We in the West invented this thing called ‘modernity’, and then we took it out into the world, whether the world wanted it or not. Once, we called this process ‘the white man’s burden’ and exported it with dreadnoughts. Now we call it ‘development’ and export it via the World Bank. But—and here is the point so often missed, especially by critics on the left—before we could eat the world, we first had to eat ourselves. Or rather: our states, our elites, our ideologues and power-mongers had to dispossess their own people before they could venture out to dispossess others. We were the prototype,
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