Modern Colonialism

Within a nation's borders, capitalism exploits the working class to benefit the rich; this is a truth many have yet to fully realize but in these times of economical distress of many western populations more and more people get to see this economy for what it is. That very same mechanism is at work internationally under global capitalism; poor countries are being exploited to benefit our rich western countries. This is a truth even less people realize, so that's today's topic.

It's not something many want to hear, but maybe that's exactly the reason why it has to be said far more often: even in these times of economic depression we have it relatively good and fare much better than people in the so called developing world. And the reason why the global south is still "developing" while we in the global north are "developed" is because global capitalism is actively keeping this relation alive; when the exploitative relation between workers and capitalists is the internal status quo for developed nations, the exploitative relation between the developed and the developing world is capitalism's international status quo. This truth is obscured by an active campaign by the world's capitalist institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; they've created and maintained a narrative in which we from the global north aide the global south on their path to also becoming developed nations by giving those nations "development aid", the occasional donation by some of our billionaires, assisting them to recover from natural disasters and granting them loans through the IMF. This is to make us feel good about ourselves and to hide what's really happening.

In reality we don't help these developing nations at all, not one little bit; that's not how capitalism works, not nationally and certainly not internationally. Capitalism is a system of exploitation and that holds true on any scale. When we "give" a country 10 dollar in development aid, we extract from that country 50 dollars worth of raw materials, labor and interest. In my post Expansionist Nightmare from two weeks ago I shared a video with you, dear readers, in which Michael Parenti told it how it is: "these nations aren't under developed, they are over exploited." The relationship between the world's rich and poor nations is not the "natural" result of markets, but is meticulously maintained by the world's richest countries, with America being their main vanguard. Like it's said in the below linked video, and like I said in my post Manifest Destiny some three months ago, after the European settlers had reached America's west coast, they had to decide if that was enough for them, or if they wanted to spread their sphere of influence and power even further. They decided on the latter and to this day, whenever a government of a developing country decides to not play by the rules of international capitalism, that government is overthrown by or with assistance of the American secret services and / or army. This is why America fights socialism and communism all over the world, not to bring "freedom and democracy", don't be fooled.

"Manifest destiny" is sometimes used by critics of U.S. foreign policy to characterize interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere. In this usage, "manifest destiny" is interpreted as the underlying cause of what is denounced by some as "American imperialism". A more positive-sounding phrase devised by scholars at the end of the twentieth century is "nation building..."
_{source: Wikipedia}

Development aid and loans from the IMF are never unconditional but instead come with conditions that benefit the global north; the receiving country has to agree to privatize all publicly owned goods and services so western businesses can come in to provide those. They have to agree to sell their raw materials for cheap as well. The developing countries are in fact the world's providers of raw materials, which is their only export. We then produce goods with these materials and sell them back to those poor countries. Colonialism never really ended, slavery has just been replaced with wage slavery and the poor countries of the world never had a real chance to recover from what was done to them when they were literally owned by European nations. Unfortunately many people don't want to hear this, much in the same way many Americans today don't want to hear or admit that systemic racism is still very much an issue, and that black people never had a real chance to recover from what was done to them when they were literally owned by white people. Much of this ignorance (sometimes willful ignorance) stems from the capitalist propaganda we're constantly bombarded with. Capitalism has people believing that this cruelty and exploitation is simply human nature, that capitalism best fits what we really are... That's so sad if you really believe that, instead of the truth, which is that we're products of the environment we've let the capitalists create for us.

I'll leave you with this video that I really recommend you all to watch; it does a much better job at explaining all this than I could ever do, and it also goes into more of how this whole situation developed historically. It is time to change this system my friends, the exploitation has to stop...

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