the moribund empire and african barbarians

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THE MORIBUND EMPIRE AND AFRICAN BARBARIANS

By Yash Tandon - International South Group Network (ISGN)

If we look at these universal states, not as alien observers but through the eyes of their own citizens, we shall find that thesenot only desire that these earthly commonwealths of theirsshould live for ever but actually believe that the immortality of these human institutions is assured, and this sometimes in theteeth of contemporary events which, to an observer posted at a different standpoint in time or space, declare beyond question that this particular universal state is at that very moment in its last agonies.

Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History

SUMMARY

Two separate but interrelated threads run through this paper.One is that a purely economistic analysis of the contemporaryworld is not only inadequate, as a theoretical and analyticaltool, but it is also a mask that hides the reality of the divisionof the world between the Empire and those outside the realm,the barbarians. Economism, and its offshoots such as “growththrough adjustment”, are, in fact, ideologies of the Empire justifying the conquest of the lands and resources of the

barbarians. Those who sought to reduce the phenomenon of the expansion of Europe from circa 1492 to our present periodof Globalization to purely economic categories have missedout important ingredients of this expansion that go beyond theeconomic to matters related to culture, religion, governanceand, of course, the use of violence.

The paper looks into the four segments into which the presentworld is divided – namely, the First World of US and UK, theAnglo-Saxon world, that exercises its hegemony over theEmpire through its market and military power; the Second

World, the lower level Empire, consisting of Europe and Japan

that share the wealth of the Empire with the Anglo-Saxons butthat also have significant contradictions with the First World;the barbarians of the “Third World”, the former colonizedpeoples of the so-called “South”; and the “Third-and-half World” of East Europeans, who have become the newbarbarians after the collapse of the Soviet union.

The second thread that runs through the paper, mostlydeveloped in its latter part, is that waiting for the CapitalistEmpire to collapse under the weight of its own contradictionsmay involve waiting for ever. Human agents, not impersonalforces of the market, make history. The struggles are here andnow, and they are concrete struggles of the barbarian nationsto win their liberation from the Empire. The paper argues thatthe road ahead for Africa forks into two – one marked the neo-liberal road that is motivated by a strategy of persuadingAfrican countries to further integrate into the global empire bydeveloping their export competitiveness, and by adopting the

“democratic” paradigm as laid out by the Empire. This, theauthor argues, is the road to perpetual slavery. The secondroad is motivated by a strategy of self-reliance, but it is not aneasy road to traverse. There are many contradictions atdifferent levels of barbarian societies, should they choose togo along this route, but this is the only alternative to abidingslavery. The paper welcomes the Sirte initiative to create anAfrican Union, but argues that this is a task, a mission, thatcannot be left only to the governments of Africa; it cannot beaccomplished without the active involvement of the ordinarypeoples of Africa.

I Introduction: The Bankruptcy Of EconomisticExplanations Of Africa's Poor Performance

Africa has been in decline for many years, for many decades.Outside of overall GDP figures, contrived in recent years bymainly mainstream economists[1] to show “positive growth”for the sake of not appearing to be in the ranks of “Afro-pessimists”, the reality on the ground is indeed worryinglygrave, whether one is talking about agricultural production,food security, de-industrialization, unemployment or the AIDS

pandemic.1



There was a time when Africa was singled out as an“exceptional” continent, especially when compared to theapparently more prosperous Asia and Latin America,compared even to the Caribbean. These comparisons gavebirth to theories and theoreticians who tried to analyze thespecificity of the African experience. Lack of exportperformance, deficit financing, overvalued currencies,parastatal profligacy, backward technology and such outwardtrappings of the economy were singled out to describe Africa’s“specificity”. With innumerable economic variables to playaround, any theory could adduce enough “empirical” evidenceto “prove” its case. Mainstream economists with predilectionstowards econometric models and regression analysis had fieldday with Africa’s statistics, filling innumerable pages in booksand “erudite” periodicals, quoting one another and gainingspurious authority in academic and professional circles.

None of this, however, could hide the fact that mere

economistic explanations for Africa’s difficulties were not eventouching the top of the iceberg. Starting around 1989 (whenthe World Bank produced its policy paper entitled Africa: FromCrisis to Sustainable Growth), the Bretton Woods institutionaleconomists took refuge into “non-economic” factors for help,bringing in factors like “good governance”, poor publicadministration, and corruption – areas in which they had littleor no competence – to explain where their economisticanalyses had failed. As shown later in the paper, these wereessentially ideological covers to disguise the real fact on theground that their policies were failing. Some of them took

refuge in the time excuse, arguing that “sufficient time” hadnot been allowed the implementation of Structural AdjustmentProgrammes (SAPs) for these to show results, that judgmentson SAPs were premature. [2] But when star performers likeGhana (under IMF stabilization programmes and SAP for nearlytwo decades) began to drop out of the World Bank list of “models” for emulation, the mainstream economists hadnowhere to hide. Worse still, after the currency crisis in Thailand in August 1997 spread to most of the rest of EastAsia, throwing economy and society in turmoil (from whichthey have yet to recover), the mainline economists could no

longer hold these countries as models either. Ironically, many

of them begrudgingly admitted that Malaysia under themaverick Mahathir, who defied IMF/WB logic and managed,barely, to protect his country from some of the worst effects of the East Asian debacle, might have been more on the rightcourse than they were.

The truth of the matter is that these economists were hidingmore than the failure of their “adjustment” policies in Africa. They were actually hiding the fact that the real object of theirpolicies in Africa (as with the rest of the third world) was not todevelop Africa but to open up Africa even further toexploitation of global capital. Were they deliberately sayingone thing and doing another? No, it was part of the premise of their ideological baggage that if Africa opened itself to foreigncapital it would be their best course to achieve economicgrowth. What their theory missed out was the fact that, in theabsence of state intervention (such as anti-trust policies at thenational level) there is an inherent tendency within capitalism

to concentrate wealth and power in fewer and fewer handsand, by the same logic, create poverty at the other pole. Sinceno redistributive or reallocative mechanism exists at theinternational level, and since there is no equivalent of anti-trust bodies at the global level, these economists should nothave been surprised at the increasing polarization of wealthand poverty on the global scale. Globalization, as the UNDP=sHuman Development Report of 1996 testifies, has created avast chasm between the north and the south. AThe gap in percapita income between the industrial and developing worldstripled, from $5,700 in 1960 to $15,400 in 1993.” [3] Africa,

says the Report, is the hardest hit. Twenty countries in Africahave a per capita income lower today than 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are in Africa. Afood-surplus continent 20 years ago, Africa is now food-deficit.

In fact, what the economists were hiding was more than thefailure of their policies in Africa. They were hiding the truthabout the fact that, like in all past ages, the contemporaryworld was divided between the Empire and the Barbarians,and that the barbarians of the third world were having a roughdeal at the hands of the Empire.

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II The Empire And The Barbarians

Encounters between civilizations

All past history is one of encounters between civilizations. Ourpresent period is no exception. Talk about “globalization” and“the global village” deludes the reality that people and groupsof people have different cultures and values, and encountersbetween them (positive as well as negative) is the stuff of which history is made. Keen Western observers, such asSamuel Huntington, wary of the threat to the West from theresurgence of non-Western civilizations, are shrewderobservers of contemporary history than naïve visionaries lostin self-created delusions about “the global village”. Theycannot read the signs of the time even when they daily see ontheir TV screens the street battles between stone-throwingPalestinian children and mortar-throwing Jewish soldiers.[4]

In the story of the encounters between civilizations,throughout global history, those in the centers of powerconstitute the “Empire” and those outside the realm are the“Barbarians”, those who are subjected to various forms of tributes for the further enrichment and empowerment of theEmpire. The British historian, Arnold Toynbee, painstakinglyrecorded the history of encounters between differentcivilizations. [5] He recorded the encounters between, amongothers, post and pre-Alexandrine Hellenic civilizations;between the Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christendom;between the West and various other civilizations including

Russia, orthodox Christendom, Hindu, Islam, Jews, Africa, andindigenous Americans. In the Encylopedia of Invasions and Conquests: From Ancient Times to the Present (ABC-CLIO,1996), Paul K. Davis has recorded that all history of empires isone of invasions and conquests.

Both Toynbee and Davis talk about the dehumanizing aspectsof the encounters between civilizations. Most imperialconquests are characterized by what Toynbee called“Zealotism, Herodianism and Evangelism”, as well as thatspecial hubris of empires that, he says, creates “the Mirage of

Immortality”, a description that surely applies to ourcontemporary empire, the Anglo-Saxon Empire.

Marxist literature, in focusing often too narrowly on thecapitalist epoch, and in reducing all recorded history to one of class struggles, has often lost sight of, or diminished thesignificance of, other aspects of the movement of history –such as culture and the spiritual medium, for example – thatare important ingredients of History. One African Marxisthistorian, in reviewing his own previous work, has nowrecorded that Capitalism had its genesis not in economics butin Christian crusades.

The chapter attempted to trace the origins of the processof capitalist development as having been laid within theChristian crusade to universalise its faith throughout theworld. This crusade had both spiritual and economicobjectives in its inception because the spread of

Christianity very much depended on the containment of Islam, which was seen as the main threat to the spread of Christianity. This implied a struggle against Islam and theconquest of its trade routes and outposts. These historicalroots of Western civilisation, the chapter points out, shouldnot be lost sight of when we analyse the economic andpolitical one. These processes manifest themselves in adialectical way.[6]

Contemporary Empire and Barbarians

All history is a history of the “included” and the “excluded”,those inside the realm and those outside. Today, Mexicanyouth trying to scale the walls surrounding the Rio Grande arethe excluded, as also the Moroccans and Algerians trying toenter France, and the Asian desperados risking life and limb tosurreptitiously enter Europe by boat or refrigerator trucks.[7] The Euro-American imperial realm is in constant fear of thebarbarians knocking on their gates. More than a nuclear war,this is their biggest fear.

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Capitalism, as it established itself in Europe encouraged,among other things, by the Protestant ethic,[8] issued forthfrom Christian realms of imperial Europe to conquer the rest of the world. The capitalist empire developed by stages, and notwithout wars, violence and conquests as well as trade,investment and improvements in science and technology. Itdeveloped from its early mercantile period (circa 1492 to1650s), to free trade imperialism with England in the lead,

especially after 1760s, to capital-export led imperialism andcolonial conquest of Africa beginning in the 1880s, to the“open door” imperialism led by the United States following theSecond World War, to our own period of Globalisation, the finalphase of the conquest of whatever is still left in the hands of the barbarians (bio-diversity, local markets, local knowledge,etc.). [9]

All this is part of the recorded history of the last 500 years. Wecome now to the contemporary, i.e. post-cold war, period. Inour own time, the world divides into roughly four segments:1. The First World Empire under the Anglo-Saxon hegemony2. The Second Level Empire of Europe and Japan3. The barbarians of the Third World (the so-called “south”),and4. The barbarians of the Third and half World (the formerSoviet empire).

The First and Second World Empires are united when it comesto imposing an imperial order over the barbarians, but thereare also significant contradictions among them. These

contradictions are by-products of history and cultures,vestiges from previous inter-imperialist rivalries for theconquest of the world, and continuing conflicts to salvage orconquer the remaining assets of the world of the barbarians.

Measured by almost any index one cares to mention (militarypower, market share in the global economy, consumption of energy, number of persons in foreign embassies, number of daily flights, civilian or military), it is evident that the USoccupies a position of global hegemony that is unequalled inthe annals of human history. The current US military doctrine

is based on developing and sustaining the military and

industrial capacity to wage and win two global-scale warssimultaneously in any quarter of the world. US corporate andmilitary power structures are mutually supportive andreinforcing; one structure of power cannot exist without theother. Hence the US tries to maintain, not always successfully(for reasons that we cannot go into now), a firm control overthe movement of arms technology as well as of corporatecapital. As Alejandro Bendana says, the US Empire is neither

colonial nor neo-colonial in the old sense. It permeates allstrata of society, and not just governments. And the USEmpire shares benefits with all elite constituents wherever theEmpire has established its controls, and imposes sanctionsagainst those who threaten to challenge the imperial order.[10]

US hegemony is shared vicariously as well as participativelyby the United Kingdom. The British state occupies a specialposition in the imperial order. It is neither a part of Europe norapart from it. On military and strategic matters it is closer tothe US than to Europe. It is the only major power outside of the US that comes out unquestioningly in support of USmilitary action (such as in Iraq and Kosovo), indeed even morebelligerently than the US imperial power itself.[11] The othertwo Anglo-Saxon dominated countries, Canada and Australia,also tend to support of the United States. In economic mattersBritain would want to be part of Europe but not at the cost of its “special” relationship with the US state. This relationship iscemented by shared language, shared Anglo-Saxon culture, ahistory of two major wars against European fascist regimes

and against communism, and interlocking corporate interests.[12] The British state is thus very much part of the First Worldglobal imperial order.

Europe and Japan constitute the Second Order Imperial states. They join forces with the Anglo-Saxon dominated order when itcomes to keeping the barbarians in place – i.e. outside theimperial realm, and in firm control over global economic andstrategic matters. They are, after all, part of the G7 group of countries that regularly meet to discuss the health of theimperial realm. But the Europeans and the Japanese also have

contradictions with the Anglo-Saxon imperial order. In4



December 1991, for example, when France and Germanyannounced joint military structures, the US squashed the ideawith characteristic vehemence. The US and Europe haveregular turf battles over Africa and the rest of the barbarianworld. The US overtures to Africa with its “Africa Growth andOpportunities Act” during 2000-01 must be seen in the contextof the renewed linkage between the European Union and theAfrican, Caribbean, Pacific States (ACP countries) in the

Cotonou Agreement that replaced the earlier LomeConvention. The US and Europe have head on collisions in theWorld Trade Organization (the WTO) on a number of issues –such as on the banana regime, the hormone-treated beef exports from the US, and the quarrel over the geneticallymodified organisms (GMOs). On issues related to theenvironment and climate change, the US hubris cansometimes throw the Europeans in fits of anger against the“arrogant Americans”.

In these matters, the British state either takes no side or tendsto lean towards the Americans. Their common corporateculture and their real politik approach to international relationshave marked difference from the culture of the Europeans. Forexample, the takeover of the German company Mannesmannby the British company Vodafone in 2000 was a victory of theshareholder concept that is dominant in the Anglo-Americancorporate culture over the stakeholder concept closer to theEuropean experience. What we are witnessing these days inthe global merger and acquisitions activity is the globalisationof the Anglo-American shareholder corporatism. Here we are

not just talking economics; we are talking about social andcultural values. The social gains that the working and otherlower classes gained in the continent of Europe over decadesof struggle are getting seriously eroded by the Thatcher/Reagan initiated privatization and deregulation. Theinternal class struggles within the continent of Europe in suchmatters is much more intense and street-wise than in the USor the UK.

The Japanese Second-level imperialism, similarly, hascontradictions with the Anglo-Saxon order. Japan, though a

global economic player, is a military midget in comparison to

the US and the UK, and plays second fiddle in regional securityarrangement in East Asia and the Pacific.[13] The Japanesewould want to link with the rest of Asia, but is afraid of theUSA. When Japan tried to distance itself from the US in 1991,the US smartly brought it under heel with the administration of Super 301.[14] During the Asian financial crisis in August 1997– March 1998, early effort by Japan to fly the kite of regionalfund to bale out the distressed states was quickly brought to

the ground by the US. The US did (does) not want Japan totake independent initiatives in the Asian-Pacific region.

The Third World and Third and half World Barbarians

Different regions of the world were integrated into the Empireat different times in the long movement that started fromEurope circa 1492 to our own present day. From the time of Columbus to that of Thatcher/Reagan, the barbarians havebeen conquered, sometimes liquidated, often assimilated, but

at all times the Empire has sought to establish increasingcontrol over the human and natural resources in thehinterlands of the Empire. The expansion of the Empire hasnever been without resistance. It is this contradictory processof integration and resistance that characterize the relationsbetween the Empire and the barbarians.

However, because of the timing and processes by whichdifferent regions of the world got conquered and integratedinto the Capitalist system, there are differences in the mannerin which productive forces and social relations developed

among the countries in the hinterlands of the Empire. Thesedifferences notwithstanding, as we approach our own times of “globalization”, the final onslaught of Capital to conquerwhatever is left in the hands of the barbarians (a kind of “mopping up operations”), the condition of the barbarians of the so-called “third world” is becoming more and more similar. There is the small elite that hold power in the name of thepeople, but exercise it for the Empire (for the Empire removesfrom power, or isolates, those who would not come under itsdiscipline), and vast numbers of people who look the same (inthe condition of their poverty) whether they are in the slums of

Rio, Nairobi or Calcutta.5



This last phase in the development of Capitalism –Globalization – is a totalizing phase. It is the creation of asingle space for the free movement of capital without bordersand national encumbrances. The active agent of this processis transnationalized capital in the hands of transnationalcorporations, whose power is extended to fill all the left-overvacuums of the earlier periods -- backed by the military powerof the Empire.

The only major regions that escaped, for a while, thisonslaught of capital was that which, after the Russianrevolution in 1917, created a parallel, and opposing, system of organizing society and production, and China. After 1990, theSoviet part of that world too collapsed under the weight of anunbearable arms race that deprived the Soviet economy of theresources that could have been employed for more usefulpurposes, the massive propaganda of the “free world”, and, of course, internal contradictions that developed within thebureaucratic class structure of the Soviet Union and its ownempire in Eastern Europe. [15]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the peoples of theregion have become, in the words of the Russian writer, BorisKagarlitsky, the “new barbarians” of our times. The shocktherapies administered to the economies of these countries by“experts” from the IMF and the World Bank quickly dismantledwhatever economic and social structures that were there froman already crumbling empire, and the societies came underthe control of the speculative capitalists from the Empire, with

kleptocratic indigenous capitalists, who look no different fromthe kleptocrats of the other barbarian nations. [16]

As Kagarlitsky says, barbarians cannot develop independently;they can only imitate, plunder and destroy, and reproducecaricatures of the institutions of civilization, such asdemocracy and the rule of law. If Western Europeans andNorth Americans are the new Romans, he says, the rest of usmust be the new barbarians. Along with Asians, Africans andLatin Americans, the new barbarians, too, are knocking on thedoors of the golden gates of the Empire that has divided the

world between the included and the excluded, those insideand those outside the pale of modern civilization.

The Paraphernalia of Imperial Governance and itsparadox

In his A Study of History , Toynbee lists the following “imperialinstitutions”:

• Communications• Garrisons and colonies• Provinces• Capital cities• Official Languages and Scripts• Law• Calendars; Weights and Measures; Money• Standing Armies• Civil Services•

Citizenships

A fuller paper would have gone into a description of each of these in some detail as it exercises imperial functions in theAnglo-Saxon dominated contemporary world. Read througheach of the above again, and the stamp of the Anglo-Saxonauthority is unmistakable, with, at second layer of the imperialorder, the stamp of continental Europe and Japan.“Communications,” says Toynbee, “head the list because theyare the master institution on which the universal statedepends for its very existence. They are the instrument not

only of its military command over its dominions but also of itspolitical control.” [17]

But while these institutions are created to ensure an imperialorder, they are also usable by the “internal proletariats orexternal proletariat of the moribund society or some aliencivilization”, says Toynbee.[18] Thus, in our own times, forexample, the electronic-mail may have been the product of the US military genius to ensure strategic communications,but it is also used by grassroots movements and NGOs tochallenge the might of the Empire (as at the Seattle meeting

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of the WTO in 1999), and by “computer hackers” to get intothe secret vaults of corporate banks and military secrets of thePentagon. This, Toynbee says, is the “paradoxical position” of universal empires. Sic vos vobis mellificatis, apes. (Thus youbees make honey but not only for yourselves). “Theseimposing polities,” says Toynbee, “are the last works of dominant minorities in the disintegrating bodies social of moribund civilizations….Their conscious purpose is to preserve

themselves… This purpose is never in the long run fulfilled… They serve others when they fail to save themselves.” [19]

Instruments of Global Governance

At the end of the Second World War, the victorious Westernpowers (the Soviet Union was also victorious, but it set out tocreate its own system) created two sets of institutions. Oneset related to economic matters. These were the IMF and theWorld Bank, together known as the Bretton Woods Institutions

(BWIs). Here the major debate was not between Europeansand the Anglo-Saxons, but within the camp of the latter.Ultimately, and inevitably because of the changed balance of power, the US concept prevailed.[20] Today, looking back, theneo-Keynesians regret that the more liberal approachsuggested by the British, Maynard Keynes, had not won theday. The neo-Kenyesians are crying crocodile tears, but wehave no space here to explain why.[21] Created initially tohelp the war-torn European nations to rehabilitate theireconomies and to help with short-term balance of paymentsdifficulties, the BWIs have become veritable instruments of

global control of the barbarian economies. In the name of “structural adjustment”, and with their power over the marketand the credit system, the BWIs have powerful control overthe destinies of the barbarians.

On the trade side, it was proposed in 1949 to set upInternational Trade Organisation, whose instruments wereenshrined in the Havana Charter. The US Senate, however, didnot ratify the Charter, and only one aspect of it survived,which constituted the third leg of the economic infrastructure,called General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). Over

time, GATT became an unsatisfactory instrument of global

governance from the US imperial perspective, partly becauseits scope was too limited, and partly because GATT had weakdisputes settling mechanism and practically no teeth. In the1980s the USA initiated a broad round of trade negotiations(the Uruguay Round) that gave birth to the World TradeOrganisation (WTO) whose scope is comprehensive, andperpetually expanding, and whose disputes settlementmechanism has powerful sanctions apparatus.

Thus, finally, as we approach the present period of Globalization, the trinity of the World Bank, the IMF and theWTO complete the set of powerful instruments of globaleconomic governance in control of the Empire.

The second set of instruments of global governance created atthe end of the Second World War consisted of the UnitedNations and its related agencies. These represented the more"visionary" aspects of global infrastructure, dealing with

disputes settlement, health, welfare, labour, culture,education, trusteeship, and other such matters. The visionarypart of the UN also paid lip service to the idea of "We, thepeople…" as against "We, the Governments …". HnhbHowever, when it came to matters of peace and security, theUN system congealed power in the hands of the two Empires(Western and Soviet) by providing them a veto over decisionstaken in the Security Council of the UN.

Over the decades, the vision and authority of the UN hasdiminished and the power and control of the Bretton Woods

institutions have increased. But, as Toynbee never ceased toremind us, that which is created by the Empire is also usableby the “internal proletariats or external proletariat of themoribund society or some alien civilization”. And so the UnitedNations has become a terrain of struggle between themoribund Empire and the sections of the global civil society,the former trying hard to keep the imperial order, and thelatter raising issues of justice for the barbarians.

The Ideology of the Modern day Empire

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No empire sustains itself by means of only force. Force is usedfirst to create a new order, as when the Europeans used forceto conquer Africa. After the new imperial order is created,force is deployed when everything else fails, almost as a lastresort. Short of military force is the use of economic sanctions(as, presently, against Zimbabwe’s barbarian Government).Both force and economic sanctions can be costly, however,even for the Empire. Also, they provoke resistance from the

barbarians. The most economical, and the most effective,means of control is through the use of ideology, especially if the barbarians can be made to swallow it as a “natural” orderof things.

The ideology of the contemporary Empire is the ideology of the free market. Of course, nothing like that exists in reality,has never existed, nor will it ever. It is a pure fantasy. But thatdoes not matter; it is enough that people should believe that itexists, or even that it should exist.[22]

What the “free market” ideology does for the Empire are threethings. First, it masks the reality of the Empire. Engagementwith the ideologists of the Empire based on evidence thatshows, for example, how the G7 countries systematically planand control the global economy immediately elicits the chargethat one is engaged in “conspiracy theories.” There is noargument that enfeebles one’s case more than being told thatone is engaged in “conspiracy theories.” That is an argumentthat ends all arguments. So once the existence of the empireis denied as a fictional creation of conspiracy theorists, there

is no case against it. It simply “does not exist”. Like magic, theEmpire simply vanishes from the imagination of not only therulers but also the ruled. If ever there was a profoundevidence of “mind over matter”, it is this global mind-bendingthat has simply evaporated the material reality of the Empire.

The second function that the ideology of the free market doesis to mask the real causes of the periodic crises to which theCapitalist system is prone. Crisis, as Marx showed, isdialectically embedded within the very system of capitalistproduction and appropriation of value. But for the market

ideologists, every crisis is either a “cyclic crisis” and therefore

temporary, or a “market failure” and hence remediable by afew “policy adjustments” here and there. It is never a“systemic crisis”. To talk about “systemic crisis” is to drawattention to the reality of what Toynbee calls the “agonies” of the moribund Empire. If this realization becomes part of theconsciousness of the rulers, and the petty agents of theEmpire in the barbarian states, then they would not know howto rule, they would lose faith in themselves. And if it becomes

part of the consciousness of the ruled, the barbarians, thenthey would wake up to the moribund character of the imperialorder, and hence to the possibility of a transformative changeof the system. Once the ideology is in peril, it is not far thatthe Empire too should be in peril.

The third function of the free market ideology is that ittransfers blame on those that “interfere” with the market.Never mind the fact that there was never a time when theImperial state left the market to function on its own. There hasalways been state “interference” in the market ever sincecapitalism was born. As Karl Polanyi demonstrated, in a workthat is often quoted by scholars these days, the market cannotexist without conscious, and often violent, intervention bypolitical forces.[23] However, it has become one of the policyplanks of BWI economists to argue that the crisis in Africa isauthored by its own rulers. Once the victims are blamed asauthors of their own misery, the guilt is transferred from therulers to the ruled, and the latter can be brought to“discipline” so that they do not make mistakes again, on painof sanctions, or worse, isolation and banishment from the

order of “civilized” communities.

It does not need the genius of a Karl Popper to know that theideology of the free market, which he himself espoused, is, inhis own famous word, “unfalsifiable”. [24]

The practical implications of all this are clear. When, forexample, an economy of an African state gets into crisis, anumber of things follow. One, Africa’s crisis, according to freemarket ideologists (especially of the World Bank and the IMF)has little to do with “external” factors, and if they do, these

external factors are purely conjunctural - such as temporary,8



or cyclical, fall in the price of the commodities, or naturalcalamities such as drought. Second, African governments arethemselves to blame for the crisis; the real causes of the crisisare “internal” to the states in crisis. These used to be “wrongmacro-economic policies”, but these days they are these, plus“bad governance”, “corruption”, etc. And, finally, the solutionlies with correcting these policies along lines suggested by the“experts’’ of the World Bank and the IMF, often bitter pills of

“adjustment” sweetened by further grants of money, and/ortechnical assistance. Joseph Stiglitz, who once worked with theWorld Bank, said that these “experts” are, from hisexperience, “third rate minds” from first rate American orEuropean universities, peddling bankrupt economic theories.[25]

III The African predicament

The root of African’s predicament lies in its extreme

vulnerability to Imperial dictation. This, in turn, is a product of four factors:a) The material reality of Africa;b) The psychological architecture of African leadership, or

what Frantz Fanon called, the “pitfalls of nationalconsciousness”;

c) The strategic interventions of the Empire every timeAfrica talks about “self reliance”; and

d) The mainstream African academia and intellectualworkers as the ideological agents of the Empire.

The material reality of Africa is captured in official statisticspoured out at the rate of a couple of million pages a year bynational, regional and global bodies that employ “experts” toquantify what is captured even more vividly and dramaticallyby TV journalists and CNN reporters. The following are someaspects of that reality:

- AIDS endemic and the decreasing life-span of the peopleof Africa- War, conflicts and anarchy or near-anarchy situations insome countries, and the

resulting displacement of people as internal or cross-border refugees- Sheer violence and brutality, and crime against the morevulnerable sections of society, especially, women andchildren- Mono-economies that are hostages to the vagaries of theglobal market- Crippling debts owed to the IMF, the World Bank and

other agents of Western capital- Falling commodity prices, and the inability to get out of dependence on commodities- Corruption, profligacy, waste

There is, of course, the more beautiful side of Africa as well.But this comprises, on the one hand, of aspects of humanity,love, culture, poetry, drama, and spirituality that are often notshared with foreigners, and, on the other hand, tourist sightsand game lodges that are shared with the visitors from theEmpire. But this more beautiful reality is a small part of alarger totality whose more negative aspects (AIDS, Debt,conflicts, etc.) make Africa so vulnerable to imperial dictation.

As for the psychological architecture of African leadership,what better than to quote Frantz Fanon when he described the“pitfalls of national consciousness”, a description that not onlyremains valid to this day but is reinforced by the experience of Africa over the last forty years.[26]

Fanon wrote:

The national middle class which takes over power at theend of the colonial regime is an underdeveloped middleclass. It has practically no economic power, and in anycase it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace. In its willfulnarcissism, the national middle class is easily convincedthat it can advantageously replace the middle class of themother country. But that same independence whichliterally drives it into a corner will give rise within its ranksto catastrophic reactions, and will oblige it to send out

9



frenzied appeals for help to the former mother country. The university and merchant classes which make up themost enlightened section of the new state are in factcharacterized by the smallness of their number and theirbeing concentrated in the capital, and the type of activitiesin which they are engaged: business, agriculture, and theliberal professions. Neither financiers nor industrialmagnates are to be found within this national middle class.

The national bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries isnot engaged in production, nor in invention, nor inbuilding, nor labor; it is completely canalised into activitiesof the intermediary type. Its inner most vocation seems tobe to keep in the running and to be part of the racket. Thepsychology of the national bourgeoisie is that of thebusinessman, not that of a captain of industry; and it isonly too true that the greed of the settlers and the systemof embargoes set up by colonialism has hardly left themany other choice.[27]

What more does one need to say? May be only one thingmore. It is that out of frustration at their inability to join theranks of the bourgeoisie of the mother country, they fall backon “nationalism”. This could be a genuine sentiment againstthe Empire, but it could also be a means of blackmailing theEmpire to release more “development” aid for their countries,or give concessions or preferential treatment, or outrightcharity. And this gives rise to the third aspect of the Africanpredicament. It is this that every time Africa is in crisis and itsleadership, in desperation, talks about “self-reliance”, there is

immediate intervention by the Empire to ward them off fromthat road, mischievously described by the Empire, as trying toseek “autarchy”.[28] Once, the Empire reassures them thatthey will be assisted with money and “experts” to guide themback “to the right track”, the political leadership is back tosquare one. The African intellectuals, Thandika Mkandawireand Charles C. Soludo have put it thus:

The tragedy of Africa’s policy-making and policyimplementation in the last several years is the completesurrender of national policies to the ever-changing ideas of

international experts. Africans have lacked the confidence

to consciously and vigorously craft and will a future forthemselves. The first attempts that Africans made atarticulating a framework for their development were in theLagos Plan of Action, the Final Act of Lagos, and UNECA’sAfrican Alternative Framework to Structural AdjustmentPrograms. Most African governments signed thedocuments and, to date, none of these governments haspublicly dissociated itself from the ideas espoused in them.

But the World Bank virulently attacked those documents,and every African government that wished to havesuccessful debt rescheduling or aid negotiations distanceditself from the principles in them.[29]

In 1979, African governments met in Lagos, Nigeria, toconsider the deteriorating situation in Africa. From a food self-sufficient continent, Africa, following a prolonged droughtbetween 1968 and 1973 that hit the Sahel at its worst, hadbecome a net food importing country. Despite two decades of donor assistance, growth in Africa had more or less stopped,and the social conditions in most countries in Africa wereworsening. African leaders, in this context, considered that theonly way left to them was to pull themselves out of theirpredicament through their own efforts, and that whateverassistance came from outside in the form of donor funds, mustbe regarded as secondary to these efforts at self-reliance. Theleaders meeting in Lagos set the year 2000 for achieving an‘African Economic Community so as to ensure the economic,social and cultural integration of our continent.’ A Nigerianeconomist, Bade Onimode, summarised the main elements of

the Lagos Plan of Action thus:[30]

• Achievement of regional food self-sufficiency throughdomestic food production - not just food security thatcan be achieved through volatile food aid and foodimports;

• satisfaction of critical needs for food, safe drinkingwater, clothing, housing, health care, education andtransport;

• elimination or alleviation of poverty; and• achievement of effective regional integration through

national and collective self-reliance.10



Soon afterwards the World Bank came out with its famous‘Berg Report’. [31] It presented an alternative scenario to theLagos Plan of Action. Africa, the Berg Report argued, need notdespair about aid from outside. More would come providedAfrican governments were to make the necessary economicand policy adjustments. They had neglected the agriculturalsector in preference to industries, that must be rectified. Theyhad provided excessive subsidies to urban dwellers, those

must go. They had excessively intervened in the economy;they must give more free space to market forces. They hadconcentrated far too much on the internal market; they mustgo for export-led growth. And so on and so forth. It was thisBerg Report that first laid the basis for what was to follow,namely, the Structural Adjustment Programmes that havebeen the bane of African societies since then. The remarkablething is that it was the World Bank itself that was the principalauthor of the very policies that it was now criticizing. But of self-criticism there was not one word in the Berg Report. [32]

The promised ‘accelerated development’ of Berg and companynever came. In the meantime, African governments forgotabout the Lagos Plan of Action. One by one they rushed to theWorld Bank with aid bowls promising to bring about astructural adjustment of their economies. In return forimposing the will of the Empire on an unwilling and longsuffering population, they did get some capital from the donorcommunity, but by the end of 1980s a new problem arose -the debt burden. In 1980 the debt of the sub-Saharancountries constituted 21% of the GNP, by 1988 it had risen to

88%. In 1980, debt service ratio in relation to exports of goodsand services was 9%, by 1988, it had risen to 25%. [33]

In 1983-85, Africa was hit by another drought, more severethan the Sahelian drought of 1968-73. By 1984, twenty Africancountries had become candidates for emergency food aid. Andso, once again in the face of crisis, African governments gottogether and asked the United Nations to hold a specialsession of the General Assembly to consider Africa’s serioussituation. The UN obliged, and at a Special Session in 1986, itadopted the UN Programme of Action for African Economic

Recovery and Development, 1986-90 (UNPAAERD). No earth-

shaking document, UNPAAERD was a mere salve to thebleeding wounds of Africa.

In 1989, the World Bank, with its ‘accelerated growth”scenario in ashes, came with yet another document - Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth. [34] In it,for the first time, the WB introduced the concept of ‘goodgovernance’, a clear departure from its usual economistic

inclinations. After setting out for Africa what it called ‘Astrategic agenda for the 1990s’, which basically boiled downto measures of structural adjustments, the document went onto say:

None of these measures will go far, nor will much external aidbe forthcoming, unless governance in Africa improves. Leadersmust become more accountable to their peoples.

Transactions must become more transparent, and funds must

be seen to be properly administered, with audit reports madepublic and procurement procedures overhauled.[1]

The Report went on to suggest a ‘Global Coalition for Africa’(GCA). It would be a forum in which African leaders (not justfrom the public sector, but also from private business, theprofessions, the universities and other NGOs) could meet withtheir key partners - the bilateral and multilateral agencies andmajor foreign NGOs - to agree on general strategies that wouldthen provide broad guidance for the design of individualcountry programmes.[2] The Report called this ‘a new

international compact for Africa’.

That was 1990. Ten years down the line, the situation, if anything, has worsened. The Empire has increased its gripover Africa by a plethora of “conditionalities” that they nowattach to their money, and these have disempowered Africangovernments of practically all initiative. All this is within thedual framework of the Structural Adjustment Programme and‘good governance’. Under debt “relief” measures (such as theHeavily Indebted Poor Countries – HIPC), the “qualified”African countries have been practically recolonized with the

11



Empire micro-managing their economies, as in the case of Mozambique where the Government was forced to reducetariffs on cashew nuts imports from 20% to 14% thus bringinginstant ruin to the local peasant producers as well asprocessors. All this is done in the name of “adjustment”. [35]

In 1994, at Marrakesh, African governments signed theUruguay Treaty that has now replaced GATT. Very few African

leaders had read the document, let alone analysed it, beforesigning it. In a new thrust of reasserting imperial hegemony,Uruguay essentially seeks to level out the playing fields of trade, investment and intellectual property rights in order toclear the way for petty nationalistic obstacles that appear tobe standing in the way of the Transnationals. Whatever hadhitherto checked the onslaught of the TNCs in Africa are aboutto be cleared away, and Africa faces the grim prospect of losing national control over the little that they had built overthe last thirty years since most of them got politicalindependence. [36]

Such, indeed, are the “pitfalls of national consciousness”.

And the fourth predicament of the continent is that itsmainstream academia and theoreticians are conscious orunconscious ideological agents of the Empire. With the demiseof the Soviet Union and the virtual collapse of the socialistalternative, the African intellectual workers have only oneplace to go to get their professional degrees and academiclegitimacy – the universities of the Universal Empire, or local

ones linked to them. To gain legitimacy, and professionalrecognition and career development, they have to place theirintellectual works in journals and publications authenticatedby the “assessors” (called “peer reviewers”) of the Imperialacademia who act, often unwittingly than wittingly, asideological gateposts of the Empire. Some of theseintellectuals are then directly recruited in the institutions of global governance (principally, the World Bank, the IMF andthe WTO), and others return home and try to

make a living as best as they can, including periodic“consultancies” with the same institutions of globalgovernance, as a means of supplementing their meagerofficial

salaries. It is no wonder that African universities are dying!

Having said that it is necessary to add that they too are oftencaught up in the same kind of pitfalls as the politicalleadership. Frustrations of working within the framework of theEmpire, and persistent material poverty of their countries,often drive them to expressions of nationalism and anger atthe Empire, but as soon as they are pacified with biggersalaries or other accouterments of the Imperial regime, theyare back to square one.

III Struggle Beyond Neo-Liberalism – Struggle forUtopia

It should be obvious from the above that Africa has no chanceof redemption under the Capitalist Empire. So what optionsdoes Africa have? Indeed, what options do the barbarians of the Third and the Third-and-half have in the face of increasingcontrol of the Empire, paradoxically, at the very time when theEmpire is itself in a paroxysm of crisis? Perhaps it is not aparadox after all, for it may be precisely because the Empire isinternally in crisis, and in a moribund state (to use Toynbee’sexpression once again) that it needs to control and exploitwhatever resources remain in the lands of the barbarians.

Even as the barbarians are demanding a “fair share” of theglobal wealth and a levelling of the of the presently unfairplaying fields, the Empire, in order for it to survive, needs toappropriate larger and larger portion of this wealth in a highlyasymmetrical world that is getting increasingly asymmetrical.

Some analysts have argued from a moral standpoint, namely,that it is the over-consumption and the profligate life styles of the citizens of the Empire that is the real problem. And theremay be some merit in this argument. But a closer analysiswould indicate that the problem lies primarily not in over-

12



consumption but in over supply of commodities for whichthere is just not enough of a market in the Empire itself. Henceits need to capture all the market in the barbarian lands tooffload its excessive goods and excessive capital. In otherwords, the problem is overproduction of goods and capital andnot over-consumption. That is the reason that the moralargument against the Capitalist Empire has no effect on thelife-styles of its citizens. They are daily bombarded with

billboards and TV commercials to persuade them to consumemore and more, or else their economies would simply collapsefor lack of markets for their excessive production. Beyond itsown markets, the Empire needs the market of the barbarianseven more than the barbarians realize.

And it is not just market for goods. The Empire also needschannels to invest their excess capital. Much of this capital isnot even invested in productive activity; indeed very little of itis. Most of it, may be even 90 per cent of it, is invested inspeculative activities – such as in foreign exchange andinterest rate dealings. To use the old Marxist terminology, theM – C – M1 is now replaced by simply M-M1 (where M denotesmoney, C denotes Commodities, and M1 denotes money withprofits). In other words, present-day capitalist speculators donot even have to engage in commodity production in order tomake money. They can just make money to make moremoney. Eventually a big gap develops between a balloonedmoney economy that has no material basis in commodityproduction. In other words, profit making in the contemporaryphase of the Capitalist Empire has become substantially

“dematerialized”; it does not require material production. It isfor this reason that Capitalism goes through periodic crisesthat result in wiping out billions of dollars from the stockexchange in a partial readjustment of money values tomaterial values. But the problem is never resolved, and withina few years there is yet another crisis, deeper than before. There is now a qualitative change in how the Empire’sideologists see the situation. After the Asian currency crisis of 1997/98, the worried ideologists of the Empire were talkingnot just about “blips” in the economy, but problems with thevery “architecture” of the global financial system.

In a short essay it is not possible to prolong this discussion togreater depth. And so it is necessary to raise the nextquestion: Will the capitalist Empire collapse through its owninternal contradictions?

Some people think that it would. Within the Marxistscholarship, there is a long tradition of thinkers who haveargued that the Capitalist system is dashing headlong to its

own final denouement. In a much discussed recent work, thehistorian Robert Brenner has argued that competition formarkets is inherently destructive for capitalism and willultimately result in its collapse.

In this view, the fall in aggregate profitability that wasresponsible for the long downturn was the result … of theover-capacity and over-production which resulted fromintensified, horizontal inter-capitalist competition. Theintensification of inter-capitalist competition was itself themanifestation of the introduction of lower-cost, lover pricegoods into the world market, especially in manufacturing,at the expense of already existing higher-cost, higher priceproducers, their profitability and their productive capacity.[37]

Critics of Brenner have argued that he has underplayed therole of class struggle, and overplayed the forces of “horizontalinter-capitalist competition”, as causes of crisis within theCapitalist system; that, indeed, the declining rate of profit is asmuch a product of the struggles of the working classes to

secure a fairer share of their labour as it is of competitionbetween the oligopolies. Critics have also argued that Brennerhas not adequately analysed the problem from the perspectiveof Marx’s theory of value, and that he might be a latter dayAdam Smith or a Ricardo rather than a Marxist. [38]

Whatever the merits of the debate, the inevitable demise of capitalism is not an either/or situation. All Empires eventuallydie. Capitalism will come to its denouement both as a result of contradictions within itself, and because of class struggle,

13



because in any case, they cannot be separated one from theother; they are part of the same process.

The question, however, is can we wait for the internalcontradictions of capitalism to dissolve the Capitalist Empire?Can something be done whilst we live under the control of theEmpire?

E Struggles Within And Against The Neo-Liberal Empire– Struggles Against Distopia

Whether socialist, or any other, utopia will come is anybody’sguess. How near or far we are to the end of Capitalist Historyand to the beginning of a new one nobody knows. In themeantime, the struggles of the barbarian peoples for liberationand that of nations for self-determination will go on. Thestruggle against the present Capitalist distopia will continue toreach higher levels of collective consciousness and action.

Africa’s destiny in this respect is bound with the rest of theglobal barbarian community, so it is necessary to deal withthis issue at this general level first, and ask the following threequestions.

• One, can the barbarian states challenge the Empire?• Two, can the barbarian workers and “civil societies”

challenge the global system as well as democratizetheir states?

• Three, can the barbarian states unite in a common frontagainst the Empire?

For reasons of brevity, and because the three questions areconnected in any case, the following provides an attempt toanswer them in an integrated manner. What we have learnt inthe last fifty years is that on their own, that is, withoutpressure from their own oppressed peoples, those who governthe barbarian states cannot challenge the fundamentals of theImperial order. Why? Because their objective role, given theconfiguration of political and social forces nationally andglobally, is to try to “integrate” their countries in the globaleconomy, and try to gain for themselves as big a share of the

global wealth as they can bargain out of the Empire. This istrue whether it is Mexico we are talking about, or India, orMalaysia or Zimbabwe. There are, of course, differencesbetween one barbarian state and another, depending oninternal configuration of class forces, specificities of theirhistory, and cultural and religious factors. Therefore, somebarbarian states may be more opposed to the Empire thanothers in particular conjunctures – Arab states, for example,

when Palestine is brutalized by Israel, which is a bit of theEmpire in their geographic midst.

On the other hand, the last fifty years have also shown thatwhat the Empire means by “integration” in the global systemis very different from what the governing elites in thebarbarian states mean. For the latter, it means a little morepolitical and economic space for them to control and own their“national” economies so that they, too, can prosper like theirimperial masters. But for the Empire, “integration” meansdoing away with national markets and national sovereignties. The Empire has no patience with petty nationalisms of barbarian elites. At the same time, the ordinary peoples in thecountries of the South are also becoming impatient with theircontinuing impoverishment and disempowerment. Thebottom-up pressure on the governing elites of the barbarianstates is intensifying.

We therefore have a paradoxical situation. The Empire seeksto reach out to the oppressed peoples directly through the so-called Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to try to

persuade them that their best course is to support the processof liberalization and globalization -- one, because theirgovernments are corrupt, and two, because their nationalcompanies are likely to be more oppressive of the workersthan transnational corporations (the TNCs, for example, canpay higher wages than local companies that often engage insweat labour), and more destructive of the environment thanthe TNCs. On the other hand, the national elites of thebarbarian states appeal to the sense of “nationalism’’ of theirworkers and NGOs to try to persuade them that only in thecontext of expanding national economies there is any chance

for the ordinary people to secure the protection of their life14



and liberties, even if, in the short run, the conditions of workmay involve sweat labour and inefficient use of theenvironment and natural resources.

At the present moment, it seems that, on balance, it is theforces of nationalism that are winning the battle for the mindsof the ordinary people of the South. Why? Because the TNCsare not accountable to the people; they could be here today

and gone tomorrow; and because they do not have theinterests of the welfare of the people at heart, focused as theyare with making profits. Thus, for example, they must makeprofits out of selling retroviral drugs against HIV/AIDs in SouthAfrica (and other countries in the South) to recover, as theysay, their R&D costs, whereas for the governments of thesecountries it is necessary to save lives than protect the profitsof the TNCs. Similarly, for the TNCs it is important to breakdown the tariff walls in the barbarian states and flood theirmarkets with goods on the grounds, they argue, that this isbest for the consumers in these countries, and will get rid of the “inefficient” enterprises that earn “rents” out of “protected” markets. But this argument, too, is not winningthe minds of the people. Why? Because the removal of tariff walls and other forms of protection kills national industry,especially if “shock therapies” advocated by “developmentexperts” of the World Bank and the IMF are adopted, andbecause the TNCs that take the place of dead nationalenterprises cannot make good the losses in jobs and socialsecurity that the death of local industry entails.

These paradoxes are daily played out in the debates that areraging in, especially, the World Trade Organisation (WTO).Debates around asymmetries of the trading system, the needfor “special and differential” treatment for the “developing”countries and the LDCs, the argument for introducing labourand environmental standards in the international trade regimeand a system to monitor and enforce these standards, theargument about the protection of intellectual property under Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), the debateon the question of whether or not to open up “governmentprocurement” in the countries in the South to international

competition, the argument about the “corruption” of the ruling

elites of “third world” states – all these debates center aroundthe question of who, ultimately, should be responsible for thegrowth of the economies in the barbarian states, theglobalized TNCs or “national” enterprises?

t is clear that we face a very complex situation, for thechallenges to all concerned are fraught. Should the elites inthe barbarian states open up their territories to transnational

capital, in the manner, for example, that Uganda appears tohave done over the last decade, or should they try the morenationalist road to development along the lines of, forexample, Malaysia? Should “civil societies” in these countrieswelcome TNCs and support the “global compact” proposed bythe Secretary-General of the UN so that the TNCs can bemonitored by the NGOs to see if they conform to labour,environmental and human rights standards? Or should theyseek to protect their national enterprises against competitionfrom the TNCs, and hope they would observe these standardswhilst also providing jobs and fair wages? Should the workersin the South welcome foreign capital and foreign TNCsbecause they are likely to pay them higher wages than localcompanies, or should they continue to support “inefficient”local companies because they are likely to provide more jobs(even if they are at lower wages) than the TNCs, and alsobecause they are likely to be more answerable to nationalconcerns than the TNCs? Should the “civil societies” in thebarbarian countries invite the Empire to take action againsttheir dictatorial regimes in order to open space for democracyalong the lines, for example, that the opposition party inZimbabwe (the Movement for Democratic Change) proposes,or should they seek to democratize the state without theinterference of the Empire?

The point about raising these issues is that they have to befaced in a concrete manner and on a daily basis. Waiting forthe socialist utopia, or waiting for the capitalist law of value(based on profits) to give way to a socialist, or any other, lawof value (based, for example, on the worth of the individual) isnot going to get rid of these challenges. History is written byhistorians after the fact, but it is made by those involved in

daily struggle at the concrete level.15



Conclusion: Which road ahead for Africa?

As we move along the new millennium, the road ahead forkstwo ways. One road indicates the “neo-liberal route”, andthose guiding Africa in that direction, both from within Africaand from the “experts” from the Empire, argue that makingAfrica “competitive” in the global market is its only salvation. To this end, they argue, Africa must open up to global capital

(not necessarily on a “fast track” but in a “phased” and“sequential” steps) so that Africa acquires the necessarytechnology and skills to diversify their exports and to capture“niche” markets in the global market place, and thus developtheir economies.

This writer is of the view that Africa is not in a position tocompete in the global arena in the manner suggested by theneo-liberal strategists because the dice is too loaded againstit. The experience of the last fifty years has shown that insteadof increasing its share in the growing wealth of the world,Africa is getting less and less of it. And the reason for this isnot far to seek. It has to do with the centralizing forces of Capitalism whose inherent tendency is to concentrate wealthand power in the Empire at the cost of the welfare andlivelihoods of the barbarians. Even such Asian countries asSouth Korea and Thailand that only yesterday were held as“models” of the neo-liberal strategy are today groaning underthe effects of the 1997/98 crisis. It was not just a “currencycrisis” as described by neo-liberal economists. The seemingcrisis was part of the movement of centralization of capital,

and the Empire’s action to take control of the markets thatwere in the hands of the barbarians. Today, the Korean and Thai economies are increasingly getting in the control of TNCsand transnational capital. The efforts, especially those of thepeople of Korea, to build strong national economies since theend of the Korean war, have been negated in a matter of acouple of years. This is a pointer, if one was needed at theempirical level, that the Empire cannot brook the emergenceof “national” economies amongst the barbarian communities,why? because that would be the beginning of the end of theEmpire.

Therefore, it is argued in this paper, the route for thebarbarians is to struggle against the centralizing tendencies of the Empire, and to develop as much of a national economy asis practical under circumstances of daily struggles asdescribed earlier. The debate about whether this constitutes“autarchy” or not is a red herring; it must not be allowed todetract the daily struggles of barbarian communities to securepolitical and economic space outside of the control and

dictation of the Empire. It must be recognized, at the sametime, that these struggles against the might and power of theEmpire are almost impossible to wage as fragmented nationalstruggles. They can succeed only if the barbarians unite in acommon struggle. There are likely to be many contradictionsin trying to unite into a common struggle, and for manyreasons. Some of these are given above, for example, inquoting Fanon on the “pitfalls of national consciousness”, ordifferences amongst the barbarians on the question of whether it is better to invite TNCs to protect labour standardsand the environment in the barbarian economies or to pursue

the national line. This paper is aimed at trying to build aconsensus that handing over the control of whatever is left of national resources and patrimony over to the agents of theEmpire is not the way to go.

In conclusion, finally, a word about the Sirte initiative totransform the Organisation of African Unity into an AfricanUnion. One must recall that every past effort by Africa to seekthe road to self-reliance has met with strong opposition fromthe Empire. On every occasion the Empire succeeded, throughusing carrots and stick, to win back the political leadership of Africa back on to the neo-liberal track. The Sirte initiative, judging from past experience, is going to face the oppositionof powerful forces from the Empire that has its own agents inAfrica. The challenge is to stay united, this time, and notcrumble under pressure from the Empire. It is a challenge thatgovernments in Africa can face only if the ordinary people aremobilized to make effective the realization of the unity of Africa. Governments alone cannot do it.

16



__________________________________

World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to SustainableGrowth, A Long Term Perspective, 1989, p. 15Ibid, p. 194 __________________________________

[1] These are mainly professional economists employed by the

Bretton Woods institutions and the Universities that servethem.

[2] Collier & Gunning, 1997, p.18.

[3] UNDP Human Development Report, 1996, p.2

[4] . S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and theRemaking of World Order , New York, Simon & Schuster,1996.

[5] A. Toynbee, A Study of History , 10 Volumes, Royal Instituteof International Affairs and Oxford University Press, 1955

[6] Dani W. Nabudere, “Globalzation, the African Post-colonialState, Post-traditionalism and the New World Order inNabudere (ed.),Globalization and the Post-Colonial AfricanState, AAPS Books, 2000, p. 52

[7] This refers to the incident in the year 2000 when 58 peopleof Chinese decent were found frozen to death in a

refrigerator truck in England. See also “The west wants thefree movement of capital, but not of labour. It is illogicaland immoral”, Special report: refugees in Britain, by Gary Younge, The Guardian March 19, 2001

[8] See R.H.Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,Penguin, 1973

[9] The colonial conquest of Africa was the quintessence of Europe extending its empire to conquer the barbarianswho were deemed not to be part of the “civilized world”.

The lands of the barbarians were regarded as “terranullius”, and the people who lived off these lands and theresources above and below them were deemed not topossess any “property rights”. Property was as defined bythe Empire, and imposed on the barbarians.

[10] Alejandro Bendana, Power Lines: US Domination in theNew Global Order , 1996

[11] It is an observed fact that when two dogs bark at aperceived threat, the smaller one barks the louder.

[12] See John Scott, Corporations, Classes and Capitalism,Hutchinson, 1985, ch.4: “Finance Capital in America andBritain”.

[13] See Walden Bello, People and Power in the Pacific:Struggle for the Post Cold War Order , Pluto, 1992

[14] Super 301 are provisions in the US Omnibus Trade Actsthat empower the US state to impose unilateral sanctionson countries that are perceived to have committed unfairtrade practices against US commercial interests.

[15] See Bettleheim,

[16] Boris Kagarlitsky,New realism New Barbarism: Socialist Theory in the era of Globalization, Pluto, 1999.

[17] Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Abridgements of Volumes VII – X, OUP for RIIA, 1957, p.22

[18] Ibid, p.11

[19] Ibid, p.11

[20] See R.N. Gardner, The Sterling Dollar Diplomacy , New York, McGraw Hill, 1969

17



[21] However, see Y. Tandon, “The Keynesian State & itsLimitations”. Paper presented at Conference organised bythe Focus on Global South, Bangkok, October 2000.

[22] Free market ideologists, like those who work for the BWIsand who teach an abstract subject (non-subject) called“Economics” in Western and Western-oriented universities,may know that the free market does not exist, but they

argue that it should exist. Those who know that a freemarket cannot ever exist but still peddle the idea that itshould exist are deliberate agents of deception; those whobelieve, as a matter of blind faith, that “one day” freemarket will come, sadly for them, they chase a pureillusion, a fantasy. Well-known and respected academics,like Jagdish Bhagawati who is a good friend of the author,fall into the second category.

[23] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: Political and Economic Origins of our Time, Boston: Beacon Press, 1944

[24] See Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery ,Hutchinson. 1959

[25] See Joseph Stiglitz, “What I learned at the world economiccrisis”, The Insider, The New Republic, 17 April, 2000

[26] As a testimony to the continuing relevance of Fanon,President Thabo Mbeki quoted Fanon at length in hisspeech to the NIEP Second Oliver Tambo Lecture in

Johannesburg on 11 August, 2000.

[27] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press,Inc, 1963

[28] African intellectuals like Samir Amin had to take pains toexplain to his detractors that when he talks about“delinking” he does not mean “autarchy”.

[29] Thandika Mkandawire & Charles C. Soludo, AfricanPerspectives on Structural Adjustment: Our Continent, Our Future, CODESRIA, 1999, pp. 138-9

[30] Bade Onimode, A Future for Africa: Beyond the Politics of Adjustment, Earthscan, 1992, p.54

[31] World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan

Africa: An Agenda for Action, Washington, 1981

[32] For what still remains the best critique of the Berg Report,see Samir Amin, “A Critique of the World Bank Report entitled ‘Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa,’ “, Africa Development, Dakar, Volume VII (1982)

[33] See UNCTAD, Handbook of International Trade and Development Statistics, 1993.

[34] World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis toSustainable Growth, A Long Term Perspective, 1989

[35] See Joseph Hanlon, "Power Without Responsibility: theWorld Bank and Mozambican Cashew Nuts," the Review of African Political Economy, # 83, March 2000

[36] For a critique of Uruguay in relation to Africa, see: Y. Tandon, “Recolonizing the Subject Peoples’” Alternatives19 (1994) pp. 173-183.

[37] Robert Brenner, “The Economics of Global Turbulence”,New Left Review, 229, 1998, pp 8-9

[38] The entire issue of Historical Materialism, Vol 5, Winter1999, was devoted to analyzing and critiquing Brenner,such is the importance of this work in opening afreshissues that have remained dormant ever since the end of the cold war.

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19

the moribund empire and african barbarians

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