In 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued an Executive Order that authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to adopt regulations that would prohibit the importation into the United States of any product of Cuban origin, and it authorized the Secretary of Commerce to expand measures that restricted the exportation of US products to Cuba.  A few days before the Executive Order, the Organization of American States, pushed by the United States, expelled Cuba.  US policy sought to topple the Cuban revolutionary government, and it was launching a war on two fronts, seeking to promote hunger and political destabilization in Cuba and to internationally isolate the island nation.  

     More than fifty years later, US President Barack Obama has recognized that the policy has failed.  Although the Cuban people have paid a high price with respect to the material conditions of life, Cuba continues with its revolutionary socialist project of national liberation. And US sanctions of Cuba have resulted in condemnation of the United States by the governments of the world.  The Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) has unanimously demanded an end to what the United States calls an embargo and Cuba calls a blockade (because it has extraterritorial components that restrict trade between Cuba and other nations).  And the General Assembly of the United Nations, by a vote of 190 to 2, has called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba, with only the United States and Israel voting against the resolution.  As a result, the Obama administration seeks to pursue another strategy for promoting “democracy” and “human rights” in Cuba, in accordance with its limited and ideologically distorted understanding of these terms (see “Cuba, United States, and human rights” 4/9/2015).

     As a result of the change in US policy, the governments of the United States and Cuba were able to arrive at an agreement to announce their intention of restoring diplomatic relations and establishing the normalization of relations between the two countries. The simultaneous announcements of December 17, 2014 were greeted with applause and support throughout the world.

     In the last fifteen months, negotiations between the two countries have been carried out in an environment of mutual respect.  Cuba believes that, in spite of significant differences in the theory and practice of democracy and human rights, the two nations can arrive at mutually beneficial agreements in various areas, following a model that Cuban chief negotiator Josefina Vidal calls “civilized coexistence.”

      Concrete steps toward normalization have been taken:  Diplomatic relations have been restored; Cuba has been removed from the US unilateral and ideologically motivated list of “countries sponsoring terrorism;” there have been bilateral agreements with respect to commerce, telecommunications, the environment, drug trafficking, postal services, and commercial flights; there has been increased flexibility with respect to US authorization of US citizens to travel to Cuba;  the US now permits the granting of credit to Cuban entities for the purchase of certain authorized US products exported directly from the United States or re-exported from third countries; and numerous delegations have visited Cuba, including representatives of the executive and legislative branches of the US and state governments.  


      However, the most important steps toward normalization lie ahead. As expressed by the Cuban newspaper Granma: The Official Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, in a Special Supplement in commemoration of the historic announcement of December 17, 2014: “The most important still remains to be done.  A blockade designed to produce hunger and desperation among our people remains in full force; the territory of the Guantanamo Naval Base continues to be illegally occupied; illegal radio and television transmissions continue; and the granting of funds for subversive programs in our country continues.”

     Cubans recognize that the change in policy toward Cuba is politically difficult in the United States, as a result of the tangle of laws and regulations that constitute the blockade, and because of many years of portraying Cuba negatively in order to justify the policy.  And they understand that the end of the blockade requires an act of Congress, controlled by the Republican Party, while the new policy is being promoted by a Democratic administration, and that this potentially conflictive political situation is occurring in a presidential election year.  In Cuba, it is understood that important components of the blockade have been established by acts of Congress, and therefore the president does not have the authority to: totally eliminate the blockade; authorize US citizens to travel to Cuba for tourism; permit US subsidiaries in third countries to trade with Cuba; or eliminate the Cuban obligation to pay in advance in cash for agricultural products.

     However, Cuban journalists and political leaders never tire in stating that the majority of the people of the United States and in the US Congress support Obama’s new policy toward Cuba; and that there are a number of steps that Obama has the presidential authority to take, but so far has not.   The December 17, 2015 Special Supplement to Granma maintains that the president has ample executive powers to transform the practical application of the blockade, which if exercised, would reduce the legal structure of the blockade to an empty shell. The President could, for example, end the persecution of Cuban transactions.  Since the announcements of December 17, 2014, three banks in third countries have been fined for violating the extraterritorial components of the blockade; and four US companies also have been find during this period.  In total the fines have been more than 2.8 billion dollars.  The president, according to the Granma Special Supplement, also has the authority to permit: the opening of accounts by Cuban banks and state companies in US banks; the direct exportation to Cuba of US products; Cuban importation from third countries of products that contain more than 25% of US components; the importation into the United States of Cuban tobacco, rum and pharmaceutical biotechnological products; the importation into the United States of products manufactured in third countries that contain Cuban raw materials such a nickel or sugar; investment by US companies in Cuba; and medical treatments in Cuba for US citizens.

     The President is proceeding cautiously.  However, the modest steps taken do indicate that the Obama administration definitely intends to end the blockade.  On the other hand, the manner in which the administration is dismantling the blockade, and the official comments that accompany the process, reveal that the administration does not intend to respect the sovereignty of Cuba but to find a more effective strategy for the promotion of US imperialist objectives.  This will the subject of our next post.


Key words: Obama, Cuba, embargo, blockade, normalization

      The last time that a US president visited Cuba was eighty-eight years ago.  The distinguished gentlemen in question was Calvin Coolidge, who arrived in Cuba to participate in the inaugural ceremony of the Sixth Pan-American Conference, held in Havana from January 16 to February 20, 1928.  Although a former president (Jimmy Carter) has visited Cuba, the visit by President Coolidge is that only time that a US president has visited Cuba while in office.  

     Coolidge’s visit to Cuba in part was intended to provide an occasion for the US president to give backing to Cuban president Gerardo Machado, who was facing intense popular opposition.  Machado had been elected president in 1924 on a promise of reform that included raising workers’ salaries and protecting national industry.  His strategy was to protect the interests of all, including the US financial oligarchy in Cuba, Spanish big merchants in Cuba, Cuban industrial and agricultural producers, and the Cuban popular sectors.  However, his project of reform failed, ruined by a significant decline in sugar prices during 1927 and 1928.  In a neocolonial context, such reform can only have success during high moments in the cycles of prices of raw materials exports (see “Machado and the promise of reform” 7/16/2014).

     From the beginning of the Machado administration, there were strikes and demonstrations organized by labor and student organizations.  The Machado government responded with a campaign of repression that included the assassination of several prominent labor and student leaders as well as imprisonment.  The repression intensified the popular movement, and Machado eventually was forced to resign in 1933 (see “‘Democracy’ becomes tyranny” 7/17/2014; “FDR and US mediation in Cuba” 8/7/2014).

     At the January 16, 1928 inaugural ceremony of the conference, Coolidge devoted considerable time in his speech to discuss the progress of Cuba as an independent republic, and he praised Machado as a president that had lifted the Cuban nation to a “high and honorable position” (quoted in López 2016).  The support by the US president enabled Machado to proceed with plans for constitutional amendments to extend his time in office.  With visible US backing, Machado was able to consolidate his power, at least for the time being.

     The second reason for Coolidge’s visit was to give support to the Pan-American project of the United States.  Pan-Americanism intended to institutionalize the participation of Latin American and Caribbean governments in the system of US neocolonial domination. To this end, prior to the 1928 conference in Havana, Pan-American conferences had been held in Washington (1888-89), Mexico (1901-2), Rio de Janeiro (1906), Buenos Aires (1910), and Santiago de Cuba (1923); and subsequent conferences were held in Montevideo (1933), Buenos Aires (1936), and Lima (1938).  During this period of 1888 to 1938, the United States encountered opposition to the US project by a number of Latin American governments.  In the 1928 conference in Havana, for example, the Latin American nations rejected the US claim that the United States had a right to intervene in Latin America in order to defend the lives and property of its citizens (“Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10/2/2013; Instituto de Historia de Cuba 1998:268-72).

      During World War II, the United States emerged as the hegemonic core nation of the neocolonial world-system, with a global economic, financial and military dominance that enabled it to implement the Pan-American project, with the support of Latin American and Caribbean governments.  The formation of the Organization of American States (OAS) was its culminating moment.  However, although it was able to expel socialist Cuba in 1961, the OAS never functioned as an instrument of US neocolonial domination.  Rather, US imperialism was carried out through unilateral US policies with respect to each Latin American nation, enabling US economic and financial penetration of the region (“Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10/2/2013).  

     The visit of Calvin Coolidge to Cuba, then, involved an effort by the US president to shore up a government that promoted US interests and to further advance the US imperialist project with respect to Latin America.  These efforts were only partially successful: Machado eventually was forced out by the popular movement; and the US-created Inter-American organizational structure, designed to institutionalize the participation by the governments of the region in US domination and exploitation, never functioned as the US hoped, requiring the United States to engage in unilateral action, which had less credibility.  

     Today, as another US president visits Cuba, the situation is very different from that of 1928:  Cuba has an independent government that defends Cuban sovereignty and not US interests; the United States is no longer a rising power with growing economic and financial resources; the world-system has entered a long structural crisis and is headed toward chaos; and the peoples of Latin America have formed movements that have brought to power progressive governments that are seeking to cast aside US neocolonial domination, establishing an opposition to US imperialist intentions that is stronger than in the time of Coolidge.  

      But some things have not changed.  Then, as now, the president of the United States arrives in defense of US imperialist objectives, yet with pretensions of democracy (see “Obama and the imperialist web” 3/11/2016).

​References
 
Instituto de Historia de Cuba. 1998.  La neocolonia.  La Habana: Editora Política. 
 
López Civeira, Francisca.  2016.  “Calvin Coolidge en La Habana, razones de una visita” in Trabajadores: Órgano de la Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (March 7, 2016), P. 5.
 
 
Key words: Obama, Cuba, Coolidge, Machado, Pan-American, imperialism

      As the world prepares to observe the historic visit of President Barack Obama to Cuba, we ought to have a clear understanding that the changes that the Obama administration proposes are changes in strategies, and they in no sense reflect a departure from US imperialist objectives with respect to Cuba and Latin America.  The Obama administration is trapped in an imperialist web from which it cannot escape.

      The impulse of the great American republic of the north toward domination was evident from its beginnings, expressed in: its economic development on the basis of a lucrative trade relation with the slave plantations of the Caribbean during the seventh and eighteenth centuries; its development of a system of slavery in the US South, and the development of its industry in the North on a foundation of commerce with the slave South; and its expansionism, through which it forcibly took lands from indigenous nations and from Mexico, establishing a nation that extended from coast to coast.  On the other hand, during its first century as a republic, a democratic impulse existed alongside its disposition to domination, as was expressed by the continual expansion of political and civil liberties to white men of the laboring classes, and by its abolition of slavery.  In 1876, the possibility still existed that the United States could fulfill the promise of democracy that it had proclaimed at its birth.  It was not too late for a US government with a democratic political will to compensate the indigenous nations and the freed slaves, and to proceed on a more democratic road.  Although the territory of the nation had been acquired through force and the economic development of its principle industry was tied to slavery, much of the economy and commerce of the nation remained in the hands of small scale industrial and agricultural producers that were not directly tied to superexploitation of labor in other lands.

      But during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the economic development of the nation took a leap toward concentrated capital and banking, the leaders of which, the “robber barons,” emerged to control the important opinion shapers in the country, including the press, the universities and the churches.  During the 1890s, concerned with the fact that the productive capacity of the nation exceeded its domestic market, the elite began to forge a policy of imperialism, characterized by interventions in other lands in order to secure markets.  President William McKinley was the first to implement the policy with military intervention in Cuba, and President Theodore Roosevelt developed imperialism as a systemic policy at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Imperialism has been the continuous policy of US presidents ever since, regardless of political party or ideological orientation, and maintained in spite of significant national and international developments.

       The move to imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century was a decisive turn, for it meant that the development of the economy of the United States would be tied to the superexploitation of vast regions, first in Latin America, and later in Africa and Asia.  At the same time, a profound ideological change occurred, as the American promise of democracy was converted into the American dream of upward mobility.  The nation was on the road to the creation of a consumer society, constructed on a material foundation of the superexploitation of the peoples of other lands.  From that time forward, it would be difficult to depart from an imperialist road, because this would require a change in the structural foundation of the national economy, and it would imply a new direction in the evolving American way of life.

     However, the American imperialist and consumerist road was not ecologically and politically sustainable in the long term.  The earth has finite limits, placing ecological constraints on human productive capacities; and the peoples of the world would not in the long run accept the conditions of poverty and underdevelopment imposed by global structures of superexploitation.  Sensing this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt envisioned a democratic reform of the world-system following the Second World War.  In the Atlantic Charter, he expressed a dream that every person in the world would be freed from want.  In other contexts, he spoke in favor of ending the colonial empires; and he voiced his intention to provide financial aid to the newly independent nations, so that greater global equality among nations and persons would emerge.  

     We cannot be sure if Roosevelt understood the implications of such a vision.  It would have required a transformation of global structures of superexploitation, and thus a restructuring of the US economy, including the development of new patterns of investment in ecologically sustainable production oriented toward providing for human needs.  As such, it would have involved a reversal of a half-century of imperialism in support of consumerism.  But it would have been possible, given the advanced industry, science and technology that the United States had developed.  Such a democratic turn would have involved a kind of global Keynesianism, implemented by an enlightened US elite, aware that an anti-imperialist democratic global project would be necessary for the sustainability of the world-system in the long run.

      We cannot know if Roosevelt would have been committed to such a global democratic transformation, if he had lived.  Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy with respect to Latin America was imperialist, and we therefore have reason for skepticism.  On the other hand, World War II created a different international situation, in that the United States emerged from the war with the economic and political power to implement a global democratic vision.  

     Nor can we know if Roosevelt’s third term vice-president, Henry Wallace, a man with progressive vision, would have guided the nation toward global leadership in the development of a democratic world-system, if he had succeeded Roosevelt.  Wallace was dumped by the Democratic Party bosses at the convention in 1944 and replaced with Harry Truman.

     We do know that Truman surrounded himself with advisers who had none of the vision of Roosevelt and Wallace.  And we know that the United States, instead of reconverting its war economy to a peace-time economy, turned to a permanent war economy, creating what retiring President Dwight Eisenhower would later call the military-industrial complex.

      The turn of the nation to a permanent war economy, justified with the Cold War ideology, further set the nation on the imperialist road.  For it would mean that the United States would be most inclined toward military aid and to military intervention in neocolonies with anti-imperialist popular movements that were threatening the established order.  And it would mean that the United States would be less and less capable of leading the world in a peaceful and democratic turn, in that it would be less capable of developing sustainable forms of production that would respond to the human needs of the world. Increasingly dependent on military intervention in order to protect its economic interests, the United States would be increasingly unable to lead the world in a different direction.  

     Barack Obama inherited this legacy of 125 years of imperialism and seventy years of a permanent war economy.  He arrived to the presidency as a result of campaign contributions from the elite, and not on a foundation of a popular anti-imperialist movement.  So there was never a basis for thinking that he was prepared to make changes in US foreign policy beyond adjustments in imperialist policies.  As the foreign policy of the Obama administration took form, Cuban and Latin American analysists continually have stressed that Obama’s policies are characterized by continuity with his predecessors, rather than change.  They have noted, for example, continued US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq; regime change in Libya; supported for terrorist opposition groups in Syria; efforts to destabilize socialist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador; and increasing military expenditures and military presence in the world.  

     The Obama administration has had some tendency to express support for more intelligent forms of imperialism, characterized by support of internal opposition groups and use of the mass media, combined with destabilizing economic strategies, while formally pretending to respect the sovereignty of the nation.  The intelligent use of imperialist strategies has been the approach with respect to Leftist governments in Latin America, and it has been more effective than cruder strategies, such as an embargo.  This shift to intelligent imperialism is what Obama now intends with respect to Cuba, eliminating the embargo, which has been universally condemned by the nations of the world, and thus is damaging to US imperialist intentions.

      One hundred twenty-five years of US imperialism have put the North American republic on a course of opposition to the legitimate aspirations of the peoples of the Third World, who for nearly a century have formed anti-imperialist popular movements in search of true independence and sovereignty.  Attempts have been made to justify antagonistic policies toward the Third World with distorting ideologies: the Cold War, the war on terrorism, and human rights.  We the people of the United States must see through these ideological distortions and develop an alternative political party with an anti-imperialist platform that seeks to lead the nation in a foreign policy of cooperation with the nations and peoples of the world, as the only path to the development of a world-system that is just, democratic and sustainable.

       In September and October 2013, I published eighteen blog posts on US imperialism in Latin America.  The posts tried to show that US policy from McKinley to Obama has been characterized by imperialism.  Shifts in emphasis have occurred within the context of a fundamental imperialist intention.  The posts are the following:
 “Lenin on Imperialism” 9/10/2013; 
“The origin of US imperialist policies” 9/18/2013; 
“US Imperialism, 1903-1932” 9/19/2013; 
“Imperialism and the FDR New Deal” 9/20/2013; 
“Post-war militarization of economy & society” 9/23/2013; 
“The Cold War and Imperialism” 9/24/2013; 
“Kennedy and the Third World” 9/25/2013; 
“The Alliance for Progress” 9/26/2013; 
“US Imperialism in Latin America, 1963-76” 9/27/2013; 
“Imperialism falters in Vietnam” 9/30/2013; 
“Jimmy Carter” 10/1/2013; 
“Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10/2/2013; 
“The national turn to the Right” 10/3/2013; 
“Reaganism” 10/4/2013; 
“Imperialism as neoliberalism” 10/7/2013; 
“The “neocons” take control” 10/8/2013; 
“Obama: More continuity than change” 10/9/2013; and
“Imperialism as basic to foreign policy” 10/10/2013. 

A subsequent post on “The imperialist discourse of Obama” was published on April 22, 2015.  

To find the posts, in the category US imperialism, scroll down.

      The development of US imperialist policies was integrally tied to the development by the United States of neocolonialism in Cuba and Latin America, and to the US rise to hegemony in the neocolonial world-system.  US imperialism has involved the use of a variety of strategies to guarantee cheap labor, raw materials and markets in nations that are formally independent.  It was born in a neocolonial context, and it has not been characterized by the seizing of political control through military aggression, as occurred with European colonialism.  In the neocolonial world-system, even when military intervention is used and imperialist wars are launched, the occupied nation is presented as independent.  Neocolonial domination is primarily through ownership by corporations of the neocolonial power and by the figurehead bourgeoisie of the neocolony of the economic, financial and mass media institutions of the neocolony.  The use of military force is secondary, and when it occurs, it is carried out by the apparently independent government of the neocolony, which receives military aid from the neocolonial power.  In the heyday of neocolonialism, direct US military intervention only occurred in situations in which the neocolonial system broke.

      Inasmuch as the United States has experienced a relative economic decline, and inasmuch as fascism is characterized by the attainment of economic objectives by military means, the increasing use by the United States of aggressive wars in promotion of economic interests can be interpreted as a turn toward global fascism.  It may be that the United States is taking steps that could lead to the abandonment of the imperialist neocolonial world-system constructed during the twentieth century in favor of a global military dictatorship and a world-empire directed by a United States government controlled by transnational corporations. 

     See seven posts on neocolonialism, posted in September 2013 and in 2014.

     We have seen that the European conquest of the world from 1492 to 1914 was penetrating, transforming the conquered regions into peripheral zones of the developing world-economy, converting them into suppliers of raw materials and cheap labor and purchasers of the surplus goods of the conquering powers.  The European project of global domination established the basic structures of the capitalist world-economy, characterized by a geographical division of labor between core and periphery.  (See various posts on the origin and development of the world-system).

       The flow of raw materials from the periphery to the core can be seen in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean.  From the sixteenth century until the emergence of the structural crisis of the world-system in the 1970s, the natural resources and human labor of Latin America and the Caribbean were used to supply raw materials to the nations of the core, including: gold, silver, sugar, indigo, coffee, rubber, bananas, petroleum, copper, tin, and iron.  Thus, Latin America was characterized by dependent capitalist development, undermining possibilities for an autonomous economic development characterized by the development of industry, strong and independent states, the protection of the social and economic rights of the people, and an expanding middle class.

     There are powerful actors in the world and in Latin America and the Caribbean who have had particular interests in the development of dependent capitalism in the region: the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, owners of plantations and haciendas that have used cheap and often forced labor to sell agricultural products to the core; international owners of plantations that have extracted agricultural products; international and national owners of mines that have extracted minerals for exportation to the core; and national political actors who have been supported by and have represented powerful national and international economic interests.  In contrast to these interests, an emerging industrial bourgeoisie has had an interest in autonomous economic development, since this would entail an expansion of industry.  And the popular sectors, including peasants, workers and the middle class, have had an interest in autonomous economic development, since this would involve a strong domestic market for a diversity of agricultural products, diversity in urban employment, and the protection of social and economic rights.  

      Thus, dependent capitalism in Latin America and the Caribbean unavoidably has been characterized by class conflict, pitting the estate bourgeoisie, their international allies, and their political representatives against an emerging industrial bourgeoisie and the popular sectors. For the most part, the former were able to maintain control of the political process and protect their economic interests from the sixteenth century until the emergence of the structural crisis of the world-system in the 1970s.

       In nineteen posts published in 2013, I describe the flow of raw materials from Latin America and the Caribbean, and the interest of national and international actors in establishing and sustaining dependent capitalism:
“The open veins of Latin America: Gold and silver” 8/16/2013; 
“Contradictions in colonial Latin America” 8/22/2013; 
“Semi-colonial Latin American republics” 8/23/2013; 
“Free trade in the 19th century” 8/26/2013; 
“The punishment of independent Paraguay” 8/27/2013; 
“The open veins of Latin America: Sugar” 8/28/2013; 
“Indigo, coffee, and liberal reform” 9/2/2013; 
“The Open Veins of Latin America: Coffee” 9/4/2013; 
“Liberal reform in 19th century Honduras” 9/5/2013; 
“The open veins of Latin America: Rubber” 9/6/2013; 
“The open veins of Latin America: Coffee, Part II” 10/14/2013; 
“The Open Veins of Latin America: Bananas” 10/15/2013; 
“The Underground Sources of Power” 10/16/2013; 
“Petroleum in Latin America” 10/17/2013; 
“Petroleum in Venezuela” 10/18/2013; 
“Copper in Chile” 10/22/2013; 
“Tin in Bolivia” 10/23/2013; 
“Iron in Venezuela and Brazil” 10/24/2013; and
“The natural resources of the periphery” 10/25/2013.

To find the posts, in the category Latin American History, scroll down.

     In the period 1918 to 1979, a project of developmentalism prevailed in most of Latin America and the Caribbean.  This was forged by an alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie and the popular sectors, and it enabled a degree of industrial development and the protection of social and economic rights.  Developmentalism was a reformist project that did not negate the interests of the estate bourgeoisie or the international bourgeoisie; indeed, the international bourgeoisie cooperated with the project, seeing it as mechanism of social control. During this time, the dream of an autonomous economic project was present in popular hopes throughout the region, inspired by the triumph of revolutions in Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua.

     In the 1970s, the world system entered a structural crisis, prompting a turn by the international bourgeoisie to neoliberalism, displacing developmentalism.  Inasmuch as the neoliberal project undermined Latin American and Caribbean industry, it represented an abandonment of the twentieth century alliance between the international bourgeoisie and the national industrial bourgeoisies of the Latin American and Caribbean nations.  And it represented a reversal of the modest concession that had been made to the popular sectors during the developmentalist project, giving rise to popular rejection of neoliberalism and a renewal of the popular movements beginning in 1994, creating a new political reality in Latin America.

       For blog posts on the structural crisis of the world-system, see World-System Crisis.  For the new political reality in Latin America since 1994, see blog posts on Latin American and Caribbean unity, South-South cooperation, Bolivia and Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa and the Citizen Revolution in Ecuador as well as a reading on Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.  

     From 1492 to 1914, seven European nations conquered the world, establishing the structural foundation of the modern world-system and capitalist world-economy.  The European project of world conquest did not always involve direct control by European states.  In some cases, formally autonomous empires or societies were compelled to make concessions to European powers, coerced by significant European military presence in the region.  In other cases, European military-economic companies contracted by European states made alliances with local political actors whose particular interests coincided with the European agenda, enabling it to take control of the political process. And there were important exceptions: China and Japan.  But in essence, during the course of four and a quarter centuries, Europe conquered the world.

     Conquest has been the way of humanity since the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago.  It was through conquest that political structures were centralized, kingdoms and empires formed, and advanced civilizations came into being.

    But the modern European conquest of the world was more penetrating.  In previous eras, the conquering power required a tribute from the conquered societies or kingdoms, but the basic structures of their political-economic systems were left intact.  In contrast, European colonial domination involved the transformation of the economies of the colonized, so that the colonized regions were converted into peripheral zones in a developing world-economy.  They were turned into suppliers of raw materials, on a basis of forced or cheap labor, and purchasers of the surplus manufactured goods of the colonial power.  With their traditional industries destroyed, and their traditional agriculture transformed, the colonies became impoverished and economically dependent on the core.  

    The peripheralization of the conquered peoples had the consequence that when formal political independence was conceded, in response to nationalist movements, the newly independent countries encountered tremendous obstacles to autonomous development.  In addition to the legacy of colonial economic structures, these obstacles included imperialist strategies by the core powers, seeking to preserve the core-peripheral relation with the colonized regions.  So today the world-system stands on a foundation of colonialism: it is a neocolonial world-system.

     In the development and maintenance of the project of global conquest, it has been necessary for the colonizing governments to justify the conquests in the eyes of the peoples of the conquering nations.  The participation of the people has been required: for officers and soldiers in the armed forces; and for merchants and consumers in the developing structures of global commerce.  During the first three centuries of the world-system, the justification was religious: the conquered peoples were not Christian, and thus considered not civilized, so the conquest was viewed as bringing civilization to the world.  From the period 1789 to 1914, liberal democracy emerged as the consensual ideology that guided the world-system, reducing the role of religious beliefs in civil society.  During this period, racism emerged as a justification: the conquered peoples were viewed as racially inferior and as uncivilized, and thus not ready for democracy. During the course of the twentieth century, racism was dislodged from its position of influence, and the meaning of democracy was expanded and deepened.  So all possibilities for the ideological justification of colonial domination were eliminated.  The strategy then became the denial of the importance of colonialism, presenting it as a phenomenon of the past and as not central to the development of the world-system. The colonial denial is supported in two ways: the fragmentation of the academic disciplines in higher education, preventing the emergence of a comprehensive understanding that discerns the role of colonialism in the economic development of Europe and that perceives the survival of colonial economic structures in the neocolonial world-system; and the development of a consumer society, distracting the people and undermining possibility for an informed popular understanding of human history and global dynamics.

     The colonial denial is central to the difference between European and Third World perspectives.  Whereas Europe and the European settler societies deny the significance of colonialism, the colonized peoples of the world are not able to forget the colonial transformation, and they consider it their duty to remember.  Whereas in Europe it is assumed that Western economic and technological advances are explained by cultural characteristics, the colonized understand colonialism and neocolonialism to be central to European development and Third World underdevelopment.   Whereas public discourse in Europe rarely refers to colonialism and neocolonialism, public officials and political figures in the Third World regularly name colonialism as an important part of their present reality.  The fundamental difference between European and Third World perspectives is their vastly different levels of consciousness of colonialism and of the colonial situation in which the vast majority of persons in the world live.

     The European colonial denial is a distortion.  It prevents us from seeing fundamental historical facts and from understanding contemporary realities.  It is not simply a matter of a difference in perspectives.  It is a question of one perspective that cannot see important components of the human condition, giving rise to partial and limited understandings of a wide variety of social issues; and another perspective that addresses relevant questions and that formulates an informed understanding.  It is a question of a legitimating and distorting ideology as against a scientific understanding.  It is a question of a Eurocentric understanding as against a universal understanding.  The Third World perspective, tied to emancipatory movements, is the most advanced understanding of which the human species is capable at this stage in its development

     Even the European Left suffers from Eurocentrism.  When we formulate issues in the historical and social context of Europe or the United States, ignoring issues and frames that are emerging in the Third World, this is a form of ethnocentrism.  When we treat the history of popular struggles primarily in the context of Europe and the United States, and pay little attention to the various popular revolutions that have been unfolding in the Third World, we are thinking in a Eurocentric way.  If we study Marx and Lenin; but not Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, and Chávez; we are developing Eurocentric blinders.

      But we Europeans and peoples of European descent can overcome Eurocentrism.  By encountering the popular revolutionary movements that have been forged by the peoples of the Third World, we can make their experiences and understandings part of our own, and we thus can emancipate ourselves from the ideological distortions of Western culture.  We can arrive to understand that colonial domination was the principal cause of the development of the West, and that neocolonial structures continue to promote the development of the North and the underdevelopment of the South.  We can develop a basic frame of reference that sees the conquest of the world by seven European nations during the course of more than four centuries as fundamental to the existing world order, and that appreciates the revolutionary struggles of the colonized as a necessary and significant global process that is seeking to construct a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  Possessing such a basic frame of reference would enable us to recognize that we must cast our lot with the peoples and movements of the Third World, in defense of humanity.

      In 2013 and 2014, I wrote fourteen blog posts on the origin and development of the world-system, which endeavored to describe the economic transformations in the colonial process:

With respect to Cuba:
“Cuba in historical and global context” 6/12/2014; 
“The peripheralization of Cuba” 6/16/2014;

With respect to Vietnam:
“What enabled French colonialism?” 4/28/2014;
“French colonialism in Vietnam” 4/25/2014;

With respect to Latin America:
“The natural resources of the periphery” 10/25/2013;

The origin and development of the world-system and the capitalist world-economy:
“What is a world-system?” 8/1/2013; 
“The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; 
“Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013; 
“The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; 
“Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; 
“Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; 
“Consolidation of the world-economy, 1640-1815” 8/19/2013; 
“New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; 
“The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013.

To find the posts, in the category World-System, scroll down.

Posts on the related theme of the “The Open Veins of Latin America” can be found in Latin American History; and on the related theme of Western development in World History.