Page "Colonialism" Paragraph 155

Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism, enforcing exploitation and social change.

Marx thought that working within the global capitalist system, colonialism is closely associated with uneven development.

It is an “ instrument of wholesale destruction, dependency and systematic exploitation producing distorted economies, socio-psychological disorientation, massive poverty and neocolonial dependency .” According to some Marxist historians, in all of the colonial countries ruled by Western European countries “ the natives were robbed of more than half their natural span of life by undernourishment ”.

Colonies are constructed into modes of production.

The search for raw materials and the current search for new investment opportunities is a result of inter-capitalist rivalry for capital accumulation.

Lenin regarded colonialism as the root cause of imperialism, as imperialism was distinguished by monopoly capitalism via colonialism and as Lyal S. Sunga explains: " Vladimir Lenin advocated forcefully the principle of self-determination of peoples in his " Theses on the Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination " as an integral plank in the programme of socialist internationalism " and he quotes Lenin who contended that " The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation.

Specifically, this demand for political democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for a referendum on secession by the seceding nation.