China Learn

The Importance of Living - China versus the World

“If all the people thump their feet on the ground, there will be an earthquake, if the entire people blow there will be a storm.” – A Chinese Proverb

In its popular sense colonial expansion started with the rise of the mercantile era in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Profit-hungry European traders-in the beginning chiefly from Holland, Spain and Britain combed the seas to reach new lands as sources of trade and outright plunder. Christian missionaries frequently formed the advance guard of this penetration. These were followed by the traders-the men with guns-who conquered and subjugated native peoples with their superior productive forces and firearms.

Holland, a major capitalist nation in the 17th Century, pioneered in the building of a colonial empire. By 1641 most of Indonesia was in her possession. The Dutch administration set a colonial pace for treachery, bribery, murder and cruelty. The population in many provinces declined sharply due to the slave-running.

The story was little different in the case of other colonies. The British East India Company bled that country white. Between 1768 and 1771, ten million people-one third of the people of Bengal-perished. The net revenue collections, however, continued to exceed all previous figures.

Rich native manufacturing centres were completely depopulated through British state action directed against handicraft industries. Tens of thousands of Indian artisans perished. Dacca, the “Manchester of India,” was reduced from one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants to thirty thousand by 1840. Murshidabad, which Sir Robert Clive described as “extensive, populous and rich as the City of London,” was completely desolated.

In its initial phases, capitalist expansion was merciless in its pursuit of profit. Profit was all that counted.

The quest for the capitalist market even created the myth of the white man’s “superiority.” The assumption of the colonial people’s “inferiority” facilitated the process of conquest and domination. The native peoples were described as “heathens,” “sub-humans,” as the “lesser-breed,” and on these grounds the conquerors sought to justify their wholesale extermination. Racial discrimination was thus very early used as a weapon to enslave other peoples.

Expanding capitalism, of course, introduced into the colonies many of the mechanical benefits associated with western civilization. Since railways and modern productive techniques were, however, primarily designed to enhance the exploitation of the colonies, these failed to bring any worthwhile benefits to the people. Nevertheless, one powerful factor did emerge.

The history of capitalism from the very beginning up to and beyond the emergence of imperialism at the turn of the 20th Century was also a history of revolt. The colonial peoples never “accepted” their masters. The centuries reveal a magnificent record of struggle. Only the superior arms and equipment of the conquerors sustained them in power. Today, however, even this superiority is crumbling under the tremendous impact of continent-wide upheavals of peoples whose single cry is liberty. From the Philippines to Indonesia the watchword is colonial emancipation. And the imperialist slave-holders are fighting back.

To perpetuate its rule imperialism has been forced to revise its strategy. The poison of slavery is being poured into new bottles and labeled “Independence” and “Democracy.” Imperialist policies are being streamlined to cope with tougher problems. As direct control becomes increasingly untenable under pressure of popular revolt, more subtle and indirect methods of domination are being adopted. The roots of these policies reach deeply into the very heart of modern society.

Imperialism is not merely a policy pursued by a given state; it is a system. By its very nature imperialism fosters plunder and violence. Imperialism is the ultimate phase in the development of the so-called “free enterprise system.”

Under “free enterprise,” profit serves as the sole motive of production. In order to increase their profits, the capitalists pay their workers the lowest possible wage consistent with the standards of a given country. Their greed for profit restricts the internal market which results in under-consumption or, conversely, in over-production. To dispose of their surplus goods, and to exploit new sources of raw materials and cheap labor, capitalists must acquire colonial empires in the industrially undeveloped ‘areas of the world. It was this driving force which led, during the course of the 19th Century, to the division of the globe among the chief imperialist powers. When there were no new outlets for expansion, the rival groups of imperialists entered into conflict over one another’s possessions. This driving force lay at the bottom of the two world wars through which mankind has passed during the past forty years.

The chief features of an imperialist state are those in which production and capital have reached a stage where monopolies begin to dominate the nation’s economic life; where industrial and banking capital merge to give rise to finance capital; where the export of ~,capital becomes a decisive factor; where monopolies and cartels come into existence on an international scale and mark out their respective spheres of exploitation throughout the world; and where, finally, the world is territorially divided up among the chief imperialist powers.

Canada, while not matching the economic and military strength of America and Britain, may thus be recognized as a full-fledged imperialist power. Twenty corporations own nearly half the industrial wealth of Canada. The directorates of banks and industrial concerns interlock to create a financial oligarchy. Canadian capitalists hold investments totaling $1.4 billion in foreign lands including the United States, Cuba, Spain and Brazil. The official 1945 Report on Canada and, International Cartels conclusively establishes the link between Canadian monopolies and some of the world’s biggest international cartels, particularly the American and British.

While Canada controls no colonies, Canadian monopolists have nevertheless derived enormous profits from the exploitation of the colonial areas of the British Empire through special preferential privileges.

Two alternatives lie before Canada:

Firstly, there is the imperialist policy of exploitation of colonial peoples, in which Canada has an active share. Under this policy the economies of the colonial lands are subordinated to the needs of the imperialist “mother” countries. Their industrial development is deliberately retarded and remnants of feudalism kept alive and reinforced. Outside of Soviet Asia and Japan, less than two percent of the population of Asia is employed in modern industry. In the United States and Canada today one farming family produces enough food for itself and four additional city families. Under Asiatic farming conditions ‘as many as five farm families are required to produce food to sustain one city family.

Living under this grinding poverty, the people of Asia lack the purchasing power to buy manufactured goods. This low consumption has a depressing effect upon world trade and economy. While the economically developed United States has in the past purchased as much as one-third of Canada’s exports, China-with nearly four times the U.S. population-has bought not more than a fraction of one percent. Canada cannot remain rich or prosperous in a poor world or a poor Asia.

Imperialist policy in addition carries within itself the germs of that type of conflict which leads to world conflagrations. It entails the suppression of the democratic national liberation movements of the colonial people struggling for freedom.

The Canadian imperialists have already underwritten both these destructive policies. This is evidenced by their active support for the Truman Doctrine with its dangerous aspirations toward uncontested world supremacy.

Canada’s alternative choice, however, involves aiding the liberation of the colonial world and assisting in the rapid development of their boundless natural resources. Such a policy would serve to stabilize world peace. It would raise the living standards of millions of people. It would bring trade and prosperity to Canada and to all nations on earth.

In this respect the late President Roosevelt observed:

“I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries.”

Freedom from want was set as one of the major objectives of the United Nations. In his book, World Industrial Development (published by the International Labor Office in 1944) Eugene Staley pointed out that sixty percent of the world’s gainfully employed people of Asia subsist on a diet far below the minimum health standard. Millions accordingly face extinction from famine and pestilence. A similar widespread deficiency exists in clothing. Were all the people to use as much cotton for clothing and furnishing as the pre-war U.S. per capita consumption, world cotton needs would be three times greater than its highest point in the past; and if the rest of the world were to be given half as much soap as an average American today uses, world production would jump over two hundred percent.

The people of Asia would require about two hundred and fifty million vehicles (or seventy-five years of U.S. output) to satisfy its present need. Similarly it would take six hundred million radio sets to bring the rest of the world up to the American rate of consumption.

Adoption of policies leading to such a gigantic expansion of production would provide an inexhaustible market for Canadian goods. It would create jobs; it would strengthen world peace. It would be consistent with the spirit of the Atlantic Charter, the Four Freedoms and the United Nations Charter. It would open a road leading to a lasting peace and prosperity for all.