the American Revolution as ghetto uprising

[sophiaserpentia]

Okay, so it wasn't exactly like a ghetto uprising. But it's an intriguing image. The American colonies became a place where the empires of Europe discarded many of their undesireables -- religous dissidents, debtors, and criminals. Then the colonists were exploited just as ghetto residents are in modern American cities -- they were confronted with a political and economic scheme that discouraged local enterprise and capital development, while being subjected to a net out-flow of money in the form of taxes and consumer goods. The colonists could not establish their own industry, but rather were put to work extracting raw materials and growing cash crops, which were shipped back to the mother country, where they were turned into goods, some of which were then shipped back and sold to the colonists. The mother countries had exclusive trade agreements with their colonies. There was also an outflow of tax money, back to the mother country.

Essentially, then, the plan was to use the colonies as an inescapable trap storing fodder for resource cannibalization. It didn't quite work that way, though, because the colonies were extremely rich in resources.

However, it might work today. A very similar kind of mercantilism has been brewing for fifty years now -- with uneven trade agreements developed and enforced first through GATT and now through the IMF and World Trade Organization. The IMF actively discourages the development of local industry in developing countries by deeming it "ineffecient," while the WTO makes incentives for "rip and ship" extraction of raw materials. Simultaneously, many corporations are constantly pushing for access to markets in developing countries -- largely with the result that they sell finished products produced elsewhere.