There exists no general history--at least one
that is available in the English language--explaining
the origins, sources, language, uses, and variations
on the theme of the Civilizing Mission, the central
myth that Europe has employed to misrepresent its
depredations around the globe, starting with the
Spanish conquests in the Americas.[2]
However, even in
the absence of such a general history, some general
propositions regarding Europe's Civilizing Mission
can be advanced safely. By its nature, the Civilizing
Mission demands a protagonist who is superior to
his subject, beyond the advantage of brute force.
This superiority has been variously located in divine
choice, genes, climate, institutions, and attributes
of the mind. In the past, most European thinkers
have preferred to locate the basis of Europe's cultural
advantage in race, biologically construed, and certainly,
by the nineteenth century, this form of racism had
became the dominant mode of constructing European
superiority.
The construction
of European superiority proceeded along two tracks.
Along the first track, European thought seeks to
endow Europeans with special attributes or they
are shown to possess these attributes in greater
abundance. The characteristic European attributes
are individualism and rationality. The first produces
the striving for freedom, courage, heroism, sainthood,
ambition, industry, diligence, enterprise and great
works of art; the second produces values that support
a higher social order, superior governance, bureaucracies,
economic growth, cathedrals, harmonies, and rational
thought, including philosophy, sciences and mathematics.
On an equal scale,
along a second track, European thought has engaged
in the task of denigrating, dehumanizing, and even
bestializing the Other. The extra-European world
is inhabited by humans lacking in individuality
and the powers of reasoning. Lacking individuality,
the extra-European man is deficient in all those
positive virtues that underpin Europe's social and
political order. Generally, this means that the
extra-European man must be defined by negatives:
he is a shirker, his wants are limited, he is not
driven to excel, his work is sloppy, he is not inventive,
he cannot be trusted, he has no self-worth, he does
not value freedom, he is cowardly, he lacks generosity,
and he will not risk his life for his freedom.
Similarly, the weak
reasoning faculty of extra-Europeans produces a
second set of negatives. A variety of European thinkers
have described him as pedantic in his thought processes
and unable to produce metaphysical works; his religion
rarely rises above the merely superstitious; he
works with simple tools, which he never seeks to
improve; he lacks forethought and, therefore, cannot
undertake great projects or create complex institutions;
he lives under despotisms, which fail to protect
property rights, and, therefore, trap his economy
at primitive levels of productivity; and although
he has not developed technology, he is incapable
of formulating abstract, mathematical theories.
In short, extra-European societies after their initial
achievements, have remained dormant, superstitious,
primitive and despotic.
Once these opposites
types--the European and extra-European man--have
been fully delineated, there are three possible
relations that can develop between them. The extra-Europeans
could be left alone; they could be ethnically cleansed,
hunted down and exterminated; or they could be improved
by opening them to unrestricted commercial contacts
with superior Europeans, and if necessary these
contacts could be established by force.
The choice among
these options was clear. Clearly, the extra-European
societies could not be left alone to vegetate; that
would be an unconscionable waste of labor and resources.
It would be preferable to push the natives off their
land or kill them off; at least, this would free
their resources for improvement. The third option
was the best. It allowed Europe to improve the labor
and resources in the extra-European societies.
However, if the natives were to resist improvement,
as they did in the Americas, they could be decimated
and their lands appropriated for improvement.
By the nineteenth
century, nearly all of Europe's great thinkers had
bought into the paradigm of the Civilizing Mission.
Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were not exempt
from its baleful influence; and they were among
the most radical and compassionate of European thinkers
in their times. They located the Orient outside
the historical process which they had constructed
to explain the transition of Europe from one historical
stage to another. In the Orient, a despotic state
owned all the land because it was forced--by the
arid or semi-arid conditions prevailing there--to
erect and maintain large-scale hydraulic works upon
which all agriculture depended. In the absence of
private property, the Asiatic societies lacked the
dialectical tension--between opposing classes--which
produce social change. The Orient, therefore, had
no real history other than the history of successive
despotisms imposed upon an unchanging social base.
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
refer to the Asiatics as "barbarians,"
"semi-barbarians" or "nations of
peasants." On the other hand, the bourgeois
societies of Europe are "civilized."
The theory of Asiatic
Despotism provided the grandest justification yet
for the Civilizing Mission. By destroying the despotic
Asiatic states, by reconstituting Asian societies
on the basis of private property, and by integrating
their archaic economies into world markets, the
colonial powers were effecting--as Karl Marx put
it, when talking of the destruction of India's self-sufficient
villages--"the only social revolution
ever heard of in Asia."[3]
Indeed, Karl Marx believed that by constructing
a network of railways in India, the British were
also laying the foundations of modern industry.
It would be impossible to create an extensive network
of railways without calling into existence an industrial
sector supplying its need for coal, iron ore, steel
and heavy machinery.
The orthodox economist's
justification for colonialism is not as grand because
his requirements for growth are minimal. Since Adam
Smith first formulated them in 1755, economic growth
occurs naturally once three conditions are present:
"peace," "easy taxes," and "a
tolerable administration of justice."[4]
Alternatively, governments establish law and order:
markets do the rest. Since the despotic governments
in the backward societies of Asia and Africa are
incapable of protecting persons and property rights,
this can only be provided by the intervention of
Europeans. In other words, the colonization of extra-European
societies is indispensable if they are to join the
civilized world.
Few projects for
the improvement of the 'inferior races' were taken
up as eagerly, or implemented with the same degree
of enthusiasm, as Europe's Civilizing Mission. Over
the course of the nineteenth century--starting earlier
in some places--the Europeans colonized much of
Asia and Africa, integrating them into global markets
under governments run by the most capable men drawn
from the best European stock. Although the Ottoman
Empire, China, Iran and Thailand were allowed to
retain indigenous rulers, they lost their ability
to control their external economic relations. Under
'Open Door' treaties, they were forced to set very
low tariffs, disband state monopolies, eliminate
restrictions on foreign investments, and exempt
Europeans--and their local protégés
in the Ottoman Empire--from local courts and local
taxes. In other words, directly and indirectly,
Europe had subjected nearly all the extra-European
societies of the world to its Civilizing Mission.
While the classical
economists had little luck--outside of Britain,
and that too, only after the 1840s--in persuading
the sovereign governments in Europe, the Americas
and Oceania to unshackle the invisible hand, their
vision of free markets was implemented in nearly
its entirety by the colonial governments in Asia,
Africa and the Caribbean. The colonies practiced
free trade, with some preferences granted to the
metropolitan country; they opened up the colonies
to foreign capital; they established the strongest
safeguards for private property; they ran small,
'efficient' governments that were always dedicated
to balancing the budget; and they strictly kept
the government out of productive activities. Barring
Japan after 1910, the Asian countries that escaped
colonization were forced into signing Open Door
Treaties, which integrated their economies into
global markets. I will refer to them as quasi-colonies
(QCs). Indeed, the World Bank and IMF would have
been out of work in the QCs and colonies (together,
QCCs); their agenda had been fully implemented by
the colonial governments in Asia, Africa and the
Caribbean.
The sovereign lagging
countries in the period under review--the century
preceding 1950--paid scant regard to the canons
of economic orthodoxy; most were heartily mercantilist
in their pursuit of economic development. They freely
imposed tariffs, operated state-owned development
banks, set up industries in the public sector, ran
budget deficits, placed restrictions on the entry
of foreign capital, regulated their exchange markets
during the Great Depression, and when in trouble
they repudiated foreign debts.[5]
Now that's sovereignty at work!
There can be little
ambiguity about the prognosis--based on the Civilizing
Mission and orthodox economics--about the relative
economic performance of the QCCs and the sovereign
lagging countries during the colonial epoch. The
QCCs were devoted acolytes of orthodox economic
policies; the sovereign lagging countries stood
at the other end of the policy spectrum, invoking
all the tools of economic intervention to promote
indigenous industry, capital and technology. The
colonies could boast of a second advantage. Unlike
the sovereign lagging countries in Latin America
and Eastern Europe, never reputed for their good
governance, the British, French, Dutch and American
colonies had the advantage of being governed by
the very cream of Europe's brew of superior races.
On the strength of these advantages, we can safely
conclude that the QCCs must have outperformed the
sovereign lagging countries in the heydays of the
Civilizing Mission--the century before 1950.
Average Annual
Weighted Growth Ratesof Per Capita Income: 1900-1992
| Growth
Rates |
1900-13
|
1913-50
|
1950-92
|
| Sovereign
Countries |
1.61
|
1.34
|
2.58
|
| QCC's |
0.50
|
-0.27
|
2.96
|
| %
of World Population |
1900
|
1913
|
1950
|
| Sovereign
Countries |
19.9
|
22.5
|
22.1
|
| QCC's |
50
|
49
|
48
|
All the statistics
we need to check this prediction are contained in
a single table that presents the weighted
average annual growth rates of per capita income
for QCCs and lagging sovereign countries for three
time periods, 1900-1913, 1913-1950 and 1950-1992.[6]
The qualifier 'lagging' refers to countries whose
per capita income in 1900 was 66 percent or less
of the US per capita income; this keeps our sample
of countries relatively homogeneous in their economic
characteristics. We have growth rates for 12 QCCs
in the first period and 13 QCCs in the second and
third periods. Although this sample appears small,
the QCCs included are the largest in this category,
and together their combined population in the three
periods is only slightly less than three-fourths
of the total population of all QCCs. The average
growth rates for the sovereign lagging countries
are based on 18 observations in the first period
and 22 for the second and third periods.[7]
The story these
numbers tell is both strange and true: the bad boys
were winning the growth derby. Over the first half
of the twentieth century, the illiberal, protectionist,
debt-repudiating sovereign countries resoundingly
trumped the free-trading, budget-balancing, law-and-order
QCCs, many of them placed under the direct care
of the world's best masters. Over 1900-1913, the
sovereign lagging countries outperformed the QCCs
by a factor of more than three-to-one. Over the
next thirty-seven years, which included two world
wars and a depression, the per capita income in
the QCCs declined by 10 percent while the sovereign
lagging countries notched an increase of 64 percent
in their per capita income. For the half-century,
1900-1950, the per capita income of sovereign lagging
countries grew at the average annual rate of 1.43
percent, while the QCCs declined at the rate
of 0.08 percent.[8]
A comparison of
the mean average annual growth rates for
the sovereign lagging countries and the QCCs yields
similar results. The mean growth rates for the sovereign
countries over 1900-1913 and 1913-1950 were 1.67
and 1.34 percent; the corresponding growth rates
for the QCCs were 0.81 and -0.02 percent. In addition,
over the first period, only three of the 18 sovereign
countries grew at rates below the mean growth rate
for the QCCs; over the second period, there was
no sovereign country which grew at a rate below
the mean for the QCCs. The differences in the growth
rates for the two sets of countries are large and
systematic.[9]
At this stage, the
orthodox economists are likely to blame the QCCs
for their poor growth record. There was nothing
wrong with the Civilizing Mission or orthodox policies;
together, they could not turn these countries around
because of the intractable barriers to growth presented
by their culture, religion and race. The negative
impact of these barriers had to be very strong indeed,
much stronger than the dual advantage of their orthodox
policies and superior governance. Is there a way
to disprove this bunkum?
Thankfully, we have
the numbers that will do this--the numbers in the
fourth column of our table. In the forty-two years
after 1950, the terminal point for the colonial
period, the former QCCs begin to turn a new leaf.
Suddenly, out of the bog of economic decline they
sprint into the territory of rapid growth. From
a weighted average annual growth rate of -0.27 percent
over the previous thirty-seven years, they are now
bounding at nearly three percent per annum, even
outpacing the old sovereign lagging countries who
grew at 2.58 percent per annum. What happened to
all the 'tenacious' barriers to growth that had
held them back for centuries? Did they suddenly
vanish in 1950?
The apologists of
orthodoxy are unlikely to pass up a third argument.
The accelerated growth in the former QCCs, they
might argue, had nothing to do with their new sovereignty;
this was a period of rapid growth for all
countries. Yes, but this can not save the day for
them. With their 'tenacious' barriers to growth
still in place, the growth record of the QCCs would
still lag behind that of the old sovereign lagging
countries; but now the reverse was true. There is
an additional problem. Since the former QCCs had
decisively abandoned their orthodox policies, this
should have worked to nullify the improved growth
conditions, leaving them with little or no growth
as before.
That leaves us still
looking for answers. Is it possible, just possible,
that the long-stagnant QCCs turned into growth sprinters
in the 1950s because they had repatriated Europe's
Civilizing Mission and they were now free to choose
the 'wrong' economic policies? Over much of 1950-1992,
the former QCCs in our sample engaged in economic
planning, undertook public investments in infrastructure
and industrial activities, operated overvalued domestic
currencies, rationed foreign exchange, imposed protectionist
tariffs, established development banks in the industrial
and agricultural sectors, sold under-priced utilities
to their new industries, sought to keep out foreign
investments, etc. Indeed, some of them were assisted
in their planning exercises by economic experts
from the US Agency for International Development.
Is it possible that these 'wrong' policies were
right for economies that had been underdeveloped
by the Civilizing Mission and its orthodox policies?
Are these numbers
going to bring some humility to the unctuous purveyors
of European Civilization? Will they now admit that
the Civilizing Mission failed the peoples of the
QCCs, humiliating them and holding them back for
centuries? Will they admit that all this was just
a cover for Europe's true business in the colonies,
which was to open them up to manipulation for the
benefit of its privileged classes? Will this admission
then be followed by contrition, by calls for compensatory
adjustments in the global system so that the transfers
can now flow in the opposite direction--from the
rich to the poor countries?
The purveyors of
ideologies are not defeated by contrary facts. In
the surrealist world of economic orthodoxy, if the
facts fail to support established theory that is
too bad for the facts. The theory reigns supreme.
The ideologues stop peddling their merchandise only
when their paymasters are defeated. For a few decades
after the Second World War, their capitalist paymasters
had been checked, put on notice. This was the result
of two self-mutilating wars amongst the colonial
powers, the offspring of rivalries between the old
and aspiring industrial powers. In turn, this produced
anti-capitalist regimes in two major countries--Russia
and China--and national liberation movements in
all the colonies and quasi-colonies. Together, these
developments seriously weakened the centralizing
powers of the capitalist system, its ability to
concentrate power in a few European centers.
This retreat of global capital opened up a window
of opportunity for countries at the Periphery. Quickly,
the former colonies took matters into their own
hands--protecting manufactures, creating development
banks, restricting foreign ownership, offering better
technology to farmers, investing in utilities and
infrastructure, and opening schools. In other words,
the QCCs--together with Latin America--sought to
create economic and political arrangements that
would allow them to resist the centralizing power
of Core capital. Thus was created the Third World,
an intermediate economic zone between the capitalist
Core and the Communist sphere, often seeking advantages
from one or both by playing them off against each
other. The creation of the Third World produced
some striking results: many of the long-stagnant
former QCCs began to advance, industrialize and
develop an indigenous capitalist base. Understandably,
Core capital did not look too kindly upon the nascent
centers of capital developing Third World.
Although checked,
the capitalist Cores--now led by the United States--were
constantly seeking to restore the centralizing tendencies
of the capitalist system through the covert activities
of their intelligence agencies, foreign aid, military
assistance and training programs, economic advisers,
and the steady penetration of Third World economies
by Core capital. Success came sooner than any one
had expected, in the early 1980s. It came at a time
when the Third World, seemingly at the height of
its power, was pressing its demands for a New International
Economic Order.
The oil crisis of
1973 provided the trigger that shifted the dismantling
of the Third World into high gear. The Arab members
of the OPEC, awash in dollars, recycled them to
Western banks, who started the first wave of commercial
lending to the Periphery since the Great Depression.
In time, as Third World debts accumulated, the capitalist
Core could act swiftly--and collectively--through
the World Bank and IMF--to restore its old power
over the Periphery. This had happened before, during
the nineteenth century, when Britain and France
created and manipulated debt-crises in the Open
Door countries to take over their finances. It was
now repeated, starting with several Latin American
countries during the 1980s, when they were unable
to service their foreign debts. In short order,
the success in Latin America would be extended to
all the countries in the Periphery.
After a short interregnum,
lasting roughly from the 1950s to the 1970s, the
Civilizing Mission is back in force. Its mission
is the same as before--to ensure that the economic
and political evolution of the Periphery is owned
and directed from the Center. The economic modus
operandi too is the same as before--take down
the nationalist barriers that countries at the Periphery
erect to nurture indigenous capital and technology.
The dismantling of the Third World was formalized
by the launching of the World Trade Organization--the
new and more comprehensive Open Door treaty--imposed
collectively by Core capital on all the Periphery.
In its latest phase,
the Civilizing Mission has a different political
modus operandi. The Core capitalist powers
are not fighting each other to acquire monopoly
control over segments of the Periphery. This is
not desirable anymore. In the past, their rivalries
had proved very costly to Core capital. Moreover,
as major corporations from Core countries collaborate,
the old rivalries are being replaced by cooperative
relationships. Equally, colonization is not necessary
for exercising control. The cumulative penetration
of the Periphery by Core capital has produced an
indigenous privileged class whose interests are
closely interwoven with that of Core capital--and,
more narrowly, with that of the United States. Core
capital can now safely rely on this partnership
to manage the affairs of the Periphery. It is quite
safe now to allow the elites in the Periphery--barring
segments of the Islamicate world--to compete for
the favors of Core capital. The global system now
has the power to neutralize populist governments
in the Periphery, should they manage to get elected.
Of course, it can always use the solution of the
last resort--a CIA-instigated right-wing military
coup. If that fails, there are sanctions, missile
strikes and, finally, invasion, all of them illegal
but duly sanctified by the Security Council.
In closing, it is
worth pointing out that while Civilizing Mission
II has produced the predictable rollback of previous
gains across much of the Periphery, this latest
phase of global capitalism is likely to produce
some new results.[10]
In its previous phase, stretching from 1800 to 1950,
global capitalism was characterized by centralization
of power, capital and manufactures in a few capitalist
Cores. All three tendencies were temporarily reversed
or weakened in the three decades that followed--the
three decades of decentralization. Although the
power to define the global system has once again
been recentralized since the 1970s, leading progressively
to the erosion of indigenous capitalist bases in
most countries in the Periphery, it appears that
the indigenous capitalist centers in some of these
countries were sufficiently developed to compete
with Core capital even on the latter's term. This
means that several new centers of capital and technology
have now been established outside of the old Cores.
Some of these centers have a very large economic
base--as in China and possibly India. If these centers
can sustain their growth momentum and autonomy,
they are likely to produce forces that will both
disrupt and stabilize global capitalism. I will
attempt to offer the briefest sketch of these new
forces.
The growth of the
new capitalist centers--especially in China and
India--has produced an altogether new situation
in the global economy. There now exist two pools
of comparable labor skills in the new centers and
the old Cores, divided by large gaps in the relevant
wages, and still separated by strong barriers to
their mobility. In itself, this represents a serious
disequilibrium in the global economy, the first
time such a disequilibrium has emerged on this scale
in the markets for medium and high-end labor skills.
This disequilibrium contains vast ramifications
for the political economy of global capitalism.
I can only itemize these ramifications here; their
elaboration would require another essay.
First, the disequilibrium
in global markets for labor skills will continue
to fuel growth in the new centers, directing their
capital increasingly to high value-added activities;
in the big new centers, such as China and India,
this growth can continue for a long time because
of their nearly inexhaustible reserves of labor.
Second, the growth of the new centers has been squeezing
profits in high value-added industries in the old
Cores, forcing them to relocate to the new centers.
A direct result of this is a downward pressure on
wages of skilled labor in the old Cores.
Third, as the new
centers continue to grow and as they continue to
upgrade their skills, the competition between the
two pools of labor will escalate to affect ever
higher skills. This means that the downward pressure
on skilled wages in the old Cores is unlikely to
be compensated by the upgrading of labor skills.
We may be looking at a full spectrum decline in
wages in the old Cores.
Fourth, since the
new communications technology is rapidly extending
the range of services that are become internationally
tradable, the forces of wage-convergence just described
will be felt over a growing range of activities,
and this will tend to accelerate the speed at which
wage-convergence takes place.
Fifth, taken together,
these new dynamics are producing an altogether new
phenomenon in the history of global capitalism:
a decline in the real wages of labor in the capitalist
Cores, and this is sure to be accompanied by erosion
of many of the gains in working conditions that
labor in the Cores had won in the past century.
Sixth, these developments
are producing a growing trade imbalance between
the new centers and old Cores because the availability
of low-wage but efficient skills in the new centers
gives them a long-term competitive advantage in
a wide and growing range of activities. The imbalance
is likely to be largest between the US and the new
centers as long as the US dollar remains the world's
leading reserve currency.
Seventh, the downward
pressure on wages and working conditions may produce
a variety of political consequences in the old Cores:
protectionism, growing class consciousness, erosion
of democracy, and even class warfare. At the international
level, the old Cores--in particular, the US--may
respond to the crisis by starting wars to convert
India and China into the equivalents of Brazil and
Mexico.
Eighth, in this
new phase of capitalist development, the workers
in the Cores may be offered a second chance to launch
a revolution against capitalist control of the economy.
