Debt: a tool of neocolonialism. 13.

"Public credit is the credo of capital" said Marx, and several Marxist theorists, notably Rosa Luxembourg, have since stressed the importance and central role of debt in the process of primitive accumulation and the subordination of the peoples of the South to the capitalist powers.

The debt of the countries of the global South, including Africa, has its origins in colonization, where it was in part its moral justification. After independence in the mid-20th century, thanks to the various liberation movements, debt became the main weapon of neo-colonialism.

Even today, the debt system accentuates maldevelopment in both South and North, and encourages the transfer of wealth from South to North. Debt is used as an instrument for imposing austerity policies and neoliberal economic policies that promote privatization and the dismantling of public services for the benefit of large multinationals and corrupt local elites, as well as attacks on what remains of the social gains of the working class.

Debt is still used today by the IFIs (WB&IMF) to impose environmentally destructive extractivist policies and promote green colonialism and the false solutions of green capitalism.

How can we get out of the debt trap? What are the main experiences of struggle? And what are the demands made by the CADTM network?

Eric Toussaint and Ashley Smith, Resisting the Debt System, https://www.cadtm.org/Resisting-the-Debt-System

Eric Toussaint: Rosa Luxemburg and debt as an imperialist instrument https://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=18076