THE DETERMINANT OF EUROPE IN THE UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN CONTINENT

(Notes I took years ago.) Reading Walter Rodney’s classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). Like Robin Hahnel in The ABCs of Political Economy (2003), he postulates two main mechanisms of underdevelopment: exploitation through trade and exploitation through investment (i.e., imperialism). The former has to do with the terms of trade. For example, the big capitalist countries effectively establish the prices of minerals and agricultural products and “subject these prices to frequent reductions,” thus harming Africa’s economy (depriving it of revenue). They also set the prices of the manufactured products they produce, which of course are higher than those of the former category. Imperialism, on the other hand, as manifested for instance in Europeans’ ownership of land and mines (and banks, factories, etc.) in Africa, entails the outflow of revenue from Africa to the foreign owners, which forestalls African development. It also takes the form of loans to African governments, which have to be repaid with interest. Again, an outflow of wealth. “The things which bring Africa into the capitalist market system are trade, colonial domination, and capitalist investment. Trade has existed for several centuries; colonial rule began in the late nineteenth century and has almost disappeared [in the early 1970s]; and the investment in the African economy has been increasing steadily in the present century. Throughout the period that Africa has participated in the capitalist economy, two factors have brought about underdevelopment. In the first place, the wealth created by African labor and from African resources was grabbed by the capitalist countries of Europe [and the U.S.]; and in the second place, restrictions were placed upon African capacity to make the maximum use of its economic potential — which is what development is all about.” In addition to all this, you have to take into account the fact that many African political leaders have for a long time been tools of the West and so haven’t acted in the best interests of their people. Corruption, etc. And the frequent military coups and constant political instability have had an adverse impact on African development (as they did in Latin America). Rodney’s survey of Africa before the colonial era is instructive. Includes some good ideas, too. E.g., regarding the debate whether there was an “African mode of production” as some people say there was an “Asiatic mode of production,” he simply states that his assumption will be that most African societies before 1500 were in a transitional state between communalism and feudalism — “the practice of agriculture (plus fishing and herding) in family communities and the practice of the same activities within states and societies comparable to feudalism.” They were slowly evolving, not on the basis of class antagonisms — because in communalism there are no true class antagonisms — but just on the basis of “the fundamental forces of production.” All these myriad societies — “pastoralists and cultivators, fishing societies and trading societies, raiders and nomads” — were being “progressively drawn into a relationship with the land, with each other, and with the state, through the expansion of the productive forces and the network of distribution.” In some cases, such as Ethiopia and Egypt, full feudal states emerged.