By Steven Kaszab
Strange things are going on in our marketplace. Since the event of the pandemic came upon us(still here going strong) the Third World has suffered along with the rest of us. Many first World Corporations had previously imported trillions of dollars from Asia, Africa and elsewhere, and this domestically catastrophic strategy destroyed the manufacturing sector in the Americas, EU and elsewhere. It’s no bother to these corporations who placed profits above the livelihoods and security of their neighbours, providing products that could easily be made domestically, although more costly. The manufacturing Mills of China pay peanuts to their employee’s, while the western manufacturer is paid much more.
Historically the owners of many manufacturing firms paid their employee’s well, with the hope that these men and women would buy their products. A prosperous middle class developed. Then five years after WW2 firms began to build, purchase or partner with Japanese, Chinese and other foreign firms with the intent of building what is needed cheaply.
This innovation created a plantation-style economy offshore. During the 14-15th centuries Portugal and then Spain developed a system of exploitation in Africa, using Africans to mine African gold and other resources. This was the 1st establishment of the plantation, a place where Africans and other slaves were forced to harvest their continents’ wealth while Europeans reaped the rewards of their exploited labor. Africans were chattel for the Europeans. Chattel means possession and Africans had become nothing more to the Europeans than that cattle. What are cattle, but things to be raised and later butchered, get it?
The plantation system incorporated this concept of ownership. While the average life span of a slave was 5-7 years, the slave was allowed to sire children, who immediately became possessions owned by the plantation. Years later the British would introduce this concept to their possessions in Barbados and later Jamaica. Huge plantations throughout these two colonies produced items like sugar, to be traded internationally. Since the Europeans of the time had picked Africans as the go-to slave population, a dehumanizing system of trade developed transporting millions across the ocean to their enslavement and ultimate demise. Racism at its finest.
Now to the present, where business people in the west applied the same method of exploitation to their economic needs. China is a dictatorship with a huge population, while India was the bread basket of the world, poor and open to financial exploitation (remember they were a British Colony). So the plantations of the day were established in China, India and elsewhere, a system upheld by nationals allied to the capitalistic principle that money rules the world. Profit is placed over the betterment of their national population.
China has many millions of people liken to chattel, working to survive. China has a working prison labour force of 15 million plus. If they should die, their internal organs are harvested and sold to the highest bidder. If you are Muslim in China, be prepared for an extra dose of oppression and colonial manipulation. India is in many ways – seemingly no better – a place where employee’s have no real rights. A place where entire village populations are driven from their ancestral homes and the homes bulldozed so a mall or manufacturing plant can be constructed. The corruption of officials in India assures corporate profits are placed above the betterment of the Indian population.
History seems to exist in a cycle, where the system of exploitation of the weak will always reappear. The system of the plantation seems to simply evolve, while humanity shown for others does not evolve. The torture, manipulation and subjugation of entire populations continue to this day. People want their cheap phones, trinkets and such and are willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious, that our selfish needs are more important than the lives of those blind to us, not seen, those who toil with little or no pay making things of no real consequence.
In the 17th century, slavery created the great empires of the day, Great Britain, France, Portugal and Spain. Trillions of dollars flowed from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America to Europe. The magnificent building of these nations, their cathedrals and buildings of historic meaning are all covered in the blood of Africans and Latinos (Brazilians). When can the ghosts of the plantation be allowed to speak? The Holy Roman Catholic Church is stained in the blood of aboriginal peoples in the America’s, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean. The very existence of what The EU symbolizes today, a wealthy union, is a result of this exploitation, great wealth centered in colonial populations, away from those who worked and died to achieve this historic goal.
China and India continue the plantation system with the exploitation of their excess populations. China has become the newest form of colonial power, the very thing communists claim to oppose. China does not have a communist government, but rather a group of feudal lords allied to corporate elitists throughout the globe. The communist party is the slave masters of China’s plantation system.
“The conquered roam free in the box of insanity,” wrote T.F. Hodge. Are we all complicit in the existence of present-day plantations of pain? Do we allow our expectations and desires to build up and maintain this form of economic and human savagery? Is the existence of present-day plantations our doing, and what are we prepared to do about it?
