The Blessings of Capitalism (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

"If it were not for the British colonising their country, these natives would still be living in uncivilised conditions—always fighting and killing one another. We have given them decent houses to live in instead of old ramshackle huts; proper clothes to wear; factories and mines to work in—in fact, all the benefits of civilisation. They ought to be grateful to us.”

The Socialist is only too familiar with remarks like these from opponents, particularly when he tries to point out that the sole purpose of colonisation is to exploit the resources of the country as well as its people.

In the course of its development, capitalism has spread into the most remote corners of the earth. It has penetrated countries like New Guinea, parts of South East Asia, islands in the Indonesian Archipelago, and the far north of America. Many places that at one time were considered full of mystery are now landing spots for jet air liners. There is hardly any section of the human race that has not directly or indirectly felt capitalism's encroachment. Many backward races are now realising that we are all part and parcel of the same universe.

New Guinea with its several million tribesmen, perhaps the last sanctuary of primitive man many of whom were unknown 20 years ago, is now providing workers for road building. With this development there is gradually entering into the lives of these people all the so-called blessings of civilisation.

The inhabitants of lands which have become fields for exploitation through the growth of capitalism have become or are becoming slaves to a wages system. Like their fellow humans in other countries, their status in society is that of a working class—a large section of the community who have no security of livelihood and who do not possess anything but their bodily powers, which they are compelled to sell to an employer in return for a wage or salary. This is about enough to enable them to obtain sufficient food and clothes and the rest to exist upon and to reproduce their kind. Such is the lot of all members of the working class, no matter of what race or sex.

A strong indictment of the effect of capitalist encroachment comes from the pen of one of the world’s greatest anthropologists Claude Lévi-Strauss. Writing in the Unesco Courier, a publication of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, he states that:

With civilisation have come strange diseases against which primitives have no natural immunization and which have brought deadly havoc to their ranks. They are succumbing rapidly to tubercolosis. malaria, trachoma, leprosy, dysentry, gonorrhea, syphilis and the mysterious disease known us Karu, the results of primitive man's contact with civilisation, though not actually introduced by it.

Kuru is a genetic deterioration which inevitably ends in death and for which no treatment or remedy is known.

In Brazil 100 tribes became extinct between 1900 and 1950. The Kaingang, from the state of Sao Paulo, numbering 1,200 in 1912 today have dwindled to 80. The Munduraku were 20,000 in 1925, in 1950 they numbered 1,200. Of the 10,000 Nambikwara in 1905 1 could trace only 1.000 in 1940. The Kayapo of the River Araguaya were 2,500 in 1902 and 10 in 1950, the Timbira l,000 in 1900 and 40 in 1950.

Claude Lévi-Strauss has written considerably of the effects of capitalism on natives, but unlike the Socialist he does not put forward a practical solution to their problems. Sometimes we are told that capitalism's intrusion into the lives of native people has resulted in an improved code of morals and conduct among them just like the civilised world, yet it is rather singular that among these backward races there are tribes like the gentle Arapesh, who live among the mountains of New Guinea in tiny villages. who combine to help and share their possessions with one another. When there is plenty, all share. When times are hard, all suffer together. Strangers visiting them are well received.

There is much that is commendable in the manner in which these primitive tribes conduct their affairs, but the Socialist does not advocate a change to this form of primitive communism. Their economic structure has not developed to that stage where they are in a position to obtain enough of the necessities of life to ensure absolute freedom from want. A famine or crop failure to them spells disaster, as they have yet to acquire the knowledge of how to cope with the resources of nature so as to be assured of an abundance at all times. This problem does not arise in modern society. The working class under capitalism do not go in want because there is a shortage of necessities, but because they have no free access to the wealth which they have produced.

This insane order of society should end, which would mean a change in property relations. The forces of wealth production, which have outstripped the methods of exchange, must be transferred into common ownership and control and all wealth must be produced for the common benefit of all mankind. Only when this is accomplished will there be a world of free people living together in harmonious relationship.

Dick Jacobs.