Latin America - Colonialism and Dependence

Colonialism and Dependence

In "Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism", Lenin warned, in

refuting Kautsky, that the domination of finance capital not only

does not lessen the inequalities and contradictions present in the

world economy, but on the contrary accentuates them.

Time has passed and proven him right. The inequalities have become

sharper. Historical research has shown that the distance that separated

the standard of living in the wealthy countries from that of the poor

countries toward the middle of the nineteenth century was much smaller

than the distance that separates them today.

The gap has widened. In 1850 the per capita income in the industrialized

countries was 50 per cent higher than in the underdeveloped countries.

To have an idea of the progress that has been achieved in the

DEVELOPMENT OF INEQUALITY, we have only to listen to President Richard

Nixon:

"...and I think about what this hemisphere, the new world, will be like

at the end of this century. And I consider that if the present growth

rates of the United States and the rest of the hemisphere have not

changed, at the end of this century the per capita income in the United

States will be 15 times higher than the income per person of our

friends, our neighbors, the members of our family in the rest of the

Hemisphere."(1)

The oppressed nations will have to grow much more rapidly just to

MAINTAIN their relative backwardness. Their present low rates of

development feed the dynamic of inequality: the oppressor nations are

becoming increasingly rich in absolute terms, but they are richer still

in relative terms.

The overall strength of the imperialist system rests on the necessary

inequality of its component parts, and that inequality is achieving ever

greater proportions.

Capitalism is still capitalism, and unequal development and widespread

poverty are still its visible fruits.

"Centralized" capitalism can afford the luxury of creating and believing

its own myths of opulence, but myths cannot be eaten, and the poor

nations that constitute the vast capitalist "periphery" are well aware

of this fact. Imperialism has "modernized" itself in its methods and

characteristics, but it has not magically turned into a universal

philanthropic organisation. The system's greed grows with the system

itself.

Nowadays imperialism does not require the old-style colonial

administrations. The archaic Portuguese model of control over Angola

and Mozambique is no longer the most "convenient". Lenin described the

reality of his time, saying that "naturally...finance capital finds it

most 'convenient', and is able to extract the greatest profit from a

subordination which involves the loss of the political independence of

the subjected countries and peoples".

In his report to the Twenty-second Congress of the CPUSSR in 1961,

Nikita Khruschev reached the conclusion that "imperialism has

irrevocably lost its control over most of the peoples of the world."

According to his report,