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On 7/1/17 8:19 PM, Philip Ferguson via Marxism wrote:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/how-capitalism-under-develops-the-world-2/
"The Belgian colony of Congo offered one of the most elaborate “models”, so to speak, of colonial exploitation – a “model” nevertheless quite comparable to what was going on in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Congo was turned into a huge labour camp ruled by terror. A common practice when farmers failed to collect enough rubber from wild rubber trees, was to take their families hostage, or to kill them and put their severed hands on display in the village as a warning. It was estimated that over the 4 decades until 1920, ten million Africans died in the Belgian Congo – half of the initial population. Over the same period, companies exploiting concessions which often covered tens of thousands of square miles, multiplied their original investments 20-fold!"
I was always appalled me by the tendency for the Political Marxists to describe the Congo as "precapitalist" because labor was based on coercion rather than markets.
What do you think the rubber was being used for? Automobile tires, that's what. Without forced labor in the Congo, Belgium would not have been able to supply tires to Renault.
In a word, Political Marxism has failed to understand capitalism dialectically.
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