Work 10

Surplus from Africa was partly used to offer a few more benefits to European workers and served as a bribe to make the latter less revolutionary. The bribe came in the form of increased wages, better working conditions, and expanded social services. The benefits of colonialism were diffused throughout European society in many ways. (…) Meanwhile, the capitalist still made his fortune by ensuring that the Ivory Coast or Colombian grower got no
price increases.

Quote: Walter Rodney (1975): Afrika. Die Geschichte einer Unterentwicklung. Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, p. 173, German edition. Picture: Wikimedia

Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Marxist historian and politician from Guyana. Born into a working-class family, he studied in Guyana and Jamaica and taught in Germany and Tanzania. He was killed in a bomb attack in 1980 while campaigning for the Working People's Alliance election campaign. In 2015, a commission of inquiry found that the attack had originated from within the Guyanese government.

The main beneficiaries of colonial conquest and plunder were European companies and colonial states. In addition, both the resources that were stolen from colonised areas and the exploitation of their people helped to defuse conflicts between labour and capital in the metropolises. There, the working classes were given a share of colonial exploitation through, for example, the cheap availability of consumer goods such as sugar and coffee. This encouraged the European working class to show solidarity with the ruling class in their own country rather than with the dispossessed on other continents. In order to achieve this cross-class “solidarity”, discourses of racism and national unity were also deployed, especially from the 19th century onwards.

*Walter Rodney (1973): How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications & Dar-Es-Salaam: Tanzanian Publishing House. *Benedict Anderson (1983): Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London & New York: Verso.

1975