Marxism Unmasked from Delusion to Destruction.pdf 7471KB

their countries into "modem" countries. Even if they had done this,
it would have been a very slow process. It wx)uld ha\r been necessary
for them to start fix)m the grass roots. First, the\- would have had to
accumubte capital to construct, let us say, equipment for the mines, in
order to produce ore and from this ore to produce metals, and then the
railroads. It would have been a vers- long, slow process.
But what really happ>ened u-as a phenomenon that nobody m the
eighteenth century- had considered. What de\-elopcd was foreign
investment. Considered from the point of \new of wT>rld historv; tbmgn
investment was a most important phenomenon. Foreign invrstment meant
that the capitalists in the West prcmded the capital rrquirrd tor the
transformation of a pan of the economic s>-$tem of the "backward"
countries into a modern 50ciet>'. This \*'as something entwrh* new.
something unknown in earlier ages. In 1817. when Ricardo wTOCe hiN
book On the l^nriaples of PoUtudl Eccmtymy and Taxatton. he sunpl>' assumed
as a fact that there was no capital imrstment abmad
The capital imrstment that de\rloped in the nineteenth century wav
ver>- different from what had taken pbce under the old colonial sN-ttem iN
it developed from the fifteenth centurv- on Then it had been a teanrh for
agricultural matcruU. natural rrv>ua'es. and pn:>duct^ that could not be
obtained in Europe. A silly explarution of their detare to trade was that the
colonial powers were interested in getting foreign markets for their
production Actually the colonial p*mrr* exploited the colonies in order
to get niateriaU: ihc>- were vtpn happ\ when the>- didn^ have to gwe
anything for the rrsourio thrv wanted, when the>- could get the ftneigyi
products tor nothing 1 hesc eariv colonitts \%rre more often ptratei and
robbers than tradesmen The\' considered «eUmg abroad onK- as a sort o4'
ciiicrgciuy measure if thrv cimldn'i get what tho wanted vkithtHit pasing
for It rhe> rrallv had \Trv little inicmi in im-riiing—the>- twlv wanted
the raw mater laK
()t course. the\- «.i>uKln't prrsrnt umie uti/ens tT\»m their own
countries from settling in these colonies and starting agricultural
pnuluition As a In-panluct of the^e iokmial srntures ol the fitteenih
eighteenth icntune>. S4>me iinpt>rtant lolonies drvrli»ped mrrsea* The
most un(x>rtant. o( course, was the United Sutes. aiul teiorKih the Latin
American countries Hut fn>m the point i»l view i)( the European
merchants and tradesmen, there was little interest in the fact that lonie
members of the Umrr classes migrated At^i settled in the United States For
a long time thev pn>bablv ii>nsidercd the islands in the (Uribbean more