King Leopold's Ghost; We Charge Genocide

[Charles Brown]

I saw the book review. It mentioned that Belgian
capitalist colonialism basically murdered approximately 10 million
Congolese in a short time. This book seems to demonstrate
some of how European capitalism underdeveloped Africa.
The current economic performance or lack of 
performance of the Congo must be included in any
evaluation of the economic performance of the
capitalist system, as occurs from time to time
on the list, especially in comparison
with socialist economies. This and other colonial and neo-
colonial economic disasters are just as much a 
part of capitalism's economic record as
the Asian "tigers" or the U.S. , for that matter.
Including these miserable failures would bring
down considerably the average "GDP" or
whatever measure of growth and production
of the capitalist system. The Congo is also
an example of how the current wealth of
the richest capitalist countries is built in part on
the long history of colonial and imperliaist
exploitation.

Charles Brown

  Detroit

Workers of the West, it's our turn.


>>> "William S. Lear" <rael at zopyra.com> 09/09 11:01 PM >>>
Today I heard Adam Hochschild tell Terry Gross about King Leopold's
ghastly crimes and U.S. culpability, documented in his new book King
Leopold's Ghost.  The book sounded superb --- has anyone here read it
who would like to share views on it?  Michiko Kakutani reviewed it in
the Sept. 1 NY Times and managed to forget to mention the U.S. role in
recognizing Leopold's personal slave pit.

Bill