Neoliberal economists inverted colonial extraction into a source of Third World progress

Evidence

Bauer’s response to postcolonial demands of the 1970s was largely consistent with the earlier MPS members’ Lockean defence of European colonialism. Referring to an English student pamphlet that accused the British of taking ‘the rubber from Malaya, the tea from India, raw materials from all over the world’, Bauer – who had begun his career working for a trading company with rubber interests in Malaya – retorted that this was the opposite of the truth; ‘the British took the rubber to Malaya and the tea to India’, he wrote. Far from the West causing the poverty of the Third World, Bauer argued that (what he euphemistically called) ‘contacts with the West’ had been the central agents of material progress. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier chapter work on the LSF Colloquium and MPS members’ Lockean defence of colonialism; also parallels postcolonial critiques (Nkrumah) already covered in Chapter Three. — connects to: The US reframed colonialism as differential development opportunity, a discourse later central to neoliberalism — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 84; Early neoliberal development economics reproduced colonial division of labor while anticipating export-oriented trade strategies — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1282; The colonial resource grab morphed into a neoliberal regime that maintained extraction mechanisms — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 28 (+7 more)
• SEED: Angle: how the metaphor of ‘contacts with the West’ as progress quietly neutralizes claims of exploitation - a rhetorical move worth examining against contemporary development discourse.

Broader Connections

• Early neoliberal development economics reproduced colonial division of labor while anticipating export-oriented trade strategies #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1282
• The colonial resource grab morphed into a neoliberal regime that maintained extraction mechanisms #corroborates (0.82) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 28
• Early neoliberal development theory echoed colonial assumptions about non-Western peoples #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1290
• Formal decolonization gave way to a neo-imperial global economic order #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 315
• Prebisch attributed third-world underdevelopment to structural trade patterns rather than local institutions #qualifies (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1742
• Contemporary neoliberal urban divides are modern expressions of colonial extraction #complicates (0.72) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 9
• Cold War anticommunism and colonial economics stunted early neoliberal development thinking #qualifies (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1267
• Colonialism brought material progress to the Third World. #contradicts (0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1767