How far Rodney's Theory Explain the Underdevelopment of Africa for European Capitalist Development - Essay Example

HOW FAR DOES RODNEY’S THEORY EXPLAIN THE UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA FOR EUROPEAN CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT? Taking a look at the economies of African countries one cannot fail to notice the weakness in the GDP, the widening gap between the poor and the rich and the increasing national debt to foreign countries. Hence the question of African’s underdevelopment. In order to comprehend the reasons as to why African countries have failed to take off to an era of international economic development in this period of globalization one needs to grasp the historical perspectives. In modern times Africa has remained to be underdeveloped. It still has the scars of the crimes of colonialism. Under development in Rodney’s mode of thought has been permeated by the capitalist’s ideologies and the resolution of problems not within the context of the inequalities that are present within Africa as a reflection of the years of slavery and colonialism. The progression of the ship building industry, the expansion of their towns and cities, the full exploitation of the Europeans forests and fishery were all spurred by the importation of humans to their country. Rodney captures Africa’s history stressing the cultural organization and the accomplishments the continent had made before the European invasion and its colonialisation ruined that organization and then went on to develop African resources in ways that didn’t in any way benefit Africa (Walter, 1981). Rodney’s theory takes the view that the invasion of the European to Africa ensued to major underdevelopment that the black continent faces. The book purports that Africa was taken advantage of in a deliberate sense by the European colonial regimes in the late twentieth century. The impoverished state of Africa’s economic and political clearly distinct is a mark of the European’s exploitation of the continent. Rodney advocated for the Marxist ideology and in that light he praised Tanzania for adopting this political ideology. When the book first surfaced it was groundbreaking since it was among the primary books that had a unique thesis to base the underdevelopment of the black continent. Rodney argued that human development and genuine liberation can only be envisioned if the individual lives of the people concerned could be transformed in a vein of doing away with the neo-colonialist government structures that subjugated their societies with structures pertinent to their ideals. Africa had political, economic and societies well before the coming of the colonialists. To support this statement he asserts that Africa had lost its power, a definitive determining factor in the human society’s relations within and without (Walter, 1981). It is a factor which depicts the capability to shield their interests, it is litmus to flexibility in compromising, the degree to which a society can persist as a cultural and physical entity. So in the circumstance the circumstance that a society bows out its power utterly to another society then that becomes a form of underdevelopment. After the period after the partitioning of Africa the continent had a great loss in their freedom it had lost all the significant control it had over its economy and its trade however what was conclusive was the loss of its political authority. Rodney goes further too vehemently reiterate the correlation of international capitalist system and the underdevelopment in Africa. The European countries engaged in capitalism, they captured vital economic national resources from Africa and accumulated them as capital in their countries for the take off to their industrial growth. Commencing with the Portuguese ships arrival in Africa, an elaborate triangular trading system that entailed transporting enslaved Africans and import plantation produce. The shipments were all centered to the European markets and they were under control of the Europeans all this in the advantage of nothing else but European capitalism. Europe, the United States and the compradors were the winners and the people of Africa were the losers (Walter, 1981 p. 60). The trans-Atlantic slave trade made millions of people to be forcefully shifted from Africa. This was one of the greatest inhumane disasters. The slaves entailed skilled tradesmen, men and women removed from their occupations and professions that were making a big contribution to the economies of their societies. Their removal weakened the yet feeble economy and their service taken to Europe. Slavery resulted in the loss of both labor and brain power (Achebe, 1985). It was robbed of the able bodied and apt thinking men and women. Rodney tries to stress a point in my view based on the Marxist ideology of the labor theory value which very few Marxists today are willing to protect. If value was simply on labor, then the value of the workforce taken from Africa would equate with the value of human resource accumulated in Europe. Hypothetically however, if the things such as physical infrastructure, political and economic organization actually ad to the value in which in most cases they do then the value of the human resource and raw materials taken from Africa are by far a greater value than the original estimate when it was taken back to Europe. Consequently the populations of other worlds grew consistently while Africa’s population remained marginal due to slavery. This provides the picture in which European countries accrued profits by the “legitimate” benefits from those acquired through “illegitimate” ways that deprived Africans the same privileges given to the Europeans. Development for Africa was not a primary objective of the colonialists, their chief aim was to control the flow of the raw materials and develop their personal networks rather than improving the public institutions. At the same time the increasing populations in the European countries increased their as it was a key factor providing human resource needed for early capitalism. In Africa on the other hand, the decreasing population as a result of slave trade impeded healthy preexistent socioeconomic development directly and indirectly. Economic development Africa also had vast elaborate trading systems before the European arrival but these systems were destroyed by the Europeans as they took them in to captivity. They had successful industries and even exported goods to Arabs. This ceased with the advent of slave trade. Slave trade impeded the gold coast economy of west Africa as it was risky being spotted with the good or trading it with something else. The issue of Slave trade often snowballs through time because Africa did not just lose one person to the European world when a slave was captured to Europe but it lost descendants, descendants that are by no means today linked to Africa (Walter, 1981). By the time Africa had broken out of the bars of slave trade and entered the colonial pre historic period, the main export was raw cotton and the main import ironically was manufactured cotton cloth. An irony that remarkably reflects the technological progression in Europe but most significantly the stagnation of the development of Africa with regards to the trade with Europe! It seemed so that Europeans deliberately deprived Africans the will to manufacture their own goods, neither did they want them to improve their technology or their local industries (Lays, 1975). When the European’s product became the dominating product in the market, the local industries could not get an opportunity to connect with the market’s demand. The businessmen either stooped their operations in the face of the cheap existing European cloth or create small makings and styles in the localized markets, an aspect known as technological regression hence the underdevelopment in the local industries. This habit is perverse today with the western countries dumping used clothing in Africa and in turn suppressing the local textile industries. The young adults in which inventiveness emerges were pulled away. Rodney asserts that any infrastructure developed was so as to make business among the Europeans more convenient, adding that any provisions given were purely accidental( Babu, 1981). Europe was advancing in the period of industrial revolution; it was progressing exponentially and Africa contrarily receding with equal impact. The Africans that were left behind in the regions adversely affected by slave trade captures spent their energy on how to acquire their freedom than on improving on production. As Rodney states ”slavery was making these people lose their battle to tame and harness nature” The negative effect of the trade Europeans had with the Africans totally cancelled out any possible positive impact that other foreigners would have impacted on the land(Walter, 1981). Rodney also notes that Africans depended to an extent the Europeans and this dependence sprang the neocolonial class of Africans that maneuvered the colonial economic structures for their own interests. This is where the leaders in the societies sold out their members acting as informers in exchange to better living all in the expense of the people of the land (Babu, 1981). There existed these classes within colonies that were closely linked to the colonialists and dependent on the foreign resources. Rodney also notes the use of education integration in the African communities to serve as a way of making the African’s obeys the colonial system and to pledge to its ideologies. He reiterates that the educated Africans were the most alienated as they were de-Africanized. The main role of pre-colonial African education was to make the Africans contribute to the exploitation and to bolster European dominance in the continent as a whole. Colonial education created a wing of subordination, manipulation and the establishment of mental confusion and ultimately the progression of underdevelopment. The same notion applies to religion here Rodney asserts that the white man held the bible on hand and a gun on the other and simultaneously was mapping out the land for grabbing and how to strategize on establishing factories on our expense( Chinweizu, 1975). In essence colonialism resulted in weakening the social cohesion that had pre-existed in the regions. Through slavery, social violence within the continent proliferated with increased kidnappings and raids. The political structures stability was undermined and chaos penetrated the African regions as the European took hold of the natural resources, human resources and brought in political systems alien to the complexities indispensability’s of the African societies. A knock on effect was set off with Europeans gradually remaking Africa in accordance to Europe’s design and manipulated the economies to make contributions to the capitalists markets in Europe. Eventually the local African markets were flooded with already manufactured goods from abroad (Walter, 1981). The local industry would eventually be erased with goods being exchanged for slaves. Eventually local production reduced and there was no motivation to spark industrial development. Instead the capital available was concentrated on spending it on senseless activities of capturing slaves and in other cases extracting minerals. The Europeans reaped heavily on this human trade. For one it facilitated cheap labor in their countries, in another point it made Africa receptive to their finished goods and most importantly it propelled the spread of capitalism in Europe. One can speculate what would have been the case if the reverse were to be true, what would have been the state development in Europe if millions of them were dragged from their homelands to another nation for a couple of centuries to contribute to labor in the progression of another economy? Certainly not the same as now! The direct correlation between the impact of the European colonialisation and the development from Africa can be clearly seen and their contentment with the status quo was filled with the fact the people did not have the capacity to fight this inhumane trade as individuals ruling it out from their continent. The several initial attempts on the matter were futile. The European development up to the dark late nineteenth century was primarily due to the fruits of foreign commerce in which slaver was an essential tool. It is important to note that the main cause of underdevelopment was the disruption of the African commerce related activities. The continent was held back, the structures regressed. What Africa experienced in the colonial era was the loss of an opportunity evolves in industry while at the same time it promoted the moving forth of the European and American continents (Walter, 1981). Africa remained in the same place; the stagnation resulted to the underdevelopment present to this day. Slavery established a global divide that today separates the wealthy and poor, the exploiters and the victims of exploitation. It is no wonder that even today Africa remains a puppet for the European worlds maneuvered by the prices of goods set and incessant dependence on their foreign aid. Africa has become a large continent of economically and to an extent politically oppressed people. The notion that the whole continent cannot gain independence at once applies as it is shown by the only few that are just now trying to shake off the Europeans ideals and apply pan Africanism in their structures. Colonialism denied this continent freedom to cultural development and justified this siege with theories of cultural assimilation (Achebe, 1985). After the era ended the people asserted that a new day had dawned as they would enter into a new political kingdom. The pomp and glory would however be devoid of meaning without the complete retraction of the directly controlled judicial and military apparatus of the colonizing parties before the threshold of change in relation to economic development and social structure could be realized. Some would still argue that Africa has not freed itself from the shackles bound by the west and is very well correct as the relationship between Africa and the European countries on basis of their agreements have been unfair on the African nations(Lash, 1993). Such unequal agreements have barred the continent from getting rich as the continent continues to sell itself cheaply and buy with a larger price the things which itself has produced!. Africa is one of the continents that have a great populace; when the whole continent finally awakes and when she opens the door leading to communism, the world will brace itself for a major storm. Bibliography. Achebe, C. (1985.) Things Fall Apart. Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House. Babu, A, M (1981). African Socialism or Socialist Africa. Harare. Zimbabwe Publishing House. Chinweizu, B. (1975.) The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slaves and the African Elite. NY. Vintage Books. Lash, S. & Urry, J. (1993) the End of Organized Capitalism. Cambridge: Policy Press. Leys, C. (1975). Under development In Africa- the Political Economy of Neocolonialism 1964-1971. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University Of California Press. Walter, R. (1981) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, Dc. Harvard University Press, Read More