Neocolonial theorists therefore proclaimed that economies based on the production of cash crops such as cocoa could not hope to develop, because the world system imposes a veritable ceiling on the revenue that can be accrued from their production. A good example of this process is the West African cocoa industry in the 1960s: during this time, production increased rapidly in many African countries overproduction, however, led to a reduction in the selling price of cocoa worldwide. After independence, the main revenue base for African countries continued to be the export of raw materials this resulted in the underdevelopment of African economies, while Western industries thrived. Economic theorists of postcolonial Africa, such as Walter Rodney and Samir Amin, combined the Marxist-Leninist concept of colonialism as a stage of capitalism with the concept of underdevelopment to create the concept of neocolonialism, which Kwame Nkrumah called "the last stage of imperialism."Īccording to Rodney and Amin, European countries, and increasingly the United States, dominated the economies of African countries through neocolonialism in several ways. This resulted in a perpetually negative balance of payments that prevented underdeveloped countries from ever becoming competitive in the global marketplace. It proclaims that underdevelopment persisted because highly developed countries dominated underdeveloped economies by paying low prices for agricultural products and flooding those economies with cheap manufactured goods. Postcolonial theorists now sought answers for theĬontinued underdevelopment of African countries and found a second influence in dependency theory.ĭependency theory first gained prominence as a way to explain the underdevelopment of Latin American economies in the 1960s. It soon became clear, however, that this was not happening.
This suggested that independent countries would begin to develop very rapidly, politically and economically, and would resemble "modern" Western countries. With the granting of independence to colonies, a theory of modernization took hold. European empires persisted well into the 1960s. However, neither imperialism nor capitalism came to an end after the war or in future years. Presumably, then, the end of imperialism (which Lenin believed would be the result of World War I) would mark the beginning of the end of capitalism.
In 1916, Vladimir Lenin modified this thesis, claiming that the rapid expansion of European imperialism around the world in the last decade of the nineteenth century had marked the highest stage of capitalism. He believed that, ultimately and inevitably, the capitalist system in industrially developed countries would be overthrown by a revolution of the working class this would result in the establishment of socialist utopias. Writing in the late nineteenth century, Karl Marx argued that capitalism represented a stage in the socioeconomic development of humanity.
First and foremost, it owes much to Marxist thinking. The concept of neocolonialism has several theoretical influences.