The key thing for African’s in Africa and in the Diaspora to understand is that land is wealth. I can’t say it any more simply than that. When you have land, you can build your house, grow your crops and live in freedom.
Capitalism, although it may be all we have ever known and may be all we see in our history books is a new invention, and a system designed to place land, currency, and the means of production in the hands of the wealthy. This system is based on varying levels of coercive force, physical, economic, social, etc – and it drives those who are not wealthy into need, so they must labour in order to earn currency to afford shelter, buy food and goods of varying kinds.
You will have noted that Africa was the source of the human resource that has made much of the Northern Hemisphere (America, Europe, Middle East) rich through the Arab and Trans-Atlantic Slave trades. In the current day Africa again is the source of materials that those same areas of the world rely on extracting at low cost from in order to build wealth. Capitalism relies on cheap or free labour and cheap or free materials as key elements to enable profit to be made.
“Markets” are also key to Capitalism, and by this I don’t mean the traditional town or village market where different stall holders bring their goods to sell. No, the “markets” that Capitalism defines are not physical but rather they are structural, they exist at an organisational level underlying the sale of everything. These markets are not necessarily focused on a specific geographic location, but can be nationwide, regional and are frequently global. However, markets still indirectly connect sellers with buyers.
The impact of the market system is deliberate and on the level of nations mirrors what capitalism does between people, the wealthy and the poor; it creates a power imbalance and need. So when coffee is produced in Ethiopia, oil in Nigeria or diamond’s in Botswana, even though these nations have a valuable resource, they must seek a market to sell it in. The prices of goods in markets are often set not by the nations that have the goods, but by cartels which serve the nations that want to buy those materials. Therefore the raw materials are kept at a low cost so that multinational companies can process, manufacture and brand them in order to sell them on at profit.
Even currency has its own market, and when nations selling raw materials, processed materials and even finished goods have weaker currencies than the nations participating in markets that buy those goods, they struggle to generate the wealth. Just like the market for raw materials and goods, the market for currency is artificially set and it is not based on an objective standard.
Markets can also create scarcity to drive up the price – note the issue with the cost of oil at the moment because of US aggression in Iran and Venezuela. Markets can also drive demand for things which are not essential to peoples’ lives, like cars, computer games, and luxury goods.
Whoever loves money never has enough;
Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verses 10&11
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.
As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owners
except to feast their eyes on them?
So we participate in a system that drives and perpetuates our continued reliance on it for survival. What happens if you stop work? No work, no currency, no shelter, no food. What happens if nations or companies refuse to observe the market system? No market, raw materials and goods are stranded and no profit is obtained from them.
The bewitching nature of the Capitalist system is powerful. We labour and strive for pretty trinkets and consumer goods that will be obsolete in a few years time. We jump through hoops to comply with laws and obligations that drain us of currency. We are driven from the land to live stacked on top of one another in blocks of flats in towns and cities and we think we are progressing because we have the latest technologies.
Capitalism doesn’t make us wealthy, it makes us poor. You can describe its effects like the analogy of frog placed in a pot of water, and the frog will stay there quite happily while the pot is being heated, not knowing it is being boiled to death. So too it is with Capitalism, our wealth is devalued (inflation), and laws are enacted to control us more and more, taking away our rights, so that the ruling class can gain more wealth while pushing people deeper into poverty, yet all the time we don’t realise it because we are either bribed or fooled by the illusion that possessions are wealth. I say again, what we need to realise is land is wealth.
Carefully evaluate the path you want to take because the decisions you take will not only affect you, but generations after you, and even as collectively we shape the direction of the continents growth and progression.
Clara Mattei is a lecturer with Italian roots. She gives some interesting information on ways to escape capitalism, without going too deep into theory in the video.