Imperial Privilege Despite Minority Status
For clarity: Global North/Global South are not geographical terms. They are often used interchangeably with the terms Imperial Core/Periphery because they broadly refer to imperial countries and imperialized countries respectively.
Identity Essentialism
and the shortcomings of the Global North’s left in understanding oppression
Among some sections of the left within the Global North, there exists the persistent idea that, for example, a Black person living in the United States and a Black person living in Nigeria are more or less in the same boat because of their shared Black identity and the experience of anti-Black racism that comes with that.
The core idea behind this belief is essentially that minorities form a unified group through their shared identity category. Their position within the global imperial world order is often treated as secondary, if it is even considered at all. This is why people make broad generalizing statements about “the Black community,” “the Hispanic community,” “the Asian community,” “the gay community,” “the trans community,” etc., as if these were homogeneous groups with identical struggles all around the world.
This is an essentialist way of understanding identity and oppression because it conceives of the oppression that marginalized groups experience as simply inherent to their identity category, as if it were a universal and unchanging truth. It neglects the importance of how material conditions, social systems, and global relations of power produce and/or shape various concrete forms of oppression and the ways we experience them. Or to put it simply for the purpose of this essay: this idea ignores class and, especially, imperialism.
How do marginalized groups in the Global North benefit from imperialism?
When you hear about imperialism, the first things that come to mind are probably military invasions and occupations. Perhaps you also think of the various coups, interventions and other forms of direct meddling in the affairs of other countries that happened (and still happen) in places like Latin America, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East: Operation Condor, the overthrow of Mossadegh, the U.S./Europe-backed anti-communist genocide in Indonesia (1965–1966), and so on.
These are all forms of imperialism, but they are not the most common and dominant form of imperialism in our global capitalist world order. The most common form is economic: the appropriation and exploitation of labor, land, markets, resources etc., coupled with the export of finance capital to further entrench the imperial nation’s control over the imperialized nation. This occurs through unequal exchange, dependency, and super-exploitation.
Ruy Mauro Marini and The Dialectics of Dependency
The Brazilian Marxist economist Ruy Mauro Marini and his important work The Dialectics of Dependency (Dialética da Dependência) can help us make sense of the question of how minorities in the Global North benefit from the exploitation and oppression of minorities in the Global South.
In his book, Marini focuses on the way Latin American countries are locked into a dependent relationship with American and European imperial powers, which enables the latter to super-exploit the former.
Marini here describes super-exploitation, why it occurs, and how it drives unequal exchange as follows:
“The effect of unequal exchange is to exacerbate the desire for profit – to the extent that it places obstacles in the way of its full satisfaction – and thus to intensify the methods of extracting surplus labor. Having said that, the three mechanisms identified – the intensification of work, the extension of the working day, and the expropriation of part of the labor necessary for the worker to replenish his labor power – give rise to a mode of production based exclusively on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not on the development of his productive capacity. This is consistent with the low level of development of the productive forces in the Latin American economy, but also with the kinds of activities that are carried out there. […] It is also important to note that, in the three mechanisms considered, the essential feature is that the worker is denied the conditions necessary to replenish his labor power that has been worn away: […] In capitalist terms, these mechanisms (which, moreover, can and usually do occur in combination) mean that labor [power] is remunerated below its value, and thus amount to a super-exploitation of labor.”
The prologue to the English translation of The Dialectics of Dependency, written by Marini’s colleague Jaime Osorio, functions as a good simplified summary of the core idea and its relevance to Latin America (but also to other regions in the Global South):
“By contrast, super-exploitation—that is, the remuneration of labor power below its value—became the fundamental mechanism that local capitals in Latin America used to supply foreign markets with raw materials and foodstuffs, and to become competitive. The fact that Latin American capitalism did not have to generate an internal market, as long as English, other European, and U.S. demand absorbed its product, is key to explaining the weight of super-exploitation in the reproduction of dependent capitalism from the very beginning. In dependent capitalism, the dominant classes were (and still are) more concerned with the consumption of workers in the imperialist economies to which they sell than with that of the local working population.”
How minorities in the Global North benefit
Now we can also see how minorities in the Global North end up being beneficiaries of the whole process. As Marini outlined, the Global North super-exploits the Global South to its own advantage. A Latin American person living in the Global North has the potential (their class position plays a role too, of course) to enjoy easy access to all types of commodities, higher wages, well-developed infrastructure, and extensive healthcare and welfare systems – all funded by the super-exploitation of the Global South.
Meanwhile, many Latin Americans living in the Global South live in countries whose economies are designed to satisfy the consumer base of the Global North, rather than to guarantee the satisfaction of the basic needs of their own population or the development of their own productive forces, infrastructure, welfare/healthcare systems, markets, etc.
Centro Argentino de Datos recently found that, based on data from INDEC Argentina, 37% of Argentina’s adult population has no income at all, while 81% of the population that does have income receives less than one million Argentine pesos (which, at the time of writing, means 81% of Argentines have an income of less than 689 US dollars). And this is just one of countless examples of super-exploitation.
For instance, 82% of Argentina’s soy production is exported, primarily to feed the livestock that provides inexpensive meat for European and North American supermarkets. Similarly, in the Lithium Triangle (spanning across Argentina, Bolivia and Chile), international corporations benefit from extremely investor-friendly laws where royalties are capped at just 3% (compared to up to 40% in other regions). This enables the production of “green” technologies, such as electric vehicles and smartphones, at lower costs for Western consumers.
The material reality is a direct value transfer: the suppressed wages and purchasing power of the Argentinian worker effectively subsidize the lifestyle and affordable consumer goods enjoyed by those living in the Imperial Core. This reality is felt for the subjects of the global north irrelevant of their position in social hierarchies.
Why does this matter? What do we do with this knowledge?
We should not treat a Latin American living in the Global North as an inherent authority for the struggles of Latin American people around the world just because of their Latin American identity. Neither should we do the same with black people, asian people, gay people, trans people, or any other identity group.
In many cases, marginalized groups like black, asian or latin american people that live in the Global North have more in common with white people in the Global North in terms of their beliefs, actions, thoughts, desires and material situations than they do with other black, asian or latin american people that live in the Global South.
This is also why they can sometimes support their country’s imperialism just as much as the white people in their country.
All of this helps us to realize that, despite some shared experiences, minorities in the Global North really are not in “the same boat” as minorities in the Global South. Recognizing this should not negate solidarity among marginalized and oppressed groups. Rather, it should remind us that true liberation and solidarity must be explicitly international and anti-imperialist.
Let’s move beyond identity essentialism and political projects that do not make anti-imperialism an essential feature of their programs. Let’s embrace a materialist, internationalist, class-conscious and anti-imperialist understanding of the world and the struggles of the most vulnerable and oppressed.
