how europe underdeveloped africa sparknotes

In 1919, Leon Trotsky wrote the Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World, which would be adopted by fifty-one delegates on the final day of the First Congress of the Communist International. For Ho Chi Minh, it shone like a “brilliant sun…over all five continents.” It opened, Mao Zedong said, “wide possibilities for the emancipation of the peoples of the world and opened up the realistic paths towards it.” Years later, Fidel Castro said that, “without the existence of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s socialist revolution would have been impossible.” The barefoot, the illiterate, the hungry, and those whose backs were strained by the plow learned that they, too, could rise up against the indignities of colonialism and win. The clarion call of October would be heard around the world. They built an industrialized state that could not only defend their hard-won sovereignty, but also projected it toward those living under colonialism’s yoke. They would achieve what no peoples had yet been able to do. In 1917, men and women with sweaty brows and calloused hands seized power in Russia. One was the war of Western nations against the cascading process of emancipation unleashed in the east. In the twentieth century, the colonial counterrevolution would play out along two geographic axes. In this way, the counterrevolutionary drive of the old Cold War is carried forward into a new century, once again filled with promise and terror in equal measure.

Fascism is rearing its head, and fresh crosshairs are being painted on nations seeking to embark on the path of sovereign development. Barred from marshaling their economic might towards the betterment of society-a process that would challenge the preeminence of private property-the old colonial powers are siphoning resources toward the protection of private wealth. The so-called “Western world,” formed over centuries by the dominance of capital, is impotent in the face of the catastrophes of hunger, poverty, and climate change. The tectonic movements unleashed by this process are sending tremors around the globe. hegemony, a period of enforced imbalances in the world-capitalist system that accelerated the underdevelopment of postcolonial societies. The balance of trade now favors China, and the nations of the Third World are preparing for the end of the era of U.S. Bertolt Brecht The Two Axes of Counterrevolutionįor the first time in capitalism’s long history, the global economic center of gravity is shifting decisively eastward. My glass of water belongs to one dying of thirst? Be glad you have it!īut how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat Paweł Wargan is an organizer and researcher based in Berlin and the coordinator of the secretariat of the Progressive International.

How europe underdeveloped africa sparknotes