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Reviewed by:
  • Capitalism: A Structural Genocide by Garry Leech
  • Gerald Caplan
Garry Leech, Capitalism: A Structural Genocide. London and New York: Zed Books, 2012. Pp. 186, paper, $18.00 US.

Garry Leech’s short book—there are only 157 pages of text—has a very clear message that no reader can miss. In fact, it’s all contained in his title. The purpose of the book is “to effectively argue that capitalism constitutes genocide.” To do so, “it is crucial to show that violence is inherent in the internal logic of capital and, therefore, it is a permanent feature of the capitalist system.” To that end, “I will argue that both of these factors are in fact true, and that the form that the violence takes is structural. Furthermore,” he continues, “not only is this structural violence inherent in the capitalist system, but it results in death on a genocidal scale, thereby constituting a class-based structural genocide that targets the poor, particularly in the global south.”

Nor is he interested in pursuing this argument by engaging in polemics, he declares, “but to argue that there are solid analytical and political reasons to use the term ‘genocide.’” As one who believes the word “genocide” and the concept of genocide have been seriously debased by its promiscuous use by politicians, victims, and scholars alike, I very much welcomed this assurance and hoped it was supported in the text.

Two questions clearly present themselves. Does Leech prove his hypothesis, and if so, so what? If it is indeed true that genocide is inherent in the capitalist system itself, does that help us deter future genocides—which I take to be Leech’s real objective, just as it is the real objective of most of us in the strange world of genocide scholarship.

I found myself biased in favor of this book going in, since much of it reminds me of my own volume The Betrayal of Africa. Both are very short—my favorite kind of book— and both introduce readers to the way the rich world has exploited the poor world for the past 600 years. He quotes Indian physicist and philosopher Vandana Shiva:

The riches accumulated by Europe are based on the riches taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India’s rich textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without Africa’s slavery, the Industrial Revolution would not have led to new riches for Europe or the US.

(29)

We are offered considerably more of such evidence, and it’s all welcome. Leech argues for example that the global North uses various forms of foreign aid to “avoid the key issue, namely their complicity in and co-responsibility for the miserable situation of the underdeveloped world.” Similarly, and damningly, “The total of all the loans and aid provided by the global North to the global South is less than the amount of money that flows in the opposite direction in foreign debt payments alone.” (103)

Leech soon turns his attention, quite properly, to Africa. He provides the usual distressing data on the health of women and children in Africa, but adds this critical [End Page 95] information from one of an infinity of UN reports on the subject: most of the terrible health problems besetting so many Africans women and children could be prevented if families had “access to adequate diets, safe water and sanitation facilities, basic literacy and health services during pregnancy and childbirth.” We have seen this phenomenon at work over the past year in the Ebola epidemic that so spooked people all over the world, not to mention AIDS.

So yes, Leech is dead right. Hundreds of thousands of people in poor countries suffer and die because those countries are poor. And they are poor, Leech insists, because rich countries have made them poor and work hard keep them that way. I entirely agree.

In fact, Leech correctly wants to turn on its head the conventional western conceit about poor countries’ development, or lack of it. We westerners like to think that we are the solution to Africa’s problems. In reality, we...

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