“ How can one of the most resource-rich countries on earth remain trapped in poverty, instability, and hunger? “Too often, the focus falls exclusively on local militias, corruption, or insecurity, while much less attention is paid to the broader economic system that profits from Congolese resources.” I sent a comment to the editor. There is a crucial factor missing. Were there classes after for al independence. If the structures of powers largely remained, what was/were the social/class(es) that perpetuated those power structures? Why did the nationalisations (not mentioned once in the article) of the 1960d and 1970s fail? Related “The central question at stake here may be posed like this: why have the processes of accumulation failed to produce a consolidation of capital, an economically powerful ruling class and sustained patterns of national investment? The standard explanations—low demographic pressure, reliance on primary commodities, deterioration in the terms of trad...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51