The Good: --How the world works is built on the international division of labor. Galeano illustrates the contours, revealing the systemic underdevelopmThe Good: --How the world works is built on the international division of labor. Galeano illustrates the contours, revealing the systemic underdevelopment (or rather, over-exploitation) of periphery regions (in this case, Latin America) from colonial capitalism to modern “liberal” capitalism (this book was written in ’71). An important reminder that capitalism's playground is global, thus our struggles, solidarity, and change must also be global. --As many reviews note, poetic humanism that brings history to life; social scholars should also take the time to engage with the general public. --I found the first half (colonial capitalism) to be the most helpful, as an overview.
The Bad, or rather suggestions: --Perhaps because I’ve read more on modern liberal capitalism, but I found the second half to lack structure. It does not seem to have the same chronology-of-history backbone as the first half (thus, not the optimal history overview). While it detours into economic examples, it seems to lack organized economic concepts. --In terms of further readings, it now seems tame to suggest Ha-Joon Chang given his liberal biases (although he is quite useful in presenting certain Development Economics theories for the general public). It seems logical to explore the Marxists and World-Systems scholars that Galeano sites, like Vladimir Lenin and Samir Amin. My personal favorite at the moment is Amiya Kumar Bagchi (Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital) and the fabulous Vijay Prashad (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, also fantastic lectures online).
Galeano's concluding remarks:
In these lands we are not experiencing the primitive infancy of capitalism but its vicious senility. Underdevelopment isn't a stage of development, but its consequence. Latin America's underdevelopment arises from external development, and continues to feed it. A system made impotent by its function of international servitude, and moribund since birth, has feet of clay. It pretends to be destiny and would like to be thought eternal. All memory is subversive, because it is different, and likewise any program for the future. The zombie is made to eat without salt: salt is dangerous, it could awaken him. The system has its paradigm in the immutable society of ants. For that reason it accords ill with the history of humankind, because that is always changing. And because in the history of humankind every act of destruction meets its response, sooner or later, in an act of creation.
Scratching the surface of colonialism: we should not be so mesmerized by horrendous individuals that we forget to analyze the institutions that broughScratching the surface of colonialism: we should not be so mesmerized by horrendous individuals that we forget to analyze the institutions that brought them to power...
The Good: --This book accessibly weaves micro case-study narratives with macro analysis. Many readers will focus on the (micro) character-based story-telling (bad apples?), while my priority is on macro structural analysis.
Colonialism 101: 1) Big Business: --When you follow the money, you realize profit is the bottom line. You may think of business on a micro scale of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and starting your own small business, but what does it mean on a macro societal scale of endless private accumulation by institutionalized absentee speculators? ...We need to dig deeper than the author Hochschild. Let's consider Varoufakis' Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present [emphases added, where "liberalism" is cosmopolitan capitalism]:
Liberalism’s fatal hypocrisy [...] was to rejoice in the virtuous Jills and Jacks, the neighbourhood butchers, bakers and brewers [1], so as to defend the vile East India Companies, the Facebooks and the Amazons, which know no neighbours, have no partners, respect no moral sentiments [2] and stop at nothing to destroy their competitors. By replacing partnerships with anonymous shareholders [3], we created Leviathans that end up undermining and defying all the values that liberals [...] claim to cherish.
[1] "butchers, bakers and brewers": Smith's celebrated quote from his 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations on self-interest producing social good: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." ...This gets lumped together with the "Invisible Hand" quote: "By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, [the merchant] intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." [2] "moral sentiments": Smith's conveniently-forgotten book prior to Wealth of Nations, the 1758 The Theory of Moral Sentiments sets out how society requires many more moral values than just self-interest; of course vulgar economists erase the fact that Smith was a moral philosopher! [3] "anonymous shareholders": The stock market is a key capitalist market. Markets for goods (real commodities, i.e. Smith's butches/bakers/brewers) have long existed before capitalism. Capitalism innovated peculiar markets: labour/land/money, which feature "fictitious commodities" (humans/nature/purchasing power are not "produced" like real commodities just for buying/selling on markets): Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
--Returning to Hochschild's book, we have a sociopathic king (with his accumulated wealth and privileges) evading increasing Parliamentary counterbalances by setting up a "business" (nice and abstract) far away from prying eyes. --Business model = privatize access to natural resources, thus creating a monopoly to maximize returns. Externalize costs with slave labour and environmental destruction. Financed by selling bonds that will outlive the king. The market became the Second Industrial Revolution’s need for raw materials (the rubber boom was the period of highest death counts). ...Yes, there can be more ethical mom-and-pop small businesses, but when profit is the bottom line how can you compete with colonial corporations?
2) Rationalization: --Next, this pathological pursuit of profit needs to be rationalized. A hearty dose of Victorian race theory was applied. “Philanthropy”, “Gospel of enterprise”, “missionaries of commerce”, “civilizing mission”, “explorers” as Western celebrities, “geographers” of Science and Reason and Enlightenment, etc. Thus, the king's holding company ("International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa") was disguised as a scientific and philanthropic association (peak liberalism)! --Next, liberally apply Doublethink: justify this as a moral crusade against “Arab slave trade”, ignoring the actual indifference (except when they were direct competition), ignoring the expansive slave trade of Spain, Portugal/Brazil, and of course ignoring the direct destruction of this moral crusade. --Use abstraction for maximum effects: Leopold did not set foot in the Belgian Congo. The biggest villains of colonialism are the absentee financiers accumulating institutional profits while sitting comfortably at home, ensnaring the colonial soldiers (tasked with doing the dirty work) in debt traps to compel them to serve the god at the top of the profit pyramid (Debt: The First 5,000 Years). ...Today's imperialism is no different; compare the financiers/merchants of death comfortably pulling the strings of toy soldiers: War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier. Functionaries could always point to being sanctioned by higher authorities. Authorities can always point to a “symbolic distance” from directly committing violence (the visceral person-to-person actions that catch our attention, rather than the abstract systemic looting!). --Related to “symbolic distance”: power's divide-and-rule, where local elites bow to stronger foreign elites; thus, the messy process of decolonization: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World --I’d like to popularize a term: “inverse divide-and-rule”: e.g. when activists try exploit contradictory factions within the rulers. See Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State for examples of reformers trying to find space between Industrial Capitalism and Financial Capitalism. --For deeper structural dives on colonialism/imperialism/capitalism: -economic theory: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present -history: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World and Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital
The Questionable: --What are the limitations with the author Hochschild's liberal reformism? I hope general readers (i.e. default liberals) will catch the significance of how the reformers detailed here transform from being raise-the-downtrodden liberal humanitarians to radicals who recognize the importance of systemic changes like economic democracy and land ownership.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. -Hélder Câmara
--Not surprised that from the reformers detailed, we have those of African American and Irish decent. As detailed in The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, nationalism is initially useful for defense but is a slippery slope; anti-imperialism needs to be internationalist and class-conscious and transcend Western vulgar nationalism. --Useful narratives around the concept of the “politics of forgetting”, about the direct destruction of records and the need to reconstruct and preserve the historical record (see Julian Assange for an updated take on this). --However, the resistance Hochschild details are almost entirely within Western liberal institutions. Thus, I am also curious to learn about the movements of the Global South. Vijay Prashad quips about how the globalization of knowledge merely means theory comes from the Global North, while the Global South is only expected to come up with guerilla manuals. See Vijay on imperialist ideological censorship, using North Korea as a triggering example: https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74 --George Washington Williams: history of the powerless cannot rely solely on conventional published sources; use of expansive investigations and synthesis… --Interesting section on reconstructing death counts. I’d like to see a comparative analysis with the other popular cases, especially the ones of Mao (which I start to unpack in reviewing Hunger and Public Action) and Stalin that are so often lauded by Western mass media with no sense of historical context. ...Not surprisingly, my suspicions of the author's liberal reformism reemerged in my readings, in Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism [emphases added]:
Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility” (Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in cold war condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist (Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters. [...]
The three historians who studied the heretofore secret gulag records concluded that the number of victims were far less than usually claimed in the West. This finding is ridiculed by anticommunist liberal Adam Hochschild, who prefers to repeat Churchill’s story about Stalin’s fingers (New York Times, 5/8/96). Like many others, Hochschild has no trouble accepting undocumented speculations about the gulag but much difficulty accepting the documented figures drawn from NKVD archives.
[Stalin's fingers:] In the absence of reliable evidence, we are fed anecdotes, such as the story Winston Churchill tells of the time he asked Stalin how many people died in the famine.
According to Churchill, the Soviet leader responded by raising both his hands, a gesture that may have signified an unwillingness to broach the subject. But since Stalin happened to have five fingers on each hand, Churchill concluded—without benefit of a clarifying follow-up question—that Stalin was confessing to ten million victims. Would the head of one state (especially the secretive Stalin) casually proffer such an admission to the head of another? To this day, Western writers treat this woolly tale as an ironclad confession of mass atrocities.
[Footnote 2:] Stalin “confided the figure of 10 million to Winston Churchill”: Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1973), 463n. No doubt, the famines that occurred during the years of Western invasion, counterrevolutionary intervention, White Guard civil war, and landowner resistance to collectivization took many victims.
The Opium Trade triangle (Britain-India-China) comes to life:
Preamble: --I’m perpetually buried in nonfiction tomes. For me to try a new fiction, letThe Opium Trade triangle (Britain-India-China) comes to life:
Preamble: --I’m perpetually buried in nonfiction tomes. For me to try a new fiction, let alone a new trilogy, requires an exceptional confluence of interests. In this case: i) Opium Trade triangle: --This trilogy’s setting is the infamous triangle (India farming opium, smuggled into China for the profit of British financiers) where Britain finally resolved its chronic trade deficits with Asia (China/India were centers of traded goods) by destroying their state markets to establish British Empire’s “free trade” global capitalism (which includes the “coolie” indentured labour market to replace the slave market, at least in British colonial plantations): Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World ii) Global South perspectives: --Having left China and been raised in Canada (another British conquest), historical perspectives are so skewed. Capitalism is conveniently seen as a domestic process (i.e. Britain’s Industrial Revolution; critiques are in this narrow context, ex. Charles Dickens) while slavery/settler colonialism/colonialism were separate processes (indeed, even contrary to capitalism): Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present --Same goes for today, where the rich nations are “capitalist” but never the poor nations they extract from (despite the latter being the most open to “free trade”/“free market” with their minimal governments: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions). Somehow there is no dependent relationships (imperialism). Socialism/communism is seen as the USSR which magically appeared and failed (never mind how they even survived multiple invasions and quickly became a superpower), so there is no alternative. --The missing perspective here is colonization’s divide-and-rule and the thus the messy process of decolonization (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World); instead of conveniently-ahistorical comparisons between Western colonial powers vs. countries decolonizing in the 20th century, consider the post-independence paths of India vs. China: Capitalism: A Ghost Story iii) Opioids and society: --What are the interactions of pain, relief, and addiction in the social context of history (ex. generational trauma/dislocation) and political economy (ex. boom/busts dislocating communities, from massive drug profits to rust belts/slums; advertising creating individualist consumer addiction, etc.)? -Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs -Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions -In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction -"Heroin on Prescription", "Neuro-Realism", "The Least Surrogate Outcome", "The Stigma Gene", "Brain-Imaging Studies Report More Positive Findings Than Their Numbers Can Support. This Is Fishy" in I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That. iv) A story-teller to bring all this to life: my list here is the reverse of most fiction readers who come for the tapestry of characters and their personal relationships. Still, it was reading Ghosh in Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change that made me commit to this trilogy.
Highlights: --It should be no surprise that my highlights are filled with glorious passages of British “free trade” “Enlightenment” (esp. evangelist opium trafficker Mr. Burnham) [bold emphases added]:
The suggestion startled Zachary: ‘D’you mean to use her [ship] as a slaver, sir? But have not your English laws outlawed that [slave] trade?’
‘That is true,’ Mr Burnham nodded. ‘Yes indeed they have, Reid. It’s sad but true that there are many who’ll stop at nothing to halt the march of human freedom.’ […] ‘Freedom, yes, exactly,’ said Mr Burnham. ‘Isn’t that what the mastery of the white man means for the lesser races? As I see it, Reid, the Africa trade was the greatest exercise in freedom since God led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Consider, Reid, the situation of a so-called slave in the Carolinas – is he not more free than his brethren in Africa, groaning under the rule of some dark tyrant?’ […] ‘And here you are carrying on like one of those Reformer fellows.’ […] ‘Lucky thing that particular disease hasn’t taken hold in your parts yet. Last bastion of liberty, I always say – slavery’ll be safe in America for a while yet. Where else could I have found a vessel like this, so perfectly suited for its cargo?’
‘Do you mean slaves, sir?’
Mr Burnham winced. ‘Why no, Reid. Not slaves – coolies. Have you not heard it said that when God closes one door he opens another? When the doors of freedom were closed to the African, the Lord opened them to a tribe that was yet more needful of it – the Asiatick.’ […] ‘A hold that was designed to carry slaves will serve just as well to carry coolies and convicts. Do you not think? We’ll put in a couple of heads and piss-dales, so the darkies needn’t always be fouling themselves. That should keep the inspectors happy.’
[…]
‘But Mr Burnham! Are you saying the British Empire will go to war to force opium on China?’
This elicited an instantaneous response from Mr Burnham, who placed his wineglass forcefully on the table. ‘Evidently you have mistaken my meaning, Raja Neel Rattan,’ he said. ‘The war, when it comes, will not be for opium. It will be for a principle: for freedom – for the freedom of trade and for the freedom of the Chinese people. Free Trade is a right conferred on Man by God, and its principles apply as much to opium as to any other article of trade. More so perhaps, since in its absence many millions of natives would be denied the lasting advantages of British influence.’ [...]
‘For the simple reason, Reid,’ said Mr Burnham patiently, ‘that British rule in India could not be sustained without opium – that is all there is to it, and let us not pretend otherwise. You are no doubt aware that in some years, the [East India] Company’s annual gains from opium are almost equal to the entire revenue of your own country, the United States? Do you imagine that British rule would be possible in this impoverished land if it were not for this source of wealth? And if we reflect on the benefits that British rule has conferred upon India, does it not follow that opium is this land’s greatest blessing? Does it not follow that it is our God-given duty to confer these benefits upon others?’ [...]
‘Does it not trouble you, Mr Burnham, to invoke God in the service of opium?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ said Mr Burnham, stroking his beard. ‘One of my countrymen has put the matter very simply: “Jesus Christ is Free Trade and Free Trade is Jesus Christ.” Truer words, I believe, were never spoken. If it is God’s will that opium be used as an instrument to open China to his teachings, then so be it. For myself, I confess I can see no reason why any Englishman should abet the Manchu tyrant in depriving the people of China of this miraculous substance.’
‘Do you mean opium?’ [...]
‘I certainly do,’ said Mr Burnham tartly. [...] ‘So you would do well to bear in mind that it would be well nigh impossible to practise modern medicine or surgery without such chemicals as morphine, codeine and narcotine – and these are but a few of the blessings derived from opium. [...] Why, one might even say that it is opium that has made this age of progress and industry possible: without it, the streets of London would be thronged with coughing, sleepless, incontinent multitudes. And if we consider all this, is it not apposite to ask if the Manchu tyrant has any right to deprive his helpless subjects of the advantages of progress? Do you think it pleases God to see us conspiring with that tyrant in depriving such a great number of people of this amazing gift?’
‘But Mr Burnham,’ Neel persisted, ‘is it not true that there is a great deal of addiction and intoxication in China? Surely such afflictions are not pleasing to our Creator?’
This nettled Mr Burnham. ‘These ills you mention, sir,’ he replied, ‘are merely aspects of the fallen nature of Man. Should you ever happen to walk through the rookeries of London, Raja Neel Rattan, you will see for yourself that there is as much addiction and intoxication in the gin shops of the Empire’s capital as there is in the dens of Canton [note: social history of addiction and social disruptions/alienation, ex. boom/bust’s rapid industrialization/capital flight]. Are we then to raze every tavern in the city? [...] No. Because the antidote for addiction lies not in bans enacted by Parliaments and emperors, but in the individual conscience – in every man’s awareness of his personal responsibility and his fear of God. As a Christian nation this is the single most important lesson we can offer to China [note the jump to individual consumerism, omitting social responsibility/regulation] – and I have no doubt that the message would be welcomed by the people of that unfortunate country, were they not prevented from hearing it by the cruel despot who holds sway over them. It is tyranny alone that is to blame for China’s degeneracy, sir. Merchants like myself are but the servants of Free Trade, which is as immutable as God’s commandments.’ [...] ‘And I might add, in this regard, that I do not think it sits well on a Raja of Raskhali to moralize on the subject of opium. [...] Well, for the very good reason that everything you possess is paid for by opium. [...]'
‘But I would not go to war for it, sir,’ Neel said, in a tone that matched Mr Burnham’s in its sharpness. ‘And I do not believe the Empire will either. You must not imagine that I am unaware of the part that Parliament plays in your country.’
‘Parliament?’ Mr Burnham laughed. ‘Parliament will not know of the war until it is over. Be assured, sir, that if such matters were left to Parliament there would be no Empire.’ [...]
‘Please do not speak to me, sir,’ said Mr Burnham, in the chilly tone of a man who wishes to snub a name-dropper, ‘of Mr Hume and Mr Locke. For I would have you know that I have been acquainted with them since they served on the Bengal Board of Revenue. I too have read every word they’ve written – even their report on sanitation. And as for Mr Hobbes, why I do believe I dined with him at my club just the other day.’ [British “Enlightenment”: David Hume, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes]
[…]
The Captain […] continued: ‘[…] For this you should know, gentlemen, that there is an unspoken pact between the white man and the natives who sustain his power in Hindoosthan – it is that in matters of marriage and procreation, like must be with like, and each must keep to their own. The day the natives lose faith in us, as the guarantors of the order of castes – that will be the day, gentlemen, that will doom our rule. This is the inviolable principle on which our authority is based – it is what makes our rule different from that of such degenerate and decayed peoples as the Spanish and Portuguese. Why, sir, if you wish to see what comes of miscegenation and mongrelism, you need only visit their possessions . . .’
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