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NEWS & LETTERS, September-October 2005Black/Red ViewA new imperialism?by John Alan Probably one of the most ironic moments in history was when Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders of the G-8 Nations met in Scotland on July 7, 2005 to talk about the poverty-stricken and terrorized Africa. Before the London bombings drew the world's attention away from Africa, Blair energetically raised at the G-8 meeting the question of giving Africa a second chance. He pointed out that "Africa emerged from colonialism almost a half-century ago with a bright political promise. Independence would drop fruits of nationhood into the laps of a people by giving them control over their destinies, it was broadly assumed and promised." However, Blair didn't go on to show why that "bright political promise" never happened for the politically free African nations, nor why the economy of African nations failed to grow and why they are now totally without accumulated capital. The truth is African poverty is the result of decades of neocolonial neglect. For example, Africans living in the shadow of an extensive oil extracting infrastructure in Nigeria are subjected to the same poverty as other regions of Africa, but with the added insult of a much more toxic environment. Global capitalism oversaw the marked decline in per capita income and life expectancy, and a rise in the most dire poverty, in the last two decades in Africa. Along with this came the wanton waste of human life through the unchecked spread of great neglected diseases (like malaria), not to mention the new scourge of AIDS. Blair claims to want to give Africa "a second chance" at overcoming its pervasive hopelessness and despair. Many people in the world will sympathize with Blair's stated goal. How could this grand offer of Blair's "second chance" be a success if the needs of global capitalism and the world market remain in control of Africa's natural resources through bribing many African leaders? Moreover, even before Blair's Africa initiative got pushed aside by the terrorist bombing, Blair's partners were not buying in on his proposal. As Raya Dunayevskaya pointed out in her PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, "The state of technological development and the accumulated capital ARE the determinants, the only determinants, when the masses are not allowed their self-activity, which threatens to undermine the stability of the whole globe, and which did gain the Africans freedom." She wrote in the 1960s, during the African revolutions: "Any traveler in Black Africa who was at all sensitive to freedom's call was under a compulsion from the surge of the liberation movement to become a participant." Blair and the members of G-8 nations are not interested in any problems or concepts of freedom in Africa. What they want is a state of stability in a neocolonial Africa that is not hostile to the world market. Blair's statement about "Africa's bright political promise" could be an attempt to hide the many ongoing conflicts in Africa that could become large conflicts. Or, more likely, Blair is saying that there are now strong capitalists in Africa who have attained enough power that G-8 nations can do business with them. For example, in Angola a 26-year-old civil war, caused in part by outside powers subsidizing various factions after the Portuguese were defeated, ended in 2002. Angola is Africa's second largest oil producer with impending elections amid widespread corruption, while 70% of the people live in abject poverty. Blair's "second chance" looks similar to the "first" chance when European powers were looting Africa's resources. Against Blair's illusion of a global capitalism with a human face we face Africa's bleak economic reality inseparable from the dialectics of liberation in the manner of Frantz Fanon. The new humanism Fanon saw in the struggle of the African masses got buried and Dunayevskaya said we must soberly face that bleak reality in our projection of an alternative to capitalism. She warned that the African revolutions had a tragic end because their leaders' thinking got bogged down by the idea of technological backwardness. This should also be a lesson to us in our approach to working out an alternative to capitalism. Fanon was in the middle of the African revolutions opposing the counterrevolution as it emerged from within. That is what makes taking off from his new humanism so important for today. |
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