Mineral wealth and Marx - is there any detectable difference?
The short answer to the question posed above is “no.” Both the Angolan and now the Mozambican governments have asserted unambiguously that the right to subsurface mineral wealth belongs to the government.
In fact, the Angolan government has demonstrated quite clearly that they are willing to wage war in whatever manner and for however long it is necessary for them to exert control over the entirety of the national area and its offshore economic zones. This includes not only oil production areas but also diamond mines in the northeast part of the country. Extraction of the oil has been done almost exclusively by foreign contractors, including US, European, and other firms experienced in oil exploration and extraction. This might seem “un-Marxist” but was in reality part of a situation so confused that at one point Cuban soldiers were protecting US oil companies from South African mercenaries funded by the US and its allies.But the question remains — is this Marxist economics in practice? In support of a negative answer we have to recognize that using foreign contractors for extraction is no more a hallmark of a particular ideology than is assertion of control over subsurface mineral rights: in short, everyone does it. The centralizing tendencies that go along with the economics of the Resource Curse may appear at first glance to have some resemblance to Marxist economic philosophy, but in reality they are simply a manifestation of the fact that power follows money — and in a resource rich country that money is located in the capital city (Kyle, 2006a, 2006b).