By Adebayo Eleduasomiji Adedeji
Antonio Gramsci said that history has left in us an infinity of traces; this quote is a significant understanding of the role history has coined in the present sociocultural and economic lifetime of the people. The brain drain from the Global South is explained by the drastic measures of the metropolis countries and the damage of imperialism and neo colonialism. The epoch in which Western Europe metamorphosed from agriculture into industrialization brought the beginning of excessive dispossession of the world in the quest to satisfy profit accumulation for the emerging capitalists. During the early stage of industrialization in western Europe, products like sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton etc. were highly demanded; in order to bring production of those products into fruition, the capitalists needed enormous raw materials, cheap labour, land and open markets to sell beyond Europe. This brought fast development and heavy scientific militarization for western European countries. Western civilization was built on violence and they spread the violence around the world to achieve their imperialist and capitalistic hegemony.
The quote by Malcolm X which says the chicken has come home to roost when President Kennedy was assassinated on the soil of America is a case study that could be compared to the violence Western Europe spread around the world which also led to the frequent violence among European countries in the tussle for power and for a share of the spoils. The violence orchestrated in the world wars brought economic depreciation in Western Europe and allied nations like Japan. This gave Eastern Europe controlled by the Soviet Union communists a chance to begin to redefine the cultural values of Europe from capital accumulation in the hands of the few into prioritizing people’s welfare. The United State saw this as a threat to their domination and expansion of their own empire after the fall of Western Europe. On the other hand, the Soviet Union were supporting resistance against imperialism all over the world which led to them supporting China and Korea against Japan and also supporting the Cuban revolutionary government against United States hegemony in Latin America. The possible expansion of communism left the American government no choice than to build their allies from the defeated Western Europe and Japan.
The national bourgeois of the United States backed by their political leaders embarked on building Western Europe through interpenetration of capital. This gave the United States the upper hand in the Western Europe economy; with the United States’ economy booming, the living standards of professionals there surpassed that of Western Europe. After the world wars, major professionals in all fields especially scientists moved into America for better living conditions and salaries, which caused brain drain in Europe for decades. The aftermath of the world wars made western Europe lose their best scientists to the United States and that became an opportunity for America having more than what they bargained for because they spend less in the educational sector since they already had the best European scientists with them that was educated with Europe educational expenditure in each of those countries. United States had made enough surplus capital concentrated in the hand of their national capitalists sponsoring military research. The PPP in the military research gave rise to the American technological advancement with the help of migrated European scientists, from mechanical to electrical products.
The flooding of American products in the Western European markets became a threat to the national capitalists competing with American giant firms for profits. Most firms in Europe didn’t have enough capital investment like the American firms. In order for Western Europe to protect their economic sovereignty from American firms buying up their firms, western European firms created mergers of their companies, and the national states too saw the need to merge. In 1957, an economic treaty was created in Rome called EEC (European Economic Community) which was a regional organization that aimed to bring about economic integration among its member states. The economic treaty energised Western European countries to increase imperialism in their colonies in the quest to catch up with American capitalism. Western Europe acknowledged the brain drain America has done to them and in order to developed their sectors and industries, they migrated the best professionals from their colonies to their countries. For example, you find more of Indian doctors in hospitals and Nigerians in the academic space in Britain; you find nationalities like Algerians, Togolese, Malians, Ivorians, and Senegalese in France sectors; and also you find descendants of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique in Portugal. The colonial education taught in the global south entrenched neo colonialism that favours the superstructure of the European and American economies. The effect of neo colonialism has made the leaders and national capitalists in the global south suited as the intermediaries in the capitalist and imperialist global economy. Western Europe and America will leave their differences in the global capitalist market to face their common enemy which is having a socialist/communist government stringing up in the global south. Socialism in any part of the world means a threat to the economic hegemony of Western capitalism. The war in Vietnam, the assassination of Cabral, Sankara, Lumumba, the overthrowing of socialists government in Ghana, Chile, Nicaragua, the sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Venezuela are to frustrate and eliminate any pro people government that put social welfare of the people ahead of capital accumulation.
The competition between Western Europe and American capitalism had brought brain drain from the global south and Western cultural hegemony has physiologically bred capitalist cultural values into their colonies which is why you see rulers in the Global South siphoning money meant for industrialization or for social welfare. The global south economy is being controlled by the Western institutions which serve the interests of the metropolis countries. They give loans to allied governments that supports capitalism to keep in place heavy militarization to protect foreign investment, to pay salaries to maintain bureaucracy, but which doesn’t change the living standards of the ordinary man on the street. When a state is backed by corporate oligarchs, the position of the state is to create a market from the dispossession of the masses, so social needs can be privatized. When industrialization is minimized to just extract raw materials to the metropolis countries, this creates limited opportunity for people to survive because without industries a nation’s economy will collapse, the best minds will be looking to escape economic hardship moving out of the country mostly to western countries and this present reality is causing brain drain in the Global South.
How do we tend to survive in a system where a tree costs more when it’s dead than when it’s alive? Capitalists’ propaganda has got some people believing capitalism thrives innovation while socialism is meant to keep the people lazy. By the way, innovation is derived from human capacity to explore the usefulness of nature for their survival which doesn’t need capitalist mode of production. Socialism put welfare of the people first, it creates an enabling environment for people to experience life beyond being exploited with 9 to 5 jobs, yet we are made to believe there is no alternative to capitalism. The world needs a change from capitalism which has normalised the exploitation of the people for capital accumulation. We must continue to speak, act and defend socialism; through it, the social order of the world will be directed to prioritizing humanity and its environment. As long as capitalism thrives in the Western hemisphere, it becomes dangerous to the welfare of the people in the Global South.
Stop capitalism and imperialism now.
