Reviewed by Alex Morgan

Anyone from Australia who has travelled abroad to Africa, Asia or Latin America is struck by the stark disparity in wealth, as well as the out-sized purchasing power of the Australian dollar in those countries. Meals are much cheaper, and consumer goods that took local workers many hours to produce can be bought for only a few dollars, which even on minimum wage in Australia takes less than half an hour of labour time to earn. With the proliferation of remote work as a result of the pandemic, some are taking advantage of these cheaper prices in places such as Indonesia or Mexico while enjoying Australian or American wages.

Why is this the case? Why are poor countries poor compared to Western countries? And why is it that Western people are able to get more in exchange for their money when purchasing commodities produced in poor nations?

Mainstream economists and anthropologists present us with an array of explanations, but few adequately explain this great disparity in wealth between the countries of the so-called First and Third worlds. Often these theories draw upon implicit and explicit forms of racism: European societies are wealthier and more developed because Europeans are innately more capable. These racist ideas are largely the product of centuries of violent economic and political domination of racialised peoples by the European ruling class. This disparity in wealth is not strictly uniform–some Eastern European nations have a per-capita GDP lower than some African nations, whereas that of Japan is around five times higher–but the general trend of unequal exchange and the unequal distribution of wealth and development remains true.

The popular explanation that persists today (e.g., Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel) argues that the subjugation of the colonised world was achieved primarily because of environmental factors that allowed European people to better develop agriculture, which in turn led to the development of more advanced military technology. However, this explanation ignores the fact that many of the Asian, African and Latin American societies were not defeated militarily, and for much of their history the technological advancement of their weaponry was at least on par with that of Europe. In any case, this does not explain why these countries have been unable to develop and “catch up” to Western countries following industrialisation, as conventional capitalist economics would predict.

Walter Rodney’s 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa addresses all of these issues in razor-sharp fashion. The title concisely presents Rodney’s thesis: that the responsibility for Africa’s underdevelopment lays primarily in the hands of the European capitalist system. In my view, reading just the first chapter alone would be enough to turn any reasonable person into a communist. In only 30 pages, this first chapter outlines the key concepts of imperialism with such terse, powerful language that it makes the nature of this global system crystal clear. What follows in the subsequent chapters is an example of dialectical materialist analysis par excellence that completely changed how I viewed the world.

In a similar vein to how Karl Marx essentially used a case study of the British Empire as a framework for analysing the development of capitalism, here Rodney presents in great detail a case study of how the global capitalist system has shaped the African continent. In doing so, Rodney demonstrates how the so-called “underdevelopment” of African, Asian and Latin American societies led to, and in turn is the result of, the development of the comparatively rich Western societies. This dialectical relationship of exploitation is shown to be the expected outcome of the continued expansion of the capitalist system beyond domestic borders: imperialism. In doing so, Rodney reminds us that Marxism is not a form of utopian idealism (as its critics would argue), but a scientific way of analysing and explaining the evolving world.

Rodney constructs his argument by analysing the developmental trajectory of African societies prior to sustained contact with Europeans, beginning around the 16th Century. This analysis discusses various examples spanning the African continent, covering the kingdoms of Egypt, Aksum, Nubia, Ghana, Bunyoro-Kitara, Bachwezi, Mutapa, Dahomey and Asante, and many more. Rodney makes the case that in many instances, these societies were either more developed than their European counterparts in terms of their agriculture, tool making, architecture and weaponry, or were already proceeding along a similar developmental path. So why, then, were Europeans able to subjugate Africa?

The answers to this complex question presented within the book are many, but Rodney places great importance on the phenomenon of unequal trade. The book details how Europeans were able to leverage their superiority in seafaring (as honed in the Mediterranean and North Sea) into a monopoly over maritime navigation routes and therefore the global trade networks. Further, European societies had begun to transition from feudalism to capitalism, which led to technical superiority in a few key areas of commodity production. This meant that Europeans were able to dictate the terms of trade of goods from all around the globe, in exchange for African gold, ivory, and human captives to be forced to work as slaves in the Americas. This unequal trade enriched Europe, while forcing African economies to focus on supplying these commodities or captives rather than developing their own societies.

The form that this exploitation took evolved in tandem with the evolution of Western capitalism. When the primary need for the development of Europe was labour to work the mines in the Americas, they enslaved Africans, and the unimaginable brutality of the European slave trade had a devastating effect on African development. Rapid growth during the Industrial Revolution allowed Western powers to militarily dominate and directly colonise Africa, exploiting African labour and resources to fuel their industrialisation. What little sovereignty African societies had during the pre-colonial era was wiped out under the violence of colonialism. When the maintenance of expansive colonies reached a crisis of productivity, Western capitalist interests shifted to neocolonialism, whereby their monopoly over certain essential technologies for development allowed them to maintain control of African economies. Thus, Africa—and the rest of the Third World—was integrated in the global capitalist system: not as an industrial power, but as a supplier of resources and cheap labour, from which wealth would flow externally to the West.

The overall conclusion of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is that Western powers have developed their economies and grown their wealth through the exploitation of Third World societies, through a process of dominating their economies via unequal trade, military coercion, and monopolisation of the labour process of key technologies. Today, this phenomenon is sharper than ever. Consequently, understanding these dynamics is essential for any sincere attempt to build socialism. As Rodney states:

If economic power is centred outside national African boundaries, then political and military power in any real sense is also centred outside until, and unless, the masses of peasants and workers are mobilised to offer an alternative to the system of sham political independence.¹

As socialists, we must support movements that seek to break free from the yoke of Western exploitation, insofar as they are genuinely anti-imperialist rather than opportunist or reactionary. In recent years, we are beginning to see new anti-imperialist national liberation struggles emerge within Africa, with coups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger expelling the French military occupation and non-government organisations and nationalising resources. We are also seeing the rise of what is referred to as ‘South–South trade’ offering economic alternatives to nations exploited by Western-dominated global trade, including trade between the BRICS nations.

Of course, unequal trade can still occur between Third World countries:

While Africa trades mainly with the countries of Western Europe, North America, and Japan, Africa is also diversifying its trade by dealing with socialist countries, and if that trade proves disadvantageous to the African economy, then the developed socialist countries will also have joined the ranks of the exploiters of Africa.²

Recently, there has been much debate about whether Chinese trade and investment in Africa and elsewhere should be considered imperialist, and it is crucial for socialists to analyse this. Importantly, there are key differences between China’s recent engagement with Africa and that of Western exploitation. China has not used military occupation or regime change operations to control African economies, which are key tools of neocolonialism. China’s investment in Africa has focused heavily on infrastructure, which is key for development but was deliberately discouraged by Western powers in order to maintain their export-oriented economy. While China offers loans to African nations, it does not impose ‘structural adjustment programs’ that require these countries to cut public spending or privatise their industries, as is the mode of operation of the IMF and World Bank. More critical analysis on this topic is required, but socialists should not oversimplify this issue by viewing all engagement as imperialism. Importantly, China is offering an alternative pathway to that of the West, and if African nations take up these opportunities then they must necessarily be preferable to the options presented by Western powers.

Notes

1. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Verso, 2018), 33. ↩︎
2. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 28. ↩︎