Allegations of exploitation were not only untrue, but positively harmful to the Third World, he argued, as they diverted attention from the personal and social causes of material progress and encouraged the view that incomes were extracted rather than earned. In his own version of Hayek’s famous ‘road to serfdom’, Bauer argued that any concession to a belief in Western exploitation of former colonies legitimised severe maltreatment, including expropriation and massacre.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 432