in 1846 marked an increasingly assertive British foreign policy in regards to trade issues. Palmerston sent a British fleet to Portugal to pressure the Portuguese government during a trade dispute, and the British used military intervention in Borneo and Africa to open markets. More significantly, in 1848 Palmerston issued a clear endorsement of free trade imperialism when, in a diplomatic note, he declared that Britain would use diplomatic and political pressure to protect “investments” if it deemed that the loss of those investments threatened the stability or security of England. Cobden and his supporters in Parliament sought to limit Palmerston’s aggressive policies by reducing the government’s military expenditures, but successive bills were rejected in Parliament. Instead, Britain’s formal and informal empires began a period of sustained growth. In 1848 British traders seized a port in Nicaragua and ultimately forced the Nicaraguan government to sign an advantageous commercial treaty. That same year, British troops occupied the Boer area of Natal and seized Natal’s main port after British merchants began cultivating cotton on formerly Natalese territory that had been annexed into the Cape Colony in 1847. In 1843 James Brooke created a personal fiefdom in Sarawak in the north of Burma. Meanwhile, throughout Africa and Asia, British merchants began negotiating and signing a series of trade treaties with local leaders. In some cases, charter companies led the commercial expansion. In addition to the well-known British East India Company, a range of smaller, but in many cases just as successful, companies such as the Royal Niger Company or the Royal South Africa Company, were able to expand British commercial hegemony. In order to protect commercial interests, the British undertook military action to either prevent encroachments from neighboring powers or expand access to resources. Often conflicts were initiated in remote areas, and London responded by sending troops to suppress native populations. On a grand scale, the 1857 Sepoy Revolt and the subsequent dissolution of the East India 453

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Company by an imperial administration is demonstrative of this trend in which minor disagreements were used by colonial officials, merchants, and so-called adventurers to expand the formal empire. Indeed, the economist John Galbraith’s “man-on-the-spot” thesis asserts that individuals were responsible for much of the expansion of the empire, because they initiated colonial agreements or conflicts that London would have avoided. From the 1840s through the 1860s, British governments attempted to sign free trade agreements with their European counterparts and to gain mostfavored-nation trade status with states on the continent. This effort was initially successful and British merchants increased their market share in a range of European states. However, the depression of 1870 led a number of European countries to reinstate tariffs. This closed markets to the British. Indeed, the British began to develop a trade deficit in the 1870s, but nonetheless continued to vigorously support the principle of free trade throughout the period. One result of the closure of European markets was a rise in support for imperialism. Merchants began to publicly endorse imperialism because they hoped that the acquisition of new territories would provide new markets to offset the loss of revenues caused by the new round of European tariffs. Concurrently, the “scramble” for colonies in Africa and Asia added a new strategic emphasis as imperial governments sought territory in order to protect their commercial interests. By the early 1900s, almost 60 percent of British manufacturing was directed toward the empire or dependent on the colonies for raw materials. The British also benefited from imperialism in general, as 40 percent of the world’s products and services were transported by British ships. Consequently, from the 1870s onward, the expansion of both the formal and informal empires accelerated. Between 1870 and 1914, there was a dramatic increase in the amount of surplus economic capital in Great Britain. By this time, London had firmly established itself as the commercial and financial center of the world and British firms dominated the global shipping, insurance, and manufacturing markets. British promotion of free trade was perceived by both the public and elites as a means to further enhance the nation’s wealth. As other European states developed their colonial empires, and often shut British merchants out of trade in the colonized regions, commercial leaders in Britain lobbied various governments to support increased access to new markets and materials. Other states emulated British tactics. For instance, after the first Opium War, the United States and France used the threat of military force to gain concessions from China that were similar to those granted to Great Britain under the Treaty of Nanking. During these years there was still considerable debate over the cost and benefits of formal colonization. For instance, the financial and manpower costs 454

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of the 1879 Afghan War led to the fall of the government of the proexpansionist Benjamin Disraeli. However, his successor, William Gladstone, also found himself dragged into colonial wars such as the First Anglo-Boer War. One compromise solution was the creation of protectorates that minimized British financial outlays for administration or defense, but secured for the British commercial advantages. British agents had chiefs sign protection treaties in which the local leader surrendered sovereignty in exchange for British diplomatic or military protection. The treaties were inevitably written in London (and in English) and local leaders often did not understand the implications of the agreements. Examples of such treaties include the 1884 Treaty of Protection with the Itsekiri in present-day Benin. The importance of trade in spurring the drive for new colonies led many scholars and philosophers to assert that trade was the overriding factor in imperialism. At the core of the argument was the assertion that powerful states naturally sought outlets for their investments and products. The role of surplus capital and the drive for economic expansion influenced several of the most significant scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx tied imperialism to the rise of a global capitalist economic system. He believed that the capitalist system would lead to a worker’s revolution and then a utopian socialist society. In 1902 the British political philosopher J. A. Hobson, a follower of Marx, published Imperialism: A Study, in which he argued that the financial sector was the only area of the economy that actually benefited from imperialism. In other areas, the military and administrative costs of empire outweighed any financial gains. Hence, Hobson contended that imperialism only benefited a small group of elites and did not provide long-range economic gains for the lower and working classes. Hobson significantly influenced Vladimir Lenin, whose 1917 work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism attempted to explain the causes of World War I by portraying the conflict as a logical outcome of ongoing imperial competition. Lenin asserted that capitalist states had delayed Marx’s worker’s revolution through imperialism. Through imperialism, capitalist powers were able to establish new markets and to gain access to cheap labor and raw materials. In this fashion, the developed imperial nations managed to create dependencies among their colonies, as these territories were never able to keep more than a small portion of the wealth created by their resources and labor (instead, much of the wealth and resources were transferred to the colonizing state). This led to a pattern of under-development in most colonies. In many ways, these early Marxist critics were reacting to shifts in the philosophy of imperialism. The heyday of free trade imperialism was the period between 1840 and 1870. During this era, the Little Englanders broadly 455

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supported disengagement from the empire as a means to lower public expenditures. However, the new wave of imperialism of the 1880s, combined with increased economic competition from Europe and the United States, led many in the British business class, who had previously been Little Englanders, to reassess their stance toward empire. As a result, there was an increasing degree of support for some level of continued engagement and even expansion of the empire. One method to lower expenditures while retaining imperial ties was home rule through dominion status and varying degrees of selfgovernment. In 1867 Canada was granted dominion status, followed by Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), and South Africa (1910). Once the period of decolonization began, other means, including the Commonwealth system, were developed to maintain economic, political, and military ties between the former colonies and Great Britain. Other imperial powers used similar tactics, including the French Francophone system. Such overt and tacit efforts to maintain economic suzerainty in the former colonies led many Marxist scholars to contend that the decolonization period simply marked a transition to a different form of imperialism: neocolonialism or neoimperialism. For instance, dependency theorists asserted that even after the formal colonial institutions departed, foreign actors were able to maintain control over resources and exploit local populations, with the assistance of pliable local regimes. These regimes, in turn, grew wealthy through bribes or through manipulation of contracts and enjoyed military support from foreign powers. A range of former imperial powers, including Great Britain, France, and Italy, engaged in neoimperialism, as did emerging world economic powers such as the United States, Japan, and Germany. Neoimperialism, furthermore, was not really even “new”; instead, it was simply a more sophisticated manifestation of free trade imperialism. The tactics and strategies employed by the postcolonial powers mirrored the tactics utilized by the British during the latter half of the nineteenth century in areas such as Latin America. For instance, by 1913 the British had almost one billion pounds invested in Latin America (about one-quarter of total British overseas investments), despite having scarcely any formal colonial presence in the region. The British also used political and military intervention to support client regimes, as happened in Guatemala and Colombia in the 1870s. The British were also able to gain commercial concessions by linking recognition of colonies with trade agreements. Consequently, British recognition of new colonies in Africa resulted in commercial clauses that opened markets to British merchants in such treaties as the Anglo-Congo Arrangement (1885) or the Anglo-German Agreement on East Africa (1886). The informal methods of empire advocated by the free trade imperialists of the mid-1800s continue to be utilized and remain 456

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a major component of the ongoing debate over the causes and results of imperialism. The global imperial politics defended by the West (Europe and its former settlement colonies) regarding the division of wealth, the use of resources, global participation and other issues, like migration, for example, could “hardly be maintained except through racism”, for the inhabitants who benefit from the global regime and live in the West or its deterritorialized units are an absolute minority in the global context, more so in Africa. The justified fear of the revenge of the excluded, humiliated and superfluous probably pervades these inhabitants as well, at least those who have faced the consequences of world domination by the West and have not completely surrendered to a “state of denial” (Cohen 2001). This fear – which might be a distant echo of the real fear of colonial settlers that their criminally gained privileges would crumble and that they would suffer the revenge of the wretched – would, in order to be effectively real, have to produce political reflection and not “phantoms” and constructions of a cultural enemy that can supposedly be legitimately destroyed using whatever means. Or as Mahmood Mamdani says in his paraphrase of Fanon: “We need to think through the full implications of victims becoming killers” (Mamdani 2004: 9).

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Africans need true independence, not imperialist ‘charity’ One thing we must make clear from the beginning is that most modernist and Marxist scholars ignore the complex problems of Africans, and European countries have continued their systems of dominating and exploiting African peoples through the forms of leadership they created for Africa at independence. As V. G. Kiernan (1982: 230) puts, “There are, after all, good reasons for prying into the past with the historian’s telescope, and trying to see more clearly what happened, instead of being content with legend or fantasy. Of all reasons for an interest in the colonial wars [and terrorism] of modern times the best is that they are still going on, openly and disguised.” Despite the fact that most African peoples have achieved flag independence since the mid20th century, almost all Africans are still exposed to many forms violence, absolute poverty, and disease. We cannot critically understand all these problems without understanding the impacts of European colonial terrorism and war on various African peoples. Almost all of the African leaders of neocolonial states have followed the footsteps of their mentors, and they have engaged in dictatorship, violence, theft and robbery of the public resources; another predicament might be “a soldiery trained by the foreigner, dragons’ teeth with harvest of wars and army coups” (K. G. Kiernan 1985: 227). Today 457

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most African countries are ruled by military terror under the patronage of the West. African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Amilcar Cabral who sought sovereignty for African peoples were overthrown or assassinated by Europe-American powers and their African collaborators. From its 800 million people to its vast fertile lands and enormous mineral wealth, Africa is brimming over with riches. There is nothing inherently poor about this great continent. The poverty of the majority of its people is a peculiar product of the latest phase of its history - colonial and neo-colonial - which was so closely tied up with the birth of modern industrial capitalism in Western Europe and North America. The plunder of Africa’s great wealth played a major role in the bringing about, and sustenance, of European and American affluence. Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest place, is also its most profitable investment destination. According to the World Bank’s 2003 global development finance report, the huge continent offers the highest returns on foreign direct investment of any region in the world. For example, ‘When it comes to Africa, Bush has more on his mind than aid’ by Torcuil Crichton, Sunday Herald, 12 June 2005. Manganese for steel, cobalt for chrome and alloys, gold, fluorspar and germanium for industrial diamonds - Africa remains a treasure trove for the world’s sophisticated economies. The US continues to rely on Africa for raw materials, and for American companies there are tremendous profits in the current trade agreements that continue the age-old exploitation of the continent by the rich world. Africa’s independent, pre-colonial history and cultural achievements, a reflection of its great civilizations, were for years denied by European scholars in order to back up the insidious colonialist lies about ‘childlike people’ who needed shepherding to full adulthood and who were not ‘ready’ for independent rule. It was a rough ‘parentage’ for the people of Africa mercantile capital saw the continent as a gold mine first for the harvesting of slave labor, then as a vast plantation to be worked by slave labor in situ - as colonies. In the middle of the nineteenth century, technological achievements (principally the machine gun and steam boat) made stable territorial occupation possible, and Europe switched its emphasis from piecemeal stealing of Africa’s population (some 200 million men, women and children were stolen and sent to the ‘new world’, though more than ninety percent fell victim to the tortures and pestilent conditions of transit and were thus murdered before setting foot as slaves in the Americas ) to enslaving the entire continent on systematic basis. In 1884, at the Berlin congress, European powers settled their territorial disputes ‘peacefully’ (with respect to each other) for the last time. Lines drawn 458

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on a map of Africa apportioned ‘unoccupied’ territory to colonial powers on the basis of their relative strength - at that time. Subsequent disputes, based on the changing relative strength of the imperialist powers, would mean redivision of territory and - since no imperialist power voluntarily surrenders (or frees) its colonial slaves, markets or raw materials – redivision by force. The bloody carnage of the two world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45 was set in motion by the imperialist powers with just such aims as redividing the world’s territories. After WWII, a post-war wave of national liberation surged across Africa, but the imperialists became very adept at hanging on to the essence of their exploitative relations with their former colonies and waiting for better times. Large European and US capitalists retained direct business and banking control of major African national assets and, having used this influence to keep African economies one sided and industrially under developed, they proceeded to use tools such as the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) to insist upon ‘free competition.’ ‘Free’ at least in areas that favored imperialist monopolies; strict protectionism was of course maintained in the imperialists’ domestic markets and weaker areas of trade. This market fundamentalism continues to ensure the dependence of the ‘third world’ on huge EU and US capital reserves (built up through the exploitation of the same countries that are then forced to borrow it back on such injurious terms). African countries, having seemingly freed themselves from colonialism, thus become financially re-enslaved as neo-colonies, in hock to the multinational corporations (MNCs) of the imperialist world for vast sums. Consequently, vast political influence is wielded by the imperialist multinationals and most of the continent is in reality only nominally free. So parasitic have the imperialist countries become that their domestic service economies are less and less productive, and the living conditions not only of the ruling class and their mandarins, but even of the working class in Britain have become dependent on increased exploitation of third world labor. This uncomfortable reality, so often ignored and denied by the fake ‘left’, is the basis for British labor movement passivity and lack of revolutionary zeal in the face of the assaults our ruling class daily wages on the rest of the world. But the aftershock of the upheavals British imperialism is causing will surely hit home sooner or later; and all the signs point to sooner. In other words: “The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is - their national debt.” (Marx, Capital, Vol 1, p 753). In capitalist society, productive, profit-making enterprises are privately owned. The socially created wealth of these industries is privately accumulated 459

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and denied to the very masses of workers who brought it into existence. Only the loss-making enterprises remain in the arena of national economy, to be paid in varying degree by capitalist profits, and workers’ wages. The main examples of these enterprises are: the maintenance of national armies and police forces; legislative and judicial branches of the state that are needed to maintain the exploitative relations; and very capital-intensive enterprises whose rate of profit is too low to attract privateers. The point to grasp about debt is not simply its size, but the fact that it reflects underlying property relations. The wealth of a society is appropriated by the capitalists and, in the case of Africa, Asia and Latin America, very often by a foreign superpower making superprofits by exploiting cheap labor resulting from derisory wages and terrible living conditions. Without a fundamental change in property relations, dropping the debt of the oppressed nations today (were financiers to accede to such demands) would simply result in re-accumulation of the debt tomorrow, since, while their wealth continues being sucked out by multinational corporations, these countries have no other way to pay for what basic services and infrastructure they have other than by borrowing. Third world debt is not a new phenomenon. It was in order to keep critically indebted countries within the snare of the financial oligarchs that the WB and IMF were originally set up. To this end they arranged emergency ‘aid packages’ to prevent Mexico (1982), Argentina (2003) etc. from falling out of exploitative relations with monopoly capitalism and falling into a turmoil of social upheaval. Such ‘aid’ has a propitious dual role for imperialism; on the one hand, it creates, or more often extends, a relationship of financial servitude with the third world country in question; on the other hand, it serves to divert potentially revolutionary movements. Imperialism really does get to have its cake and eat it, at least for the time being. The G8 started as the ‘library group’ of six nations (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan), whose economic ministers first met in the early seventies to discuss the impact of soaring oil prices on their floundering economies, which was then threatening to tip the world into recession. Canada was asked to join in the eighties and Russia made eight after the counterrevolution had triumphed in the USSR - a ‘reward’ for allowing increased NATO domination in Europe. These annual meetings of government spokesmen from the world’s most powerful imperialist/capitalist nations have so exposed themselves as reactionary think tanks and servants of monopoly capital that they have become the focus of significant protest in recent years. In particular, the ‘Battle of Seattle’ at the WTO meeting in Nov/Dec 1999 alarmed state security services, who have been looking ever since for ways to subvert, control, demoralize and disarm the growing threat. (See for example 460

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http: //www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/miscdocs/200008_e.html) During the build up to the Gleneagles summit on 6 July this year, a concerted campaign was waged by celebrity, state and establishment figures for ‘leadership’ and control of this movement. But the attempt to make protest ‘constructive’, non-violent and benevolent in its attitude to the world exploiters’ forums cannot triumph in the long term, any more than capitalism can cease to be itself. On Saturday 2 July 200,000 ‘fans’ were treated to ‘Live 8’, a pop concert in Hyde Park organized and addressed by Bob Geldof, a close associate of Blair, who summed up his aims as: “More aid for Africa, debt cancellation and fair trade.” (But what is ‘fair’ trade?). On Sunday July 3, a carefully orchestrated march called by the tailor-made ‘Make Poverty History’ (MPH) campaign in Edinburgh, attended by such dangerous radicals as Scottish first minister Jack McConnell and Hillary Benn MP (Son of Labor grandee Tony and recently made Secretary of State for ‘International Development’) heard a message of solidarity from Pope Benedict XVI, intimating that “rich nations should accept the burden of debt relief for the poor.” Very pious! The briefest look at the MPH website reveals just how firmly integrated into the imperialist establishment are the federated organizations whose poster boys for G8-promoted ‘poverty solutions’ Geldof and Bono have become. Apart from the worthies already mentioned, the Make Poverty History federation includes religious groups such as the churches of England and Scotland, the Baptist Union, CAFOD, the Church Mission Society, Liberal Judaism, and the Evangelical alliance; industry groups including the biotechnology and biological research council; and unions and professional bodies whose members, like the marchers, may well have the best intentions, but whose leaders are adept at steering them in the pro-imperialist direction. Add a seemingly endless list of charities and lobby groups, from Princess Di’s memorial fund to Elton John’s AIDS foundation and you have a picture of the great and good not seen since the benevolent days of Victorian philanthropy - a philanthropy that diagnosed immorality the root cause of poverty, rather than examining its own exploitative role, and prescribed the horrors of the workhouse as a cure. In the buildup and aftermath of Gleneagles, we were regaled with platitudes of the first order; a thin veneer beneath which business at the G8 carried on in its usual high handed, not to say, bloodthirsty and rapacious manner. After the summit there was little evidence of any meaningful concession. The US accepted climate change “as an issue”! G8 will “work towards” decreasing tariffs and subsidies to make trade ‘fairer’, and an increase in debt relief by $28.8bn over 10 years has been pledged - which we will examine later. 461

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Nevertheless, Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof was ebullient, calling it a “great day.” Never before have so many people forced a change of policy onto a global agenda. If anyone had said eight weeks ago will we get a doubling of aid, will we get a deal on debt, people would have said ‘no’,” Mr Geldof said. He added that he gave the G8 summit “10 out of 10 on aid, eight out of 10 on debt.” “Six hundred thousand Africans, mostly children, will remember this G8 summit at Gleneagles because they will be around to remember this summit, and they wouldn’t have otherwise,” said Bono. Such blithe inanities and blatant falsehoods cannot hide the true content of the G8 deals and the surrounding circus laid on by the British establishment George Galloway, speaking in Edinburgh, quite correctly pointed out Blair’s “‘grotesquely cynical manoeuvre’ in placing himself at the forefront of the anti-poverty campaign, and says that if ‘Sir Bob and Sir Bono’ really wanted to help, they would stand in Whitehall and call on poor countries to tear up the debts because they have already paid.” (Cited in http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2005/07/03/gorgeous_george_lo rd_bob_and_bolivia.html)

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Hypocrisy of Colonial Empire’s “Charity” As it turns out, the pledged sum turns out to be a classic example of imperialist fraud and lies reminiscent of Enron’s ‘creative accounting’ and the massaging of unemployment statistics. “The G8 communiqué announcing the ‘victory for millions’ is unequivocal. Under a section headed ‘G8 proposals for HIPC debt cancellation’, it says that debt relief to poor countries will be granted only if they are shown ‘adjusting their gross assistance flows by the amount given’ - in other words, their aid will be reduced by the same amount as the debt relief. So they gain nothing.” “The ‘55 billion’ claimed by The Observer comes down, at most, to $1bn spread over 18 countries. This will almost certainly be halved - providing less than six days’ worth of debt payments - because Blair and Brown want the IMF to pay its share of the ‘relief’ by re-valuing its vast stock of gold and passionate Bush has said No. “The first unmentionable is that the gold was originally plundered from Africa. The second is that debt payments are due to rise next year, more than doubling by 2015. This will mean not ‘victory for millions’, but death for millions.” John Pilger in Morning Star G8 special, 2 July 2005, explains that on top of this, the amounts pledged, while seeming large when judged by the standards of our own individual lives and experience, are actually vanishingly small in the scale of economies of nations and even compared with the economies of the 462

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largest multinational corporations. In sheer volume terms, the world’s largest economy is sending the largest amount of foreign aid to Africa, but as a proportion of national wealth only 0.16 percent (around £19bn) of the US budget goes on aid, far short of the 0.7 percent of GDP that is the UN target. Compare this with the current level of US military spending (expected to top £600bn in 2006). This meanness is especially striking when we compare the amount pledged - not actually given - with the vast magnitude of African assets owned and controlled by US and EU monopoly capital, as well as the surplus value (profit) their multinational corporations (MNCs) derive from employing (exploiting) African labor power. The real flow of wealth remains firmly one way: from the ‘poor third world’ to the ‘rich first world.’ “At present, for every $1 of ‘aid’ to Africa, $3 are taken out by western banks, institutions and governments - and that does not account for the repatriated profit of transnational corporations.” (Pilger, ibid). Hence, the poverty of the former and the opulence of the latter. Seen in this context, the imperialist nations’ pledge of 0.7 percent of GNP (a pledge, moreover, that was made, but never kept, some 35 years ago in the UN) can be seen as a useless sticking plaster over the sore of African poverty that is rooted in the present actions as well as past history of our ruling monopoly capitalist class. It is an expensive and diversionary PR campaign; nothing more. And, furthermore, ‘aid’ is being pledged on the condition of ‘good governance’, an insidious cover-all phrase whose true meaning is ‘strict compliance with imperialist market fundamentalism’, as dictated by the World Bank and IMF. Far from being a solution to poverty, such ‘aid’ acts as a bribe and sop to encourage manipulable regimes to open up all markets, assets, productive processes and activities (‘services’), no matter how fundamental to the development of the people and nation, to privatization and plunder, thus further impoverishing the ordinary people of the recipient nations. The African Growth and Opportunity Act, which sounds like a benevolent multilateral trade agreement between the US and Africa, forces participants to remove subsidies from their industries (while allowing the US to subsidize its own) and insists on privatization of social services such as water even in countries that face drought. “The non-government organizations working in the continent have described the agreement as a colonial imposition that provides the US with cheap labor and goods and tax-free energy. Of course, over 90 percent of the sales under the agreement in its first nine months were oil exports from Nigeria and Gabon.” The returns are not for Africans though. While 70 percent of Nigerians exist on a dollar a day, Shell continues to make megaprofits from oil drilling in the country, taking an estimated $30bn out of the ground since the 1950s. “At 463

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present 12 percent of US oil comes from Africa and by 2015, when the UN’s Millennium Goals to halve world poverty will be laughably incomplete, that proportion will have reached 25 percent. To control the security of oil supply will, in all likelihood, require a large US military presence near the oilfields. [But here, real progress was made at Gleneagles, for the G8 nations agreed 20,000 ‘peace-keeping’ troops should be stationed in Africa to protect such ‘strategic interests.’ “Poverty and the needs of the African population will take second place to US geo-political strategy. In the lexicon of aid and trade, the NEPAD agreements and the AGOA, there are only three letters that really matter to the US in Africa, they are O-I-L.” (Torcuil Crichton, ibid). So ‘debt cancellation’ turns out to be a sham and a fraud, entrenching and re-enforcing the mechanism by which the poor are further impoverished. The indebtedness of selective (compliant) puppet national state regimes is (temporarily!) reduced in return for further privatization, deeper long-term sacrifices, bigger cuts in the social wage and, ultimately, more debt. For British workers, the result of this is even cheaper labor abroad, more jobs leaving the country, higher unemployment and, ultimately, wage cuts here too. We cannot fight the attacks of international capital on our own jobs and conditions without defending workers internationally - including their right to defend themselves from this piracy by armed force if necessary. “A ridiculously small amount of US aid, far less than 1 percent of its total aid budget, is spent in sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest place on Earth. A lot of the funds go to Pakistan, to Israel, to countries that assist in the US’s strategic interests. In that respect, foreign aid is, as it always was, a tool of foreign policy.” (Ibid.). Inevitably, those who effectively resist neo-colonial plunder and raise their people out of poverty and subjugation are singled out as being ‘rogue states’ least deserving of aid. This will be water off a duck’s back to the Zimbabweans, who have incurred imperialism’s wrath by really effecting massive transfer of wealth (first the nation’s land and now the nation’s industry) from the rich to the poor, and are not in need of the imperialists’ enslaving ‘charity.’ The lesson here too is clear: let African workers and peasants take revolutionary control of their own destiny and they will be able to unilaterally cancel all ‘debt’ and exploitative relations of production.

Labor Opportunism

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Working-class opposition to the plunder of Africa has been bought off in the imperialist countries by throwing a healthy slice of the booty to influential leaders in the working-class movement, thus creating a very bourgeois ‘aristocracy’ of labor. Hence the very efficient way in which Blair and ‘Labor’ are happy to prosecute wars in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa to protect the interests of finance capital at the drop of a hat. Labor’s trade union and ‘revolutionary’ hangers on of various hues play their despicable role through unstinting support for this very imperialist Labor Party on all decisive issues, despite its many heinous crimes against humanity. If we fail to defend our fellow workers (irrespective of national boundaries, which the capitalists themselves long ago transcended in their ceaseless thirst to exploit cheap labor, seek new markets and hunt for raw materials), we give up any claim to our own independence and freedom. We totally remove ourselves from the arena of class struggle and meekly submit to our own exploitation at the hands of the very same capitalists. Only blind prejudice is left to convince us that the order of the world is somehow tipped in our favor. At least we’re better off than … whoever. Hence the droning of capitalist media on the ‘danger of immigration.’ We are encouraged to snivel and cringe before our ‘superiors’, the capitalist class and their representatives, while bashing each other’s skulls together over age old, irrelevant ‘differences’ in race, nationality, and religion. Thus the true dividing lines between worker and capitalist, exploited and exploiter, are blurred, and the only real social solution to poverty - a phenomenon now totally historically unjustifiable in light of the vast productive potential of modern social labor power - is made to seem too complex for our ‘simple working-class minds’ to grasp. Namely, revolutionary removal of the exploiting classes and collective administration of our work and wealth in the interests of working people. The lack of consciousness amongst workers in the imperialist countries, cultivated by a comfortable existence and a bribed ‘working-class leadership’, can only be fought by establishing a truly working-class party to fight for our long term interests: confiscation of the capitalists’ ill-gotten gains and the end of the era of exploitation of man by man and nation by nation. We must revisit the exemplary lessons of the Soviet Union, which in its ascendancy showed working people the world over the practical and prosaically beautiful truth of socialism: that it is possible to administer the most sophisticated and organized productive processes, indeed the creative life and economies of entire nations, without an exploiting class. That peaceful co-existence and co-operation can be substituted for the oppression and exploitation so characteristic of the relations between US and European imperialism and Africa. That the racist, divisive and impoverishing inter-dependency of imperialism can be smashed in the fires of 465

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collective struggle if the people of Africa and the workers of US and Europe again take up the path of October. Let the workers and oppressed peoples of the world forge a new all-encompassing Soviet brotherhood of nations and consign imperialism, exploitation, poverty, famine and war to the scrap heap of historical curiosities where they belong.

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Operating Behind Enemy Lines If enslaving colonial “imperialism is the world system, the last stage of capitalism—and it must be defeated in a world confrontation”; if “the strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism”, let’s see what our role is. Che saw our role as “the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capitals, raw materials, technicians and cheap labor, and to which they export new capitals—instruments of domination—arms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependence”, and proposed opening several international fronts—creating “many Vietnams”. However, he hasn’t neglected the importance of “operating behind the enemy lines”, which, according to the dominant opinion on the revolutionary left of his epoch, was wrongly assigned to Western proletariat, without proper social and economic analysis of conditions that could open up such a possibility. In studying those, the comrades from Danish KAK (later M-KA) understood quite properly that, under conditions at the time, the lever was to be applied only to the periphery. The dynamics of capitalism requires continuous analysis of ever-changing conditions for vanguard to direct the class struggle accordingly. Thus, the inflow of three million Arab and African refugees to Europe in the last two years (still pouring in) in addition to those already present on imperialist soil, cannot be neglected. Those newcomers, for the most part, cannot escape the process of lumpenproletarianization and social marginalization due to a number of factors such as unskillfulness, language barriers and, of course, racism. On the other hand, the Western proletariat has recently shown that in times of crisis it leans to fascism, and so the radicalization of refugees, as well as the already present racial minorities, isn’t even in question. Without operating behind the enemy lines, our anti-imperialist resistance at the periphery, even if victories were achievable here and there, is not sustainable in the long term, due to our military, technological and economic inferiority, and every kind of isolation. Deeper contradictions between First world and Second world powers, played at our hands to some extent (it didn’t help the Iraqis nor 466

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Libyans but has benefited Syrians), in part, breaking up the global imperialist hegemony, and offering the possibility of practical assistance at the local level. In seeking to prevent imperialist aggression, or sliding towards autarky, we tend to recognize that alliance as lesser evil, which raises the issue of prevention of further development towards socialism. Namely, this aid does not come for free and without concessions, and so involves tolerating a significant private sector. Instead of pushing towards total delinking, anti-imperialist governments and movements are forced upon a modified relinking. In this sense only, it is in these anarchist organizations (Anarchosyndicalists) in the West that we’re gaining new allies. As with the aforementioned Danish group, the proletariat makes a negligible part of the membership of anarchist organizations in the West. These revolutionaries mainly arise from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie—class traitors, primarily motivated by ideological, not material motives. The petty bourgeoisie in our ranks at the periphery (in post-colonial times) poses a risk of opportunism, precisely due to conflict of interest, while at the core countries it seems not to be the case. Conflicts of interest are equally represented among all classes in the core (except among those that we marked as revolutionary potential), but unlike the proletariat, which reacts and is led exclusively by interests, members of the petty bourgeoisie, as we see in practice, in small numbers and under certain circumstances, could work against their own class, driven by ideological motives. Are we suggesting that anarchists organize African and Asian refugees in the West? Yes and no. Yes—because Marxism is dealing with objective antagonisms, based on what things are like, not what we’d like them to be, and these groups are the only ones pulling their weight in this matter of dear importance. No—because such a scenario is neither completely desirable nor possible. It is not desirable for well-known ideological reason—a necessity of Marxist training of the revolutionary subject, reactionary idealism and antimaterialism shown by most anarchists, favoring anti-authoritarianism over antiimperialism, the risk of spontaneous and uncontrolled terrorism. It is not possible for political reasons—liberal anti-theism, lack of understanding of the necessity of particularity and its role in decolonization, as well as historical stages of human development, the passive attitude towards the anti-colonial and national liberation struggles, etc. As we know, we’re still talking about the First world ideology based, ultimately, on the idea of superiority of the cultural heritage of the West, but incoherently, without the open support for (neo)colonial policy (unlike Trots). However, they seem to be the only ones who sniffed the revolutionary subject in Western Europe. Opposed to racism and motivated by humanism, they had 467

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played a progressive role in relation to refugees, providing concrete assistance, launching solidarity campaigns, and in few cases (France & Greece), inspired the frightened people to oppose police terror, and encouraged radicalization. Just as violent anti-imperialist uprisings at the periphery were “hijacked” by Islamists, so is the “operation behind enemy lines” in the core, at least in its embryo, by anarchists. Here, we have presented the opinion that in the imperialist center, under the conditions of imperialist super-profits, class character barely determines political attitude of an individual, therefore progressivism and radicalism are a thing of idiosyncrasy. We brought to light the importance of “operating behind enemy lines” and its achievability under the conditions of mass migrations. Finally we propose concrete measures of action towards building the International of Third-Worldist Marxist organizations, centralizing the transnational anti-imperialist front and coordinating the revolutionary struggle in the periphery and the core, with a clear mission of creating many Vietnams and operating behind enemy lines.

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Africa’s Transition from Colonial Empire The question of ‘capitalist transition’ has been one of the central themes of Marxist scholarship including world-system analysis, and much effort has been made to identify how the enslaving capitalist mode of production came into being at a particular time in a particular location like Africa, and what historical conditions gave rise to it. In The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (2015) Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu point out that the Mongol Empire spurred the development of merchant capital throughout Europe. The Pax Mongolica opened up the Silk Road, dramatically increased trade, and transferred the Empire’s higher development of its productive forces to backward Europe. This encouraged the formations of cities, which had a gravitational pull on peasants to leave the countryside and become wage laborers especially in the Italian citystates. The Mongol Empire was also the source of bubonic plague that caused the Black Death in Europe, which decisively changed the balance of class forces in England, driving lords to become capitalist farmers and peasants to become rural laborers. Thus the Pax Mongolica forms an international precondition for the rise of English agrarian capitalism recounted by Brenner. But, Anievas and Nisancioglu contend, without the geopolitical competition from the Ottoman Empire Holland and England would never have undergone the transition to capitalism. The Ottoman’s more advanced tributary mode of production buttressed a more stable, unified state compared to Europe’s squabbling feudal states. As a result, they were able to deploy a far larger military 468

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force against their rivals in Europe. The most powerful state in Europe, the Hapsburg Empire, had no choice but to deploy a disproportionate amount of its forces against the Ottomans. The geopolitical rivalry between the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans facilitated Holland and England’s capitalist development in two ways. First it offered their merchants significant trade opportunities. Second it provided them the geopolitical space to develop capitalism and complete their bourgeois revolutions. With the Hapsburgs preoccupied, Holland managed to successfully carry through the Dutch Revolt and establish the first capitalist nation state. In England, the Hapsburg’s preoccupation with the Ottomans ensured their isolation from any threat, and led to a relative demilitarization of the feudal lords, thereby weakening their power over the peasantry and compelling some of them, in the wake of the Black Death, to adopt a capitalist agriculture. However, without the conquest of the Americas and the development of plantation slavery, Anievas and Nisancioglu argue, the new capitalist powers could have been strangled in their cribs and certainly would not have undergone capitalist industrialization. The Ottoman’s were the principal reason that the European societies reoriented from the Mediterranean to the so-called New World. And once they did, the plunder of the region reinforced the differential patterns of development between the feudal absolutist powers like Spain and those of the newly capitalist Holland and England. Driven by its feudal military preoccupation of competing with the Ottoman’s, Spain used its horde of gold and silver to pay off loans it had taken out to pay for its military. Much of that treasure ended back in Holland and England to expand their new system. Anievas and Nisancioglu also show how the colonial slave trade and the hybrid labor regime of plantation slavery, which fused capitalist pressures of production for the market with precapitalist relations of production, provided the raw material for industrialization—cotton for example being the basis for England’s textile boom. The combination of these inter-societal dynamics thus made possible capitalist development in Holland, England, and eventually the rest of Europe. But this was not an evolutionary process. They argue bourgeois revolutions were necessary to establish capitalist states to defend and reproduce capitalist class rule internally against the exploited classes and internationally against both capitalist and pre-capitalist rivals. Anievas and Nisancioglu adopt a consequentialist theory of the bourgeois revolutions, pioneered by many, but most fully developed by Neil Davidson in his magisterial How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions. They show how a combination of capitalist lords, merchants, industrialists, and their bourgeois representatives, such as lawyers, led the revolutions in countries like Holland, 469

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England, and France. In later bourgeois revolutions, precapitalist classes often carried them out from above in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. But all built new states that facilitated capitalist development. Once established in the European metropole, they argue, capitalism could still have been strangled by its own contradictions, in particular its internal tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The European capitalist powers, in particular Holland and England, overcame these and other obstacles to capitalist development through their penetration of markets in the Americas and Asia. With these obstacles overcome, the European powers achieved a decisive advantage over the previously dominant tributary powers like China and the Ottomans that they carved up through imperial warfare. Thus, the West came to rule. Many have rightly challenged their expansion of Trotsky’s law of uneven and combined development to analyze pre-capitalist societies like the Mongol Empire and its interaction with European feudalism. Trotsky mainly argued that this law applied to capitalism, since as a mode of production it is uniquely expansionary compared to other modes of production, and therefore has the capacity to subordinate and transform development. For the most part, Anievas and Nisancioglu might be better served by seeing the pre-capitalist interactions through the law of uneven development, since in the main they do not reveal genuine hybrid social formations in their discussion of these societies, but a dynamic of competition, commodity exchange, and transfer of productive forces. In their discussion of capitalism, they endorse Dipesh Chakrabarty’s argument in Provincializing Europe as a superior way for understanding the differences between advanced and developing capitalist societies than that of Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. Chakrabarty divides capitalism’s history into two parts: History 1 encompasses the system’s universalizing tendency to subordinate all laborers to its laws regardless of national particularity; and History 2 includes all the social particularities in each and every society like, in Chakrabarty’s words, human being’s “bodily habits,” religious “gods and spirits,” and “unselfconscious collective practices” that are “constantly interrupting the totalizing thrusts of History 1.” Anievas and Nisancioglu correctly criticize Chibber for claiming that Chakrabarty assigns the West to History 1 and postcolonial societies to History 2. Chakrabarty makes clear that both histories inhere in all capitalist societies. They also may have a point that Chibber’s emphasis on capitalist universalization weakens our ability to adequately explain how capitalism universally imposes its laws of motion on all societies and at the same time produces social differences between societies. But there is much to be lost in becoming hostage to Chakrabarty’s Heiddegerian mysticism and 470

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poststructuralist politics of difference between societies that posit a difference of kind between the West and the Orient. As Vasant Kaiwar warns in The Postcolonial Orient, with Chakrabarty, “we end up with a sentimental, postmodernist Third-Worldism.” I personally believe Anievas and Nisancioglu would be better served by sticking with Trotsky’s law of uneven and combined development, a law that Chakrabarty, by the way, dismisses along with the law of uneven development as an obstacle to understanding the postcolonial world. In fact, it is a far better basis, as Anievas and Nisancioglu themselves demonstrate, for explaining capitalism’s tendency to impose its logic on all societies and at the same time produce peculiarities in each and every society it transforms. Anievas and Nisancioglu’s aversion to what they worry are ideal-typical or reductionist definitions of capitalism such as the Political Marxist’s market dependency or the more classical Marxist definition of the competitive exploitation of wage labor leaves them with a rather vague definition of capitalism. Thus they write, “Capitalism is best understood as a set of configurations, assemblages, or bundles of social relations and processes oriented around the systematic reproduction of the capital relation, but not reducible—either historically or logically—to that relation alone. . . . These relations may take numerous forms, such as coercive state apparatuses, ideologies and cultures of consent, or forms of power and exploitation that are not immediately given in or derivative of the simple capital-wage-labor relation, such as racism and patriarchy.” This viewpoint—tacked on and undeveloped—likely leads them in their conclusion, whose political generalizations seem in contrast to the rest of their arguments, to some questionable criticisms of Marxist arguments about the revolutionary party, and class struggle and its relation to movements against oppression. They present a straw man conception of the revolutionary party, contending that it is the organizational form, in which political differences are ironed out, unity among disparate parts realized, and a homogeneous political perspective pursued. In turn, the perspectives constructed by the leadership of parties and organizations are presented as the historical prime mover—the royal road—which simply needs to replicated everywhere for capitalism to be overthrown. The authors also claim that the Left committed to building parties assumes that it has all the answers already, imparts them in a top down way to workers and the oppressed, and sees political differences as something that “must be directed onto the True Path” or “exiled as a ‘bourgeois deviation.’” What they are describing is a sect, not a party. Certainly there are such sects, but they very rarely, if ever, play a leading role in any kind of struggle, let alone revolution.

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Anievas and Nisancioglu’s vague definition of capitalism leads them to decenter the working class as the pivotal agent of socialist revolution. This is ironic since Trotsky used the law of uneven and combined development, which is the core of their book, as the scientific basis of his strategy of permanent revolution, a strategy that underscored the central role of the working class in leading the rest of exploited and oppressed in revolution. By contrast they go so far as to ask, “might it be time to rethink the privileged revolutionary subject (the proletariat) in broader terms than its traditional, singular association with waged labor?” Drawing on theories of intersectionality, they want to dynamically integrate struggles against exploitation and oppression as all part of the anti-capitalist struggle. In doing so they rightly challenge Political Marxists like Ellen Meiksins Wood who argue that class exploitation is essential to capitalism while oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality are not. Instead, they argue that capitalism is equally dependent on class, race, gender, and other oppressions. They advocate, therefore, that all struggles pose equivalent threats to the system. They have a point but they take it too far. Capitalism rests on the competitive exploitation of wage labor; it is the basis of the entire system. At the same time, various oppressions are an inextricable part of it. For example, women’s oppression through their disproportionate burden in the social reproduction of labor is an essential part of capitalism today. Recognizing the constituent nature of capital-wage labor relation to the system does not diminish struggles against oppression. They are absolutely necessary to unite workers to overthrow the capitalist class, and within oppressed groups, which themselves consist of groups with different class interests, workers’ have the most interest in carrying the liberation struggle the furthest. Anti-capitalist struggles can start on any number of fronts, including against aspects of oppression, but if it does not win at the point of production, the system with all its sundry oppressions, cannot be overthrown. Regardless of these questions and criticisms, Anievas and Nisancioglu have made an enormous contribution to redressing the one-sided debates about the origins of capitalism and the West’s conquest of the planet. Their book enables anyone hoping to understand as well as challenge Eurocentrism, imperialism, and the capitalist system as a whole.

De-linking?

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Can poor nations, especially those in Africa, really ‘delink’ or isolate themselves in a globalized world? If so, what are the consequences of this delinking? Samir Amin, (1989) recommends the process of ‘delinking’ or ‘antiglobalization,’ as a solution to the unequal distribution of wealth and prevailing poverty in our world today, particularly in Africa. The notion of delinking is derived from dependency and world-system theories as an alternative to global capitalism. A number of theorists have constructed dependency theory as a reaction to Modernization theory, viewing the prevalence of poverty in developing nations to be a result of external factors rather than internal or ‘selfinflicted’ causes. Immanuel Wallerstein’s ‘World Systems theory’ extends on this concept of dependency, suggesting that developed nations or the ‘core’ such as the U.S.A aid in the underdevelopment of developing countries or ‘periphery’ (Wallerstein, 2004). The relevance of ideas behind dependency and world system theories have been hugely debated over recent decades, as there has been a steady shift towards an increasingly globalized world (Wallerstein, 2004). A number of past attempts at delinking have proved to be detrimental. Furthermore, many argue that dependency theory is outdated and not relevant today, though movements in recent times such as ‘Occupy’ are clearly based on the foundations of dependency theory. However whether or not attempts to delink today do work to benefit some developing countries, this strategy of delinking may not serve to override the overall inequality associated with the current world system. This closing chapter will first provide a critical examination of dependency theory, followed by Wallersteins ‘world system theory’ and in doing so explain the notion of the ‘development of underdevelopment,’ said to be linked with global capitalism. Thirdly, Amin’s (1990) subsequent strategy of delinking will be briefly discussed. A few examples will then be given to illustrate both the gains and consequences associated with delinking over history. Moreover, a depiction of the reverberations of dependency theory as seen in recent movements will be made. Finally this paper will conclude with an attempt to answer the question as to how viable the action of delinking is today for developing nations upon the backdrop of our highly interconnected globalized world. Dependency Theory Dependency theory falls within a group of neo-Marxist theories that attempt to explain development, underdevelopment, and inequalities in the global system. Dependency theory came about as a reaction to the earlier

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modernization theory and its failure to generate economic growth in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike modernization theorists that argue that poor countries are simply further behind richer countries in terms of development, dependency theorists argue that poorer countries are exploited by richer countries, or more specifically, that the development of European and other Western countries depend upon the underdevelopment of non-Western countries. In this framework, poorer regions such as Latin America are peripheral to the capitalist industrial core, or the rich, developed countries of Europe and North America. Dependency theory was important in opening the door within geography and in other social sciences to discussions around the social construction of poverty (Putnam, 2010). The roots of dependency theory were founded in the late 1950’s, early 1960s, through the work of Argentinean Raúl Prebisch. Prebisch, criticized the international division of labor, in which Latin America provided food crops and raw materials for the industrial core and received finished goods in return. In his opinion, the continuation of this relationship would inhibit Latin America’s process of capital accumulation because of the unbalanced terms of trade. Prebisch proposed instead that Latin America industrialize, which would require protectionism and a heavy role on the part of governments (Putnam 2010). André Gunder Frank expanded on Prebisch’s theory adapting it to Marxism, and formulating dependency theory as a critique of modernization theory. Frank opposed modernization theory’s idea that the underdevelopment of developing nations was self-inflicted and a result of a developing nation’s internal nature (Putnam, 2010). Instead, in Gunder Frank’s view, the underdevelopment of the periphery was an inevitable reflection of the development of the core. He argued that the industrial ‘metropolis’ extracts a surplus from its ‘satellites’ in order to sustain its own dynamic growth. Exploitative metropole-satellite relationships are reproduced between countries in the periphery, and even within countries (as the rich countries are to Brazil, so is Brazil to Paraguay, and the industrial-commercial center of Sao Paulo to the impoverished Brazilian northeast). While internal political and social structures contribute to the process of underdevelopment, they can only be understood as a function of this external dominance. Given the ongoing extraction of locally-generated capital, Frank doubted whether development was possible in dependent countries (Frank, 1974). On the other hand, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, placed much more emphasis on the political undercurrents within dependent countries. Cardoso believed that historical economic changes, while driven by the technological and financial dominance of the richer countries, offered the 474

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opportunity for a range of political responses in the poor countries, including greater popular participation or resistance. Furthermore, he distinguished between the political situation of dependence, and the economic question of development. For Cardoso, development was possible in a situation of dependence, even if it were only ‘associate-dependent’ development (Cardoso, 1979).

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Wallerstein and the World-System Theory In the 1970’s historical sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein expanded upon the notion of dependency theory and refined the Marxist aspect of dependency referring to it as the ‘World-system theory’. In hopes of further understanding the historical changes associated with rise of the modern world between 1450 and 1670, Wallerstein devised a concept which would allow for the comprehensive understanding of the internal and external manifestations of the modernization process and for analytically sound comparisons between different parts of the world. The feudalistic Western Europe saw a severe economic downturn from 1300-1450. Wallerstein argues that Europe moved towards the establishment of a capitalist world economy in order to ensure continued economic growth. In response to the feudal crisis, by the late 15th and early 16th C the World Economic System Emerged (Wallerstein, 1987). According to Wallerstein (2004), the Capitalist world system refers to the international division of labor that divides the world into core countries, periphery countries and the semi-periphery countries. Each region has different characteristics, which Wallerstein believes to be key in analyzing each region’s relative position within the world economy. The core countries have strong developed governments, extensive bureaucracies and large armies. They are the most economically diversified, wealthy, and have the greatest power over noncore countries. This region also tended to have the strongest working class (Wallerstein, 2004). Wallerstein (2004) on the hand refers to the periphery countries as lacking strong central governments and generally exporting raw materials to the core. He further describes the periphery to be the least economically diversified and having a large peasant class with a high percentage of poor and uneducated people who are often exploited laborers. Wallerstein later goes on to describe the semi-periphery countries as the midpoints between the periphery and core regions. These areas are comprised of either core regions in decline or the periphery regions trying to improve their status in the world economic system. The semi periphery regions are not as wealthy as the core as they did not manufacture high cost goods and prevail in international trade. Like peripheries, 475

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semi-peripheries are exploited by the core, however they also exploited their subordinates (Wallerstein, 2004). Amin’s De-linking Strategy Samir Amin offers delinking as a solution to the issues posed in the above dependency and world system theories. Similar to Wallerstein, Amin is also focuses his attention towards the global capitalist system rather than nation states. Furthermore, extending on Marxist dependency theory, Amin supports Andre Gunder Frank’s notion that ‘rich nations aid in the development of underdevelopment of poor nations.’ However unlike Frank, Amin theorized that in the face of unequal development ‘the choice facing third world countries is that of delinking’ (Pieterse, 2010). However Amins view on delinking has constantly changed over time and current construction of Amin’s delinking thesis is quite broad, and has a number of different meanings. Essentially Amin’s notion of delinking refer to antiglobalization processes. Though delinking can also be understood as antiwestern, anti-capitalist, self-reliant, nationalization or regionalization. Though these are slightly different takes on delinking, they all work to challenge the global capitalist world system (Pieterse, 2010). Bello’s (2004) de-globalization theory builds on Amin’s delinking theory, highlighting the need of developing states to focus inward. Bello’s deglobalization model proposes a similar strategy to Amin’s delinking as a method whereby developing states work to challenge the current inequalities in the world system through disuniting current international relationships. However Bello does go on to stress the need for “reorienting economies from the emphasis on production for export to production for the local market,” viewing the current global problems as systemic (Bello, 2004: 113).

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Past Consequences of De-linking There have been a number of attempts over history by developing countries to delink from the global capitalist system. According to Pieterse (2010), ‘delinking has been the quickest way to the Albania effect which leads to isolation from foreign trade, technology, communication and finance. Some examples that clearly demonstrate the negative consequences of delinking include attempts to delink as seen in a number of African Countries especially the Ivory Coast, also Albania, Yemen, North Korea, Argentina, Burma and Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, to name just a few. The Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in particular highlights the negative consequences of delinking (Pieterse, 2010). 476

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The 1970’s Pol Pot Regime in Cambodia, used propaganda to oppose the right-wing parties of Cambodia and their alleged pro-American attitudes. The Pol Pot regime was also anti-Vietnamese and desired a ‘new communist Cambodia.’ The Pol Pot’s regime and anti-globalist thought led to huge disaster and destruction. The Pol Pot Regime also ignored global laws and strategies and killed a huge number of Cambodians who were highly educated including doctors, lawyers, teachers and any individual who would challenge his conservative, leftist, communist ideals. The combined effects of executions, forced labor, malnutrition, and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population (Kiernan, 1997). Alternatively, the case of Venezuela in particular, highlights some positive consequences of delinking (Pieterse, 2010). In February 1989, a series of spontaneous mass protests by the people against the Venezuelan government took place. These protests were motivated by a desire to preserve the gains they had won. The poor people of Venezuela were aware the elite minority (oligarchy) perceived them as insignificant. This mass protest became known as the Caracazo, the first real uprising by the poor against the neo-liberal capitalist system (Ali, 2006).

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Reverberations of Dependency Theory Reflecting on historical events such as those mentioned above, it is clear just how valid dependency analysis was to a number of circumstances, which implies that dependency theory may have an important role in explaining our present as well. There a number of recent movements that have taken place in the last decade that when examined carefully demonstrate the use of theories and ideas that stem from dependency theory. Though these movements may not resemble the exact theory proposed by the original dependency or world system theorists, they still reflect some of the basic thought and strategies that are clearly derived from these older dependency theories (Jonathan Glennie, 2012). The ‘Occupy’ Movement seen in many nations across the globe today, is a major movement that clearly displays dependency thought in its reasoning and basis. In summary, Occupy movements around the world, are an effort by a large number of individuals concerned with the shocking statistics indicating the gap between the top 1% and the global 99% to be greater than ever before. The aim of the Occupy movement is to essentially place pressure on the elite that can potentially change these statistics and aid in the decrease in levels of inequality between the rich and the poor (Glennie and Hassanaien, 2012). The notion that the ‘rich is getting richer while the poor are getting poorer’ is not a new concept created in the last decade. This concept is rooted in 477

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dependency theory with its discussion of the role of the elite or developed countries aiding in the underdevelopment of the poor. As Occupy activists clearly believe that their efforts can potentially get the elite to change the global inequality of capital, then it is fair to say that these activists also believe that it is the elite that are causing the development of underdevelopment. (Glennie and Hassanaien, 2012). Moreover, Mexico’s recent ‘Zapatista’ Movement also displays the use of concepts clearly derived from dependency theory. The Zapatista movement fist emerged in 1994 as an indigenous leftist movement in Chiapas, Mexico. The Zapatista formed as a rebellion group against the Mexican liberation army. A more recent movement emerged last year in December 2012, working hard to maintain control of the good farmland they took in the original rebellion. This movement clearly depicts a desire of a group of people to disconnect from neoliberal capitalism and turn focus to more internal, grassroots matters such as locals ‘harvesting the fruits’ from their own indigenous farmland. This demonstrates the ideas conceived in dependency theory (Grillo, 2013).

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Alternative Solutions to de-linking? Though aspects of dependency theory are still used today, delinking will not necessarily serve as an overall solution to reducing or ending the inequality in a globalizing world. Countries such as China and India that have achieved decreasing levels of poverty and have been viewed as the next upcoming power nations in the world system have not necessarily done so through the process of delinking. It is perhaps important to investigate the underlying processes used by rising countries such as China and India and their utilization of globalization to determine a solution to achieving an equal and just world system (Pieterse, 2010). It is worth noting that these shining stars of mobility, China and India, maintain significant levels of protection and market distortions and have not necessarily withdrawn from global interactions. Nor have these nations engaged in the kind of shock liberalization, cuts in public spending and generalized privatization that have left less fortunate countries, including most of subSaharan Africa, in such dire straits (Glennie and Hassanaien, 2012). In sum, there is no denying the prevailing inequality in today’s increasingly globalized world. There are still huge inequalities in the distribution of wealth between countries, with the elite continuing to benefit while poor countries such as Sub-Saharan Africa, continue to face poverty. There is no doubt that if studied closely, one will find traces of the ideas and concepts of dependency theory embedded in movements seen in the world today. Though not identical 478

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to original dependency theory, ideas stemming from dependency theory and world system theory can still be seen today in movements such as ‘Occupy’ and ‘Zapatista.’ The use of such concepts still shows the importance and relevance of dependency theory today (Grillo, 2013). However despite recent uses of dependency concepts, whether or not dependency theory is exactly beneficial or practical to reduce or end inequality of capital in a globalizing world is debatable. As demonstrated in past attempts to delink from global capitalist systems, examples such as that in the Ivory Coast and Argentina show how delinking can have detrimental effects. In an increasingly interconnected world, it is likely that the negative consequences associated with delinking could intensify. Furthermore, there are examples such as the rise of China and India that have embraced globalization and demonstrate that globalization has benefits and delinking is not necessarily the answer. For there to be equality in the world, those that are benefitting from the current world system must give up their privileges in order for those struggling to rise out of dire straits (Pieterse 2010). Perhaps as Amin suggests, a complete reorganization of the world system is needed today, whereby the periphery work together to challenge the core. This movement is a big ask and there would of course be concern surrounding the complexities, complications and major upheavals this could create. One thing is clear though; the intricacies and interdependencies between today’s nations are strongly tied. The process of delinking alone may not prove realistic in untying the knots that cause the inequality in this highly complex and globalized world (Pieterse, 2010).

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Practical Action Strategies for Social and Economic De-linking and Development Monetarist policy in Chile, as well as in Argentina, Uruguay, Israel, Thatcherite Great Britain, and Reaganite United States, has imposed terrible costs on working and other poor people, and especially on those it has made unemployed. It has not remedied any of the structural problems of these economies or avoided the deepening of the economic crisis internationally or nationally. This failure of political economic policy in the face of largely uncontrollable world economic developments is also true of Keynesianism, which monetarism replaced. The Keyensians claim that the post-war expansion was a result of the successful application of Keynesian policy. They put the cart before the horse. It was the post-war economic expansion following the previous economic crisis from 1913 to 1940 that spelled the success of Keynesian policy. As soon as the expansion ran out by the 1970s, when the 479

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present economic crisis began, this spelled the failure and bankruptcy of Keynsianism and brought about its replacement by monetarism as the dominant economic theory and ideology. The Third World version of Keynesianism— that is, import substitution for the internal market—was also replaced by monetarism and supply-side economics in the form of export promotion. In the North, the whole supply-side policy of tax cuts, which it was thought would automatically produce an economic expansion, was of course a miserable failure in both the U.S. and Britain and indeed in the world as a whole. The 1979-82 recession was even more severe than the 1972-75 recession and did not respond in any way whatsoever to these monetarist and supply-side remedies. Both Reagan and Thatcher promised to reduce the budget deficit and get government off our back in Britain and the United States. Under Reagan and Thatcher, the role of government measured by government expenditures as a per cent of the GNP has very substantially increased. So this is an indication that the so-called practical policies of orthodoxy, whether Keyensian or monetarist, have failed to provide practical solutions for the problems of the advanced industrial economies; while in the Third World, monetarism has led to the terrible tragedies that we are now aware of in Africa and to the debt crisis in Latin America. So these failures of orthodox theories and policies, including modernization theory in the Third World, offer a comparative context for your question and my answer about the practicality of policies and recommendations of critical theory, related to dependency and world systems. Dependency theory certainly has had all kinds of practical applications, even my own formulations of it. I remember in 1972 in Chile that a UN conference on trade and development was held in Santiago in 1972 and that the term “development of underdevelopment” began to be bandied around by the delegates there. That was a sign for me that it was time to go on and indeed, that same year I wrote an article entitled, Dependence is Dead, Long Live Dependence. Of course, the world economic crisis and the military regimes it brought on in Latin America and elsewhere then rendered dependency theory devoid of practical policy relevance. But the aggravation of the world economic crisis, and particularly its manifestation through the Third World debt crisis seems to have made Keynesian and dependency analysis more policy relevant again. So dependency theory and what we may call “world systems theory” certainly generate practical political, economic, and social policies, strategies, and tactics. The question is how successful these are. Here, I am less optimistic. Although not a pessimist, I am an optimist with experience. Experience has shown that these policies are about as unsuccessful as the policies associated with more orthodox theories. Then the question becomes “What is to be done?” 480

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and all I can suggest is a general approach. The general approach is to look at what is happening in the world economy as a whole. All around the world there is fast growth in what has been called the “new social movements” which have become the dominant moving force in society today. There is a vast activity among these social movements, which someone has compared to termites. Each has no power on its own, but an army of termites is often able to completely eat through the essential structure of a building or, in this case, of a society. What is notable about these social movements is that very few of them, with the exception of some nationalist ones, seek to capture state power. Instead of capturing state power, they seek to carve out for their members a different kind of social existence within the possibilities that are offered to them. Many of these social movements are more defensive than offensive, and in a place like Chile or Brazil or Africa, they seek little more than to provide for the physical survival of their members through soup kitchens, community organizations, and various kinds of cooperative action, which mobilize their members for self-help and for the affirmation of their own identity. That’s where the action is. And that is the place for the intelligent layman, as well as the intelligent or non-intelligent social scientist, to look with regard to both policy formation and with regard to his or her own praxis, to join these people in their respective communities, however they are defined locally, ethnically, religiously, or what have you. Since many of these social movements can be called single-issue movements, they don’t often embrace each other. The point is that these movements are writing their own political script as in the ad-lib street theatre. That’s perhaps the relevant analogy: you have this street theatre going on all over the world, and I suspect that what motivates them is the sense of injustice and oppression to which their members are subject by the society in which they live. I would be surprised if any of them have worked out an alternative conception of a just society. They are trying to carve out an alternative existence for themselves in this world society, without ever aspiring to change the society as a whole or to change the nature of the state within the society. That is perhaps one of their strengths and what permits them to increasingly mobilize some of their people. Of course, some of these movements are also backward-looking in that they want to revive the old values that are being eroded by modernity. Islam wants to go back to the golden age of Muhammed because after the seventh century, everything went to hell in a bucket, and in that sense; they are very backward looking. The evangelists in the United States want to go back to the traditional ways that they say are being eroded by the system in which they live. That may be a way to mobilize people, but not one sufficient to formulate policies for inserting their members into the evolving society of the future and 481

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into the international division of labor. For that you have also to be forward looking in regard to what you want to do and whether you want to ride with the stream to your benefit. Therefore, some understanding of the world system and of its structure and development can be of considerable aid for leaders and members of these various social movements.

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Which Way Africa-Towards De-linking from Colonial Empire? The puzzling thing is that even in 2017, African countries are still not allowed to formulate their own economic and social policies. As if they are not independent, they must accept and implement again and again the policy prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank. This time, too, the continent and its people should not expect something fruitful that can address their abject situations. The fact that the African Development Bank could participate this time to formulate a policy document does not imply that the Bank has a say in bringing its own version of economic policy—one that really analyzes and impacts the economic and social crises of the continent. Since the African Development Bank itself advances the same ideology as the IMF and the World Bank, the disparate African people should not expect something new. From this vantage point, let’s look at the merits and demerits of the document that was prepared by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. On the 17th and 18th of March 2017, the G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors met in Baden-Baden, south Germany, and discussed, among other things, Africa and how to create a favorable atmosphere for foreign investments in various African countries. The initiative came from the German government that hosted the conference. Accordingly, the G-20 finance ministers “acknowledged their responsibility” to combine forces “to tackle” the economic crises that many African countries were facing. This kind of initiative is good for many African countries so long as the policy makers and the policy itself can address the burning issues that the countries are confronted with. However, in order to get rid of the problems that these countries are facing, the aim of the policy and its theoretical and philosophical foundations must be known. It is clear to anybody that, without theory there cannot be any praxis. If one looks at the document that was produced and presented to the conference and those institutions that were assigned to formulate a framework that serves as a guideline for investment, one cannot know, however, the framework’s scientific and theoretical basis. The two institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, as a matter of fact, do not have good records in dealing with Africa’s economic crises. Over the last 482

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decades, these two institutions formulated the economic policies of many African countries and dictated to the governments how to implement the policies. Since political independence, many African countries have not been allowed to formulate their own economic and social policies reflecting the real situations that exist on the ground. Nor were there debates about the merits and demerits of the economic policies imposed by these institutions. Intellectuals of the effected African countries did not have the chance to discuss and debate the policy issues that would touch the lives of millions of Africans. While Western countries, including Japan and South Korea, formulated and implemented their own economic policies without foreign interventions, African countries were not given the same opportunity. The political and military reconstruction after the Second World War helped many West European countries, also including Japan and South Korea, reorganize their societies and build their economies on firm foundations, but for various reasons, African countries did not get the same kind help. Though African countries became nominally independent, they were compelled to pursue the old division of labor that had first thrown them into a weak position. Until today, all economic policies have been imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions and the international community. As shown by studies and, more importantly, the realities on the ground (Bandow & Vásquez, 1994) all those economic policies that were implemented as prescribed by the Bretton Woods institutions did not solve the economic and social problems of the continent. Rather, the economic policies inflicted heavy damages to African societies. Instead of a coherent, integrated and dynamic economic and social system, we observe fragmented economic structures that could not raise the living standards of the majority of the people in these countries. The policies as such did not have the capacity to create true national wealth with multiplier effects. Therefore, the various policies of the last decades rather deepened the economic and social crises of many African countries. Still today, many African countries are dependent for their income on one or two exportable commodities. Most of the commodities are exported without being processed. If we ask why Europeans had the sensation that Africans are quiet, instead of seeing their constant movement, that was practically only evident with the so-called “Arab springs”, the answer is clear: nobody, not in Africa nor in Europe, nor anywhere else in the world, can rely on conventional or corporate media to inform them of popular resistance. This topic is vetoed for most agencies that supply the agenda of all big media. On the other hand, history is written by the winners, and they do not spend any time in narrating the strength and the reasons of its enemy —or does so in a distorted way. We were taught in school that colonization was a far more pacific process than it actually was. 483

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According to school textbooks, we Europeans “Christianized” and “civilized” the savages who were in awe of our superiority. Today, we know that we actually murdered and ransacked entire civilizations with great cruelty a few centuries ago, although we remain ignorant on the bases of our current “civilization.” Social convulsion is not new in African countries, but its depiction in outside media indeed has changed in the last years. As we know, what does not appear in big media does not exist.

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Tahrir Square protesters at the height of the Jan 25 revolution against Hosni Mubarak. (Credits: Tara-Todras Whitehill/ AP)

The current political conjuncture is characterized by a concatenation of popular protests against neoliberalism which have intensified following the deepest crisis of the world economy since the 1930s. In particular, some of the most visible phenomena in recent years have been the mass demonstrations across North Africa and the Middle East, the European movements against austerity, and the worldwide Occupy protests. Hence, we direly need to engage in the theorization of power structures, popular agency, and social transformation in conjunction with related strategic questions, espousing a democratic “socialism from below” that accentuates the political agency of a multiplicity of social groups beyond a narrow, producer-focused labor movement.

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While this resurgence of grassroots mobilization has been inspiring to behold, the obvious understanding of such movements has often been somewhat less illuminating. The facile, not to mention hubristic, equation of British anti-cuts campaigns with the Egyptian Revolution, for example, indicated a misapprehension of the contemporary wave of protest movements and their varied social conditions. Equally, the mainstream media tend to obscure the common threads connecting such struggles by obstinately disavowing the systemic circumstances that generated them: a crisis of global capitalism, rising inequality, and a political system dominated by compromised élites. Indeed, the social movements should enable us to see these African particular struggles in relation to wider social totalities and material realities or the bigger picture of global power relations such as neoliberal globalization. To all the usual struggles in the history of any nation of the world, African people must add the colonization resistance of the XIX century, the struggle for freedom in the XX century. Then, the indignation towards global capitalist system, that arrived in Europe a few years ago but had already arrived in Africa in the 80s, when they began to suffer the consequences of austerity policies, as well as the plans for structural adjustment, lasted during the 90s, and had its last wave that reached Africa before it reached Europe, because the African peoples began to suffer the effects of the last so-called crisis, such as price increases or massive layoffs, sooner than the rest of the world, between 2003 and 2005. During all those years, civil and social movements have had a crucial importance in the resistance to the system. Social movements were enormous, massive, organized and sometimes spontaneous, violent or pacific, but constant and strong, capable of influencing the States, and its construction, with their demands of socio-economic justice, that sometimes opened spaces for a political opposition. In general, they emerge as horizontal, communitarian movements. They can sometimes fall into being used by interests that are far from their original aim, but movements of resistance and protest always emerge again, they are an energy in constant movement. Sometimes, their leaders emerged as the visible heads of the movement and occupied seats in politics, such as Sankara in Burkina Faso and Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly, Zaire), and sometimes not, as in the case of Ken Saro Wiwa in Nigeria. In any case, visible leaders of the African social resistances were frequently decapitated, literally or figuratively, by the West, before and after independency processes.

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NUMSA – Metal worker’s union

Most of African civil societies have fought, through organization, problems that many Western governments would not be capable of confronting; they survive to what is known here as failed states, these countries who did not overcome with success the post-colonial phase, or countries with complex situations that their governments, clients of the foreign interests, cannot face, such as refugee crises, environmental degradation, privatizations, lack of electricity, of health coverage… Social movements organized in Africa are very common, even though in Europe people can’t —or don’t want to— see them. For example, France had a difficult time when invading Western Africa, not just because it had to fight a 10-year-war with the British for the control of that area, but because people and kingdoms of the area, such as the old Songhai empire, rebelled against that domination and France was forced to deploy the greatest military campaign ever deployed by that country. The African peoples resisted the colonization in so many ways that at several times the Europeans thought they could not dominate them. France had to divide in small “countries” what was supposed to be a great colony. The division in Alto Volta (former name of Burkina Faso) and other administrations (Mali, Senegal, etc.) was made to better control the incontrollable.

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Academics began studying social African movements in the 60s and 70s, when independence struggles began, precisely because of their importance in the development of the events that would end up forming independent Africa, as we know it. These movements had great responsibility in the process of resistance to colonization, fight for decolonization, freedom and democracy in their countries. They contributed to the origins of the opposition majority and the political plurality of the current African states. Historically, movements have been diverse in their focus: feminism, work, environment, politics, class, ethnics or culture. African Social Movements can make de-linking from the stranglehold of Colonial Empire happen.

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For an African Workers’ and Peasants’ Democracy There are different types of democratic reforms, from some which provide a good deal of political liberties for the masses to miserable liberalizations that provide next to nothing for the masses. Thus, historically, the peasant is a figure of the utmost tragedy. He is grotesquely exploited, forced into self-subjection, forced into preserving all that is most backward and reactionary. And yet he makes his own strait jacket. He cannot, by his way of life, conceive of a real alternative. He cannot emancipate himself, and self-emancipation is one of the pre-conditions for socialism or people’s democracy. His opposition to his own exploitation, when he is solely dependent upon his own resources, is thus either 487

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purely negative, or marginal to the system – that is, the opposition does not challenge the existence of the system so much as check certain practices within it. The most common form of this opposition – and the least effective in revolutionary terms – is social banditry. Small bands of armed men prey on the forces of authority, acting as Robin Hoods to take from the rich and give, at least in principle, to the poor. The small size of such groups, their great mobility, and the willingness of the dispersed peasant families to protect and supply the rebels as a sort of ‘counter police’ force, make them almost invulnerable to counter-attack by the authorities, who are mere repressive parasites serving the interests of foreign capital. Daily, the workers operate the most advanced sectors of the economy, where innovation and change are constant dynamic elements destroying the inherited customs of the past. They have forced upon them, as part of their very daily existence, a mass division of labor which includes high specialization, including the most advanced technical knowledge, and elaborate interdependence. Of necessity, the workers are a collective, covering the whole of the most important parts of the economy, not a community of independent producers. By their daily work and daily struggle, they are aware, that society as a whole is the arena, not one district, nor even just one factory. The employer is part of an employing class, standing in a certain relationship to the State and its agencies. Of course, in practice, many different levels of perception exist among workers and make for many variations from this rather abstract pattern. However, the difference between the proletariat and the peasantry is that, in principle, workers can comprehend society as a whole, and given the Marxist perspective for the development of capitalism, will be driven to do so. The peasantry, in principle, cannot comprehend society as a whole, and are not driven to do so by the nature of their way of life. On the contrary, the peasant who acquires a knowledge of society as a whole is an anomaly, someone who has to fight against the intrinsic conditions of his way of life rather than being led necessarily by those conditions in that direction. Where the proletariat is a majority, its own emancipation is within its own power, and its self-emancipation is the emancipation of society as a whole, including the peasantry. Thus, the role of the proletariat is not an optional element in Marxism. Without it, Marxism becomes nonsense, and we have to start from scratch all over again. Whatever form of ‘socialism’ could be formulated on different grounds could not, validly, borrow from Marxism except by changing the essential meaning of the words involved (as we have seen is the case with the term ‘exploitation’).

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Progressive steps are important, even if they are not the final step. But in present conditions, is continuously threatened by the continued existence of the imperialist powers. In Vietnam, the American forces may be defeated, but this will not end the existence of Washington. The existence of the advanced capitalist powers, private and State, makes the prospects for any sustained economic development in the backward countries grim. Thus, the future of the backward countries, like the future of the peasantry, depends, not upon one defeat of one element of imperialism, but its global destruction. And it cannot be destroyed globally in Vietnam, nor can it be destroyed by the world’s peasantry. It can only be destroyed in the advanced countries themselves, and only by the proletariat. Thus the issue – peasant or proletarian – is not about who can achieve ‘socialism’ in one country, but about the emancipation of mankind as a whole by the world’s peasantry. It can only be destroyed in the advanced countries themselves, and only by the proletariat. Thus the issue – peasant or proletarian – is not about who can achieve ‘socialism’ in one country, but about the emancipation of mankind as a whole. Governing in the interest of the working class and peasants is therefore impossible for any government under colonial empire as this simply cannot be done under capitalism. Capitalism is based on the ownership and control of the means of production by a ‘privileged few’ and production for the market with a view to profit, the source of their high incomes and privileged lifestyle. Capitalism therefore runs on profits. Any government, whatever its intentions, has to respect this and give priority to profits and conditions for profit-making, unless they want to provoke an economic crisis and slump. This means putting profit-making before meeting the needs of ‘ordinary working-class families.’ All governments have done – have had to do – this, but they’ve all done it. In Britain for instance, there has been no honeymoon period for the Tory government. No electoral cavalry is poised to ride over the hill to save working class people from the Tory onslaught. Workers and young people have concluded that they and their organizations are on their own and will need to energetically push back the bosses and the government’s offensive. Africa must learn this lesson. And, the time is Now! The reason is that: “Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to the division of labor,” wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, “the work of the proletarian has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily required knack, that is required of him.” (Marx-Engels, Selected Works, Vol.1, p.114). In the days of Ancient Rome, a slave was described as “instrumentum vocalis”—a “tool with a voice.” Nowadays, the position of most ‘free’ workers 489

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is not much better. Not only the deadly monotony and exhausting work of the production line, but also the soul-destroying nature of the work of many whitecollar workers working with computers in large offices which, in effect, increasingly resemble factories. And this is the way most people spend their lives, if they are lucky enough to find work at all! Yet the development of technique means that it is possible to abolish, or reduce to a minimum expression, this kind of inhuman toil. The word “robot” comes from the Czech “robotnik,” which means “a slave.” That is just what industrial robots are. They do not sleep, they do not stop for a tea-break or lunch, and they work ceaselessly 14 hours a day, performing their tasks with great flexibility and to the highest standard. In fact, just as the boss would like the worker to be! It is quite possible nowadays to have big factories with no workers at all, other than those required for maintenance. The general introduction of industrial robots to large-scale industry therefore potentially represents the greatest labor-saving revolution in history. Under capitalism, such a development would lead to unemployment on an unimaginable scale, and ultimately provoke the collapse of the whole system. Hence, although the technology exists and also, as we have seen, huge amounts of capital which is not being put to productive use, the introduction of the new technology has been extremely slow and uneven. The same economic system which dooms 50 million people in the industrialized countries, and further hundreds of millions in Africa, Asia and Latin America to a life of enforced idleness and misery, and which systematically destroys the means of production, closing down factories like so many matchboxes, also prevents the utilization of technology which could transform the lives of the peoples of the world. One of the most striking features of modern capitalism is the way in which it has united the whole world under its control. The prediction of the authors of the Communist Manifesto has been borne out in an almost laboratory pure fashion. The international division of labor has been carried to an extreme. The world market exercises an irresistible pull on all national economies. No power, not the USA, not Russia nor China can tear itself free from it. Under capitalism the “New World Order” manifests itself as the ruthless domination of a handful of imperialist powers, headed by the United States, and a few hundred giant multinationals, which treat the semi-colonial countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America as their feudal fiefdoms. For the masses of the Third World, capitalism is, in the phrase of Lenin, “horror without end.” Yet the case for a genuine New World Order is really unanswerable. It is not only the means of putting an end to the crazy economic imbalances and the crying social injustices which are an endless source of human misery, wars and conflicts. It is a matter of absolute necessity for the very survival of the planet. 490

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The blind search after short-term gain for the monopolies leads to the rape of the world’s resources and the destruction of the environment. Not just the felling of rain-forests, but the systematic poisoning of the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. In the first volume of Capital, Marx already pointed to this destructive tendency of the profit system. But now it has reached a critical point. If this rampage is allowed to continue unchecked, the future not just of the human race, but possibly of life on earth could be placed in terrible danger. The reality is that the productive forces have long outstripped the limits of private ownership and the nation state. In order to realize the astonishing potential of modern industry, science and technique, it is necessary to achieve a system based upon the harmonious planning of production on a global scale. The prior condition for this is the overthrow of the dictatorship of the big banks and monopolies, and its replacement by a genuine regime of workers’ democracy. The development of production and new techniques enters in contradiction with the old idea of the worker as a mere appendage of the machine. In order to make the best use of sophisticated techniques, and achieve a high level of quality, it is necessary to achieve the conscious participation of the workers at all levels. In effect, this fact is recognized, although in a distorted way by the latest Japanese production concepts. Even the most sophisticated robots can never attain the same level of creative consciousness as a human being, although it may be far more efficient at performing mechanical tasks. The necessity for democratic workers’ control and management, far from being a Marxist utopia, flows inevitably from the demands of modern production itself. “Instead of mindlessly carrying out a single, repetitive operation, tomorrow’s car worker is more likely to be a team member with many skills and greater responsibilities... “For some car firms, survival will depend on how successful they are at promoting teamwork throughout their organizations. People are so much dexterous, flexible and inventive than robots—which is why the Japanese believe that automation should help people to work in factories rather than replace them. Robots alone could not achieve the Holy Grail of flexible production.” (The Economist, 17/10/92). Of course, in practice, the intention of the Japanese monopolies is to invent a new way of squeezing more surplus value out of the workers. Despite the fine words printed above, about robots helping people to work in factories, the big Japanese car-makers did not hesitate to layoff workers once their profits were affected. In a genuine socialist planned economy, the general introduction of the new techniques would be used to reduce the working day to a minimum expression. This would provide the material basis for a qualitative advance of human civilization. 491

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The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that “Man begins to philosophise when the necessities of life are provided.” By philosophise we mean the ability to think in general, to lift one’s eyes, above the worries and immediate pressures of every day existence, to seek a broader horizon, to contemplate life, nature, and the Universe. In present-day society, the minds of men and women are oppressed by the struggle for survival—whether or not they will find work, whether they will be able to pay the bills at the end of the month, find a roof over their heads, obtain provision for sickness and old age. Only when these degrading obsessions are eliminated will men and women become genuinely free human beings, able for the first time to realize their full potential. Trotsky once asked the question: “How many Aristotles are herding swine? How many swineherds are sitting on thrones?” Throughout African human history, the mass of humanity from and in the continent have been deprived of access to free time, education and culture which would permit them to contribute to society’s store of knowledge. It is a crime of class society that such a vast reservoir of human talent is wasted. By releasing it, socialism would prepare the way for such a blossoming of culture, art and science as has never been seen in African human history. African humanity would draw itself up to its full height. This would mark the end of human prehistory and the commencement of the true history of the African human race delinked from the obstructionist forces of colonial empire.

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Concluding Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire Africa, a continent with virtually all the resources it takes for development, is the worst hit by hunger, starvation, armed conflicts, instability, displacement and abject poverty. Politicians, jockeying for the little resources left by the capitalist class, display the politics of hide-and-seek, repression and oppression. This is mainly because of the system which encourages capital accumulation and profit-seeking. The cumulative effect is flagrant corruption, deprivation, wastage and impoverishment which intensifies underdevelopment. Worst of all, as Africa is helplessly dragged into the global free trade (not fair trade) championed by the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) and World Bank, Africa’s natural resources are further exposed for deep exploitation by international capitalism, which deteriorates the woes of the already impoverished African working class. This shows that the objective conditions of African socio-economic formations do not favor capitalism. Capitalism and imperialism are perceived as the major cause of the current underdevelopment in Africa. Capitalist development has tended to reinforce the exploitative dependence that enables underdevelopment to persist. The fact 492

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remains that Africa will never witness any meaningful development under capital accumulation and market profit-seeking which breed dissension, division, greed, selfishness, tribalism, ethnic chauvinism and the like. After the 22nd ECOWAS Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, one African president identified division and the exposure of the region’s economy (market) to the Western capitalist class as the major source militating against the development of the region. But this is the base of capitalism—market profit-seeking and exploitation. It is not enough to identify these problems but more so to resolve them by helping to abolish the system that creates them. The African working class have the cards in their hands for socialism if only they want it. Indeed, African conditions have revealed capitalism in its harshness and brutality: inequalities are too glaring. In the face of extremities of want and a meagre surplus, it is difficult to sell the idea that those who are in positions to accumulate should take what they can and leave the rest to suffer what they must. Africa’s ruling class has run out of ideas for fashioning and inspiring a functional development strategy, limited as it is by the constraints of working with ideas compatible with the maintenance of the existing property relations. The evils of capitalism are conspicuous in Africa and Africans have lost confidence in capitalism, exemplified by the renewed springing-up of workingclass consciousness in South Africa, The Gambia, Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and others but are choked by the external forces of capitalism. Again, another problem for the transition to socialism is the state of the development of productive forces in Africa which may turn even the best of intentions into caricature. The lack of the development of the productive forces appears to encourage political authoritarianism and reduces “Socialism” to the management and redistribution of poverty. But underdevelopment will surely persist if the existing capitalist relations of production are maintained, and if the dependence of Africa on international capital continues. Therefore, the overturning of the existing relations of production is necessary for overcoming underdevelopment. Socialism is inevitable if development is desirable. It is obvious that in the event of protracted futile developmental efforts, the politics of anxiety has become institutionalized and increasingly the ruling class is displaying signs of paranoia while the subordinate classes have become frustrated, demoralized and available for induction into extremist movements as in Algeria, Senegal, Burundi, Rwanda and the like. The ruling class is fast psychologizing failures which lie in the economic sphere. The fact is that Africa has less hope of development if the property relations of production and distribution and the capitalist market system continue. The reverse is the solution—socialism abolishing capital accumulation and market profit-seeking

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and embracing production for need. The time is now to co-operate with fellow workers all over the world to establish global socialism.

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References Ali, T 2006, ‘The fierce bull and the cunning donkeys’, Pirates of the Caribbean: axis of hope, pp. 43-76, Verso, London. Amin, Samir. (1990). Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World. London, New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd. Samir Amin, 1997. Capitalism in the Age of Globalization. London: Zed Books Ltd. Samir Amin, 2000.The Political Economy of the Twentieth Century. [Online]Available: http://monthlyreview. org/2000/06/01/the-political-economy-of-the-twentieth-century. Samir Amin, 2001.”Imperialism and Globalization.” Monthly Review, 6-24. Samir Amin, 2003. “World Poverty, Pauperization, &Capital Accumulation.” Monthly Review, 1-9. Samir Amin, 2006.Beyond US Hegemony?: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World. London, New York: Zed Books Ltd. Bandow, Doug & Vásquez, Ian. (1994). Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF and the Developing World, Washington D.C. Bello, W. (2004). Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy. Updated Edition. Black Point: Fernwood. Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. (2010). Empires in world history: Power and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Cardoso, HF & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and Development in Latin America, University of California Press, Berkeley. Cohen, S. (2001). States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering Cambridge. Darwin, John. (2008). After Tamerlane: The global history of empire since 1405. New York: Bloomsbury. Doyle, Michael W. (1986). Empires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. Fanon, F. (2005). The Wretched of the Earth. New York. Folz, Robert. (1969). The concept of empire in Western Europe from the fifth to the fourteenth century. London: Edward Arnold. Frank, AG. (1974). ‘Dependence is dead, long live dependence and the class struggle: an answer to critics’, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 87-106. Glennie, J & Hassanaien, N 2012: ‘Poverty matters blog’ The Guardian, 1st March, p. 1, viewed 20th April, http: //www.guardian.co.uk/globaldevelopment/poverty-matters/2012/mar/01/do-not-drop-dependencytheory 494

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Grillo, I. (2013). ‘Return of the Zapatistas: are Mexico’s rebels still relevant? Time World Mexico, 8th January, p. 1, viewed 20th April 2013, http: //world.time.com/2013/01/08/return-of-the-zapatistas-are-mexicosrebels-still-relevant/ Kiernan, B. (1997). The Pol Pot regime: Race, power and genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, pp.1975–79, Yale University Press, New Haven. Kiernan, Ben. (2007). Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kiernan, V. G. (1982). From Conquest to Collapse: European Empires from 1815-1960. New York: Pantheon Books. Mamdani, M. (2001). When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton and Oxford. Mann, Michael. (1986–2012). The sources of social power. 4 vols. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. Münkler, Herfried. (2007). Empires: The logic of world domination from Ancient Rome to the United States. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Pagden, Anthony. (2003). Peoples and empires: A short history of European migration, exploration, and conquest, from Greece to the present. New York: Modern Library. Pieterse, J.N. (2010). Development Theory, 2nd edn, SAGE publications, London. Putnam, H.R. (2010). ‘Dependency Theory’, Encyclopedia of geography, viewed 18th April 2013, http://knowledge.sagepub.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/view/geography/ n273.xml?rskey=PqrwAN&row=3 Suny, Ronald Grigor. (2001). The empire strikes out: Imperial Russia, “national” identity, and theories of empire. In A state of nations: Empire and nation-making in the age of Lenin and Stalin. Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, 23–66. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Weber, Max. (1978). Economy and Society: An outline of interpretive sociology. 2 vols. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: Univ. of California.

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AFRICA IN THE COLONIAL AGES OF EMPIRE

TATAH MENTAN is an erudite Theodore Lentz Peace and Security Studies Fellow and Professor of Political Science with enormous contributions to knowledge in the global political economy of international relations.

AFRICA IN THE COLONIAL AGES OF EMPIRE

Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond

Tatah Mentan

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is written from the perspective that the scholarly lives of academics researching on Africa are changing, constantly in flux and increasingly bound to the demands of Western colonial imperialism. This existential situation has forced the continent to morph into a tool in the hands of Colonial Empire. According to Tatah Mentan, the effects of this existential situation of Africa compel serious academic scrutiny. At the same time, inquiry into the African predicament has been changing and evolving within and against the rhythms of this “new normal” of Colonial Empire-Old or New. The author insists that the long and bloody history of imperial conquest that began with the dawn of capitalism needs critical scholarly examination. As Marx wrote in Capital: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moment of primitive accumulation.” Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is therefore a MUST-READ for faculty, students as well as policy makers alike in the changing dynamics of their profession, be it theoretically, methodologically, or structurally and materially.

Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond

Words like “colonialism” and “empire” were once frowned upon in the U.S. and other Western mainstream media as worn-out left-wing rhetoric that didn’t fit reality. Not anymore! Tatah Mentan observes that a growing chorus of right-wing ideologues, with close ties to the Western administrations’ war-making hawks in NATO, are encouraging Washington and the rest of Europe to take pride in the expansion of their power over people and nations around the globe.

Tatah Mentan