Kwame Nkrumah

The Last Stage of Imperialism

Neo-colonialism

nhu ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world.

In fact neo-colonialism is the victim of its own contradictions. In order to make it attractive to those upon whom it is practised it must be shown as capable of raising their living standards, but the economic object of neo-colonialism is to keep those standards depressed in the interest of the developed countries. It is only when this contradiction is understood that the failure of innumerable 'aid' programmes, many of them well intentioned, can be explained.

In the first place, the rulers of neo-colonial States derive their authority to govern, not from the will of the people, but from the support which they obtain from their neo-colonialist masters. They have therefore little interest in developing education, strengthening the bargaining power of their workers employed by expatriate firms, of indeed of taking any step which would challenge the colonial pattern of commerce and industry, which it is the object of neo-colonialism to preserve.

'Aid', therefore, to a neo-colonial State is merely a revolving credit, paid by the neo-colonial master, passing through the neo-colonial State and returning to the neo-colonial master in the form of increased profits.

Few would argue against the need for economic planning on a national scale. How much stronger is the argument for continental planning. The modern trend is towards larger economic and political units as interdependence of nations and peoples grows. No country can be completely self-sufficient or afford to ignore political events outside its borders. Africa is clearly fragmented into too many small, uneconomic and non-viable States, many of whom are having a very hard struggle to survive. As already noted, others have had to cling to old ties with former colonial rulers and have become easy prey to neo-colonialist forces. Some of them have found themselves, whether they liked it or not, drawn into the cold war and into the rivalries between foreign powers. The Congo is a notable example.

The increasing expansion of productive capacity and potential output of the advanced capitalist countries has its corollary in the necessity to export on a geometrically increasing scale the nnished products of industry and the excess capital that could only further inflate competition at home, but brings rapid and high returns from the industrially-starved new nations. Hence the fevered jostling for position in these areas as well as in that of raw materials monopoly, which is using Africa as the play-ground, not only of the cold war (an aspect of the fight of capitalism for existence against socialism, but of the competitive struggle of international monopoly. North American unports into Africa rose from 10 3 per cent in 1959 to 13-1 per cent in 1962, while those from other western countries and Japan remained the same or declined slightly. This corresponds to the increasing American investments in the continent's extractive industries and the growth of United States participation in financial establishments on this continent.

It is out of the revenue from the trade in these materials that the African countries look to amass part of the capital that will make it possible for them to utilise these same commodities in the service of their own development. Paradoxically, however, these precious counters in Africa's future are meantime being used to widen the economic gap between her and the highly industrialized countries, which are hurriedly exploiting the opportunity to make good deficiencies in their economies. Since those who are carrying on the exploitation are also the monopolists who manipulate the markets for primary products at the one end and the price for the final products at the other, the countries of origin must be pinned down to a long wait before they can tackle on a major scale the capital problem facing all the developing countries of seriously raising the standard of life of their people, if they make no effort to gird their resources in a more practical and self-supporting manner.

The Banque de l'Indochine is closely associated with the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, and has links with the Société Générale de Belgique. Its original sphere of operations has been largely closed by its exclusion from North Vietnam because of the socialist regime established there, while in South Vietnam it has now become subordinate to American finance.

To give an appearance of legality to these conventions, the representatives of the Belgian government declared that they acted 'in accordance with the wishes expressed by the economic, financial and social conference which took place in Brussels in the months of April and May 1960'. In reality, in pronouncing the dissolution of the C.S.K. and the 

. the Belgian authorities wanted, above all, to place before the new Congolese State an accomplished fact.

In order to show how indispensable the financial support of Belgium was, the Belgian companies had, in fact, taken care to make massive withdrawals of capital at the same time as they pushed to the maximum the export of Congolese products, and on the other hand, limited to the extreme their imports. The Congolese trade balance resulting from the action gave an exceptionally high surplus in 1959 (13,417 million francs), which did nothing to save the Congo from very great financial difficulties. In fact, a heavy proportion of the sums anticipated from the sale of Congolese products were not returned to the colony, and more than seven billions of private capital left the Congo in the course of the exercise.

These giants join forces at certain focal points in the struggle for domination. All the time they carry on a ferocious competition to secure monopoly markets and original source material supplies, not only for synthetics production but for the metallurgical, electronics and nuclear industries that have become part and parcel of their post-war expansion. It is not surprising therefore that even a cursory glance at their interests should reveal involvement in African raw materials' exploitation, even though their financial shufflings may appear superficially to be very far away from such engagements.

The African countries are faced with the need to turn subsistence economies into organisms that will generate viable and improved conditions of living for their populations. However, many African governments, instead of getting together in united action which would stimulate maximum capital accumulation and the construction of a solid over-all African economy, are granting concessions for the working of mineral, agricultural and forestry resources whose purpose is the drawing off of output to sustain and enlarge the industries and economies of the imperialist countries. Not one of the investing syndicates has any intention of founding in any one of these countries an integrated industrial complex that would give impetus to genuine economic growth. Nor are the returns on the export of primary products from mining, agriculture and forestry likely to provide to any important extent the looked-for capital for investing in industrial foundation.

Although aid from socialist countries still falls far short of that offered from the west, it is often more impressive, since it is swift and flexible, and interest rates on communist loans are only about two per cent compared with five to six per cent charged on loans from western countries.

Nor is the whole story of 'aid' contained in figures, for there are conditions which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and navigation treaties; agreements for economic co-operation; the right to meddle in internal finances, including currency and foreign exchange, to lower trade barriers in favor of the donor country's goods and capital; to protect the interests of private investments; determination of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of such funds—a majority of it, in fact—to buy goods from the donor nation. These conditions apply to industry, commerce, agriculture, shipping and insurance, apart from others which are political and military.

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