We and the Third World; E. von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

- French proverb As A WORLD TRAVELER more or less permanently on the move, I must confess to the odious crime of thor ough disagreement with current conceptions in regard to the West ern world's relationship with, and duties toward, the so-called devel oping nations. My disagreement concerns not only the secular views on the subject but .also those pre vailing increasingly in the majority of the Christian Churches. Travels and intensive studies over a period of fifteen years have convinced me that our general Western notions in regard to this delicate subject must be thoroughly revised. Obvi ously, an exhaustive argument can not be expected within a short article, nor elaborate statistics pre sented. All that can be done here Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer. Of his many published works, perhaps the best known in America are Liberty or Equality? and The Timeless Christian.

is to tabulate various of the cur rent - largely erroneous - views, followed by a few critical remarks. "Colonialism Was a Crime, Its Record Entirely Negative" Let us begin with the widespread assumption that "colonialism" was a crime and its record entirely negati vee Many Americans espe cially, I would say, are "dedicated" to this notion, forgetting that the United States still has colonies (in the Pacific) and that without the British colonial effort the glorious American nation would not exist. A patriotic American "anticolonial ist" can be likened to a man in his prime, proud of his record and achievements but fulminating against fatherhood-without which he would not exist - an attitude reminding one of the Oedipus Com plex and worthy of medical. atten tion. 85 86 THE FREEMAN February Without British colonialism there would be no Nigeria, Ghana, or Australia, no India liberated from the Moslem yoke, and so forth. Without the Roman colonial drive neither the French nor the Spanish language would exist, nor English as we know it, and pre sumably not even our modern, civ ilization. And let me add that without Bavarian colonizing my own country, Austria, would not exist either. A furious Brazilian anticolonialist would seem very funny to me. Several years ago, when I was asked in Irkutsk what I thought of that capital of East ern Siberia, I replied that it testi fied to the vigor of Russian coloni alism. Thereupon, I was earnestly exhorted not to say "kolonialism"

but "osvoyeniye," which means "in corporation." Keeping a straight face, I wrote this word down in my notebook while, out of the cor ner of my eye, I watched the broad grins all around me. "Colonialism" is a neologism not to be found in older dictionaries. It is not an "ism," but expresses a mere law of history and politics. No power vacuum can exist for any length of time; it invites penetration and occupation. In this respect, geography does not differ from physics. Point two is the charge that Europe and the United States continue to take brutal advantage of the former colonies and other "developing countries" through investments there. However, "emerging nations" are in need of capital - foreign capital, if they have none of their own and refuse to practice the harsh policy of low wages and high investments. This harsh policy characterized our European economy and industry more than a hundred years ago and laid the foundations for our present high living standards.

Until the end of 1958, Franco desperately and foolishly strug gled against foreign investments in his then truly "underdeveloped" country whose living standards were well below those of Chile. Fortunately, he was finally pre vailed upon to give up this sterile attitude; as a result, not only for eign capital and local investors, but the Spanish masses, too, be gan to prosper. On the other hand, many "capitalists" until recently still invested considerable sums in politically unstable overseas na tions and lost them through revo lutions, riots, guerilla warfare and confiscations, or simply because of the unavailability of efficient man power. And as for foreign aid, the French - to cite only one example - still pay more per capita than the Americans do, and they pay more to their colonies than they did in the colonial period. If the Italians do not shell it out in simi1972 WE AND THE THIRD WORLD 87 Jar fashion, the reason may be that living standards in parts of Nigeria are higher than they are in Italy's deep south, in the Mez zogiorno.

IIDeco/onization a Boon ll Thirdly, there is the prevalent view that "decolonization" has been a real boon for the liberated masses, giving them a chance to develop their own cultural herit age. Yet, in most cases .only a thin layer of westernized "na tives" benefited from a premature decolonization - for which they have to thank the Cold War and the invisible Washington-Moscow Axis of "anticolonialists" outbid ding each other under the motto: "I can be more anticolonialist than you are." But the rule of the new men, whether politicians, mob masters, or dictators, has not been marked by greater efficiency, greater justice and magnanimity, more peace, or (least of all) less corruption. Nobody would have dared to slip a hundred rupee note into the hand of a British judge in India; among the little people there one finds today the greatest admirers of colonial rule, which to many of them now appears as a Golden Age. (Did you ever talk to the montwgnards in Vietnam? Or to simple Cambodian farmers? You will find the same attitude there.) Let us also remember our own Germanic ancestors, real savages who destroyed the already Chris tianized Roman Empire. How long did it take them to gain standards comparable to those of the Roman culture they destroyed? Six hun dred years? Eight hundred years?

Still, many are those who in sist that the undeniable "back wardness" of the emerging na tions is due to our past oppression and/ or to our refusal to educate them. But what would have hap pened, let us say, had we thrown a cordon sanita.irre around tropical Africa and never set foot on that part of the Dark Continent? Do we not have the admission of Mr. Tubman of Liberia and of Em peror Haile Selassie that their countries, unfortunately, are lack ing the hard but salutary experi ence of colonialism ? Have the Portuguese been really so amiss in educating the Angolans? (What is the illiteracy rate in Portugal proper?) Or what of the Belgians in the Congo? Did not Lovanium University have an atomic reactor before the University of Vienna? How many Ph.D.s and M.D.s were there in the ancient Kingdom of the Congo before the white man arrived? And as for wicked west ernization: is not the Third World desperately trying to continue this process? Is not Marxism more western than Confucianism, Tao88 THE FREEMAN February ism, or Buddhism, or modern tech nology and medicine more so than ancestor worship, magic, and sor cery?

"Old World Domination" Fairy tales about the Third World abound in America as well as in Europe. Thus, we hear that, in Latin America especially, the hangovers from Old World domi nation are responsible for the big so·cial differences and the contin ued internal exploitation. Now, whence does the poverty of the Latin American masses come? How great is the expectation of raising disciplined, skilled, labori ous men in the sometimes nearly polyandric and matriarchal "fam ilies" with up to 80 per cent ille gitimate births, characteristic of the Caribbean and other· more southern areas? In addition, one has to remem ber that only three areas in the entire world have "modern" work ethics or what the Spaniards call la gana de trabajar: Europe (with the center of gravity in theN orth west) , North America, and East Asia (including perhaps Vietnam, but certainly excluding Laos and Cambodia) . We must bear in mind that in the Middle Ages the year, according to regional customs, had between 90 and 130 holy days of obligation besides the 52 Sundays.

Systematic and rationalized work became an ideal only with the Reformation. In a generally easy going country, if a small minority (often of alien origin) works real ly hard, it will, for want of competition, become rich almost over night. Hence the "social problem," hence the rapid rise of fervently envied minorities all over the globe - the Parsees in India, the Japanese in Brazil and Peru, the Spaniards (los zopilotes!) in Mex ico, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Lebanese in Africa, the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, the Ibos in Nigeria, and so on. They will always serve as scape goats for mankind's most deep seated vice: envy, murderous, fur ious envy. Naturally, these unpop ular minorities rarely feel safe; demagoguery agitates against them, and they tend to seek secur ity for their savings. Related to the myth of the Old World's culpability is another one: given the "deplorable sins of the past" in these areas, the only rea sonable economic development can be one along socialist lines. "Let us help them to follow Marx!"

True, individualism and a com petitive spirit are essentially Western characteristics, but be sides Spain we have the cases of Japan, Formosa, Singapore, the Ivory Coast, and Lebanon where free enterprise has, after all, proved to be the goose that lays 1972 WE AND THE .THIRD WORLD 89 the golden eggs. Russian living standards (we are not speaking of the GNP) are barely above the levels of 1914. Then there are those who insist that weare "bound in justice" to help the emerging nations econom ically, financially, materially. Well, in more than 150 years we managed with blood, sweat, and tears and with endless patience to buildup an industrial civilization which only in the last· two or three dec adeshas yielded a "life of plenty" for any sizable numbers among us. Due to the big capital invest ments required in the beginning, only few branches· of production in a young industrial economy can afford to pay "liberal" ("living") wages. In some cases it takes gen erations. Our wealth, too,:did not come swiftly. or smoothly. Out of voluntary charity we ought to help theothe~s to catch up with us ma terially, but they have no demands on. us "in justice."

In this connection the. "ideal ists" among us might reply that our wealth does not stem from our efforts, but from the past and present exploitation of "colored" peoples .. and their raw materials. The alleged immense benefits from our· colonial .period, however, are yet another myth. Decolonization, in spite of large-scale confisca tions, ushered .in our European prosperity. (The most prosperous European nations, such as Switz erland or Sweden, never had col onies.) Even the Belgian Congo was profitable only between 1940 and 1957; of. the German colonies only little Togo paid off. Adam Smith, in the face of American Independence, declared that busi ness with colonies is no more profitable than with foreign coun tries. Actually, trade with the former Thirteen Colonies rose from 15 to 61 million dollars in the period 1775-1806. In 1852 Dis raeli, referring to Britain's for eign possessions, spoke about "those miserable colonies" and Cobden asked· ironically: "Who· is the enemy who will do us the pleasure to steal our possessions 1"

Colonies appealed to patriots, mis sionaries, na,valofficers, and ad venturous entrepreneurs(a~d speculators) who rarely saw their dreams come true. The necessary initial investment - roads, rail roads, hospitals, military estab lishments, canals, drainages, pest control, schools, training centers, ports, telegraph lines, sanitation was so enormous that decoloniza tion frequently came before ·real profits began to make themselves felt. Nevertheless, the· steady lament about our European (and even American) mistreatment of the formerly colonized nations con tinues. Europeans, especially if 90 THE FREEMAN February they broke with the Christian faith and fell for neo-pagan ide ologies, have always been far more cruel toward each other (remem ber Auschwitz, Dresden, Katyn) than toward any "natives"; and as for the "natives" among them selves, we need only open a news paper almost any day to hear what they do to each other. (Imagine the reactions if the BangIa Desh movement had been suppressed in the way it was by a British gen eral! And the same applies to the extermination of the Ibos, to men tion only two especially stark cases.) Brutal treatment? Prob ably two-thirds of the populations of the "emerging nations" would not exist were it not for Western medicine. Sleeping sickness, bu bonic plague, yellow fever, bil harzia, filhosis, cholera, dysentery, and leprosy would still decimate entire regions. Horrors like Zen anyana, Dahomey's "Evil Night,"

the antics of the Kings of Benin, Suttee (burning of widows) in India, "eating long pig" (canni balism) in Polynesia, not to men tion the bestial slaughters on Mexico's Teocalli, would still go on were it not for "colonialism." However, we are constantly ex horted: "The world cannot be· per mitted to go on being one quarter rich and three quarters poor." To this we have to reply that the dif ference in living standards be~ tween Europe-America-J apan and the rest of the world will continue to exist as long as the human element - skill, management, econ omy, intelligence, determination to work hard - differs so significant ly. (In the Congo the Belgians imported highly paid bricklayers from the homeland because each one did more than three times the work of a native.) Of course, this might change in time. Today Ger man manufacturers prefer Span iards and Balkanites to "native" workers.

A Framework of Technology The dream of European-Amer ican-J apanese living standards on the basis of "Protestant work ethics" can only be fulfilled within the framework of a high order of technology. Scientifically speaking, there is no answer to the question whether we are normal and the others lazy, or the others normal and we neurotic. (Climate has hardly anything to do with the issue which depends upon a vol untary choice between leisure and spending and poverty, or hard work and saving and wealth.) Three years ago Dr. J. S. Kamwar of the Indian Council for Agrarian Research stated that if only two of the larger Indian states were to till the soil intensively and with modern methods, all of India could be fed properly; and if all the 1972 WE AND THE THIRD WORLD 91 farmers in all 14 states were to toil scientifically and ,diligently, two-thirds of the produce could be exported. To all this I would like' to add four supplementary remarks: 1) The democratic republic, sometimes a failure even in highly civilized nations (vide the case of Germany), becomes swiftly bank rupt outside of "Euramerica."

When monarchy is ruled out as obsolete - and the Third World always craves for what it con siders the most "modern" institu tions - the father image is soon replaced by that of Big Brother. Yet, tyrannies tend toward a bu reaucratic and centralized collec tivism ("socialism") and thus the economy is "politicized." Confisca tions ("nationalizations") always contribute to the reluctance of foreign investors. In fact, the in dustrial entrepreneur or land owner who, under such circum stances, does not salt away at least some of his profits to foreign banks, must be a super-patriot, a saint, or a soft-brained simpleton. 2) Almost everywhere in the Third World there is the failure to recognize that Western culture and civilization represent a pack age deal. One cannot arbitrarily pick some items and leave the rest. He who wants to own, keep and repair a car has to accept - consciously or unconsciously - Aris totelian and Cartesian notions.

N either modern wars nor modern agriculture are possible without an industrial background. No indus try can be based on animistic, Buddist, or Vedantic foundations. The engineer has been born in the shadow of the Cross. Scientific thinking is "exclusive," not syn cretistic or relativistic. Whether Western, civilization is superior or inferior to others is beside the point. The fact remains that all nations on this globe want to be westernized. But with an unerring instinct they usually choose the worst the West has to offer, for example the obsolete nineteenth century ideas embraced by Max ism. 3) "Social engineering" will not alleviate poverty. This is even more' true if (as it happens in the Third World) the social pyramid has a very broad basis, shrinks rapidly toward the middle and ends in a long, thin needle. The needle may be conspicuous, but its cubic con tent is very small. "Redistribu tion" will not cure the misery of the masses, only the baking of a bigger cake will have this effect, which presupposes wise leader ship and motivation among the many.