Download Neo-Colonialism, Modernisation and Dependency. Ch. II in

Neo-Colonialism, Modernisation and Dependency. Ch. II in Globalisation and the Post-Colonial
order
Ankie Hoogvelt
Indipendnces and Neo-Colonialism were the outcome of profound historical pressures and struggles
that were engendered by the very success of colonialismas a hegemonic organization of
international relations of production which had permitted a vast accumulation of wealth and
progress in the west. It is the very success of this pattern of global accumulation that brought forth
its own contradictions, so pressures for change and adaptation must be achievd to give continuity to
the global accumulation. The imposition of the international division of labour under informal
empire and formal colonialism had the indirecrt effect of layng the foundations for continued
control even in absence of political domination.
Global Economic Pressure - In the first period agriculture had been passed into the possesssion of
foreign plantation owners or had been directed towards the large-scale production of export crops
(cash crops), on the other hand long-term concessions for mineral exploitation had been granted and
mines had been estabilished as wholly owned subsidiaries of metropolitan firms. Capital market and
market institutions had been set up, and export/import trade was firmlyin the hands of such multycommodities traders.
In other words the incorporation of Africa in the networks of the capitalist world-economy
engendered the periferalization of this continent in relation to the Western countris, in addition the
colonial period had stabilized the capitalist institutions that now could had worked without the
political sovereignity.
The most important of these the private property that was protected by a good deal of international
law permitted the emergence of Neo-colonialism as the survival and continuation of the colonial
system in spite of formal recognition of political indipendence.
The neo-colonialism had many manifestations among which the birth of puppet governments,
foreign military bases, balkanisation but the main result was the relegation of the African countries
at the status of producers and exporters of primary unprocessed commodities in exchange for
manufactured consumer goods from the metropolitan countries.
The terms of texchange were unfavourable to the primary producers from a point of view of longterm price development, so many countries newly becoming independent started to ask for reforms
to develop their productive forces so the process of decolonizaion and the ideology of development
and modernizaion merged supported by african eltes educated to western values.
Already in 1950s, the leading branches of metroplitan firms were shifting from production of
consumer goods to the production of producer goods (capital goods), so the african countries
became from market outlets of consumer goods to place that attracted the supply of machines and
equipment goods.
So as the profits continued to be realized in resources sector a new form of accumulation ( surplus
extraction) marked the neo-colonial period: the tecnological rent.
The absence of competition engendered super profits for the monopolist sellers of technology that
had been invited to help them locally what had been previously imported.
Domestic Tensions - Soon the class that had been coopted to western ethic ( evolués) discovered
the contradictions between what European ideologists saw of their society and culture: freedom,
equality and brotherhood and the hipocritical, oppressive, racist institutions of european
colonialism.
The awakening nationalist spirit and independence created a momentary alliance between this class
and the masses of peasants and urban poors that the colonial strategy of divide et impera had
carefully separated. But thuis alliance proved temporary and fragile as Fanon showed in Pittfalls of
national consciousness: the national bourgeoisie find his national historical mission that of the
agent of european bourgeoisies, as it has no aim in transforming the nation, so it became a
“comprador” bourgeoisie.
Geopolitical Relations –
As the US secured its control over Latin america since the promulgation of Monroe Doctrine in
1823, they, after having sacrified American lives in the cause of its european allies, demanded a
price The new International Economic Order undr US hegemony.
International institutions were created to secure the stability of the international economy, under the
principles of US hegemony : IMF, WB (1944), GATT (1947, NATO (1948) and the Truman
Doctrine Point 4 (1947) Underdeveloped Country under the protection of US to avoid that these
countries would enter in the socialist area. In the point four programme of Development Aid
appling uncritically the modernization theory to less-developed countries to develop their resources
and keep them out of communist world.
Economic and technological aid was at first a means, but it was soon realised that the
transplantation of capital and technology to thirld world would nor bear fruit unless it was
accompained by wider and consistent social, cultural and political changes.
So according to the modernization theories when traditional institutions or values did not fit, they
were considered dysfunctional to the process of development and regarded as problems;
furthermore these advocated the convergence of less-developed societies to the western model, but
also strenghtened the illusion of independence and of sovereignity of the national developmental
state.
On the other side Dependency theorists perceived societies as not indpendnt but as a part of a whole
that was the capitalism as a world system that span accross nations and places them at different
positions according to their structural place in a historically developed international division of
labour.
According to the classic theory of imperialism that looked at the causes of imperialism ( the merge
of finance capital with the industrial capital ) the capitalism owerseas would everywere work up the
same tension and class conflict (between bourgeoisie and proletariat) that was already doing at
home. One exception amongst classical marxists was Leon Trotsky who formulated in 1920 the
unicity of the world-system in his Law of Combined and Uneven Development. He argued that as
the internationalization of capital, the capitalism develops as a world system and world history
becomes a contradictory but concrete totality.
In this totality countries develop in an unequal or uneven manner in relation to one another, this
more complex and less deterministic view of the historical evolution
Undrdevelopment is not due to an original state as claimed by modernization theorista but the result
of the same world historical process in which the now developed capitalist countries became
developed. The essence of the dependency theory is the contention that as a result of penetration by
colonial capital a distorted structure of economy and society had been created in the colonial
countries which would reproduce economic stagnation and extreme pauperisation of the masses.
!
The distorted structure of economy implied: 1) The subordination of the economy to the structure
of advanced capitalist countries – UN report observed that almost 90% of the export earnings of the
DCs derived from primary production and one-half of these countries earned more than 50% of
their export revenues (incomes) from a single primary commodity; 2)External Orientation that does
it mean dependency on overseas markets, for capital and technology sourcing and for production
outlets. This dependency was exacerbate by extreme concentration of dependency on few countries
as a result of continuing linkages with the colonial mother country. The empirical indicators that
reflect such concentrations were: trade partner concentrations; aid donor concentrations; export
product concentrations; militari trade partner concentrations; ownership of firms of colonial mother
country.
The distorted structure of society implied 1) a class alliance between foreign capital and comprador
elite (mercantile and landed) 2) the evolution of extreme patterns of social inequality which in turns
restricts and distorts the domestic market.
This imposed the block of internal social transformation in overall economic stagnation and
pauperisation. The dependency theory placed the cause of continued underdevelopment in the
legacy of a distorted structure of economy and society that is referred to peripheral
society/economy. The structure of a peripheral economy denied autocentric development that is a
process of development whee the whole cycle of production, reproduction of capital, realisation of
capital and valorization of capital and the relation between producer goods and consumer goods are
contained within the national economy.
The international division of labour involved a transfer of value from poor countries to rich because
of unequal terms of exchange of commodities traded – Prebish and Singer liberal writer that
challenged the Ricardo theory of international trade and advanrages comparative:
1)Income inelasticity of demand for foodsfuff
2)Substitutions of raw materials by industrial products (sinthetics)
3) A declining ratio of raw material inputs to industrial outputs
This wiew was shared by Immanuel –unequal Exange- depended from the differential in the wages,
ha didn’t give importance to factor of demand in explaining the worsening terms of trade of poor
countries. He said unequal exange don’t occurr between commodities but between countries,
applyng the marx’s labour theory of value to int. Exchange he argued that tha level of wages
depends on historical and social conditions and equalisation of wages is unlikely to occurr because
of the immobility of labour factor – Amin added the matter of the time employed to produce a
commodity