Ben’s Reviews > How Europe Underdeveloped Africa > Status Update

“If one accepts that the government is always the servant of a particular class, it is perfectly understandable that the colonial governments should have been in collusion with capitalists to siphon off surplus from Africa to Europe. But even if one does not start from that…premise, it would be impossible to ignore the evidence of how the colonial administrators worked…on behalf of the big capitalists.”

“In many parts of the world, capitalism in its imperialist form accepted that some measure of political sovereignly should be left in the hands of the local population. This was so in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, and to a more limited extent in China…European capitalists came to the decision that Africa should be directly colonized. There is evidence to suggest [this] was not entirely planned.”

“Gezo, who ruled from 1818 to 1857, was a reformer, and he made sincere efforts to meet criticisms of his policies by groups such as missionaries and anti-slavery campaigners; but it soon became clear that Europeans were not bent on seeing Dahomey re-emerge as a strong state, but were rather creating excuses and the subjective conditions to justify their proposed colonization of the people of Dahomey.”

“It is necessary to recall that in the process of independent evolution on all continents, the increase in productive capacity was accompanied by increasing inequality at all stages except socialism.”

“Oppression follows logically from exploitation, so as to guarantee the latter.”