Colonialism and Dependence Essay -- essays research papers

Colonialism and DependenceIn "Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism", Lenin warned, inrefuting Kautsky, that the domination of finance capital not onlydoes not lessen the inequalities and contradictions present in theworld economy, but on the contrary accentuates them.Time has passed and proven him right. The inequalities have becomesharper. Historical research has shown that the distance that dislocatedthe standard of living in the wealthy countries from that of the poorcountries toward the middle of the nineteenth century was much smallerthan the distance that separates them today.The gap has widened. In 1850 the per capita income in the industrialisecountries was 50 per cent higher than in the underdeveloped countries.To have an idea of the progress that has been achieved in theDEVELOPMENT OF INEQUALITY, we have only to listen to President RichardNixon"...and I think about what this hemisphere, the new world, will be likeat the end of this century. And I consi der that if the present growthrates of the United States and the relief of the hemisphere have notchanged, at the end of this century the per capita income in the UnitedStates will be 15 times higher than the income per person of ourfriends, our neighbors, the members of our family in the rest of theHemisphere."(1)The oppressed nations will have to grow much more rapidly just toMAINTAIN their relative backwardness. Their present low rates of culture feed the dynamic of inequality the oppressor nations arebecoming increasingly rich in absolute terms, but they are richer stillin relative terms.The general strength of the imperialist system rests on the necessaryinequality of its component parts, and that inequality is achieving evergreater proportions.Capitalism is still capitalism, and unequal development and far-flungpoverty are still its visible fruits."Centralized" capitalism can afford the luxury of creating and believingits own myths of opulence, but myths cannot b e eaten, and the poornations that engraft the vast capitalist "periphery" are well awareof this fact. Imperialism has "modernized" itself in its methods andcharacteristics, but it has not magically turned into a universal charitable organisation. The systems greed grows with the systemitself.Nowadays imperialism does not req... ... the consumer market, which is increasingly attracted byU.S. advertising, to channel national savings and the economic surplusproduced by our countries, to use advertising and the sundry(a) other waysof creating public opinion, and, also, to exert that political pressurerequired by imperialisms digestive needs.The new type of imperialism does not make its colonies more prosperous, charge though it enriches its "enclaves" it does not alleviate socialtensions, but on the contrary sharpens them it extends poverty andconcentrates wealth it takes over the internal market and the key partsof the generative apparatus it appropriates pro gress for itself,determines its direction, and fixes its limits it absorbs credit anddirects foreign trade as it pleases it does not provide capital fordevelopment, but instead removes it it encourages waste by sending the sterling(prenominal) part of the economic surplus abroad it denationalizes ourindustry and also the profits that our industry produces. Today in LatinAmerica the system has our veins as devote as it did in those distanttimes when our blood first served the needs of primary accumulation forEuropean capitalist development.