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Internationalist Communist Forum
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#92 - How capitalism under-develops the world
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Feb 2012
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Επόμενο
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Introduction
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The past four years of world economic crisis have been only the latest illustration of the bankruptcy of capitalism as an
economic system and as a form of social organisation. But the damage which capitalism causes goes back a long way - and is
certainly not confined to the consequences of its periodic somersaults.
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Capitalism itself was borne out of the brutal plundering of many of today's poorest countries. Without the slave trade which
decimated Africa's population for over two centuries, the industrial revolution would never have developed in Britain and
British capital would never have seen the light. Subsequently, since the capitalist market took on its present form, the world
economy has been dominated by the small, but very wealthy capitalist classes, which ruled the few very rich, imperialist powers.
And these capitalist classes have been drawing their enormous incomes partly from the exploitation of their domestic working
classes, but also, to a large extent, from the looting of the human and material resources of the poor countries.
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Whether under colonial rule or not, the poor countries included, and still include, the majority of the planet's population.
But despite having contributed so much to the accumulation of wealth of the imperialist capitalist classes, they got nothing in
return. During the wave of decolonisation which followed WWII, the hope that was expressed in the former colonies that they
would be able, one day, to extricate themselves from their under-development has proven to be an illusion. In fact the overall
wealth gap between the rich and the poor countries has never ceased to grow over the past century.
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Even in the few poor countries where some economic development did take place, due to exceptional historical and/or geographical
circumstances, it did not alter their subjection to the rich countries' economies. More importantly, it did not bring any
significant benefit to their populations. The spectacular, modern skyscrapers towering over the largest Indian and Chinese
cities barely conceal the abysmal poverty of the vast majority struggling to scrape a living.
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In any case, under-development in the poor countries was never written in stone, but man-made. And while it is the product of
factors which are all intertwined, its persistence stems from one single cause: the ever-increasing cost extorted from the whole
planet, by a capitalist system which has long become obsolete. It is this idea which we intend to develop in today's forum.
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Επόμενο
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αρχή σελίδας
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