A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE (Part 17). This blog is a continuation of the review of The Creation of World Poverty by Teresa Hayter, published in 1990.
Small farmers were deprived of their means of subsistence
In Britain such a labor force became available from the 15th century as a result of ‘enclosures’ and evictions of small peasants in order to increase the size of holdings. Small farmers and tenants were deprived of their means of subsistence when landlords found that it was profitable to enclose what had previously been common land and to take over small farms, often in order to use the land for grazing sheep and producing wool. Thus were created large numbers of people who had nothing to sell but their labor-power. Many of those landless found jobs in the new industries of the industrial revolution.
Conquest, piracy, and plunder
Apologists claim that capitalists were virtuous people who saved out of their hard work in order to invest for greater returns in the future. Much of this capital wealth came, not from the frugality of individuals, but from the new gains to be made in overseas trade – a term which included conquest, piracy, and plunder. Marx summarized the process in the first volume of Capital: ‘The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the hunting of black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.’
Hunger where it did not exist before
The power of Islamic, Chinese and Indian states was based on a prosperous agriculture whose advanced forms of irrigation needed and supported a considerable labor force. They were relatively self-sufficient and there was less inducement for them to trade or to support the activities of traders. The effect of the European expansion into other parts of the world has been to thwart and stunt the development that would otherwise have taken place. Foreign intervention, far from helping countries to develop, has produced underdevelopment. It has destroyed existing forms of industrial activity and introduced hunger where it did not exist before.
Local rulers subordinate to and dependent on their colonial overlords
The colonial powers and their successors have often allied themselves with the most reactionary forces within underdeveloped countries and have helped to crush resistance to them, in the past and also today. In Africa and Asia the Europeans ruled through making use of and reinforcing pre-existing power structures, removing recalcitrant kings and emirs, transforming local rulers into ‘Native Princes’, and ‘Native Authorities’, or simply ‘chiefs’, who were subordinate to and dependent on their colonial overlords but whose powers over their own subjects were often reinforced and extended by the colonial authorities. Sometimes they imposed reactionary social structures where they did not exist before. The Spaniards introduced various semi-feudal forms of land ownership into Latin America which still act as powerful barriers to progress today. Many ‘pro-Western’ governments today are dependent for their survival on outside support. They and their foreign backers have combined to produce a world order which is disastrous for the great majority of the peoples of the underdeveloped countries.