"Camille Desmoulins had become an editor because a stammer, overcome for a few minutes during the excitement of July 12th, '89, prevented 'Monsieur Hon-Hon' from airing his views in any other way." p.461, "The French Revolution", by J.M.Thompson, Sutton Publishing, U.K.:2001.
Although it may seem colonialist views are far behind us, a 2014 YouGov poll revealed 59 per cent of British people view the British Empire as “something to be proud of.” Those proud of their colonial history outnumber critics of the Empire three to one. Similarly, 49 per cent believe the Empire benefited its former colonies.
Such views, often tied to nostalgia for old imperial glory, can help shape the foreign and domestic policies of Western countries.
Gilley has helped to justify these views by getting his opinions published in a peer review journal. In his article, Gilley attempts to provide evidence which proves colonialism was objectively beneficial to the colonized. He says historians are simply too politically correct to admit colonialism’s benefits.
In fact, the opposite is true. In the overwhelming majority of cases, empirical research clearly provides the facts to prove colonialism inflicted grave political, psychological and economic harms on the colonized.
It takes a highly selective misreading of the evidence to claim that colonialism was anything other than a humanitarian disaster for most of the colonized. The publication of Gilley’s article — despite the evidence of facts — calls into question the peer review process and academic standards of The Third World Quarterly.
…
The Bengal famine of 1943 was the final British-administered famine in India and claimed around three million lives. When Winston Churchill was asked to stop shipping desperately needed foodstuffs out of Bengal, he said Indians were to blame for their own deaths for ‘breeding like rabbits.’ (Shutterstock), CC BY
These counter-examples disprove Gilley’s central thesis that non-Western countries are by definition incapable of reaching modernity without Western “guidance.”
In short, the facts are in, but they do not paint the picture that Gilley and other imperial apologists would like to claim. Colonialism left deep scars on the Global South and for those genuinely interested in the welfare of non-Western countries, the first step is acknowledging this.
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Cries of political correctness are used to suppress inconvenient facts.
One should remember the above picture whenever anyone meantions the famines under Stalin and Mao. Any hierarchical system is capable of such horror.
On a side note, Japan should now be considered to be an American colony because it is dominated by American military and political influence. A Japan acting indepently of American interests is inconceivable. Turkey is able to exert a more independent course for itself.
The seeds of failure for a prosperous China Trade were being planted during the years in which western nations treated China as a semi-colony, taking as much as they could get and giving little or nothing in return. The failure was also precipitated by the nations in which Chinese nationals were exploited for their labor, but denied universal rights and protections.
The story of Commissioner Lin Tse Hsu and his destruction of the great quantity of opium in 1839 is as important to Chinese history as the Boston Tea Party is to the United States; and although Lin’s actions precipitated defeat by the Western powers, the national humiliation China and Chinese suffered for almost a century is partly responsible for the two revolutions in modern times. With an emphasis on its own needs, China will assuredly measure each petitioner for respect. That nation’s history also suggests the need to be especially aware of challenges to its sovereignty.
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So far, the successful Communist revolutions have all been based on national uprisings against colonialism:
Russian revolution against French Imperialism
Chinese revolution against European, American and Japanese Imperialism
Vietnamese revolution against French and American Imperialism
Laotian revolution against French Imperialism
Cuban revolution against American Imperialism
Venezuelan revolution against American Imperialism
For the nest series of Revolutions, these will have to be in Imperialist countries like Australia. Here nationalism is the natural enemy of social revolution.
This is why it is important to build anti-racism movements around land rights and refugee rights. We have to emphasis the international character of the working class.
One thing makes me hopeful — that this election was not a victory for austerity. The two main austerity parties — Tories and LibDems — saw their share of the vote fall by 14.4 percentage points whilst the two clearest anti-austerity parties (SNP and Greens) gained a combined 5.9 percentage points.
On the other hand, though, I'm pessimistic. Ukip's success* shows that there is also public support for anti-market policies: Ukippers (and indeed many other voters) favour (pdf) controls on prices and rents as well as on immigration. And whilst a slogan "we'll put you in control" should in theory be a popular and coherent way of promoting worker democracy, I see very little public demand for it.
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I think the difference between austerity in Greece and the UK is that austerity in Greece was an existental crisis. Austerity there was threatening the idea of Greece. Whereas in the UK, austerity was a way of keeping the super-rich happy enough to stay there in order to spend enough to keep some of the people happy.
It is probably very early in the development of the workers' consciousness in places like the UK to talk about worker democracy. However, the workers in places like Venezuela can see the benefit of this through the nearness of Cuba and the effects in their daily lives. Thus, they are developing their consciousness at a faster pace.
This is probably due to that the effects of colonialism was never disguised in Venezuela as it was in the UK. Only a heavy hand of the military there kept things under control. Now that the military has aligned with the workers, there is an awakening of how society can be better organized.
Periodic crises and political instability followed by military coups
seems to have been permanent features of political life of the country
after formal independence began in 1960. Still under the influence of Paris, the first post-colonial regime had been unwilling or unable to deal with the country's immense social and economic problems, leading to mass unrest, labour and student strikes and of course, a military coup.
As a result of the coup, Harsch writes, the army's popularity
had increased and came to be seen by many young intellectuals as a
possible instrument
for social change, a “potential modernizing institution that might help
discipline the corrupt bureaucracy, counter-balance the inordinate
influence of the traditional chiefs, and generally help modernize the
county”.
It was in military college that Sankara came under the direct
ideological influence of the college's director, the Marxist academic
Adam Toure, a
clandestine member of the pro-Moscow African Independence Party that
was centred in Senegal, with branches in other former French colonies. It
would turn out to be an important step in the future president's
political evolution. Keeping his political affiliations hidden in those
conservative circumstances, Toure quietly gathered together — outside
the classroom — his brightest and most politically inclined
students – among them Sankara — for informal discussions on topics such
as, “imperialism and neo-colonialism, socialism and
communism, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, the liberation movements
in Africa, and similar topics”. (Toure would later serve in Sankara's
government as minister of information, only to be jailed for two years
in 1984 because of his oppositional activities. He was nearly shot, only
being saved because of Sankara's personal intervention.)
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It is interesting to compare and contrast the political development of Hugo Charvez and Thomas Sankara.
Both of them became radicalised through their respective military colleges. The Venezuelan one was overt in its radical agenda and it was based deeply on the country's struggle for independence. Thus the whole class was exposured to these ideas. Thus, the Venezuelan military aligns itself with the Bolivarian Revolution.
The Upper Voltan one had to be secretative. Thus, there was a split in the officer corps that was fatal to the revolutionary regime later on.
The Venezuelan coup failed. This forced Chaverz and others to rethink their strategy, and to end up in the political arena to spread their ideas there instead of forcing people to accept them. By entering into the democratic process, Chaverz gained legitimacy that he used to launch his radical agenda. And this legitimacy has enabled the revolution to survive a coup.
The Upper Voltan coup succeeded. This meant that Sankara did not need to rely on the political process to implement his radical agenda. This destroyed his legitimacy and, eventually, got him killed.
However, both Chaverz and Sankara leave a legacy that continues to inspire their followers to radicalism.
Those who predict capitalism’s demise have to contend with one important historical fact: capitalism has an almost unlimited capacity to reinvent itself. Indeed, its malleability is the reason it has overcome periodic crises over the centuries and outlived critics from Karl Marx on. ...
Rodrik goes to write that increasing government intervention helped to stabilise the Capitalist system:
... The new balance that it established between state and market set the stage for an unprecedented period of social cohesion, stability and prosperity in the advanced economies that lasted until the mid-1970s.
This model became frayed from the 1980s on, and now appears to have broken down. The reason can be expressed in one word: globalization.
The postwar mixed economy was built for and operated at the level of nation-states, and required keeping the international economy at bay. ...
Here Rodrik forgets that the current manifestation of Globalisation is not the first one in history. The previous manifestation died at the start of World War I. That one was a more encompassing one in that direct military and political control was imposed by the imperial powers through their empires.
Following World War II, neo-colonialism became the norm in which local elites managed the process on behalf of foreign interests. This meant the system was not as efficient as before but more stable as it required less direct intervention.
However, the increasing confidence and power of these local elites has caused the imperial powers to revert to direct military and political control as seen in the cases of Serbia, Iraq, Chad, Panama, Chechyna, Tibet, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, etc.
Under Capitalism, the nation state exists as a protected market for the local Capitalists. Access to this market is of great interest to other Capitalists seeking to offset crises in their own markets.
Rodrik concludes that:
The lesson is not that capitalism is dead. It is that we need to reinvent it for a new century in which the forces of economic globalization are much more powerful than before. ... This means imagining a better balance between markets and their supporting institutions at the global level. Sometimes, this will require ... strengthening global governance. At other times, it will mean preventing markets from expanding beyond the reach of institutions that must remain national. The right approach will differ across country groupings and among issue areas.
Designing the next capitalism will not be easy. But we do have history on our side: capitalism’s saving grace is that it is almost infinitely malleable.
Once again, Rodrik hopes that, by having greater span of government control, the Capitalist crises can be contained. Rodrik wants a supra-national government to manage Capitalism for the Capitalists. In other words, the One World Government is being put forward as the salvation of the Capitalist system. This will not go down well with the petite Bourgeious who passionately believe that government is the cause of their problems.
The central problem of Capitalism is that profit both drives the system and causes it to collapse by reducing consumption. If goods cannot be consumed because of lack of money, then goods cannot be sold. Therefore, unsold goods represent unvalorised capital. Capital that cannot be valorised cannot be turned into profit. No expectation of profit means no investment in either machinery, raw materials, or labour. Thus, the amount of money available for the purchase of goods to be consumed is reduced. And so, the cycle continues.
I suppose Rodrik wants a Keynesian world government to keep consumption up during economic downturns. Government spending requires taxation. And taxation without representation has been the cause of a few revolutions. Read more!
When Indonesia won its independence in 1945, the country was propelled forward by a sense of hope, a sense that once freed from colonial rule, from the dictatorship of Dutch and other Western commercial interests, the economy could be developed and society would prosper.
Sixty years later, this hope is gone. In 1945, Western colonialism left Indonesia with no education system of any worth, no industry, no scientific or technological capacity. While Europe, North America, Japan and Australia industrialised and modernised during the 19th century and continued to prosper through most of the 20th, Indonesia, like all the Western colonies, was used as a source of cheap raw materials and of coolie labour.
Sixty years later little has changed. The policies of the developed capitalist nations, backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, have kept Indonesia non-industrialised, poverty stricken and technologically dependent.
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His solution is:
Such actions should be condemned as murderous, cruel and wanton and also as ineffective in achieving any change to the lives of Third World peoples. But they will continue as long as the huge gulf of power and wealth between the imperialist West and the underdeveloped, exploited Third World continues.
How to end these attacks? In the end, they will only stop when the movements to end this gulf grow, both in Indonesia and in the developed countries, and become forces that lead people to throw off the humiliation, national oppression and exploitation that the underdeveloped world now suffers.
Here in Australia, the movement against the US-led occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan must grow and force the US, Australia, Britain and other foreign armies out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The movement to "make poverty history" must go beyond an advertising campaign by celebrities and return to the streets, demanding the complete cancellation of the Third World's debt. That is what we can do to stop the continuation of terrorist attacks like those that took place in Bali.
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In other words, people with hope are less likely to kill. People with nothing to lose may want to kill as many of their tormentors as possible.
It is very hard to accept that one's lifestyle is based on the brutal exploitation of others. We are all guilty of the oppression of the Indonesians because we have not found a way to stop the exploitation. The guilt for the killings lies with the bombers and their associates. The guilt for their despair and anger lies with us.
