WITHIN a globally capitalist setting, for a country or even a region of the Global South, to be mineral-rich can be a source of great hardship for its people. It is ironic that the global North which is the home base of capitalism has been historically mineral-poor. This is as true of the pioneering country of industrial capitalism, Britain, as it is of Japan, the sole Asian member of the global North. A powerful motive for imperialism in fact has been the quest for essential primary commodities, especially of minerals that are indispensable for the maintenance of Northern “prosperity”.

If some particular mineral of commercial use is found in a country of the global South, then multinational corporations from the North descend upon that country to extract this mineral wealth. The Gross Domestic Product of that country goes up because of such extraction; high GDP growth is experienced for some time; and the country is held up before the world by imperialist agencies as a shining example of export-led growth. Not much employment however is generated in the country even in the mineral sector, and what is generated is usually small relative to the size of the labour reserves created by deindustrialization. What is more, this mineral development often occurs in populated habitats, especially tribal habitats, so that large numbers of people are dispossessed and displaced by it. The bulk of the mineral revenue that is generated goes to the MNCs which siphon it abroad. The spin-off effects of this mineral extraction therefore, by way of developing sectors of the economy other than just the infrastructure that is needed to transport the mineral resources abroad, remain limited, so that the common people of the country are scarcely benefitted by such mineral extraction.

Then, finally, a day comes when these mineral resources get exhausted, the much-hyped “development” comes to an end, and the country is not just back to square one, it is back to square one after having lost its mineral wealth which has got exhausted meanwhile. Even the infrastructure that had been developed to export the mineral wealth abroad becomes difficult to maintain and starts decaying. The people of the country do not benefit from the wealth that gets extracted before it is exhausted, but on the other hand they lose their mineral wealth. The people in short are just looted.

We do not have to go far to find an example of this phenomenon which some people have called the “resource curse”, which is an incorrect identification since it deflects attention from the social nature of the phenomenon. Our neighbouring country Burma (or Myanmar) provides a classic example of it. Not only was it rich in precious metals, but was found to be endowed with oil whose exports began from the mid-nineteenth century. Oil was extracted by the British-owned Burmah Oil Company and American -owned Standard Oil Company so intensively that by the time of Burma’s independence from British rule in 1948, much of its oil wealth had been exhausted. Today while Burma exports recently discovered gas, it imports over 90 percent of its fuel oil needs which makes it acutely vulnerable to global oil price-hikes, and it is listed in the category of “least developed countries” of the world according to UN classification.

The ephemeral nature of the mineral boom in countries of the global South is the reason why renowned economist Joan Robinson calls MNC investment in extracting minerals the worst form of direct foreign investment: when MNCs invest in the manufacturing sector, they at least build some assets in the country, but when they invest in mineral extraction they simply take away the country’s non-renewable resources without building any durable assets, and leave the country poorer at the end of it.

Not surprisingly, in many countries of the global South, political decolonization had been followed by nationalization of mineral resources, and public sector companies had been set up for mineral extraction. Indeed the threat of the public sector was often used to increase the share of the mineral revenue taken by the state exchequer of the country of the global South from the MNCs. Thus in Ecuador when Left-wing leader Rafael Correa was elected President he raised the share of the state in mineral revenue generally, and in the oil sector in particular.

Nationalization of mineral resources however exposes the country to the risk of MNCs plotting the overthrow of such a “nationalist” regime; and in cases where coup attempts are unsuccessful in overthrowing the regime, there is often direct imperialist armed intervention in support of the interests of the MNCs.

The classic example of such direct armed intervention today is Iran. The US and Israel have invaded that country with the explicitly-stated objective of bringing about a regime change, for which the entire leadership of Iran was assassinated in an unprecedented show of savagery in modern times. While the invasion to effect a regime change had multiple and broader objectives, the economic motive of capturing Iranian oil for US companies was never hidden from the public by Donald Trump. Iranian oil had been nationalized under Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1951, because of which Mossadegh himself was overthrown in a coup engineered by British and American intelligence agencies in 1953; but oil continues to be in the public sector even under the current Islamic regime. This is made possible inter alia by the fact that, according to several Islamic jurists, common ownership of minerals is in conformity with Islamic laws while private ownership is not.

Manoeuvres for controlling mineral resources of the global South have given rise to some of the most savage episodes in the history of imperialism. One of the most infamous episodes relates to what used to be called Belgian Congo in colonial times. The achievement of independence by Congo under the popular leadership of Patrice Lumumba had caused fears in imperialist circles of a seizure of control over natural resources by the independent country from the clutches of imperialism. What was engineered after independence under imperialist aegis was a declaration of secession by the mineral-rich Katanga province from the rest of the country, and the arrest and assassination of Patrice Lumumba.

The world-wide adoption of neo-liberal policies in late twentieth century represented a sort of counter-revolution against the economic decolonization ushered in by political independence in the global South. In a swathe of countries and regions, multinational corporations were vested once again with control over mineral resources. In India for instance exclusive state control over mineral resources had been promised by the anti-colonial struggle and had constituted national policy after independence, but this was given up in 1993 when MNCs and domestic corporate capital were allowed in this sector. Even the residual control over MNCs in the minerals sector, such as a 50 percent cap on foreign equity participation, was given up in 2006, when fully-owned foreign companies were allowed entry into this sector.

What has followed is a set of ruthless predatory measures leading to the displacement of large numbers of tribal people from their traditional habitats so that mining by domestic corporates and MNCs can be carried out. In all such cases, the achievement of so-called “development” has brought acute misery to the local people; what has been occurring is a process of primitive accumulation of capital.

The BJP which rules at the Centre and now at the state level in mineral-rich Odisha as well, being ever solicitous towards big capital, has recently introduced new regulations that limit the state government’s ability to impose taxes on mining companies; this will lead not only to a centralization of mining revenues but also to larger private appropriation of such revenues. Not surprisingly, people’s movement against displacement and dispossession by mining companies is emerging as a major terrain of class struggle.

With neo-liberalism reaching a dead-end, with the promise of neo-liberal “prosperity” which was used to garner popular support for such policies turning out to be a chimera, the process of primitive accumulation will take increasingly vicious forms. From unleashing direct aggression as in Venezuela and Iran, to propping up neo-fascist regimes that would be far more ruthless in carrying out primitive accumulation in the interests of globalized capital, imperialism would be increasingly in direct confrontation with the people. As capitalism enters the final phase of its existence it will also become much more vicious; the peoples’ resistance will have to reckon with this fact.