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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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Imperialist parasitism
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The imperialist powers found many other ways of exploiting the rest of the world. From the end of the 19th century, banking
became a source of growing profits, in the imperialist countries' spheres of influence first, and then even in their poorest
colonies.
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Some of today's poor countries were never colonies, but this did not protect them from the exploitation of the imperialist
powers. This is the case, in particular, for most of the Middle-East which, until World War I was entirely under the domination
of the Ottoman empire. Instead, it was the Ottoman empire itself which became indebted to Britain and France, to the point of
coming entirely under their financial control. And much the same happened with Egypt, around the repayment of the debts
resulting from the building of the Suez Canal.
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In most colonies, hardly any investment was ever made in infrastructure, except the very minimum required by colonial
exploitation - railway lines between the coast and mining areas, or deep sea harbour facilities, for instance. Even in that
case, the level of under-investment for these projects could only be described as criminal. For instance, between 1921 and 1934
a 300-mile railway line was build in the French Congo, between the capital Brazzaville and the Atlantic Ocean. Tens of
thousands of Africans were forcibly brought, on foot, to work on the line. In total, an estimated 17,000 died of disease and
exhaustion. There was neither machinery nor any kind of tools except the most basic to do the job. Africans were to call this
train the "man-eater", which probably says it all!
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India may have been more fortunate in that, from the 1860s, railway lines started to be built and, by the turn of the century,
there were 37,000 miles of railway lines and 136,000 miles of roads. However, this transport infrastructure was not designed to
meet the needs of the population. It had two main purposes. One was to ensure that army reinforcements could be quickly
brought in where needed. And the other was to provide big profits to British manufacturers. As to the cost of this
infrastructure, it was to be paid out of the Indian population's future taxes. In addition, since British banks had lent the
funds, the Indian population was also to pay the fat interest required by the banks!
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Britain's financial parasitism on India developed rapidly. By the eve of World War I, the sum total of dividends and interest
paid by India to British capital was worth 60% more than the commercial and industrial income from India. Over the next two
decades, this commercial and industrial income remained more or less at the same level, but the share of British capital
invested abroad that went to India more than doubled, increasing from 11% to 25% - resulting in a considerable rise in financial
profits extracted from India and a sharp increase in the colony's exploitation.
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The case of India was not an isolated one, among the colonial countries and it should come as no surprise that some of today's
largest banks built their colossal wealth on colonial finance - like HSBC and Standard Chartered in Britain, or BNP-Paribas and
Banque de Suez in France.
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