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If the public cartels and the strategy of asset nationalization did not always benefit the tropical working class, it should be said that the strategy also did not benefit those countries that did not have access to the higher-priced primary products. When OPEC maintained its price for oil, the dar…

[...] when Venezuela took action against the Seven Sisters in the 1960s, one commentator described the transfer of power in this way: "A planning apparatus and state-owned heavy industry complexes (a steel mill and aluminium industry in the Guayana province; petrochemical complexes in the northwest…

As if testing Uslar-Pietri' s thesis, in December 1936, the oil workers at the Maracaibo fields went on strike for better daily wages, better housing, and salary parity between Venezuelans and foreigners; the regime joined with the oil companies to refuse the demands, sent in the police, and decree…

[...] Monies spent on the military do not create a multiplier effect on the rest of the economy in terms of social development. Indeed, military expenditure in the Third World distorts the national economic pledge to reverse the imperial drain and create a national economy whose incentive is soci…

Despite this massive growth, the PKI under Aidit did not make any move to take state power. The labor unions seized control of Dutch­ owned firms in late 1 957, but that was as far as they would go. In 1 957-58, in Sumatra and Sulawesi, the military and the right wing joined together to create libe…