The Coolies of the American Empire

Friday December 13, 2002 17:50

by vngelis

Role of Immigration in the British and American Empire

When the British Empire expanded into Africa it utilised the transport systems of the time to intensify the rate of exploitation of the poor and colonial world. So as to ensure their cargo was guaranteed they built giant railway networks which are still standing to this day. They exported labourers from one part of the Empire (Indians from India to Africa) and they exclusively were allowed to build the railway tracks. The reason was simple. If labour is imported it is easier to control, it is easier to subdue and it is easier to manipulate with promised riches, which on the whole never materialised.

By spending millions of dollars in building the infrastructure for the export of raw materials the British also created mass resentment to their rule in the same manner that today the multinational corporations bring in imported labourers to set up export processing facilities or raw material extraction. Foreign managers are all over Africa setting up, running oil projects to exporting red roses. Many times they employ African labourers from countries which disintigrated from civil wars and other IMF sponsored disasters. Zambia has countless of immigrants from the collapse of the Congo. South Africa the same.

The modern coolies are also making their appearance in the imperialist centres. Whole swathes of previously owned transport companies, from the trains to the buses are now directly importing labour either from North Africa or Cetral and South America depending on whether you are living in London or New York. The aim of this policy beyond the decrease in wages and working conditions as 9/10 these operations become open shop (non-unionised) is to play divide and rule. From the moment workers are taken to a new location, the language, culture and customs are difficult to get used and this process may take years. Bosses in the meantime are able to extract the maximum labour from these new coolies of the American Empire.

But the coolies of old sufferred if one looks at the example of the British Empire in Africa. They were considered to be colonial servants par excellence and when the great anti-colonial revolutions shook Africa to its core in the 1950's and 1960's many ran for cover or were forced to return to where they came from, for example the Asian Indians in Uganda.

History cannot be deceived. Privatisation, deregulation and the sub-contracting of the labour force doesn't lead to a better transport system. On the contrary it leads to a form of generalised collapse. The difference between the present and past is that whilst the British Empire reserved most of its coolies for the outer reaches of the Empire, today it reserves them for its own shores. No one is safe from the declining rate of profit. Workers who still have a job, the new coolies and those that will replace them as each successive replacement leads to worsening of conditions and a worse service.

The collapse of the American Empire will probably take the form of what happened to the British in Africa: generalised rebellion by the indigenous black masses against both colonialism and their puppets.This process has just started in Latin America