largest corporations in the country of operations, were influential in the social
and cultural life of the host country as well as in its politics. Governments
dependent on the information coming from such sources were unable to work
out their own solutions to the problems, such as poverty, which are of no
particular interest to foreigners (Baran, 1957, p. 194; Hymer, 1982).
The anti-colonialists of the post-independence era found neo-colonialism
to be operating in diverse ways other than legitimate pressure group activity.
Nkrumah described how neo-colonialists ‘slip past our guard’ through mili-
tary bases, advisers, media propaganda, evangelism and CIA subversion.
Military dependence on the former colonial powers for arms, training, advis-
ers and basic military doctrine has been seen as one of the most visible aspects
of neo-colonialism. The success or failure of a coup d’étatwas often depend-
ent on the level of external encouragement. In Africa the ‘metropolitan
centres, especially France, have assumed the role of arbiters of the survival of
particular regimes’ (Berman, 1974, pp. 6–7). France’s neo-colonial role
continued into the 1990s in Rwanda, Zaire, Gabon and Togo.
Comprador élites
Other important political features of neo-colonialism are the common inter-
ests of local élites and external organizations, whether they be foreign gov-
ernments, multinational corporations or international agencies. Baran
described merchants ‘expanding and thriving within the orbit of foreign
capital’, forming a ‘comparador element’ of the native bourgeoisie which,
together with ‘native industrial monopolists’, act as ‘stalwart defenders of
the established order’. Large landowners not only benefit from foreign cap-
ital but find outlets for their produce, employment opportunities for mem-
bers of their families, and rising land values in the neo-imperial connection
(Baran, 1957, pp. 194–5).
The multinationals have an effect on the class structure and power distri-
bution in less developed countries by creating dependent classes of local
merchants, financiers and privileged sections of the labour force – ‘satellite
classes whose interests are tied to the dependenciasyndrome’ (Rosen and
Jones, 1979, p. 254; Schuurman, 1993, p. 5). Under neo-colonialism the
imperial power is represented by ‘collaborative classes within post-colonial
society, some more dependent on foreign interests than others’. Petras
draws the following distinctions:
Large-scale industrialists involved in production for the local market and
with a powerful presence in the state are more likely to be associateNeo-colonialism and Dependency 81