1) The document analyzes the Columbus myth as an origin story that justifies the dominance of powers from the global North since 1492. 2) It argues that while their dominance is declining, these powers refuse to understand that their wealth came from acquiring the wealth of others through imperialism and slavery, not from any inherent superiority. 3) The Columbus myth disguises this by portraying Columbus as discovering America and creating a model of progress, rather than enslaving and wiping out indigenous populations for profit. The myth sustains the dominant worldview.

1. Hubris
A materialist analysis
of the Columbus myth

2. The problem
simply stated
The powers which have
dominated the world since
1492 are in decline, and their
dominance is under threat
Yet they refuse to understand
the reasons
Why?

3. The answer simply
stated
They do not understand the source of their
dominance
They believe it is due to their superior
capacity to produce wealth
Actually due to their capacity to acquire
the wealth of others
But disguised by the economic system that
maintains it – capitalist imperialism
This disguise takes the form of a
myth system
Columbianism

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Annual Growth Four-Year Moving Average
The Great Long Northern Decline
Average growth rate of the global North (USA, Europe, Japan,
settler colonies)
All Northern countries since
1974
The longest decline in the
history of capitalism
Entirely endogenous (internally
generated)
Not caused by the rise of China
but blamed on China
Because otherwise, it would be
blamed on the economic system
of the dominant countries
And their ruling classes

5. The Columbus myth simply stated

6. But…
Columbus did not discover America
• He landed in the Bahamas and colonised Cuba
He did not create a new model of human progress
• He enslaved the Taino population to make him rich
• He created modern genocide and wiped them out
• He governed so badly that Spain recalled him
The Columbus story is not a factual claim but a myth
• A belief system that sustains a dominant class
• If we grasp this belief system, we clear the way to a
materialist, scientific understanding
• Not because the myth is ‘wrong’
• But because it explains the thought-structure of the world’s
dominant classes
• That is, it expose the limits of modern social science
• And tells us how to transcend these limits

7. A materialist
concept of myth
Robert Graves, author of Greek
Myths:
• Persons represent peoples
• Events represent conquests
The material content of a myth is
an actual historical event.
It is therefore wrong to dismiss a
myth as a merely false statement
We have to understand the
national and class struggle that
the myth represents

8. Columbus as a
mythical figure
Columbianism is an origin myth
A hero myth
A liberation myth
A father myth
A world myth
A revelation myth
A discovery myth
A destiny myth
A superiority myth

9. Peculiarities of the Columbus myth
Did not actually emerge until
the Late 19th Century
•Promoted by Italian
immigrants denounced as
‘Dagoes’
•Columbus as ‘Italian
contribution to American
Civilization’
•Columbus Day announced in
1930s and did not get
presidential approval until
Trump
A pseudo-rational religion
• Masquerades as a product of
the enlightenment
• America has ‘taken over
where Europe left off’
• God is replaced by the
market
• The Bible is replaced by
Economics
• Columbus personifies the
doctrine of the US civilizing
mission
Masquerades as a doctrine of
liberation
•Poses as ‘liberator’
•But provides the justification for
war and intervention
•Reinvented Victorian liberalism as
its moral system
•With all the failures of that
doctrine
•Rooted in the notion of the
freedom to own
•Esoteric secret: deifies private
property and the Northern
monopolies of trade, finance and
technology

10. 1492: a potted history
Began as a trade venture
• Islamic traders dominated routes to the East
• Columbus sought a new route to India
• But stumbled on the American bi-continent
Became the source of finance for European capitalism and the
birthplace of capitalist slavery
The principal source of raw materials and the products of cheap
labour, mainly enslaved or indentured
We have to understand this as capitalist ‘forced’ labour, because
it produced commodities, hence value
This was the foundation of the colonial system – and the
industrial revolution
• Silver and Gold
• Cotton
• Coffee, Tobacco, Sugar, … then tea, rubber, wood, minerals, oil.
Low-cost materials, financed by precious metals, produced
under slave conditions: Marx’s ‘rosy dawn of capitalism’
Potosi: by 1620
fourth largest
city in
Christendom
8 million
indigenous and
African people
died there

11. Capitalism has gone through
huge changes, but
•The global North consists of
the same group of nations as
in 1917
•And retains its monopoly of
high-tech, trade and finance
The true source of its wealth
is the labour of others
•But to admit this threatens
its political survival demands
•It therefore disguises the
source of its wealth as a
theory of superior civilization
Hence
• Racism
• Trade wars
• Regime change
• Militarism
• Cold War against China
How Columbianism replaced Eurocentrism
The working class entered
the world stage
•Russian and Chinese
revolutions made
interimperialist war too risky
•Domestic compromise imposed
‘welfare state’
US stepped forward as
‘world leader’
•Imposed dollar as world
currency
•Created NATO
•Built buffer states in Germany,
Japan and South Korea
Hence
• The Columbus Myth
• Symbolises US Ascendancy
• Symbolises Northern
dominance

12. Hubris
• A crime in Athenian law under the constitution of Solon
• Punished by Nemesis
Athenian term denoting ‘excessive pride and arrogance’
• Inability of the oppressor to maintain conditions for social reproduction
• The revolt of the oppressed
Outcome of a class compromise imposed by the combination of:
• doomed by its inner nature
• ends in tragedy (Oresteian trilogy, Oedipus, etc)
Nevertheless, an unstable compromise
• First step: a truly scientific understanding of society
Our task: to outrun Nemesis and lay the basis for a peaceful and
just new society