“Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.”

We are reposting this. It was posted a decade ago.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I am re-reading some of Marx’s writings on colonialism and, as usual, it is fascinating stuff. Nothing even the casual observer wouldn’t know in general, but to read some of the particulars as Marx wrote them 150 years ago is powerful and a testament to his great courage and foresight and what great benefit that has been for human knowledge. It earned him the vilification and hatred of all the ruling powers, the Popes and kings, the bankers and moneymen who are all complicit in the slaughter of human beings.

He writes of the development of capitalism, its beginnings and its expansion in to the world in search of raw materials and markets for its commodities. He describes the activities of Holland the dominant capitalist nation in the 17th century.

He talks of the role of the “official” Christian church and quotes a prominent writer of Christian affairs of the times, William Howitt. Howitt noted, “The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth." (1)

He then goes on to describe the Dutch colonial administration in Holland that was labeled by one observer, a former governor of Java as “one of the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery, massacre and meanness.” (2)

Marx adds, “Nothing is more characteristic than their system of stealing men to get slaves for Java. The men stealers were trained for this purpose. The thief, the interpreter and the seller, were the chief agents in this trade, native princes the chief sellers. (As a famous Irishman once said: The rich always betray the poor. RM 3) The young people stolen were thrown in to the secret dungeons of Celebes, until they were ready for the sailing to the slave ships.”

He goes on to describe how the Dutch came to “secure” Malacca. “…the Dutch corrupted the Portugeuse Governor. He let them in to the town in 1641. They hurried at once his house and assassinated him, to “abstain” from the payment of 21, 875, the price of his treason. Wherever they set foot, devastation and de-population followed. Banjuwangi, a province of Java, in 1750 numbered over 80,000 inhabitants, in 1811, only 18,000, Sweet Commerce.”

I have been racking my brain trying to remember where I read that sweet commerce comment years ago and I have found it again. Remember it: Sweet Commerce.

He also describes British capitalism in China and their rule in India. The British fought two wars in China to impose opium on them and to open the country to British goods. In India, they one time bought up all the rice, a staple food, to drive up prices and therefore their profits; hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, died. The lessons of occupation were learned first in Ireland and practiced throughout the Indian sub continent.

I am not intending to rag on the British or my Dutch friends here. It is the system of production that determines this horrible existence. Holland, and then Britain were simply the countries where it first began to take on national prominence; where the relatively stable, self sustaining feudal economy was on the wane, forced to make a deal in the English revolution and suffering a mortal headache in France a hundred years later. History enforces its will with a vengeance.

As capitalism ventured beyond the boundaries of the nation state it took the state religion with it. This is the reason for this barbaric Christian history. It is one of the reasons Islam was met with less hostility in Africa; it was not so associated with commodity slavery.

US president Obama is telling the world that the US it not at war. He supports the Turks, he supports the Palestinians, he supports the Iranians; this is the new friendly US imperialism. As he talks this talk, the number of Americans on food stamps doubles to 32 million, one tenth of the country. Homelessness has skyrocketed and millions are losing their homes. In the former colonial world that Marx describes above, nothing much has changed over the centuries for millions of people except for the introduction of cell phones and the cheap commodities that flood the world. Millions of children die from starvation among plenty; that’s commerce.

Capitalism is a permanent state of war; it is not a friendly system never was and never will be. Marx’s great contribution to human existence was he stripped bare the cloak of mystery that serves the interests of the ruling classes so well and looked at what really was and how it came to be. This is what allows us to have some say in what will be in the future, to consciously make history and not just be victims of it.

(1) William Howitt: Colonization and Christianity 1838
(2) Thomas Stanford Raffles: The History of Java 1817
(3) Henry Joy M’Cracken
(4) Marx quotes from Capital; Vol. 1 Chapter 31 This chapter is also published in pamphlet form titled, The Genesis of Capital. It is superb reading. Also in a book On Colonialism by Progress Publishers
Image A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs: William Blake