"Over 9 million refugees and internally displaced people from conflicts in Africa. Hundreds and thousands of people have been slaughtered from a number of conflicts and civil wars." The source is here.
Wikipedia lists over 50 African countries that have been involved in war. The list is here.
I followed civil war in Rwanda. I have just read the book, "a long way gone". I have heard atrocities of war in the Congo. I have Liberian refugees in my class. Why is Africa at war?
If you would like a learned paper, please read, "Why are there so many civil wars in Africa."
One of the reasons cited in the paper is poverty. A brilliant depiction of the Tragedy of the Commons is on Marginal Revolution. Private property instills the incentive to produce. Of course, those rights have to be enforced. This brings me to the question, can there be private property without government?
This is an interesting question, and I think the answer is slightly nuanced. Rousseau, who I argue was the father of the entire notion of the Western communal society (ultimately, there exist five forms of communism: Rousseauvian/anarchist, Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist/Maoist, and postmodern), would tend to revere tribal communities for their ability to be rather decentralized as well as, in a sense, democratic and communal. It is this type of communal community that was the norm in many parts of Africa before it was colonized by Europe. At that time, many of those in Africa were given their first exposure to the very notions of property, which are required to have any degree of theft and desire for the property of others. This, combined with the poverty left in the wake of the European powers, is one of the primary fueling agents of African civil war. Thus, as we can't simply take abstract notions of property away, this is where we have to begin to find any solution. It is not the absence of notions of private property that is the problem, it is the notions themselves. That is why Rousseauvian communism failed before it could even be tried in the West, let alone in present-day Africa (which has been too Westernized to be able to return to a Rousseauvian system).
ReplyDeleteI would not necessarily advocate the enforcement of private property, however. It is the West's fault that many groups in Africa are caught between Rousseauvian and Hayekian cultures, and the best way to decrease poverty in Africa is to, in fact, abandon both. For instance, a Hayekian preoccupation with efficiency is implicit in unfettered globalization, which is collapsing wages and, in effect, the right to a nonviolent future for many Africans. On the other hand, living wages, as a result of a fair trade system, would increase tax revenue for local and national governments, allowing for adequate social services to be instated as well as corruption-prevention apparatuses and, more importantly in this discussion, an implicit enforcement of private property (thus abandoning the Rousseauvian culture).