David Graeber's "Debt" and Colonialism (Quotes/Build)

Where to start? I could have begun by explaining how these loans had originally been taken out by unelected dictators who placed most of it directly in their Swiss bank accounts, and ask her to contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid, not by the dictator, or even by his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. Or to think about how many of these poor countries had actually already paid back what they’d borrowed three or four times now, but that through the miracle of compounded interest, it still hadn’t made a significant dent in the principal. I could also observe that there was a difference between refinancing loans, and demanding that in order to obtain refinancing, countries have to follow some orthodox free-market economic policy designed in Washington or Zurich that their citizens had never agreed to and never would, and that it was a bit dishonest to insist that countries adopt democratic constitutions and then also insist that, whoever gets elected, they have no control over their country’s policies anyway (3)

                This quote, and the next quote to follow, are from the beginning of the chapter when Graeber described an encounter he had with a so-called activist attorney. The quotes presented here will be in reverse order, a deliberate choice of mine to aid in my analysis. In her blog “Debt and ‘Morality’” Deirdre quotes the same paragraph and begins her analysis by calling this economic colonialism. I both agree and disagree with this label. I have found that nowadays people often use qualifiers before leveling a critique of a system and labeling it colonialism. I think this has to do with the mindset that colonialism is a part of the “colonial period” and the “colonial period” is over. However, Graeber’s excerpt above shows that colonialism is not over, not even close. So yes, it is economic colonialism, and the reason it is economic colonialism is because it is simply colonialism; the economic manipulation and domination is a given. This is a point I feel Graeber could have made a bit more strongly. A bit later on in the chapter he does note that un-coincidentally many of these “third world” nations that are falling into this debt trap are ones that were ‘former’ colonial entities (5). My critique is that he could have been more explicit: these are not simply former colonial entities, these are countries that are still fighting colonialism to this day!

                In “TheWeapon of Theory” Amilcar Cabral offers definitions of colonialism and neocolonialism. He states:

the first [form of imperialist domination] is direct domination, by means of a power made up of people foreign to the dominated people (armed forces police, administrative agents and settlers); this is generally called classical colonialism or colonialism. [The second form] is indirect domination, by a political power made up mainly or completely of native agents; this is called neocolonialism (7) [emphasis Cabral's]

The first definition is one that most people are familiar with and the one that they think of when they hear the word “colonialism”. Unfortunately, the second form of imperialist domination, and the overall nuances of colonialism, is less familiar to most. I would make the argument that neocolonialism is simply a branch of colonialism, and so a colonized entity can have elements of both forms of domination. In truth, in order to have the latter the first must be in place. For the only reason that a native force would engage in this form of imperialist domination is because they have identified with their foreign colonizers and are thus doing the work of their colonizers. Do we not see, then, that the unelected dictators that Graeber mentions are simply doing the work of the empire? I will quote another passage of Cabral, one that is more obviously related to what we are discussing:

The so-called policy of ‘aid for undeveloped countries’ adopted by imperialism with the aim of creating or reinforcing native pseudo-bourgeoisies which are necessarily dependent on the international bourgeoisie, and thus obstructing the path of revolution (9)

Colonizers are like viruses. They infect the host by implanting their own ideologies and multiplying. Because this is the tactic, the original colonizers need not still remain in the host, for they have already replicated and turned native bodies into mirror-images of themselves.

On page two Graeber notes that:

The IMF then stepped in [to the Third World debt crisis] to insist that, in order to obtain refinancing, poor countries would be obliged to abandon price supports on basic foodstuffs, or even policies of keeping strategic food reserves, and abandon free health care and free education; how all of this had led to the collapse of all the most basic supports for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. I spoke of poverty, of the looting of public resources, the collapse of societies, endemic violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, and broken lives.

After reading these two quotes I would be positively shocked if even a moderately-informed person would try to argue with me as to whether or not colonialism still exists and is showing itself through the “Third World debt crisis”. This is how the virus of colonialism works! Do you not see how in order to “fix” the debt, the IMF is suggesting that forms of socialized structures must be abandoned and that these nations most adopt “democratic constitutions” (3). In this way, democratic constitutions=Capitalist constitutions.  The virus eradicates what was once in place and replaces it with its toxicity. Look at the Tonton Macoutes in Haiti for example. Native forces? Perhaps. They were native forces trained by US military, and funded by the US government. This is how modern imperialist domination works. It creates particular rules concerning debt, enforces these rules in inhumane ways, and uses the debt leverage as a way to further erode “third world” nations.