President Donald Trump

Since the end of World War II, the world is experiencing the resurgence of neo-fascist proclivities. The flourishing seed of such extreme right wing ideology has emerged in Western Europe and the United States of America. Nowadays, elements leading those countries are advocating extreme nationalism, attacking left-wing ideologies and other Marxist ideology. Literally, they indulge in the racists and xenophobic scapegoating of vulnerable peoples, and also promoting pseudo-populist right-wing economic programs. Unlike the fascist, the neo-fascists placed the blame of their countries’ social chaos on non-European immigrants than on the Jews and leftists.

As of 2008, the walls of global capitalism crumbled as a result of the attendant problems of climate change, environmental degradation, and the entrenched inequality orchestrated by the super-rich- feathering their nest by exploiting the working class and oppressing the peasantry. Like in every cycle of burst, in 2008, the system experienced its major burst since the 1930s. Many big businesses in the West suffered insolvency, some reduced their wage bill by cutting down staffs, and other collapsed as a result of the crisis. In response to such economic catastrophe, national governments in the West provided life support to some of those corporations under the nice phrase of “bailout.” For instance, Chryslers and General Motors benefitted from such generosity.  Since then, it is this enigma that the capitalist imperialist around the globe are finding a fixation to extricate the system from the abyss. As a result, the proponents of ‘’ the efficient market hypothesis” are working assiduously hard to rescind the terminal demise of this system.

The crisis of 2008 has left the West striving for balance, she has resorted to using mercantilist thought to address the economic crisis. In this, the right-wing Theresa May and folks in the UK who are engaged in the Brexit project are busy focusing on economic seclusion from the EU, as a consequence, the British economy  is experiencing a sharp decline never before noticed in modern times. The value of the pound has declined, while the economy is speedily moving in a downward spiral. Capitalism has lost its progressive potentials, instead of creating job, developing technology and industry, factories are shutting down. The productive forces are stagnated, leading to job loss, and the unemployment of a lot of peasant and poor masses.

Even the Chinese economy which was experiencing a fast growth is now slowing in growth as a result of the fast decline of this system, while Japan is also in steadily decline. As for Greece, the situation there is so appalling, let alone Spain and Portugal that are nursing their own sets of challenges as a result of the bankruptcy of the system. The life of global capitalism is becoming an economic artifact which is appropriate for the museum. The climate crisis which is plaguing the world, leading to deforestation, drought, famine, and hunger in it exposed how the profit-motive multinational companies have managed to make the world uncomfortable for the working poor and peasant masses.

On the other side of the western Hemisphere, the acolytes of this system are in the state of total confusion, not coming to terms with the fact that the cause of the decline of capitalism is as a result of the contradictions created by the system itself. The right-wing conservative in Donald Trump is looking for soft targets to scapegoat for the terminal collapse of the system. He takes pride in   scapegoating vulnerable peoples for the social problems in the United States of America, and also prioritizing right-wing economic policies by lowering taxes on the one percent super-rich corporate elites on Wall Street. Instead of him focusing on solving the issues of the United States of America from the root, he thinks isolation and the building of walls will ease her woes and usher in a paradigm of economic prosperity.
Donald Trump and his cronies with neo-fascist sensibilities want to play blind eye to the hard fact, African resources- both material and human- from the age of slavery to the height of colonialism-  were not only used to occasion the industrial revolution in Europe, but her labor was also used to build the West. Slavery became a profitable enterprise to the white bourgeoisie because it favored their exploitation of our people. Today, our Continent is in the cesspool as a result of the continuous exploitation of her resources by profit-hungry corporations.

When slavery became undesirable, the West devised another vicious system: colonization. This time around they did not forcibly take us away to enslave us, they came, controlled, and brought religion to enslave us while they loot our Continent to the ground. Colonialism ignited a king-vassal relationship in Africa: Africa became the producer of raw materials at a cheap cost to ensure the wheels of manufacturing industries in the West accrue surplus profit. Our economy became a satellite for the production of raw materials for the international capitalist syndicate, while imported goods from the export of our raw materials are sold to us for a high cost. 

Trump knows that Inequality occasioned by corporate kakistocracy is the reason for the failings in the United States of America. Corporate kakistocracy, as you now it, is the domination of big banks, hedge funds and monopoly industries.  It undermines the effort at ending social inequality but promotes social gap. The decline of capitalism along with its attendant ramifications of recession, unemployment, and protest shows the system is at a dead alley.  The West should stop scapegoating vulnerable peoples as the reason for her fallings. She needs to dig deep into addressing, as Prof. Colonel West would say, “the dogmas of free market fundamentalism, aggressive militarization, and the escalating authoritarianism.”    

“In short, we are experiencing the sad American imperial devouring of American democracy. This historic devouring in our time constitutes an unprecedented gangsterization of America—an unbridled grasp at power, wealth, and status. And when the most powerful forces in a society—and an empire—promote a suffocation of democratic energies, the very future of genuine democracy is jeopardized,” as Colonel West Posited.

Indeed, imperialism cannot redeem itself from its own grave diggers created as a result of corporate kakistocracy. The migrant crisis in Europe is a Western creation which is engendered by the installation of puppet governments, the militarization of international issues, the economic exploitation of the resources of vulnerable peoples, and the imposition of the phony concept of free market fundamentalism. As long as the West continues to use those instruments to suppress the peoples of the Third World, the ongoing migrants’ crisis in Europe and America will be a perennial issue.

A recent study revealed how the European settlers aided and abetted by the national bourgeoisie is plundering Africa. The study shows how the Continent is being sucked of her resources, putting the figures at a number high: “While $134 billion flows into the continent each year, predominantly in the form of loans, foreign investment and aid; $192 billion is taken out, mainly in profits made by foreign companies, tax dodging and the costs of adapting to climate change. The result is that Africa suffers a net loss of $58 billion a year.” (Health Poverty Action Briefing, July 2014).

Dr. H. Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr.  provides an apt description of this paralysis: “Today, the pattern of trade remains the same: Third World countries are still producing raw materials and still receiving low returns. Europe and the other industrialized white nations are still producing manufactured goods and selling them exorbitantly. Unlike the European manufacturers during colonial era who could compensate for their loss on the one hand with an increase in the prices of manufactured goods, Third world countries on the other hand must compensate for their loss by borrowing money at high interest rates from the white industrialized countries. So the Third World Countries go through the merciless struggle of ‘digging one hole to fill another,’ with the attendant consequences of poverty, disease and high infant mortality.”

When you exploit Africa and use her natural resources to make your countries great, while poverty levels increase, diseases rage havoc, inequality becomes pervasive and pernicious, and then the people will leave their countries to move where they can find a better livelihood. This is the first approach taken by vulnerable peoples who are keen on surviving as opposed to addressing the causes of their backwardness. From time in immemorial, the cause of migration has always been the failure of where you are to provide the basic necessities for your survival.” Humans leave from one locality to another in pursuit of self-preservation and self-actualization. This is what our people pursue.

Instead of labelling countries from the Third World as “shitholes”, imperialist Donald Trump must be informed that the wealth of the Third World, sucked by capitalist bloodsucking spree,   masquerading as investment, is the cause of the economic paralysis of the Continent. Countries in the Third World have been saddled by the ubiquity of multinational capitalist corporations, which come in to exploit our people and further inequality.  Trump and the West, along with their local stooges, should regulate the flow of global capital, stop undermining leftist governments, and exploiting the resources of the world poor so that these “shitholes countries can create a progressive future for themselves.

The commanding height of Africa’s economy is being controlled by multinational corporations and monopolies. About half of the corporations engaging in the iron ore, gold, diamond, mining and platinum sectors in sub-Saharan Africa are listed on the London stock exchange, owning a staggering 1 trillion of Africa’s resources, while half of the banks in sub-Saharan Africa are foreign-owned. Additionally, according to conservative estimate, foreign monopolies controlled about 1.3 million square kilometers of the Continent’s land, in contrast to the fact that bulk of the peasants and the working class don’t have the luxury of land to engage in neither small-scale nor large scale farming.

Africa is a victim of an economic exploitation and political oppression dating back from the days of slavery to colonialism. Our people and resources have been used to develop the imperialist cities. The West used ‘’black genocide” to raid our countries of their resources and enslave us. Our backwardness is because they devised a scheme to perpetually prey on us. Every time Africa takes a decisive step to ensure her self-determination, they visit us with coups geared at slaughtering our best minds.

Prof. PLO Lumumba would posit: “in the 1970s and 1980s, coup d’état became so frequent like breakfast in Africa,” Nkrumah was sacrificed because he was fixated on ensuring that Africa unite and harness her potential; Patrice Lumumba was sacrificed because he refused to allow the resources of Congo to be exploited by the combined forces of Belgium, France and Britain. Sylvanus Olympio was toppled because he insisted on making Togo a great country. Amilcar Cabral was eliminated simply because he held the view that Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde will not be spheres of influence of Portugal. Sekou Toure was isolated by France simply because he preferred “Freedom in poverty to riches in slavery.” Felix Moumie was poisoned by an agent loyal to the French government because he could not tolerate the relegation of Cameroun as a puppet state to France.

As if those were not enough, the West promoted numskulls like Mobutu Seso Siko, Jean Bedel Bokassa, Idi Amin, and many other puppets to take over African countries. They promoted those buffoons who surrendered the resources of Africa to the West, as well as purged dissent and raged havoc in Africa. Those right wing African leaders crippled the rise of leftist tendencies, and paved the way for the conflicts that plagued the Continent. Those resulting anomalies are the reasons why this Continent still lags behind in development. Those are the factors that have kept this Continent in the gutters. Essentially, Africa is the victim of continuous maneuvering from the West. Yet she and other Third World countries are branded as the exporters of social chaos to Europe.

In other words, the manipulative jockeying of the Great Powers for the resources of Africa continues to undermine her effort at economic transformation and self-determination.  It is from this backdrop that the working class- united and conscious of the necessity of the economic battle- must   unite to deal a fatal blow to capitalist plunder. This is the only class which can abruptly halt the massive plundering of the resources of Africa, because it is the class which produces the surplus value for the capitalist corporations. This class with its progressive consciousness can break the limp of capitalist exploitation and extricate the Continent from the clutches of economic decline to the height of social transformation.  Until this is done, the workers in Africa will continue to be wage slaves.

About the Author: Alfred P.B. Kiadii is a student of the University of Liberia studying Political science with emphasis in public Administration. He is the Director of Press and Propaganda of the Liberia National Students Union. Contact him at bokaidii@gmail.com. Alternatively, he can be reached at +231888995870/775349651

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