In a book entitled Colonialism Today, published in 1981, Hosea Jaffe claimed that colonialism was the cradle of capitalism. His key point was that although, in chronological terms, the capitalist mode of production preceded the imperialist invasion – economic, political and military – by European countries around the world, it was with colonialism that the capitalist mode of production established itself as a “system”. A system is a set of rules or a regime that governs the actions of human beings. Central to the capitalist mode of production is of course labour.
Following this reasoning, it is rather arduous to study colonial economies or colonialism in general without keeping in mind the organisation of labour. Turning to the particular case of Colonial Somalia, the author notes that, in the nineteenth century, part of the territory that was inhabited by the Somali people was colonised by Italy, a semi-capitalist European nation. Indeed, Italian capitalism has been accurately described by both Lenin and then Gramsci as “imperialismo straccione” (imperialism of the beggars), as Italy, when it started its imperialist adventure, did not have capital to export and conquered African territories in order not to lag behind other neighbouring nations – namely France. Italian colonialism was thus not driven by a real need to expand economically as a capitalist necessity but rather it was the result of a subjective political design to attain imperial standing at the expense of African peoples. However, colonialism gave the growing Italian capitalist class – closely linked to the political class system – a way to enter in connection with their European counterparts.
For the Somali peoples, subjected to Italian colonial domination, the issue was a different one – namely, to what extent did colonialism change Somali societies and their mode pf production? Historians largely agree that it is difficult to offer any clear-cut answers to this question. The question is quite crucial and it concerns the issue of the capitalist transformation of a society. In the contemporary world, capitalism is considered the “normal” mode of production. It is often described as dominant or contagious. Some societies though seem to escape its power. Or maybe this is only a superficial view, and in reality all African societies, including the Somali one, are capitalistic in nature, and therefore not different in essence from Western societies. This also means that they should be included in the global capitalist system and, to that extent, colonialism was instrumental in this development. The issue of labour is crucial because, if this is true, we should have in place a system of classes of exploited workers and another class which extracts value from this labour. The social and economic differences (inequalities) are therefore present and inevitably set to increase, bringing more conflictual situations.