Comment on For me, it's going to be Fediverse or nothing
queermunist@lemmy.ml 16 hours agoYou should read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, capitalism didn’t help them at all. They were intentionally deprived of industrial and intellectual property that would allow them to build up their own means of production – underdeveloped by capitalism — and intentionally kept at a lower stage of development to superexploit the workers and extract superprofits.
Flag independence and so-called decolonization didn’t mean freedom to develop either, now under neocolonialism the same underdevelopment takes place. Libya and Syria are just more examples of the same neocolonial agenda, to underdevelop nations and force them to be subservient to the imperial core. Those weren’t revolutions, they were Western dirty wars: coup the government, pour in weapons to fuel whatever terrorist groups are willing to work with the West, sanction the people to make the economy scream, etc. etc.
So, no, capitalism wasn’t the best way to develop any of those countries.
The reason China needed to use capitalism to develop was solely to fool the West into doing business. There’s a saying attributed to Lenin; “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” That’s all China has done. Not only did the capitalist sell them the rope, the capitalists also sold them the rope factories and outsourced every step of rope production.
China was never capitalists. They’re communists wearing the flayed skin of capitalism to trick it into lowering its guard.
Capitalism also isn’t developing the imperial core anymore. We have reached a stage of deindustrialization, where now instead of building up infrastructure and production capacity we’re letting capital strip the wiring from the walls to maximize cost cutting without actually developing anything. There is some development that still happens thanks to government grants and public institutions, but now Musk is cutting those too to “save money”. Thanks to rampant privatization and austerity everything is worse.
And of course there’s no popular support here in the West, this is the imperial core. We grew fat and rich off of the superprofits from imperialism, revolution would mean a redistribution of wealth from the imperial core to the periphery. That means Europe and Canada and the US will have to pay repairations for what they have done to the world. I don’t expect that to be popular here!
Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 16 hours ago
Oh yeah, after Congo got independence from Belgium. Their purchasing power reduced to not even 10% of what it was at 1960 at the time of 1979.
Right now Congo is being “neocolonised” by China.
…india.com/…/viral-video-of-chinese-employers-ass…
South Africa however is a whole different story. They are the most inequal country in the world.
Africa has a median net wealth per adult of 1250 USD. Mean is 8400 USD.
For South Africa this is 5200 USD median and 25000 usd average.
The approach in Congo was a lot more revolutionary while in South Africa it was reformist. In Congo, any Belgian was forcibly deported and many were murdered. In South Africa there are still a lot of descendants from dutchies.
I believe that China’s investment in Congo will be good for Congo, as most investments are.
The Belgian investments were to extract raw resources from the country. But these railroads and trains are still being used today.
Nobody really wants to help Congo unless they get financially rewarded for it. Congo is quite a scary place too, for business. All that instability?
Revolutions = instability = capital flight = poverty
We’ll see what happens. The west developed China. Now it’s China’s turn to develop Africa. About time too, fucking hell, we’re so close to Africa. Become developed so that we can do meaningful trade.
The investments in china have been tremendously rewarding.
You and I view China very different. You might view them as Buddhism and the west as Christian.
But I view Europe as Judaism. America as Christianity and china as islam. 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0
The same thing, just different branding. It’s all capitalism.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
Yes, and that was revenge. Countries were punished for winning independence.
Those railroads are just supply lines that ship from resource extraction points to seaports. The railroads don’t connect cities or provide infrastructure for actual people or act as part of the supply chain for internal production. They were built to be purely extractive. That’s not real development, that’s underdevelopment. The railroads ship out cobalt and ground nuts and the people of the DRC are deprived of access for their own civilian or industrial uses.
Colonizers did not develop Africa. This is a lie spread by colonizers to hide their crimes against humanity.
Yeah, because Belgians raped and tortured and murdered so many Congolese people. The sick shit colonizers did in Africa rivals the Nazis.
No no no, China developed itself by fooling the West (into selling them the rope, get it?) because the West never develops anything by choice.
Look, if revolution can be avoided that’s great! Venezuela managed to do it and they’d be doing quite well if it weren’t for imperialist meddling from the US. I’m not saying that revolution is the only option, only that the abolition of capitalism must be the end goal. I say “end goal” because it’s not realistic to just abolish markets and commodity production and wage labor instantly and expect it to work. The abolition of capitalism will take time.
But if your goal is to keep capitalism alive forever you are not a leftist. Deal with it.
Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 13 hours ago
Aight but can you also talk about china on Congo and the video I showed you? I’m saying china is just the same as Europe and America.
I find that normal. China is new to having power, their government has a lot of power in their own region. People their opinions are suppressed in china. They have the great firewall of china.
What you are doing here, is not allowed in China. You’d be seen as a traitor and dealt with by the government.