Did the Rich World Become Rich Using Colonization and Exploitation of the Poor: A Critical Assessment of Theory and Empirical Evidence
Introduction
The rich world tries to forget that the causes of underdevelopment and poverty were slavery, colonization, brutal exploitation and plunder, which for centuries were subjected to different countries. The poverty from which people suffer is associated with the imaginary inability of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans and Caribbean, i.e., blacks, Indians, yellows and mestizos, develop, and even manage their own countries The current economic order, imposed by rich countries, is not only cruel unjust, inhuman, contrary to the inevitable course of history, but also an expression of racist ideology, which once inspired the Nazis in Europe, with its mass extermination and concentration camps, which are now in the third world is called the refugee camps and that in fact concentrated poverty , hunger and violence; the same racist concepts that in Africa inspired the monstrous system of apartheid (Reinert Erik, 2008, p. 94)
Can there be a society without social inequality? Apparently, to answer the question, it is necessary to understand the causes of people’s unequal position in society. In sociology there is no single universal explanation of this phenomenon. Various scientific and methodological Schools interpret it differently. The most interesting, noteworthy approaches will be considered below.
Functionalism explains inequality based on the differentiation of social functions performed by different layers, classes and communities. Functioning and the development of society are possible only through the division of labor, where each social group carries out the relevant decision of vital importance to the whole integrity of the tasks: one involved in the production of material goods, others create spiritual values, the third run, and so on. For the normal life of society the optimal combination of all human activities is important. Some of them are more important, other – less. Thus, based on the hierarchy of social functions the corresponding hierarchy of classes, strata to fulfill them, is developed. At the top of the social ladder those responsible for general management and administration of the country, for only they can support and ensure social cohesion, create the necessary conditions for the successful implementation of other functions, are always put.
Explanation of social inequality by principle of functional utility carries a serious risk of the subjectivist interpretation. Indeed, why this or that function is regarded as more significant if society as a whole organism cannot exist without functional diversity. This approach does not explain such realities as recognition for its individual belonging to a higher stratum in the absence of its direct involvement in management. That is why T. Parsons, considering the social hierarchy as a necessary factor ensuring the viability of the social system, connects it with the system configuration of prevailing values in society. In his understanding the location of the social classes in the hierarchy is determined by the formed in society ideas about the importance of each of them (Giddens Anthony, 2009, p. 397).
Monitor of the actions and behavior of specific individuals gave impetus to the development of an explanation of the status of social inequality. Every person occupying a certain place in society and acquires its status. Social inequality is the inequality of status, as follows both from the ability of individuals to perform a social role (for example, to be competent to manage, possess appropriate knowledge and skills to be a doctor, a lawyer, and so on) and the possibilities, which enable a person to achieve a particular position in society (own property, capital, origin, belonging to the influential political forces).
In accordance with the economic point of view the root cause of social inequality lies in the unequal relation to the property, the distribution of wealth. Most vividly this approach manifested in Marxism. In its version, it is the emergence of private property led to the social stratification of society, the formation of antagonistic classes. Exaggeration of the role of private property in the social stratification of society led Marx and his followers to the conclusion to eliminate social inequalities by establishing public ownership of the means of production (Parenti Michael, 1995).
The lack of a unified approach to the explanation of the origins of social inequality due to the fact that it is always perceived by at least two levels. Firstly, as a property of society. Written history does not know society without social inequality. The struggle of people, parties, groups and classes is a struggle for the possession of great social opportunities, benefits and privileges. If inequality is an inherent property of the society, therefore, it has a positive functional load. Society reproduces inequality, because it needs as a source of livelihood development.
Second, the inequality is always perceived as unequal relations between people, groups. Therefore, it becomes a natural desire to find the origins of the unequal position of the peculiarities of the individual in society: in the possession of the property, power, and personal qualities of the individual. This approach is now widespread.
Inequality has many faces and is manifested in the various parts of a single social organism: in the family, institutions, enterprises and small and large social groups. It is a prerequisite for the organization of social life. Parents, having the advantage of experience, skills, available funds compared with their young children have the opportunity to influence the latter, facilitating their socialization. Operation of any enterprise is based on the division of labor in the management and subordinates-performing. The emergence of a team leader helps its cohesion, becoming a stable formation, but at the same time accompanied by the granting of special rights leader.
Economic Growth
Economic growth is the increase in national output of goods and services for a certain period of time. The easiest indicator is GDP. So when people talk about economic growth, it is generally about the increase in real GDP or real GDP per capita for a certain period of time. Economic growth depends on several factors. Factors of economic growth are those phenomena and processes that determine the possibility of an increase in real output, efficiency and quality of growth. By the method of impact on economic growth direct and indirect factors are distinguished. Direct factors are those directly determine the physical capacity for economic growth. Indirect factors affect the possibility of converting this ability into reality. Direct factors include directly determine the dynamics of aggregate output and demand, namely increase the number and improve the quality of human resources; growth and improvement of the qualitative composition of the equity capital; improvements in technology and organization of production; increase the quantity and quality involved in the commercialization of resources; and the growth of entrepreneurial skills in the community (Sachs Jeffery, 2006, p. 213).
The structure includes indirect factors of supply and distribution, namely reduction in the degree of monopolization of markets; decrease in prices of inputs; reduction of income taxes; and expanding access to credit. If the use of indirect factors is in reverse order (increasing monopolization, rising taxes, etc.), economic growth will be restrained.
Economic growth is at the expense of investment in production. It should be noted an important feature of investment: in the time of its implementation it increases aggregate demand, and in subsequent periods – the total supply, as it increases the amount of production capacity.
The level required to meet basic needs varies depending on the time and society. Therefore, the poverty line varies in time and from country to country, and each state defines the poverty line corresponding to its level of development, societal norms and values. It is quite possible that the poor, such as in Greece, live pretty well according to the standards of any country in transition. Poor countries in transition may be a good idea to live compared with, for example, with poor people of Ethiopia.
Exploitation of Poor Countries
Developed countries led by the US have set such high tariffs on exports from poor countries that these tariffs, such as food, almost 5 times higher than producer prices (Felipe Jesus, Kumar Ustav and Abdo, Arnelyn, 2010). That is only one-fifth of the purchase price back to poor countries, and 4/5 settles in the already rich countries. The growth in world prices of industrial goods in developed countries is ahead of rising prices for raw materials and agricultural products in poor countries each year by 3.4%. This is neo-colonialism, i.e. the exploitation of poor countries by rich is not due to the direct occupation, and due to the global economic levers. In fact, in the world there are “two of humanity” separated by durable and impenetrable border, guarded by the global economic mechanism.
Today, the state of the three richest entrepreneurs of the world is equal to the total GDP of the 48 poorest countries in which 826 million people are starving. 2.4 billion people live in extreme poverty without access to medicines. Illiterate adults account for 854 million, 11 million of children under the age of 5 die each year from malnutrition and lack of medicine, 250 million children work for a few cents per hour and 1 billion works for a dollar a day.
This process of exploitation of the poor countries by rich is only a natural limit: the limitations of the total natural resources of the planet, when it can no longer sustain itself on such wasteful civilization. But international conspiracy is preparing to re-division of the remaining resources and to reduce the world’s population to a necessary minimum.
Rich and Poor Countries
The vast majority of Third World societies located in regions emerging from colonial rule – in Asia, Africa and South America. Units remain colonies (e.g., Hong Kong remained a British colony until 1997, and then transferred to the management of China). Several colonies gained independence early, so, for example, Haiti became the first black autonomous republic in January 1804. Spanish colonies in South America gained their freedom in 1810, while Brazil got rid of Portuguese rule in 1822. In most cases, the early European settlers of independence, as a rule, played a leading role in the separation from the mother countries (except Haiti). This was the case with the formation of the United States.
Some countries that were never ruled from Europe experienced, however, the strongest impact of colonial relations. A striking example is China. By force of arms, China was forced to conclude with the European powers trade agreements, according to which in the hands of Europeans moved close control of territories, including several major seaports. Hong Kong is the last of these special areas.
Most Third World nations formed their own independent states only after the Second World War, often as a result of the bloody anti-colonial struggle. An example is India, which soon after independence was divided into India and Pakistan, a number of other Asian countries (such as Burma, Malaysia and Singapore), and many countries in Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Zaire, Tanzania and Algeria).
Prior to colonization, many third world countries were not isolated states. Their boundaries were formed during European rule, when the colonists either combined, often by force, under a single administrative authority a lot of completely different cultures, or dismembered common culture where borders were two possessions of the European powers. Although a large colonial expansion began in the XVI century, most regions have become now the third world countries were colonized only in the nineteenth century. India has not passed completely under British rule until 1860, about the same period, the British administration established in Malaya, Singapore and Burma.
The economic consequences of colonialism are (Colonialism and Neocolonialism, n. d.):
- European powers acquired colony for several reasons.
- Possession of the colony increased political influence and power of the metropolis and provides opportunities for military bases.
- Most Westerners saw colonialism as a civilizing enterprise to help pry the native peoples of the primitive living conditions. The missionaries sought to convey to the pagans to Christianity.
- Economic reasons played an important role. Since the early years of western expansion food, raw materials and other products that serve as the basis of economic development of the West were brought from the colonies. Even where the colony is not acquired for the sake of economic benefits, the country of the colonizers sought to provide economic benefits to cover the costs of management of the region.
Colonialism and its consequences remain today one of the most controversial issues in world history. What has European colonization brought the peoples of Africa, Latin America and Asia? Of course, in many of its manifestations it has proven disgraceful for the Europeans. In colonial wars masses of indigenous people were killed; colonizers introduced the practice of slave trade resulted in the XVI-XIX centuries to reduce the African population of 16 million people. In Europe the gold and precious stones, rare woods, minerals and so on were exported in huge volumes. But colonizers established the branches of industry and agriculture, which are often the most important to the economies of the periphery. Development of diamonds in Africa and metals in Latin America, even the cultivation of tea in Ceylon and the cultivation of rubber trees in Malaysia – all this would have been impossible without the intervention of the Europeans. On the eve of the First World War the economic leader of the world was the United States, together, as it is known, the former British, French and Spanish colonial possessions, and Argentina, also a former Spanish colony, ranked seventh row in the list of major economies (Colonialism and Neocolonialism, n. d.).
Theory and Evidence
The ever increasing global inequality is not caused by changes in the intensity and direction of financial and trade flows, which are usually associated with the tools of globalization, and accompanied by such. It seems not so much the result of external expansion of the Western world as its internal progress (Jones Ronald W., 2000). For the first time in the history inequalities are generated by the personal efforts and successes of the representatives of one part of society, or one part of civilization, and therefore in accordance with the traditional understanding of justice “new inequality” cannot be considered unfair. It is possible that as awareness of this fact the desire to reform the emerging world order will fade.
The main difference between rich and poor countries is that all rich countries passed the stage of development without free trade, which in the case of its success led to the fact that free trade has become more profitable for them. This stage in the history of today’s developed countries is banned: poor countries are not allowed to emulate the economic structure of the rich countries. Markets can miraculously eradicate poverty no more than solve the problem of global warming or pollution. Only a confident and resolute public in rich countries can provide governments of poor countries to freely make decisions that would benefit the residents of these countries. This means that people must reject and assumed to be rational orthodoxy of free trade, and the ethics of “fair” system of global trade. Fair trade in today’s world may not relate to the problem of poverty. It also means that people need to keep track of their governments, so they do not interfere in the internal affairs of poor countries. These measures are much more than propaganda for the reduction of tariffs on agricultural products, to help poor people around the world (Giddens Anthony, 2009, p. 413).
In the so-called newly industrialized countries, international corporations often find groups that are well suited to exploit them as cheap labor – in addition, if instead of working first in the world. These concerns are taken part of its production to countries with low wages, labor export back pace and productivity, they squeezed out of the workers in the first world, but paying for it is only in these countries adopted starvation wages. “The poor” developing countries help them. They are struggling with poverty of the state, providing international capital its people as non-competitive cheap labor, suppressing any resistance against intolerable working conditions and that trying to attract foreign capital into its territory. And if in such countries alternative governments that understand the different national success for its people prefer a different role than the role of cheap labor for international capital still come to power, the coalition of democratic world powers did not miss a single way to cause such social “experiments” to defeat – in extreme cases by military intervention. Despite the low wages that are supported in the newly industrializing countries by internal and external power, only a minority finds there constant and regular paid work. Most forms the capitalist reserves that only in exceptional phases of economic growth falls happiness for awhile. Or it is already pre refers to the absolute surplus (Cohen Daniel, 1998, p. 39).
Conclusion
If the reason of particularly strong in the third world needs is declared insane capitalism, capitalism itself is already beyond criticism. Refuted by comparing the total cause of poverty and factories rather high opinion of system operation – for those, who believe that such prosperity as in the first world, third something is missing, they already know what it is: the capital of the indispensable source life for all people. And then it turns out that the need arises, not from the rule of capital, but from the lack of it. And if someone asks a bad egg question why this capital is not evenly distributed throughout the world, why they do not bless a third world – they jump in their responses. Listing the historical conditions that allegedly prevent “healthy” development of capitalism in the third world, it is difficult to determine which of them is decisive – colonialism, the local currency, bad government, protectionism, the first conquest of the world of competitive advantage. In fact, the same always comes out: the capitalist system property robs people of their own to feed themselves; it forces them to seek their chance in the service of capital. Fans of equity capital compared with life here and there – but this time the capital is not in theory but in practice, compares the performance and cheapness of labor of the people, that is, uses them against each other. And when the system finally does not leave people choice, and no one can live without living for capital – then it represents the opposite: who wants to live, he needs capital.
References
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Giddens, Anthony. “Sociology”. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009. Print.
Jones, Ronald W. “Globalization and the Distribution of Income: The Economic Arguments”, Paper for the Workshop on Global Processes of Inequality, 2000. Web.
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Reinert, Erik. “How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor”. New York: Public Affairs, 2008. Print.
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