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"“Those who are conquered,” wrote the philosopher Ibn Khaldūn in the fourteenth century, “always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics — in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and customs.”"

King Leopold II raped and plundered Congo for 25 years. An estimated 10 million Africans were killed in his quest for riches (half of Congo's population). Among all the brutality in Congo, the rubber harvest is singled out as especially horrendous. (This period of terror is stamped into the Mongo language where "to send someone to harvest rubber" is an idiom meaning "to tyrannize.")

Belgium bought the colony from Leopold in 1908, but they made few structural changes.

After "independence" Lumumba offered a brief flicker of hope, but there was no way Western capitalists would tolerate his talk about economic independence as a requirement for true independence. He was assassinated in 1961 to allow the continued exploitation of the country and extraction of its vast natural resources by Western corporations.

In 1965, Lieutenant General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized control of the country, and, as the author of this book points out, "Aside from the color of his skin, there were few ways in which he did not resemble the monarch who governed the same territory a hundred years earlier. His one-man rule. His great wealth taken from the land. His naming a lake after himself. His yacht. His appropriation of state possessions as his own. His huge shareholdings in private corporations doing business in his territory. Just as Leopold, using his privately controlled state, shared most of his rubber profits with no one, so Mobutu acquired his personal group of gold mines — and a rubber plantation. Mobutu’s habit of printing more money when he needed it resembled nothing so much as Leopold’s printing of Congo bonds."

King Leopold's ghost still looms large over Congo, as the shadow of European imperialism still looms large over large parts of Africa south of Sahara. But in Europe most people believe our exploitation of Africa is a thing of the past.

PROUT, Progressive Utilization Theory, is the framework for this book, and the proposed tool to shape society "After Capitalism." The economist Paul Erdman described another book on PROUT as “a strange mixture of voodoo historical theories and sound economic analysis.” Add a comma after "voodoo," and I think that works for this one, as well.


Voodoo (or just woo):
Materialism as most people use the word today, greed for material wealth and success measured by material accumulation, is a natural consequence of the rise of philosophical materialism, the belief that matter is all there is. This is what has lead us to the current Capitalist world order. Primitive spiritualism can fill the void in our existence that we currently fill with stuff. As we move away from materialism, a conflation of the economic and the philosophical variety, the path to a sustainable future where we live in harmony with nature opens up.

Historical theories:
There are four (arche)types, or classes, of human beings: laborers, warriors, intellectuals and merchants. Their labels, and to a certain degree their description, is borrowed from Hinduism, it seems. The grand narrative explains all of history as a cycle where these types take turns being the dominant type. (The dial is currently firmly lodged in the capitalist/merchant position, if you were in doubt.) To placate Mark Twain, who famously insisted history doesn't repeat itself, it merely rhymes, the cycle viewed in 3D is actually a spiral. We’re not going back to what was before after the revolution, we just go back to having the worker type dominate. As history progresses/revolves, we will from time to time be blessed with a few ‘Übermenschen’ who are a perfect mix of the four archetypes. These “enlightened moralists,” Sadvipras, will accelerate social progress whenever the wheel gets stuck because the dominant class has become corrupted.


Economic analysis:
PROUT wants an end to the capitalist world domination, an end to governments in Western democracies only representing the 1%, an end to the ruthless exploitation of the poor by the rich, and an end to the exploitation of "Mother Earth."
Economic democracy in a decentralized economy where cooperatives replace corporations, is the remedy. Small private initiatives are also envisioned to play a part, while large infrastructure elements like roads and railroads will be state owned.

I am unsure how to rate this book. The reason I picked up this book is my interest in theories on economic democracy and cooperatives/worker-self directed enterprises. The vision for the future in this book is pretty close to other accounts I've read on the subject (After Capitalism by Schweickart and Democracy at Work by Wolff), and I really like this vision.
I am allergic to woo, though, and this book gave me plenty of hives with its spiritualism, universal consciousness, homeopathy, naturopathy and general "holistic" approach.

As religion goes, this isn't so bad, though, and our goals seem to be very similar. I prefer the other accounts I've read to this one, but… three stars? Yeah, lets give it three stars.