The violent rise of capital (part 2)
A short history of the end of history.
Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on earth to rule all of humanity.
— Thomas Sankara
The horrors of colonialism
As we established at the end of our first essay, the European exploration of the Americas was not motivated by vague notions of curiosity or divine adventure, but, rather, had the forceful accumulation of resources, cheap labor, and capital as its main driver. It was a direct response to the peasant revolts and the strengthening of the European proletariat, aimed at finding a ‘fix,’ i.e. resources and new markets, to capitalism’s emerging shortcomings.
In part one of this essay series, we spanned the narrative from pre-historic societies to the birth of capitalism, discussing the European peasant revolts (the ‘golden age of the European proletariat’), feudalism, the rise of private property, and the lasting rule of the Western bourgeoisie:
Volumes were written on the devastation and unimaginable crimes European colonialists and slavers unleashed upon the world. Millions of people were either murdered outright or died through more indirect means such as sickness or prohibition of access to ancestral hunting, farming, and foraging grounds. Entire peoples and tribes were wiped out, many more were forced to flee their homes. Countless Africans were enslaved or otherwise exploited, forced to work under inhumane conditions. Ecosystems were destroyed, resources and raw materials violently extracted, forests, lands, lakes, and rivers poisoned and rendered lifeless.
There is no monetary value that can be assigned to these lasting blights on humanity; no debt large enough to cover the generational misery Europeans have caused in the Americas, Africa, and large parts of Asia to enrich themselves and enable their lavish lifestyles — provided any reparations were ever to be paid.
While the terrors perpetrated by the Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, and, later, Americans are relatively well-documented, lesser-known atrocities, such as those committed by the Belgians in the Congo, are still being investigated and processed. Others may remain hidden in the wrinkles of history forever.
Lives for rubber: Belgians in the Congo
From 1885 to 1908, Belgium, under the absolute rule of King Leopold II, tore apart the Congo to extract natural rubber which was then exported across the globe at staggering profit margins. Almost the entire Congolese territory of around 2.6 million square kilometers was put (or better: taken) under Leopold’s crown or, else, distributed to private Belgian companies. The indigenous populations lost their lands, livelihoods, and, eventually, human dignity.
Well into the 20th century, millions remained subjected to forced labor — effectively enslavement — and were forced to live under inhumane conditions. In what is a well-documented historical fact, Belgian colonialists used to cut off the hands of workers who were unable to meet certain quotas.1 A civilizing influence, indeed.
While it is difficult to estimate how many Africans were (directly or indirectly) murdered by the Belgians (most mass murders and genocides were swept under the rug), most historians place the figure at somewhere between ten to fifteen million lives.2 In 2020, more than a century after the fact, King Philippe of Belgium formally ‘expressed his regrets’ to the Congolese people. No reparations for the stolen resources, the forests and rivers poisoned, and the lives destroyed were ever paid.
The Belgian rule of the Congo, however grueling and disturbing, constitutes merely one example in a never-ending list of capitalist crimes, highlighting the inevitable alliance and synergy between capitalism and imperial fascism. The one necessitates the other. But what was the point of it all?
White supremacy and the unpayable debt
It is safe to assert that industrialized Western nations owe large parts of their wealth and prosperity — their military and industrial power, global corporations, developed social security systems, infrastructure, enormous levels of consumption, life expectancies, and healthcare systems — to the centuries of relentless exploitation in other parts of the world. The deliberate impoverishment of the Global South persists to this day (we will talk more about this in an upcoming essay) and has in no way diminished in neither its scope and aggressiveness nor its fatal consequences. It has merely taken on more ‘digestible’ forms such as neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism, making it easier for Western democracies to put a veil around their crimes.
While we often assume that the European Industrial Revolution occurred as a result of scientific advancements and ingenuity, it was colonization that provided the raw materials, resources, and cheap labor that enabled it. While commoners and peasants ‘at home’ in Europe were constantly revolting and demanding higher wages and better working conditions, the peoples of the Global South were free to exploit at will.
This circumstance was aided by the necessary ideological conviction of the supremacy of the ‘white man.’ By branding indigenous Americans and Africans as ‘sub-human’ (a belief promoted by the state and the Church), their lifestyles as primitive and savage, and their beliefs as heretical, Europeans effectively absolved themselves of the atrocities they committed. After all, they had brought civilization, order, the ‘right’ religion, and the comforts of modern life to these violent primitives — racism and white supremacy are our civilizational pillars.
Western hegemony
When the Americas and Africa were no longer sufficient, Western powers turned to new pastures. As is often the case, capitalism found a much-needed 'fix' for its shortcomings. China and India, among others, ‘were chosen’ to further increase Western capital accumulation and sustain inherently unsustainable economic growth. The British, to name a prominent case, exploited the Indian subcontinent to finance their increasing industrialization and a new welfare system, established in the late 19th century to address the rampant discontent and social insecurity of the general British populace.3
At the turn of the 20th century, more than half of Britain’s domestic budget was funded by colonial expropriation in India and its other colonies.4 India's share of the world economy declined from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950, its share of global industrial output falling from 25% in 1750 to 2% in 1900.5 China shares a similar story, with Western interventions and invasions systematically undermining its economic and political might and independence.
The exploitation and military oppression of the two previously dominant economic and cultural powers (see graph below) thus enabled the capitalist West's rise and lasting rule. The economic proliferation of Western Europe and, later, the United States, was enabled by the deliberate impoverishment of other parts of the world and the elimination of all competing systems. In recent decades, China and India have only been able to reestablish themselves as global superpowers by imitating (to a degree, in China’s case) capitalist methods and abandoning their traditional ways of life. The following self-made graph illustrates the sheer scale and efficiency of the West’s ascension:6
Deliberate starvation: The British in India
The Bengal famine of 1943 in ‘British India’ serves as a reminder of the lengths capitalist forces will go to in order to fulfill their insatiable need for resources. In what was one of the most horrific atrocities to occur under British colonial rule (and, honestly, there are a lot to choose from), likely more than three million Indians died of starvation and malnutrition — more than the total number of civilian and military casualties suffered by Britain and the US combined during World War II.7
For many years, droughts and weather conditions were blamed (a theory promoted by British propaganda). Today, however, most researchers and historians agree that the Bengal famine was a result of deliberate British policy, headed by Winston Churchill and advised by the well-known economist John Maynard Keynes.8
Here is how they did it:
The British artificially raised inflation to the point where food and other basic resources became unaffordable to a large part of the Indian populace, who, at this point, had already suffered nearly two centuries of British exploitation. This artificial price increase allowed the British to avoid any forms of direct taxation or appropriation, which would likely have resulted in riots and resistance.
The same resources and food supplies, now available in much greater quantities, were then diverted away from India to support British and American troops fighting in the war. While millions were starving, British merchants happily transported many tons of Indian food stocks to Western shores. White people's lives were deemed more valuable than Indian ones.
The end of freedom; one system to rule them all
It is important to emphasize how enclosure, colonialism, and slavery were (and are) not separate processes; they work hand in hand. By gaining access to cheap resources and labor, nobles and merchants were able to accumulate the capital required for the large-scale extraction that fueled the Industrial Revolution and the West’s subjugation of the Global South.
Disenfranchised domestic peasants and commoners, driven off their lands and forced to migrate to cities and work for wages, provided the necessary base of consumers to which the end products of the capitalist machinery could be sold. They hardly had a choice; by robbing them of the ability to feed and provide for themselves, the new proletariat became wholly reliant on the capitalists for food, clothes, housing, and all other necessities of life. All escape routes were cut off as the system came full circle. You either lived on their terms and laws or you starved. This is where we find ourselves today.
While romanticizing the simple agrarian lifestyles of European farmers and peasants before the Industrial Revolution, or indigenous peoples around the globe prior to the arrival of Western powers on their shores, can be tempting, it is important to remember that many of those people led harsh, brutal, and rather short lives. But, as David Graeber and David Wengrow demonstrate, many other indigenous and ‘pre-historic’ peoples did, indeed, live rather comfortable lives, working three or four hours a day and spending the rest of the day socializing and resting.9 Most importantly, there was no single way of life and no single dominating system. People lived and died under various social and political arrangements, some very hierarchical, others egalitarian and what we would consider Utopian. And always there was the option and freedom to just… walk away and seek other arrangements. That is not the case anymore.
Either way, there can be no excuse for the scale and cruelty of Western conquest and forced assimilation. There was no honest exchange of ideas, values, resources, or technologies; only violent exertion of power. Who knows what the diverse and culturally rich peoples of the Americas, Africa, or Australia could have taught their Western counterparts? Who knows how much knowledge, passed down for generations, was lost forever?
We tend to judge civilizations by metrics such as technological advancement, material comfort, or the extent to which they have bent their environments to their will. The often-encountered indigenous lifestyle of harmonious coexistence with nature and community-based cooperation did not fit the Western worldview, which regarded nature as something to be overpowered and dominated. There was undoubtedly a great deal of hardship in pre-industrial European and indigenous communities; there was violence, war, conquest, and disease. It was Europeans, however, who promoted those plagues to industrial levels and forcefully exported them around the globe, culminating in world wars and holocausts hitherto unimaginable in their levels of destruction, dehumanization, and loss of life.
Rather than celebrating diversity in culture, ideology, and beliefs, we ended up with the most uniform and single-minded society in history. All apparency of freedom — the freedom to live life as one chooses, the freedom to build different kinds of societies, the freedom to abandon capitalism — has been taken from us.
In most countries, there exists not a single square meter of land that is not ‘owned’ by some individual or corporation. Anti-capitalists are often met with the statement ‘If you hate capitalism so much, then just go live in the woods.’ The utter ignorance exhibited by such statements aside, ‘just leaving and going to live in the woods’ is a rather sure way of contributing to the immense prison populations of many Western nations.
Our freedom and self-determination have all but vanished; ghosts of the past, replaced by 9-to-5 jobs and mindless consumerism — with dramatic mental and, ultimately, physical consequences. There can be no freedom while not all are free. A freedom that is defined by its compliance with capitalism is no freedom at all. Today, not a single person on this planet is truly free.
As Billy Bragg put it in the English version of The Internationale:
‘Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.’
I’m author, writer, and activist Antonio Melonio, the creator of Beneath the Pavement. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack or over on Patreon. It’s the best way to support Beneath the Pavement and help me put out more and higher-quality content.
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See for example: Mwambonu, D. (2021, January 4). How Belgium chopped off hands and arms, and killed over 15 million in Africa. United States of Africa. https://usafrikagov.com/how-belgium-chopped-off-hands-and-arms-and-killed-over-15-million-in-africa
Vanthemsche, G. (2018). Belgium and the Congo, 1885–1980 (Reprint). Cambridge University Press.
Bhambra, G. K. (2022). Relations of Extraction, Relations of Redistribution: Empire, Nation, and the Construction of the British Welfare State. The British Journal of Sociology, 73(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12896
Chakrabarti, S., & Patnaik, U. (2019). Agrarian and Other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri. Adfo Books;
Hickel, J. (2021). Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Windmill Books.
Williamson, J. G., & Clingingsmith, D. (2005). India’s Deindustrialization in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Harvard University. https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/orourkek/Istanbul/JGWGEHNIndianDeind.pdf
Maddison, A. (2007b). Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. Oxford University Press.
Most estimates range from 2.1 to 3.8 million. See for example: Maharatna, A. (1996). The Demography of Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press;
Ó Gráda, C. (2007). Making Famine History. Journal of Economic Literature, 45(1), 5–38. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.45.1.5
How British colonizers caused the Bengal famine. (2022, March 12). New Internationalist. https://newint.org/features/2021/12/07/feature-how-british-colonizers-caused-bengal-famine
Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021b). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (First Edition). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.