{"id":198,"date":"2025-07-29T02:35:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T02:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everbeck.net\/proj1\/?page_id=198"},"modified":"2025-08-04T06:28:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T06:28:53","slug":"post-colonialism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/everbeck.net\/proj1\/post-colonialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Modernity"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Age of Freedom<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Can You Feel Golden Chains?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Even after slavery was abolished, western Europeans continued to politically and economically dominate the vast majority of the planet. They reinvested the wealth generated through slavery and wage labor in the colonies and intensified the production of commodities like sugar. But because, through the extreme and ruthless application of violence, they were able to effectively suppress resistance, wages in the colonies remained far below those of Europe. The flow of sugar remained unabated.<\/p>

When labor movements in Europe drove up the price of labor, it encouraged capitalists to automate and improve efficiency to reduce the need for labor. But rather than creating permanent unemployment for workers in Europe, the United States America and other rich ex-colonies like Australia, it only encouraged further capital-investment and created more higher-skilled jobs that grew a middle class of professionals who saw themselves as distinct from the industrial working class. The accountants for a given industrial sugar concern developed a distinct social identity and different tastes than those of the unskilled laborers working the machines.<\/p>

This \u2018middle class\u2019 of workers, though economically closer to the industrial workers than to the capitalists, could afford property and high levels of consumption, especially of commodities like sugary confections, aged rum, tropical fruits, fine cigars, designer clothing and premium coffee.<\/p>

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Photo of three young professionals in 1923. Artist Unknown<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Copyrights 2009 Mariordo@aol.com<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Children in field cut crops \u00a9 ILO\/Joseph Fortin [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0] - ILO Asia-Pacific<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Posession is Nine Tenths of the Law<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Today, sugar production has reached staggering heights, far beyond the wildest dreams of the plantation Patrones, Planteurs, and Masters of the Spanish, French and British colonial empires. Over 100 million people work in sugar productions With 189.3 million metric tons of projected annual production in 2025, commercial sugar has hooked the entire planet into an unshakable addiction.<\/p>\n

Now, instead of at the hands of human chattels, sugar is produced by free individuals who are free to choose degrading and strenuous working conditions or let their families starve while large employers monopolize their ancestral lands.<\/p>\n

The Green Revolution increased sugarcane production 3.5 times from 1960 to 2018. This is staggering when the pre-existing scale of sugar manufacture is considered. Large plantations introduced new chemical fertilizers, irrigation methods and some mechanization to dramatically increase yields. However, despite the great increase in agricultural productivity, much of the concrete labor is still done manually and with shockingly crude methods. Millions of men, women, and children across the \u2018developing\u2019 world spend sweltering hours hacking sugarcane with machetes and then pressing it through large rollers to extract its juice.<\/p>\n

While more and more sugarcane is harvested mechanically, especially in places where labor costs have increased, these methods lead to considerable crop damage and waste which manual harvesting avoids. If human labor is cheap enough, it makes far more financial sense to continue to consume as much of it as possible to maximize profits.<\/p>\n

Because most states where sugarcane is harvested serve the interests of the plantation owning class rather than the common citizens, the reduction of manual labor in sugarcane harvesting therefore ends up meaning more land is required, which leads to the, often violent, displacement of small indigenous farmers from their lands in favor of large farming enterprises. It also means greater exploitation of natural resources like water and the use of even more fertilizers which leads to even greater ecological devastation. But these costs are not priced into the cheap sugar on our shelves. <\/p>\n

Today, the production of commodities like sugar, tropical fruits, coffee and so on is upheld by a limitless pool of violence. Companies like Nestl\u00e9, Coca Cola, Unilever and Mondelez rely on their dictator and death-squad partners to keep the commodities flowing. When a group of Central American Coca Cola workers gets uppity, there’s always a group of mercenaries, kept at a safe legal distance through intermediaries, ready to gun enough of them down to pacify the problem. <\/p>

Some efforts to create more ethical supply chains have taken place with movements like ‘Fair Trade’, but while these producers (usually) receive more than mere subsistence, the payment they get is still based on a systemic devaluation of the labor of workers outside rich countries. A fair trade cocoa farmer is not getting compensation remotely comparable to what a similar worker in a European or even East Asian country would receive. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Going Deeper<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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As our political-economic order careens toward crisis after crisis, sober assessment demands that we reflect on how our lives are shaped by sugar. From abstract policy instruments wielded by elite technocrats to our very biology, the crystalline powder coats our social reality.\u00a0<\/p>

While we have explained the history of sugar from its earliest cultivation to its present state,\u00a0why<\/em> it is such a powerful substance, which has served as a medium for such atrocity, remains to be explored.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Click the link below to continue on toward the chemistry of Sugar<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tProceed<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Age of Freedom Can You Feel Golden Chains? Even after slavery was abolished, western Europeans continued to politically and economically dominate the vast majority of the planet. They reinvested the wealth generated through slavery and wage labor in the colonies and intensified the production of commodities like sugar. 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