Neocolonialism

M. Watts, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction exploitation is usually deployed in this regard: first, as a

modern form of industrial or commercial land use (or
Standing at the heart of the term neocolonialism is a sort mineral extraction) derived probably from its Latin ori-
of paradox. Kwame Nkrumah, the anticolonial leader and gins as an arrangement or explanation. The second
first president of Ghana and the first theorist of neo- meaning is a generic sense of unjustness or oppression,
colonialism as such, defined the condition as: referring to a potentially wide-ranging social relations
across time and space (exploitation of women by men,
modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the
workers by capitalists, slaves by slave-owners, low by high
same time talking about ‘freedom’ (Kwame Nkrumah,
castes, serfs by feudal overlords). The range of opinion
1964: 41).
here can be substantial ranging from the Kantian view
that exploitation refers to the instrumental treatment of
In his formulation it was the ‘last stage’ of imperialism
humans to coerced activity to psychological harm. The
because it emerged in the context of the Cold War
analytical content is of less concern than its moral
(in which the Third World became the site of proxy anti-
standing and the moral force of the reasoning (whether
communist struggles) and the deepening militancy of
and how the state or groups of states should prohibit
ex-colonial territories. This was no longer ‘naked colo-
exploitative transactions or refuse to enforce such agree-
nialism’ but rather more invisible modalities – economic,
ments). The third meaning which is central to neocolonial
ideological, political, and cultural – in which colonial
theorizing is explicitly analytical in the sense that it
exploitation was perpetuated. For Nkrumah, the control
purports to provide a theoretical and conceptual ground
by imperial powers over nominally independent states
on which the claim – A exploits B when A takes unfair
was achieved through new forms of corporate and es-
pecially financial forms of capital, by a psychological advantage of B – can be assessed. In philosophical terms,
dependency among Third World elites, by the effects of one can say that social science seeks to understand the
what he called ‘limited wars’ and by the capitulation of truth conditions under which such a claim can be made of
African, Latin American, and Asian leadership to the a particular social setting.
hegemonic forces of the former colonial states. The theorization of exploitation in neocolonialism
While Nkrumah first gave voice to the concept of was originally (and to a large extent still is) associated
neocolonialism as an analytical device, the substance of with the work of Karl Marx and the notion of surplus
the term was an integral part of African anti-imperialist appropriation and the labor theory of value, and
theorizing. Leopold Senghor, Alioune Diop, and Albert subsequently theories of imperialism. Marx’s account
Memmi all articulated similar sorts of ideas in the 1950s identifies a fundamental contradiction at the heart of
and 1960s. In 1967, it was Franz Fanon, in particular, in capitalism – a contradiction between two great classes
his searing account of Algeria and what he called ‘‘the (workers and owners of capital) which is fundamentally
pitfalls of nationalist consciousness,’’ who laid out of an exploitative relation shaped by the appropriation of
profound map of the forms and norms of the neocolonial surplus. Unlike feudalism in which surplus appropriation
condition. The Algerian war of liberation played an is transparent (in the forms of taxes and levies made by
absolutely indispensable role in the formation of neo- landowners and lords backed by the power of the church
colonialism as a category of thought, and French intel- and crown), surplus value is obscured in the capitalist
lectuals – most obviously Jean Paul Sartre in 1964 labor process. Marx argues that labor is the only source
(reprinted 2001) – also contributed to the theorization of, of value, and value is the embodiment of a quantum of
in his case, French neocolonial rule and the deployment socially necessary labor. It is the difference between the
of violence (the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in sale of a worker’s labor power and the amount of labor
particular) as its particular instrumentality. necessary to reproduce it that is the source of surplus
value. The means by which capital extracts this surplus
value under capitalism – through the working day, labor
Neocolonialism as Exploitation intensification, and enhancing labor productivity – cou-
pled to the changing relations between variable and
Central to the idea of neocolonialism is the persistence of constant capital determine, in Marx’s view, the extent,
‘colonial’ (or more properly imperial) and therefore ex- degree, and forms of exploitation. In the first volume of
ploitative relations. There are three broad senses in which Capital Marx identifies the origins of surplus value in the

360
 Neocolonialism 361

organization of production (the social relations of pro- aspirations for political independence from the colonial
duction so-called). In volume II Marx explains how ex- metropolitan power. Decolonization can be understood
ploitation affects the circulation of capital, and in volume as the period of later colonialism but implicit in the
III he traces the division of the total product of ex- notion of neocolonialism is the idea that decolonization
ploitation among its beneficiaries and the contradiction was incomplete or perhaps aborted to perpetuate a form
so created. In Marxist theory, two kinds of material of metropolitan or imperial hegemony. Modern coloni-
interest – interests securing material welfare and interests alism in its various norms and forms extended over the
enhancing economic power – are linked through ex- period from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. In
ploitation (exploiters simultaneously obtain greater eco- the New World, which had been subjected to Spanish,
nomic welfare and greater economic power by retaining French, Portugese, and Dutch colonial rule in the ‘first
control over the social allocation of surplus through in- age of colonialism’, the first wave of decolonization oc-
vestments). Members of a class, in short, hold a common curred in the eighteenth century. In this regard, the so-
set of interests, and therefore have common interests with called ‘classical age of imperialism’ in the last quarter of
respect to the process of exploitation. the nineteenth century was short, the first decoloniza-
A long line of Marx-inspired theorizing has, of course, tions of the second wave being achieved after the end of
attempted to grasp exploitative relations between coun- World War II. The two cycles of imperialism both con-
tries, and this contributed directly to Nkrumah’s original cluded with a limited phase of decolonization followed
formulation. This is the heart of theories of imperialism, by the rapid collapse of empires and an irresistible push
whether as the coercive extraction of surplus through to political independence. What neocolonialism offered
colonial states through unequal exchange or through the was a critical sense of how this process occurred and
imperial operation of transnational banks and multilateral whether it was in any sense complete.
development institutions (the World Bank and the The first challenge to the first wave of colonization
International Monetary Fund). The so-called ‘anti-glob- came in 1776 as British North American colonies de-
alization’ movement (especially focusing on institutions clared independence. While Britain maintained its
like the World Trade Organization) and the ‘sweatshop Caribbean and Canadian colonies, the Napoleonic up-
movements’ (focusing on transnational firms such as Nike) heavals in Europe so weakened Spain and Portugal that
are contemporary exemplars of a politics of exploitation European settlers from Mexico to Chile expelled their
linking advanced capitalist states and transnational com- imperial masters. By 1825, the Spanish and Portugese
panies with the poverty and immiseration of the Global empires were dead. In the subsequent 115 years up to
South against a backdrop of neoliberalism and free trade. World War II, decolonization was limited to Cuba in
In the Marxian tradition, there has been in general an 1898 and two groups of British colonies: the white settler
abandonment of the labor theory of value – away from colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South
Elster’s view that ‘‘workers are exploited if they work Africa) granted internal autonomy and finally full sov-
longer hours than the number of hours employed in the ereignty in 1931, and Egypt and Iraq after World War I.
goods they consume’’ – toward John Roemer’s notion that World War II marked the death knell for European col-
a group (or country) is exploited if it has ‘‘some con- onization: India’s separation from the British, Indonesia
ditionally feasible alternative under which its members from the Dutch, the remaining Arab-mandated terri-
would be better off ’’. Perhaps the central figure in de- tories, and Indochina from the French. The independ-
veloping these arguments is Erik Olin Wright. Building ence of Ghana in 1957 marked an avalanche of liberations
on the work of Roemer, Wright distinguishes four types in Africa, though the process was not complete until 1990
of assets, the unequal control or ownership of which (Nambia). Between 1945 and 1989 over 100 new in-
constitute four distinct forms of exploitation: labor power dependent states were created.
assets (feudal exploitation), capital assets (capitalist ex- Decolonization is a process marked by the achievement
ploitation), organization assets (statist exploitation), and of political independence but the duration, depth, and
skill assets (socialist exploitation). While Wright and character of decolonization movements vary substantially.
others have used this approach to grasp contemporary In some African colonies, colonization was barely accom-
exploitation within so-called advanced capitalism, there plished and resistance movements of varying degrees of
are obvious resonances between the operation of neo- organization and institutionalization attended the entire
colonialism and his quartet of forms of exploitation. colonial project. In other cases, an organized anticolonial
and nationalist movement came late, accompanied by a
Neocolonialism and the Process of rapid and hastily assembled set of political negotiations in
Decolonization which it is clear that the metropolitan power wished to
hand over the reigns of power with utmost expedience
Decolonization refers to the process, often long, tortuous, (Nigeria). In others, it took a war of liberation, a bloody
and violent, by which colonies achieve their national armed struggle by leftist guerillas or nationalist agitators
362 Neocolonialism

pitted against white settlers or intransigent colonial states model in which African colonial subjects were granted
(as in Laos, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe). a racial equality and citizenship rights but in which
One of the problems with analyzing decolonization, as ‘indigenes’ were simultaneously a sort of bonus. In the
Fred Cooper notes, is that the story ‘lends itself to be historiography of the period, the nationalist road to self-
read backward and to privilege the process of ending government tends to take for granted the depth and appeal
colonial rule over anything else that was happening in of a national identity. It is precisely the shallowness of
those years’. It should also be said that any account of these nationalisms in the postcolonial period which reveals
decolonization – or for that matter neocolonialism – how limited is the simple nationalist account of decolon-
presumes an account, or a theory, of colonialism itself: ization itself. In practice, decolonization occurred in the
top-down interpretations take colonial projects at face context of all manner of contradictions and tensions be-
value, whereas the nationalist account denies any reality tween the national question and other social questions.
to the goal of modernization which the colonial state is There is also a narrative of decolonization which has a
purported to bring. In general, decolonization is seen as singular vision but from the side of the colonial state. It
either (1) ‘self-government as an outcome of negotiated was the colonial bureaucracy, long before nationalist
preparation and vision from above’ by a colonial state parties arose, which shaped self-government on a calcu-
apparatus, or (2) as a ‘nationalist triumph from below’ in lus of interest and power derived from an older con-
which power is wrested (violently or otherwise) from ception of colonial rule (New Zealand and Canada) as a
recalcitrant colonizers. In practice, decolonization was an stepping stone to Independence. In this view, Africa by
enormously complex process involving something of 1947 had already been set on the road to decolonization –
each, and shaped both by the peculiarities of colonialism this is a classic instant of Whig history – in spite of the
itself and the particular setting in world time in which fact that the colonial offices typically saw early African
the nationalist drive began. leaders as schoolboys or demagogues. Another version of
There are two forms of decolonization which rest the dirigiste theory is rendered through the cold calcu-
on what one might call nationalist triumph. The first is lation of money and cost. It was the decision-making
built upon social mobilization in which a patchwork of rationale of accountants estimating costs and gains – and
anticolonial resistances and movements (many of which who in particular gained – against the backdrop of im-
are synonymous with colonial conquest itself) are sewn perial power’s economic performance after World War II
together into a unified nationalist movement by a western- which sealed the fate of the colonies.
educated elite (Malaysia, Ghana, or Aden). Mobili- In all of these accounts – for India as much as Indo-
zation occurred across a wide and eclectic range of nesia or Iraq – colonialism is as monolithic as the ex-
organizations – trade unions, professional groups, and planations themselves. There is a reduction involved in
ethnic associations – bringing them into political parties seeing Indians or Kenyans as colonial subjects or as na-
and propelled by a leadership focused on racism, on lib- tional or proto-nationalist actors. An alternative approach
eration, and the sense of national identity of the colony, pursued by the so-called subaltern school sees colonial-
given its own history and culture. The second is revo- ism as a contra-metropolitan project, moving against
lutionary – Franz Fanon is its most powerful and articulate trends to exercise power under universal social practices
spokesman – in which the vanguard is not western-edu- and norms. In other words, the hegemonic project of
cated elites or indeed workers, but the peasants and colonialism fragmented as colonial rule attached itself to
lumpenproletariat. It rested upon violence and rejection of local idioms of power. From this experience characterized
any semblance of neocoloniaism. Decolonization rejected by hybrid forms of identity, of blurred boundaries,
bourgeois nationalism (of the first sort); rather, as Fanon and contradictory practices, the process of decoloni-
put it, ‘‘the last shall be first and the first last. Decolon- zation must necessarily look more complex than simply
ization is the putting into practice of this sentence.’’ self-rule managed from above by the colonial state or
Both views depict nationalism as subsuming all other mobilized from below by nationalist forces. In the same
struggles and hence obscures and misses much history; way, the shift from decolonization to neocolonialism
both posit a ‘true cause’, as Cooper puts it, in which there operated through similar sorts of complexity and inter-
is little truck with opposition. Mamdani’s enormously mixing in which hegemonic metropolitan power was
influential book on Africa makes the important point that exercised through a battery of institutions and practices
decolonization posed the possibility of breaking with the (‘development’, ‘capitalism’, and ‘socialism’).
tradition of European colonial indirect rule (what he
called ‘decentralized despotism’) in which African custom Neocolonialism as a Contemporary
granted enormous powers to local systems of traditional Category of Analysis
(and therefore cultural) authority, and developing instead
a sort of civic nationalism in which cultural politics did not The term neocolonialism has fallen out of fashion since
play a key role. Most African states continued the colonial the 1970s (with perhaps the exception of a flood of Soviet
 Neocolonialism 363

Marxist-inspired, and largely ideological, studies pub- much about the broad ideological thrust of the Forum.
lished up to the mid-1980s). It is quite true however that Ideologically, it clearly stands against neoliberalism and
the broad thrust of critical development work from the free-market capitalism; it is of the Left but looks for new
late 1960s onward – dependency theory emerging from and different models of economic and political organi-
Latin America, the calls for a New International Economic zation drawing from a vast array of experiments
Order, unequal exchange theory, and the French Marx- embracing the landless workers movements, anti-dam
isant modes of production debate, and Wallersteinian struggles, indigenous peoples, and anti-corporate and
world systems theory to take handful of the most prom- multilateral struggles. The idea of a global convention of
inent trends in development discourse – all spoke of re- anticapitalist movements was in part driven by the desire
lations of exploitation between former colonial states and to provide a counterweight to the World Economic
the advanced capitalist core. Indeed, any theory of im- Forum held every year in Davos and by the difficulty of
perialism almost by definition presumes the exercise of organizing mass protest in Switzerland capable of gen-
powerful forms of dependency among First and Third erating sufficient media coverage to challenge the pre-
World states and to this extent the analytic core of neo- vailing hegemony of free-market discourse and practice.
colonialism identified by Nkrumah has been central to any The protests against the World Bank and IMF annual
critical and left-wing account of global political economy. meetings in 1999 and thereafter – most notably in Seattle,
More recently in the so-called anti-globalization Genoa, and Washington, DC – were an important
protests – the movement of movements – the critique of milestone in the move toward an alternative forum for
corporate power, of the expanded role of finance capital civic movements opposing unfettered capitalism around
in the impoverishment of the Global South, and the the world.
imperialist role of multilateral development institutions It is impossible, however, to understand the WSF
such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and outside of the counter-revolution in development thin-
World Bank is entirely consistent in substance with king and relatedly the growing dominance of neolib-
Nkrumah’s account. The revivification of neocolonialism eralism (free markets, free trade, privatization, and state
is especially clear in the World Social Forum (WSF). cut-backs). The abandonment of Keynesian models of
First convened in January 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, capitalist development – marked by the ascendancy of
the WSF in an annual meeting held by members of the Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl –
so-called anti-globalization movements – sometimes and the rapid adoption of the economic ideas associated
dubbed the ‘movement of movements’ – to provide a with Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedmann and the
setting in which global and national campaigns can be Mont Pelerin Society had massive and direct implications
coordinated, shared, and refined. It is not an organization for the Global South beginning in the 1980s with the
or a united front but ‘‘an open meeting place for re- massive onslaught of structural adjustment and stabili-
flective thinking, democratic debateyby groups and zation programs. It was out of this combination of ‘eco-
movements of civil society that are opposed to neolibera- nomic reform’ (viz., the rapid liberalization of state-led
lism and to domination of the world by any capital or any development), ‘shock therapy’, and in many places mas-
form of imperialism.’’ The WSF has grown substantially sive economic recession (e.g., the early 1980s and the late
from its first meeting in Brazil. Subsequent meetings in 1990s) that the plethora of movements, often arraigned
2002 and 2003 were also held in Porto Alegre, and against the privatizations of various commons, arose. In
thereafter in Mumbai (2004), Porto Alegre (2005), and contradistinction to the triumphalism (and purported
Nairobi (2007). In 2006, a ‘polycentric forum’ was held in inevitability) of globalization that dominated the 1990s,
Bamako (Mali), Caracas (Venezuela), and Karachi the WSF stood for, in their own language, ‘‘another world
(Pakistan). In 2001, 12 000 people attended the WSF; in is possible’’ rather than ‘‘there is no alternative’’. In some
2007, the number had grown to 60 000 registered at- circles, the WSF is held up as a shining example of what
tendees, and 1400 organizations representing 110 coun- Negri and Hardt call ‘the multitude’. The term neo-
tries. The WSF has also prompted the establishment of a colonialism does not appear prominently in the WSF but
number of regional fora – the Asian Social Forum, the the affinities are clear. The language now is of ‘recolon-
Mediterranean Social Forum, and in 2007, the first US ization’ (as the process) and ‘empowerment’ and ‘alter-
Social Forum – though not all of them stand in a similar native development’ (as the solution).
relation to the ‘parent body’.
The genealogy of the WSF is complex. The fact that
four of the 11 WSF meetings have been held in Porto Conclusion
Alegre – a city with strong connections to the Brazilian
Left and the Workers Party and the home to an in- Neocolonialism more than anything was a key marker of
novative model of local government and participatory a certain sort of 1960s Third World nationalism. Neo-
democracy (so-called participatory budgeting) – says colonialism was a by-product of its largely African and
364 Neocolonialism

Marxist origins, of the Bandung movement, and of the Chamberlain, M. (1985). Decolonization. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Cambridge University Press.
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For a while, it was central to thinking of the theories of University Press.
imperialism within a Marxist frame but it fell out of Fanon, F. (1967). The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.
Guha, S. and Spivak, G. (eds.) (1988). Subaltern Studies. Oxford:
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adjustment and economic reforms on a large part of the University Press.
Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. London: Clarendon.
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Mamdani, M. (1995). Citizen and Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
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and 1990s had, in this respect, more than a tinge of Marx, K. (1992). Capital, Vols. I–III. London: Penguin.
Nkrumah’s original intent. There are also close affinities Mertes, T. (2005). The Movement of Movements. London: Verso.
Moore, B. (1973). Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery. Boston,
between neocolonialism in the Nkrumah sense and MA: Beacon Press.
postcolonial theory , but the latter always distanced itself Nkrumah, K. (1965). Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.
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Rey, P.-P. (1977). Les Alliances de Classes. Paris: Maspero.
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Sartre, J.-P. (2001). Colonialism and Neocolonialism (first published in
See also: Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Dependency; 1964). London: Routledge.
Neoliberalism and Development; Structural Adjustment. Starr, A. (2005). Global Revolt. London: Zed.
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Young, R. (2001). Postcolonialism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Further Reading
Arrighi, G. and Pearce, B. (1972). Unequal Exchange. London: Monthly
Review Press. Relevant Websites
Brewer, J. (1987). Exploitation in the new Marxism of collective action.
Sociological Review 35, 84--96. [Link]
Buchanan, A. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Totowa, NJ: World Social Forum.
Rowman and Allanheld.