Day 110: Evilution - Neocolonialism

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 98: The Unholy Trinity
Day 99: Money Votes
Day 102: Liberalism
Day 103: Abstract Equality
Day 104: We have to Protect our Freedom!
Day 105: Human Liberties
Day 106: Structural Adjustment
Day 107: Getting Reality to conform to an Illusion
Day 108: Virtual Democracies
Day 109: Politics as a Double-Faced Game

Let’s have a look at why many countries who are under Structural Adjustment Programs, came to turn to international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank.

Most of these Third World Countries had been previously colonised by the West.
During this time, the colonised countries’ existence was only relevant to the Colonising country in so far that it could use it for resource extraction or trade benefits. During the colonial rule, a lot of changes took place in terms of the colonies’ infrastructures. Infrastructures were built in relation to the country’s function, and like we just mentioned, this function was to serve the colonising country.

So any and all infrastructures built in these countries, were built to direct the flow of resources towards the West. Most of the time, these infrastructures were focused on only a few goods, like cocoa, tobacco, coffee.

So what happened after independence?

During the colonial rule, all these countries were submerged into the international economic/money system – they were now part of the game. When the colonial rulers left, they had no choice but to continue playing the game – the ties were already too much ingrained. So now they had to come up with a plan to be able to continue to play the game. Unfortunately, the only infrastructures in place in these countries in terms of international trade, were those to serve the West. So even though the colonial rulers left – these colonised countries still continued to play the exact same role after colonisation. Considering that there were many of these countries, and many of them focused/specialised on the same goods/crops – they were now competing with each other to get their goods sold to the West, which forced them to lower their prices as much as possible just to get their stuff sold.

Previously during the colonial rule, the occupiers would finance much of the country’s development that would further trade. Now that they had left, these third world countries were left with nothing. The only thing they could do to ‘kickstart’ their economies = was to borrow money.

Every since then, many of these countries went into Debt and have so far not been able to repay it.

The loans they get now, are conditional as seen in Day 98 and Day 106 – where not only these countries are at the mercy of the West economically – but now also have to conform politically. So in essence, nothing has really changed. Just through money, a new form of ‘indirect’ colonialism replaced the older ‘direct’ colonialism – but countries are still being exploited.

Look at it simplistically:

The West comes and colonises Third World Countries. They take their resource and built stuff which only serves the West. Then they go away and leave the Third World Countries alone, and let them plunge into massive Debt just for the sake of survival. But the only reason why they had to go into Debt, was because of the actions of the West.

I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense!

We call ourselves ‘civilised’ and ‘evolved’ – but we’ve really not changed at all, we’ve just gotten better at covering up what we do and make it sound more acceptable – while it is totally NOT.