Africa Development, Volume
XL, No. 3, 2015, pp. 139-159
© Council for the Development of Social
Science Research in Africa, 2015
(ISSN
0850-3907)
Development is Resistance
Yash Tandon*
Abstract
The main
the argument of this article is that, in our epoch, resistance against imperial
domination is the first law of motion of development. How did I come to this
conclusion? I came to it through a critical look at the existing theories of
development, and through my active participation in over fifty years of
Africa’s struggle to ‘develop’. The
article looks at various aspects of the theory and practice of ‘development’,
focusing mainly on the theory as expounded by economic theoreticians for the
last three hundred years. The article also makes use of specific cases or case
studies to sharpen its main argument and support the conclusion reached. The
discussion is situated firmly in the context of the harsh reality of
imperialism. The west suffers from an acute case of amnesia when it comes to
recognising imperialism … and its role in destroying the cultural, economic and
social roots of Africa’s (admittedly slow) evolution into self-sustaining and
respected members of the international community. Today, Africa’s economy is
shattered – devastated – by the so-called ‘free trade’ dogma. I can say with
some degree of authority as a political-economic historian that there has never
existed anything called ‘free trade’ – never.
Résumé
L’argument
principal de cet article est que, à notre époque, la résistance contre la
domination impériale est la première règle de l’action de développement.
Comment suis-je arrivé à cette conclusion? J’en suis arrivé à travers un regard
critique sur les théories de développement existantes, et ma participation
active à plus de cinquante ans de lutte pour « développer» l’Afrique. Cet
article aborde divers aspects de la théorie et de la pratique du «
développement », en se focalisant principalement sur la théorie telle
qu’exposée par les théoriciens économiques au cours des trois derniers siècles.
L’article se fonde également sur des cas spécifiques ou des études de cas pour
étayer son argument principal et soutenir la conclusion. Le débat se situe bien
dans le contexte de la dure
* Associate at the African Studies
Centre at Oxford, and honorary visiting professor at Middlesex University,
London. Email: tandonmail@yahoo.com
réalité de
l’impérialisme. L’Occident souffre d’un cas aigu d’amnésie lorsqu’il s’agit de
reconnaître l’impérialisme ... et son rôle dans la destruction des racines
culturelles, économiques et sociales de l’évolution de l’Afrique (certes lente)
vers des membres autonomes et respectés de la communauté internationale.
Aujourd’hui, l’économie de l’Afrique est brisée – dévastée – par le soi-disant
dogme « de libre-échange ». Je peux dire avec une certaine autorité en tant
qu’historien politico-économique qui il n’a jamais existé quelque chose appelé
« libre échange » – jamais.
Introduction
Development is not reducible to ‘growth’.
In fact, ‘growth’ and the ‘GDP’ (Gross Development Product) are laughable
concepts. They are paraded by academic economists (sadly also in the
universities in Africa and the South) as well as by institutions such as the
IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as their key
concepts for measuring ‘development’.
Unpack (or to use a fancy word – ‘deconstruct’) ‘growth’ and ‘GDP’, and
you will find a can of worms.
Study the GDP of, for example, the US and the UK. The more bombs they produce and deploy –
mostly outside of their own countries – the more their GDP grows!1
The US is fighting 74 different wars … that the government will publicly admit.
2
Every time the US unleashes war, its GDP grows … and so does the misery of the
rest of the world. And when the latter countries rebuild their economies (often
by American corporations, as in the 2003-11 Iraq war), it is now these
countries that show increased GDP! It is
truly bizarre.
There are billions of people on earth that have inadequate
access to food, fuel, housing and medicines;
and yet the world’s GDP grows by the year. By official reckoning, Africa
has been ‘enjoying’ an enviable 6 to 7 per cent growth a year for the last
several years, and yet millions of people are ‘internal refugees’ – denied
elementary access to means of survival – whilst thousands perish in the
Mediterranean. At the time of writing this article, the European Union was
drawing up plans for military attacks on Libyan targets to stop migrant boats –
to cut the ‘supply side’, as they say. Britain was drafting a UN Security
Council resolution that would authorise it to bomb vessels used by human
traffickers around Libya – offshore and inshore. And so it goes – the more
Europe bombs the more Europe’s GDP increases!
Another ‘laughable’ addition to the GDP of the world is the
drugs trade. Statistics about profits from the drug trade are largely difficult
to secure because of the trade’s illicit nature. In its 1997 World Drugs Report the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime estimated the value of the market at $4 trillion,
ranking drugs alongside arms and oil among the world’s largest traded goods.3
An online report published by the UK Home Office in 2007 estimated the drug
market in the UK at £4-6.6 billion a year.4 In 2013, the United
States Drug Enforcement Agency made 1,501,043 arrests for drug law violations.5
And so it goes …the more arrests are made and people thrown into jail, the more
the United States’ GDP grows! What can be more ridiculous as a measurement of
‘growth’ or ‘development’? It is not just laughable – it is tragic!
All Economic Theories are Ideologies
All economic theories, without exception,
are ideologies. As such, they have a certain descriptive content based on
social, economic and political realities on the ground, and also a normative
content – on how society or economy should be organised. The descriptive part
is subject to empirical verification. It is the normative content that
distinguishes one ideology from another, for that is derived from a subjective
assessment of one’s values guided by one’s circumstances. When an ideology is
shared by a group or a collection of people, it acquires the identity of that
group – class, race, gender, religion, and so on. The interesting thing for social historians
is that the dominant classes have always managed to hide or obscure their class
identities and the ideological content of these theories. This is not through
deliberate manipulation by the educational and media infrastructure (although
that too), but essentially because the ruling classes genuinely believe that
their economic theories are ‘scientific’ and beneficial to everybody.
There is a vast literature on this subject, and therefore I
will be brief and limit myself to demonstrating – in broad strokes – the
fundamentally Eurocentric (or Euro-American-centric) basis of the dominant
economic theories that have reigned ever since the rise of capitalism as a
world system, some five hundred years ago.
I do not particularly like to go into the history of economic theory
(because this might be a familiar subject to many of the readers of this
article), but it is important that we go through this for the sake of those who
are not familiar with it – in order to clearly lay out the ideological terrain
that is at the root of the developmental crisis of our times.
From the Physiocrats to the ‘Chicago School’
The ideology of this epoch is spawned and
spread by the dominant ruling classes that control global capital.
Significantly, this ideology has remained more or less intact over the last 300
years. In the eighteenth century, the mainly French economic thinkers
collectively known as the Physiocrats
argued that agriculture was the basis of all wealth. But in the nineteenth
century, and in particular since the Napoleonic Wars in which England defeated
France, the English managed to beat the French in being the first nation to
industrialise, and to spread its mercantile empire throughout the global
system.
Adam Smith’s Wealth
of Nations (1776) more or less codified and systematised the
mercantilist-colonialist argument. He argued, essentially, that left to the
free market, its ‘invisible hand’ will allocate national and global resources
to their most efficient, an argument further refined by David Ricardo with his
theory of comparative advantages.
America, then a colony of England, was persuaded by the
English to specialise in the production of agricultural commodities (cotton,
tobacco, etc.), where, the English argued, its ‘comparative’ advantage lay –
leaving it to England to do the manufacturing. Alexander Hamilton, among
others, challenged the theory, and out of this was born the American School of
economics rooted in Hamilton’s economic principles, which was that America
needed, also, to industrialise, and therefore needed its natural resources at
home and not exported to ‘mother’ England. Hamilton was what we would call
today a ‘nationalist’.
Frederick List, a German who lived in America in the 1820s,
adopted Hamilton’s ideas and argued that the English classical theory would
deny Germany a chance to industrialise. Having industrialised, England was now
‘kicking the ladder’ over which it had climbed so that nobody else could
compete with it. The Listian principles provided the ideological argument for
Germany to challenge the ‘free trade’ principles and in favour of state support
(in the form, for example, of subsidies and tariff protection) to German
industry in the 1860s and beyond. List is the founder of what later came to be
identified as the ‘German historical school of economics’.
The Americans and the Germans used the Hamilton-Listian
principles to undertake what we today would call an ‘anti-imperialist struggle’
– resistance against the domination of England and Europe. However, as soon as
America and Germany became industrial nations, they, in turn, became imperial
nations themselves. Hamilton and List were quickly put into the dustbin of
economic theory. The United States and Germany have today become the champions
of ‘free trade’ theory, the very ideology they challenged when it was
propounded by England.
While the ‘classical’ economic theory was challenged by
Hamilton’s American School and List’s German School from a nationalist
perspective, it was also challenged by another German – Karl Marx – from a
class perspective. Industrialisation was all very well, Marx argued, but the
owners of capital were exploiting the workers and appropriating the surplus
value in an endless pursuit for profit and accumulation of wealth. In the face
of this double assault - nationalist and workerist - the English had to go back
to the drawing board to invent another theory.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century came the ‘neoclassical
economics’ – commonly associated with Alfred Marshall who tried to formulate
‘economic science’ as a counter to the ‘political economy’ of Marx. The labour
theory of value (of Adam Smith and Marx) was displaced in favour of the
‘marginal utility theory of supply and demand’.
The search for an anti-Marxist economic theory led to the
spawning of other ideas, such as the ‘Austrian School’ most commonly associated
with Ludwig von Mises and methodological individualism – deductive economics
based on axiomatic truths about human behaviour.
None of the economic theories (classical, neoclassical,
Hamiltonian, Listian, German historical school, Austrian school, among others)
came to save Africa from savage colonisation.6 Why not? Because
they were all ideologies to serve the imperial interests of the ruling classes
in Europe and America. Even then, furthermore, these economic theories were not
enough of an ideological cover for Africa’s predation. They had to be
embellished by a missionary ideology – ‘the white man’s burden’ to ‘civilize’
Africa.
In his General Theory
(1936), Keynes challenged the assumptions of classical and neoclassical
economists and offered an alternative paradigm based on direct state
intervention in the economy to counter the negative effects of free market
economics. But Keynesian economic theory was also an ideology that served the
imperial interests of England.7 It should be clear to the reader that
all these economic theories (including Keynesian) masquerading as ‘science’
were essentially self-serving Eurocentric ideologies. When it came to
colonising Africa, neither the ‘nationalist’ ideas of Hamilton and List, nor
the state-interventionist ideas of Keynes mattered. They did not apply to
Africa. There was a racist dichotomy to their ideas - emancipatory when it came
to Europe, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and apartheid South Africa, and imperialist when it came to the rest
of the world.
Fast forwarding to our own times – from the mid-1980s to
about 2007/8 – Keynes’ ideas were reduced to the margins of economic theory.8
The dominant economic theory came not from Europe but America. The
‘Chicago School of monetarist economics’,
commonly associated with Milton Friedman, now became the dominant economic
theory. Friedman replaced Keynes as the leading ideologue for capitalism and
imperialism. According to the monetarist theories, the cyclical or aberrant
disturbances in the economy were purely short-term (not structural or what I
would call ‘systemic’). These, Friedman argued, could be addressed by proper
monetary policies. There was no need to overhaul the entire global economic
system – it was working just fine. There was no need for state intervention in
the economy (this was ‘communist ideology’); left to itself the market was
working well. If there were countries that were out of trade balance, all that
was needed were some wellpackaged austerity and IMF-enforced austerity
measures. 9
The Chicago school of economics went back to Ricardian
Classical and Marshallian Neoclassical economics with further refinements
employing growth models, econometrics, and game theory. Everything was
‘scientific’, measurable, and governed by the ‘invisible’ hands of good old
Adam Smith. Among others, the ideas of David Ricardo, Bertil Ohlin, Jacob Viner
and Harry Johnson were taken out of the closet to provide spurious historical
‘authority’ to creditor-oriented monetarists.
Neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus
This dominant mode of Euro-Americo-centric
economic thinking became part of the universal ‘truth’, now called neoliberalism.
After Thatcher and Reagan came to power in Britain and the US respectively,
these ‘truths’ became the instruments to pry open the rest of the world to the
command of the dominant Anglo-Saxon capital. This was ‘globalisation’. The free
market had full sway. The regulatory mechanisms of the Keynesian-New Deal era
(such as the GlassSteagall Act) were set aside for banks and other financial
institutions to engage in no-holds-barred accumulation of profits. Money became
the means to make more money without passing through the phase of production.
In the hands of the IMF and the World Bank, these economic
‘truths’ were imposed on the debt-stricken countries of the South as Structural
Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), fittingly called the ‘Washington Consensus’ - a
consensus designed within the cloistered walls of Washington. Once again, as so
many times before, the Eurocentric collective predatory system was imposed on
the South. Then fell the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the ensuing Western
triumphalism, whatever regulatory mechanisms existed to control capital were
dismantled. This put in a dominant position a rent-seeking financial sector
whose insatiable pursuit of money accumulation led to all kinds of Ponzi
schemes. 10
The neoliberal ideology continues to shape the economic
policies of the dominant countries – the US, Germany, Britain, France and Japan
– and the institutions of global economic governance – principally the IMF, the
World Bank, and the WTO. Among the neo-Keynesians, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Kruger
are decorated as Nobel Laureates, along with ‘welfare economists’ like Amartya
Sen. These are joined by a host of other economists and theoreticians, among
them, for example, the revived German Historical School, structuralist
economists, ecological economists, gender economists, institutional economists,
biophysical economists – each group adding a dimension to exposing the
inequities of the dominant neoliberal paradigm - in an eclectic alliance of the
so-called orthodox and heterodox, but still essentially Euro-American-centric
ideologists.
The main political-economic Euro-American-centric
tendencies describing themselves as ‘development theory’ can be presented
graphically as in Diagram 1.
Diagram 1: Main Political-Economic Theories and Tendencies
Two conclusions can be drawn. One, these
300-year-old ideologically conservative or at best reformist mainstream or
‘normal’ political-economic theories have brainwashed generations of economists
(sadly also in the ‘best universities’ of the global south). They are the
ideological glue of imperialist theories and are essentially exploitative and
racist. They have to be completely demolished and delegitimised for the system
they uphold also to be delegitimised.
Two, a major challenge for the theoreticians of not only
the global south but also of the marginalised peoples and sub-nationalists of
the north is to provide an alternative definition of development.
Development is a Process
Development is a process. The process is
resistance – relentless opposition to the imperial system… until liberation.
This has been the story of the liberation struggles against colonialism and
imperialism in the South for over a hundred years. I might add that there are
now pockets of resistance even in the North against the above-described
dominant ideological tyranny, though some of these – such as in Greece – are
still in the early stages of their resistance. The Syriza-formed government is
mobilising the people to challenge, to resist, the austerity programme and
ideology of the dominant imperial powers of Europe and their triad institutions
– the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund. What will come out of this ‘war’ between the European
political-financial establishment and the people of Greece is still an open
question. In the United Kingdom, the 7 May 2015 election has put in the
frontline the Scottish National Party (SNP) that, like Syriza, has challenged
the austerity-based ideology of the ruling Conservative Party; it has also
opened the space for Scottish independence.
Let me elaborate this concept of development as resistance
further. In contrast to the OECD’s ‘delivery concept of development’ as an act
that pours money and technical assistance into the ‘poor’ recipients that are
assumed not be able to think, act, plan or implement for themselves, without
being monitored and evaluated by the donors, I argue that development has
essentially two components.
One, development is self-defined. It cannot be defined by
outsiders. Within the national framework, it is defined in an evolving
democratic process as part of the national project. In this long evolutionary
development process, decision-making and control over national resources pass
into the hands of the population and their democratic institutions.
Two, development is a process of self-empowerment. As the
struggle for gender equality, for example, teaches us, development is a long
process of struggle for liberation from structures of domination and control,
including mental constructs and the use of language. This struggle is waged
between nations, within nations, within communities, and even within
households.
If you read the above two points again, you will see that the
definition fits the situation not only in the global south, but also in nations
like the Greeks’ and the Scots’ in Europe, and ‘the nation of Islam’ in the
United States.
Learning from
Nyerere
I might add that I am not saying anything
original. I have learnt from a practitioner (not a mere theorist) of
development – namely, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the first president of
Tanzania, and the founding spirit behind the South Centre. In all his active
political life (1958 to 1999) he wrote on what he practiced – a genuine
‘philosopher king’. 11 These are some of his ideas on the subject:
•
Development is a process; it starts from within the
individual, communities and the nation;
•
It is the realisation of the potential for self-support
and contributing to society;
•
It involves the building of self-confidence;
•
It aims at leading lives of dignity, which include
gainful employment that helps individuals to meet basic needs, security, equity
and participation. These lead to self-fulfilment;
•
It is freedom from fear of want and exploitation;
•
It is freedom from political, economic and social
exploitation;
•
It is the continuous struggle for the right and access
to decisionmaking that affects the life and livelihood of the individual, the
community, the nation and the region.
These
ideas form the ideological glue of development. Borrowing from Nyerere, and
against the background of the struggle for emancipation from colonial and
imperial economic exploitation and national oppression, development from a
Southern perspective may be defined by the following formula:
Development = SF + DF - IF where:
•
SF is the social factor – the essential well-being of
the people free from want and exploitation;
•
DF is the democratic factor – the right of the people
to participate in decision-making that affects their lives and livelihoods;
•
IF is the imperial factor – the right of a nation to
liberation from colonial and imperial domination, which follows from the right
to self-determination.
To
put it succinctly, development, in its most inclusive sense, means the
satisfaction of the basic material and social needs of the people (especially
those most vulnerable) through a system of governance that is democratic and
accountable to the people, and through eliminating imperial interventions in
developing societies. One might argue that these are also the goals of all
selfrespecting economic theoreticians in the west, and of all the institutions
of global governance – such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. But when
you look at how their so-called ‘development goals’ are to be achieved, it
should be obvious that these theorists and these institutions have not moved
one inch from the 300 years of imperial ideology – an ideology that has changed
in form and text but never in substance.
And what is the substance of imperial theories? In its
present form, it boils down to the following formula:
Development = Growth + Wealth
accumulation+ trickle down where:
•
Growth = open markets + foreign investments + good governance (as defined by developed country
donors and the multilateral agencies that they control);
•
Wealth accumulation = ensuring that the rich continue
to get richer and are able to amass fortunes;
•
With trickle-down effect of some of the benefits of
growth to the poor.
It is fair to add, however, that the imperial countries
that follow the ‘social democratic model’ have a variation of the growth model
in their own countries, expressed, in simple terms, as the following:
Development = Growth + Open markets + wealth accumulation +
Good governance + Redistribution Where:
•
Growth = Open markets + foreign investments ;
•
Wealth accumulation = Ensuring that the rich continue
to get richer and amass fortunes;
•
Good governance (as defined by the donors and the
multilateral agencies that they control);
•
Redistribution = Taxing the rich to give to the poor
(usually taxing the less poor and the middle classes, for the rich employ
lawyers and accountants to hide their wealth and outwit the tax collector).
But this formula does not work even in the
West – let alone in their poor caricatures in the global South. The world has
become more unequal over the last 50 years than over the preceding one
thousand. The OECD’s 2011 study – ‘Divided we Stand: Why Inequality Keeps
Rising’ – revealed that globally the rich-poor gap has widened in the last
decade. Between nations this is clearly evident. But even within advanced
countries – including the ‘egalitarian’ states such as Germany, Denmark and
Sweden – the rich-poor income and welfare gap is growing.
What it does not say is that there is no possibility of
‘distributive solution’ within the present system that is structurally
engineered to produce inequality. The revolutionary political and social
forces, even in the west, are weakening in relation to the power of global
corporations and a global bankocracy.
Development as Defined for the Global South
The formula from the Southern perspective
(Development = SF + DF - IF) is not only national, but also regional and even
continental. It is also the basis for expanding it to South-South cooperation.
Here too, Nyerere made a unique contribution. He was not only a great
nationalist leader, but also a visionary Pan-African and third world leader. In
the 1980s, he chaired the South Commission set up by the developing countries.
The political rationale and teleological direction of the South Commission
Report was succinctly summarised by Nyerere in these five headings:
1.
Development shall be people centered;
2.
Pursue a policy of maximum national self-reliance;
3.
Supplement that with a policy of maximum collective
South-South self-reliance
4.
South-South self-reliance;
5.
Build maximum South-South solidarity in your relations
with the North;
6.
Develop science and technology.
So much for the theory: let us come to the
reality on the ground.
The Reality of Imperialism
We must first come to terms with the
concept – and reality – of imperialism. If one has not understood imperialism,
one has understood nothing about the relationship between the North and the
South, or between the West and the rest. 12
Western Denial of the Reality of Imperialism
Paradoxically, people in the West,
including well-meaning NGOs and people otherwise sympathetic to Africa, have
difficulty recognising the reality of imperialism. They are in a state of
denial about imperialism. I have sought to find an explanation in both Western
culture and history to illuminate this mental blockage, but I have not come up
with a good answer. For example, I have often wondered why Hitler is described
in almost all Western literature as a ‘fascist’ but never as an imperialist.
Could it be that calling Hitler an imperialist is too perilously close to
looking at a mirror image? Today, many Westerners, including intellectuals,
deny the existence of imperialism. Let me illustrate this from my own
experience. In November 1995, in Maastricht in the Netherlands, I was engaged
in a public debate with Herman Cohen, a former US Under-Secretary of State for
African Affairs, and at the time in the governing executive of the Global
Coalition for Africa (GCA).13 The debate was on ‘democracy and
governance’ in Africa. When I used the word ‘imperialism’ to describe the
situation in Africa, Cohen countered by saying I was ‘anachronistic’, and that
imperialism was simply ‘a figment of Tandon’s imagination’. I did not have to
answer him; Africans amongst the audience gave him several concrete examples of
imperialism. One of these people was Aminata Traore, one-time Minister of
Culture and Tourism in Mali. She told Cohen that she was disappointed that as a
top official of the Global Coalition for Africa he had no understanding of
imperialism or the reality of Africa.
In another instance, in February 1997 I attended a
conference in Oslo on Agenda 21 (i.e. sustainable development). I shared the
platform with the influential consultant to the Brundtland Commission, Lloyd
Timberlake. 14 He was at the time also the Director of the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development. He countered my description
of the present reality in Africa as dominated by imperialism by suggesting that
I was ‘out of date’, and that he had not heard the word imperialism ‘for the
last thirty years’. At first I was astonished, but then I realized that the
audience - largely Norwegian - was probably in agreement with him. I had to
tread carefully in order not to alienate my friends in the audience. So,
without challenging Timberlake directly, I suggested – using an idiom I borrowed
from my environmentalist friends – that because England can use Uganda’s
resources, its ‘ecological footprint’ is much bigger than Uganda’s. I doubt if
he understood my point, for he stared at me vacantly. He did not understand
that this was because whilst Uganda had become ‘independent’, England, as an
imperial country, continued to exploit and consume Uganda’s resources and so
had a bigger ‘footprint’. I wondered: how does one ‘educate’ a person who is in
a state of denial about the global political environment? Why should
Timberlake’s ecological environment be so real to him but not the political
imperial environment? How did he manage to separate the two?
Imperialism and Neo-colonialism Defined
Imperialism is a particular kind of
relationship that arose in the wake of colonialism. It may not be reduced to
any kind of asymmetrical power relationship. Could the relations between the
USA and Europe, for example, be described also as imperialist? No. Why not?
Because although they have unequal power, at the global level they are both
imperialist powers; they are partners and competitors at the same time. For
instance, American and European companies compete in the telecommunications
market. But if Zimbabwe, or Iran, or Cuba (or Syria, Somalia or Venezuela) ‘step
out of line’, the US and the European Union will gang up to bring ‘order’ - cut
off their gas and water, as it were, to ‘bring them back into line’. No,
imperialism is not any relationship between two unequal powers. It is a
historically created phenomenon; you cannot discuss it in the abstract.
Concretely, the imperialist nations compete and collaborate to maintain a
system of production and consumption based on the exploitation of the rich
resources - including labour - of the South.
Lenin’s definition of imperialism as the ‘highest stage of
capitalism’ is a good analytical extension of the Marxist theory of Capital up
to 1880s and beyond. Students of
international relations, especially those from the South, might want to read
Lenin’s classic text on imperialism15.Below I lay out
imperialism’s main characteristics as defined by Lenin:
1.
Concentration of production and monopolies
2.
The new role of banks
3.
The emergence of finance capital and the financial
oligarchy
4.
Export of capital
5.
Division of the world among capitalist associations
6.
Division of the world among the great powers
7.
Imperialism as a special stage of capitalism
8.
Parasitism and decay of capitalism
Imperialism is not a fleeting phenomenon;
it is part of our present reality. Fifty years after Lenin’s book, Kwame
Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, wrote a book (whilst still President)
entitled Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage
of Imperialism. This is what he wrote in the introduction: ‘The
neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its
most dangerous stage… The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is
subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of
international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its
political policy is directed from outside’. 16
Fifty years since Nkrumah’s book, neo-colonialism – as
defined by Nkrumah – is still with us. If anything, imperialism has become even
more aggressive. Why? Because it is now under serious challenge from younger
generations of third-world peoples and social activists, even in the West.
Selected Case Studies of Resistance against Imperialism
Palestinian Resistance against Americo-Jewish Imperial State
The state of Israel is a Euro-American
creation. Its birth has four undeniable historical roots. One is the
persecution of the Jews in Europe for centuries, culminating in Hitler’s
holocaust. The second is the export (dumping) of this centuries old European
problem to the Arab Middle-East – a process that began in the 1880s but ended
in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The third is the institutional
backing of the creation of Israel by the United Nations. Very few countries of
the South were members of the UN. India voted against the resolution, and so
did the then already sovereign Arab states. Virtually the whole of Africa was
still under European colonial rule. The Palestinians were not consulted. And
the fourth is the massive military power supplied to the Jews by the West to
oust Arabs from their homelands in Palestine.
The state of Israel was born in blood and violence –sadly
some of us know little about the second book of the Torah – the Exodus – and
the hardships 600,000 Jews suffered in escaping from slavery in Egypt in 6th
Century BC. In our time, Israeli security forces have killed at least 700,000
(some say a million) Palestinians in their quest for statehood. During the Six
Day War in 1967, Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and
Egypt, and since then Israel has not stopped colonising the rest of Palestine.
Under the 1948 division of the land of Palestine, the Jews
and the Palestinians were to create their own states. But this – the ‘two
state’ formula – was a deception. As a young man I grew up believing in the
cause of the Jews for a state of their own, especially after reading Leon
Uris’s ‘Exodus’. Later, as a young
Socialist, I read about the kibbutz and moshav (agricultural cooperatives)
movement, and I dreamt of visiting one of these cooperatives. I never made it.
In 2012 I was finally able to go Palestine. I was in Ramallah for over a week.
And what I saw simply shattered me. In the 1980s and 1990s, I used to go to
South Africa (from Zimbabwe where I lived) invited by the underground
resistance movement. I can say with complete honesty that what I saw in
Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Jericho was far worse than apartheid South Africa. The Palestinian Authority (PA) was
hopelessly ineffective in addressing the basic problems of the people (such as
access to water, and the right to visit families and relatives across the
hundreds of Israeli barriers and check-points they had to cross). The PA was
spineless when it came to ‘negotiating’ with Israel – or the ‘Quartet’ of
‘mediators’ that was led by the United States.
Development of Palestine, unequivocally put, is resistance
against the Americo-Jewish Imperial State. As apartheid South Africa had ceased to be morally unsustainable, so
today apartheid Israel has lost moral
legitimacy.17
Resistance by a Sanctioned Country - the Case of
Iran
Western sanctions against Iran began in
1979 – some thirty years ago. The sanctions are quite comprehensive. The West
has frozen an equivalent of $100 billion of Iran’s money in foreign banks since
the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The US total economic and financial embargo
includes:
•
Sanctions on the energy sector, which provides about 80
percent of government revenues;
•
Sanctions on the sale of aircraft or repair parts to
Iranian aviation companies;
•
Sanctions on Iranians engaging in any transactions with
American citizens;
•
Information embargo, including on the state
broadcasting authority. The US and the West do not want the rest of the world
to hear the Iranian side of the story;
•
Sanctions on major Iranian electronics producers;
•
Sanctions on internet policing agencies such as the
Iranian Cyber Police;
•
Sanctions on companies doing business with Iran. Any
United States property held by blacklisted companies and individuals are
subject to confiscation.
The US is supported by its North America
Treaty Organization (NATO)
‘coalition of the willing’ states:
•
The EU has comprehensive sanctions measures covering
trade and financial and other services (e.g., shipping);
•
Canada has put a ban on Iranian national property
deals, a ban on arms and oil technology, as well as a ban on investments in
Iran;
•
Australia has imposed financial sanctions and a travel
ban on individuals and entities involved in Iran’s nuclear and missile
programs;
•
Switzerland has banned trade with Iran in dual-purpose
arms and products used in oil and gas sectors, and a ban on financial services;
•
Japan has banned some Iranian banks and investments in
Iran’s energy sector, and has frozen the assets of some individuals (but
interestingly, Japan has not imposed a trade ban on oil, for
•
South Korea has imposed targeted sanctions on 126
Iranian individuals and companies.
As for Israel, it has declared Iran an
enemy state. At the center of it is the issue of nuclear weapons. Iran claims
it wants the nuclear energy to supplement its depleting oil resources. The US
and Israel claim that Iran wants nuclear power to wage war. They claim that
Iranian nuclear potential is a threat to ‘global peace and security’. And so,
the sanctions cannot be lifted until the nuclear issue is first resolved to the
satisfaction of US, Israel, and Europe.
There is no question that sanctions are hurting Iran’s
economy. On the other hand, Iran has cleverly used sanctions as a means to
restructure its oil deals with other foreign companies. Iran has set up a
system of ‘buyback contracts’. The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) makes an
agreement with foreign corporations to jointly explore and develop an oil
field. The NIOC remains in full control of the project. When the contract
expires – usually after five to eight years – the Iranian state becomes the
sole operator, keeping all revenues from further sales. And if a dispute arises
between NIOC and the oil company, the matter might be taken out of the hands of
the disputants by an Islamic court.18
This is in sharp contrast to the system forced on Iraq by
the US. Under a ‘production-sharing agreements’ (PSA), the Iraqi state
technically owns the oil, but its control is nominal. The PSA is just another
name for the classic colonial form of concessions. It gives the foreign company
monopoly rights to develop and manage an oil field for between twenty-five and
forty years. During this period the terms of the contract are fixed and cannot
be legally altered by Iraq. The reserves are entered into the company’s balance
sheets as the assets of the company, which is entitled to decide on the rates
of their extraction (that is, their depletion) and other production details as
it see fit. There is no upper limit on profits. If disputes arise, these are
solved not in Iraq’s courts but in international arbitration tribunals. 19
Of course, Western trade and financial sanctions have left
a big hole in Iran-Western relations, but that hole is significantly filled by
the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as well
as other smaller countries of the South. They do not share Western enthusiasm
for sanctions against Iran. Oil is a major resource. Iran is able to barter oil
for goods and services from non-Western countries. India, for example, pays for
Iranian oil imports in rupees. This is potentially damaging to the supremacy of
the ‘mighty’ US dollar.
The US Empire is not blind to this ‘other reality’. Nor,
indeed, is Iran oblivious to the need for some kind of compromise. In the
recent (201415) negotiations among Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent
members of the Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, France,
United Kingdom – plus Germany), there appears a window of opportunity for some
kind of compromise. Iran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear program, and
an increased amount of international inspections, in exchange for relief from
sanctions. However, at the time of writing this paper, there have appeared
differences in the interpretation of what was actually agreed, and how the
process was expected to move forward. At the center of this controversy is
whether the sanctions are to be lifted in their entirety (Iran’s position) or
in phases (US position). But, of course, everybody knows that behind this
blockage lies the lobbying power of Israel in the United States.
For Iran, there is no question of bending to the will of
either Israel or the United States. That is not the road to its development.
It is the West that unilaterally decoupled Iran from the
world economy. But Iran has survived. Iran’s defiant resistance has paid off.
After many false starts since 2006, on July 2015 Iran and the six world powers
– the US, the UK, China, Russia, and Germany (P5+1) finally signed a deal. Iran
agreed to limit its nuclear activity and to give the International Atomic
Energy Authority (IAEA) full access to its nuclear facilities. In return the
West agreed to lift the sanctions that have been in place since 1979. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel
called it a ‘stunning historic mistake’. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani called
it a ‘historic deal’ that opened a new chapter in Iran’s relations with the
world.
So what do we learn from Iran? The answer is clear – it is
resistance against imperial dominance… not surrender to the will of the Empire.
The West had thought that sanctions-induced economic austerity woud give rise
to disaffection on the part of ordinary Iranian people, and thus eventually to
a ‘regime change’. The West had been harboring this illusion for thirty years.
All these years, the West had learnt nothing of the deeply rooted anti-
imperialist sentiment of the Iranian people. Also, the mainstream economic
theoreticians have learnt nothing that when it comes to the relations between
the Empire and the Global South, development is resistance to imperial
domination.
EPAs – East Africa’s Resistance against European
Imperialism
African countries
achieved their political independence at various times after a long – and often
violent – struggle against the European imperial powers. However, economic
independence still remains an unachieved goal. Let us recall Nkrumah: ‘The essence of
neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory,
independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In
reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from
outside’ (Ibid).
Soon after francophone countries gained their political
independence in the 1960s, the Europe Union (EU) got them to enter into an
economic agreement at Yaoundé in 1963. In 1969 (to cut a long story short) the
EU then signed a separate agreement with the three East African countries
(Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) called the Arusha Agreement. The EU also signed
similar agreements with other former colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
During the 1970s, the EU decided to bring all these African, Caribbean and
Pacific (ACP) countries into a common trading and financial system. The system
was further tightened in 2000, with the Cotonou Agreement between 79 ACP
countries and the EU. All these former colonies were now in a tight
neo-colonial grip of the European Union. The Cotonou Agreement (CA) is, to this
day, the principal framework agreement between Europe and Africa. Signed in 2000 the CA was designed to last
for a period of 20 years (up to 2020).
Despite the acknowledged principle of ‘equality and mutual
respect’, the CA is an ‘unequal treaty’. It is basically an agreement between
two asymmetrical ‘power blocs’, the (real) power of the 15 (now 27) countries
of the EU speaking with one voice coordinated from Brussels, pitted against the
(fictitious) power of the 79 ACP countries speaking with many voices: the EU’s
per capita GDP is about US$20,000 in 2009, compared to about US$9,000 in some
Caribbean countries to less than US$100 in the poorest African countries.
Whilst the EU has a highly coordinated policy towards the ACP, the only
coordination for the ACP (if this is what it must be called) takes place in the
ACP House in Brussels. The Economic Commission (EC) provides for the
maintenance of the ACP House, and per
diems for ACP delegates to attend international conferences. Thus the ACP
secretariat are supported and financed by the very body – the EC – with which
they enter into negotiations about the future of their countries’ economies.
Coming to the regional level, the East African Community
(now expanded to include Rwanda and Burundi) has its Secretariat in Arusha.
Slightly over 60 percent ($78.17 million) of the EAC budget for 201415 was
funded by the donors and 32 percent ($41.9 million) by the five EAC
governments. It is therefore not surprising that the EAC Secretariat – as well
as the aid-dependent governments of the five countries – has been under
unceasing and relentless pressure from the EC to hasten the process of signing
the EPAs.
However, ever since the signing of Cotonou in 2000, the
people of East Africa have been resisting the EU-imposed diktat over their governments. In 2007, for example, the Kenya
Small Scale Farmers Forum (KSSFF) filed a case against their government arguing
that the EPAs would put at risk the livelihoods of millions of Kenyan and East
African farmers. On 30 October, 2013, the High Court ruled in KSSFF’s favour.
The Court directed the Kenya government to establish a mechanism for involving
stakeholders in the on-going EPA negotiations, and encourage public debate on
this matter. (The Government has substantially ignored this decision). The
KSSFF is supported by a number of civil society organisations in East Africa –
foremost among them the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and the Southern
and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI).
These organisations work closely with members of parliaments of the five East
African Countries and of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA). They
also work with the Geneva-based South Centre (the policy think tank of the
Global South). The South Centre has provided detailed technical analysis that
showed that the East African countries faced serious de-industrialisation if
they signed the EPAs.
In 2012 the EC Trade Commissioner came to East Africa with
an EPA text in his pocket confident that the East African Ministers of Trade and
Industry would sign the agreement. Two days before his arrival, however, the
EALA passed a resolution cautioning the Ministers against signing the agreement
until all contentious issues were resolved. This resolution was binding on the
Ministers. The EC Commissioner decided that the Minsters or the EALA did not
matter. He phoned the President of one of the five countries that at the time
was chairing the East African Summit of Heads of State – a normal imperial
practice to overturn the democratic will of the people. (Democracy and good
governance, it is important to note, are fluid concepts when it comes to
Imperial-Neocolonial relationship). The EC Commissioner was astonished that the
President gave him no audience; he had to return to Brussels emptyhanded. The people had won … at least in 2012.
Following this humiliating defeat, the EC increased its
pressure at all levels – at Brussels, at East African national capitals, at the
EAC Secretariat in Arusha, at the private sector with vested interests in signing
the EPA agreement, and at the various Heads of States. The EC succeeded; but
partly. It managed to get the EPA ‘concluded’ and ‘signed’ by the East African
bureaucrats in Brussels in September 2014. In March 2015, however, the East
African civil society organisations and the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum met
in Nairobi, once again cautioning their governments against signing the EPAs
without full consultation with various stakeholders and ratification. The
struggle continues as we go to press.
Conclusion
First, development is not reducible to
‘growth’, or to statistical numbers. Development, above all, is a process. It
is the process of people acquiring control over their own destinies. When these
are denied by exploitative or oppressive forces, these must be resisted.
Second, Africa’s political leaders are under illusion to believe that
‘development aid’ or ‘foreign direct investments’ will get them out of their
development crisis. It is important to
understand what ‘capital’ is, how it is generated, and what its real function
is. Money is a system of credits; and capital is past savings used for enhanced
production. Both money and capital create masters of those who have these and
slaves of those who do not. It is as simple as this.
As the article has demonstrated, the Empire is not a
figment of imagination. It is real. Most economists (as opposed to political
economists) do not recognise the reality of imperialism. It is not there in
their vocabulary or in their thought processes. Economic theory is an
abstraction from reality. All economic theories, without exception, are
ideologies. Speaking as an economic historian, I can say with some authority
that there has never been anything called ‘free trade’ or ‘fair trade’ – never,
not even in the so-called ‘golden period’ of the English mercantile system.
The dominant classes have always managed to hide or obscure
their class identities and ideologies. It is our task to expose the fallacy
behind the self-serving and the fundamentally Euro-American-centric basis of
current dominant economic theories. These theories have to be completely
demolished and delegtimised for the system they uphold also to be delegtimised.
As discussed in the paper, the developed or industrialised
countries are not interested in the development of the countries of the South.
They are only interested in their own development – through exploiting the
labour and resources of the South. Trade
is War. Over the last five hundred years – from slave trade to colonial
trade to trade in our times – trade has been a relentless war of the imperial
countries against the nations of the South. All development under conditions of
exploitation and oppression is RESISTANCE. This still remains the case today as
Africa seeks to liberate itself from the scourge of neo-colonialism. In our
epoch, resistance against imperial domination is the first law of motion of
development.
Notes
1. The United
States spends more per year on the military than the next thirteen countries
combined – $711 billion compared to $695 billion spent by China, Russia, UK,
France, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Germany Brazil, Italy, South Korea,
Australia and Canada.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-30/debunking-gutting-militarystoryline
2. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/u-s-currently-fighting-74-different-warsthat-it-publicly-admits.html
3. “World Drug
Report – Global Illicit Drug Trends”. Unodc.org. Retrieved 2011-1126.
4. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110220105210/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/rdsolr2007.pdf
5. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#sthash.MoRPc8St.dpuf
6. The only
exception to this was the Marxist theory that interpreted history from a class
and political-economic, materialist perspective
7. For a good,
comprehensive – but desperately neo-Keynesian – analysis
of this, see Nayak, Satyenda. 2013. The
Global Financial Crisis. Genesis, Policy Response and Road Ahead, Springer, 2013. For a more critical appraisal of Keynes
see Tandon, Y. Trade is War,
OR-books, 2015, pp 56-57
8. They were
resurrected in the post-2007 financial-economic crisis by the so-called
‘heterodox’ theorists - what I call the ‘heterodoximos’ theorists. (see chart)
9. The Greeks
and before the Greeks, the peoples of the global South, have been fighting
these ‘austerity’-led Economic ‘restructuring’, but at the time of writing, the
powerholders of the banking system and the dominant classes within the Imperial
states, have not yielded an inch of ground to the Greeks.
10. A Ponzi
scheme is an investment operation where the ‘operator’ pays out to those who
invest in the scheme not from real-time investment (and thus from profits) but
from capital invested into the operation by new investors. This is the logic of
the ‘money credit system’ – and exposed as a fraud.
11. See the
excellent series on African political thinkers put out by the Centre Europe -
Tier Monde (CETIM). In the Introduction to the one on Julius Nyerere I
elaborate on why I think Nyerere was a Philosopher King. CETIM, 2015, pp 10-11.
12. Parts of
this section is derived from my Trade is War, OR-Books, 2015.
13. The GCA was
created around 1993, a brainchild of former World Bank President Robert
McNamara. Its objective was ‘to ensure that Africa remains high on the
international agenda, to facilitate greater understanding of the development
challenges faced by the continent, and to promote agreement on necessary
actions to be taken by both African governments and their international partners.
The GCA’s agenda is focused on the broad themes of a) peace and security; b)
governance and transition to democracy; and c) sustainable growth and
integration into the global economy.’ See
http://web.worldbank.org/Website/External/Countries/Africaext/0. Nothing much
is heard of the GCA anymore; it was simply a ‘figment of the imagination’ of
Western imperialists like the World Bank that they could ‘do the development’
on behalf of Africa.
14. In 1983 the
United Nations set up the World Commission on Environment and Development,
headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of
Norway. The
Commission is also known as the Brundtland Commission
15. First
published in mid-1917 in pamphlet form in Petrograd. See Lenin (1963), Lenin’s Selected Works, Vol. 1, Progress Publishers,
pp. 667-766. I should add that Lenin’s pamphlet was not entirely an original
work. Lenin acknowledged his debt to, among others, J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study (1902).
16. Kwame
Nkrumah (1966), Neo-Colonialism: The Last
Stage of Imperialism, International Publishers, p. ix.
17. As I write
these lines, The Vatican announced that it would formally recognise Palestinian
statehood.
18. See
Alexander Brexendorff and Christian Ule, “Changes bring new attention to
Iranian buyback contracts”, Oil & Gas
Journal, 1 November 2004.
19. See
Platform IPS, War on Want, Global Policy Forum, Oil Change, NEF (2005), Crude Designs: The rip-off of Iraq’s oil
wealth’, Platform. (Download available from www.platformlondon.org.)
No comments:
Post a Comment