Tom says:
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote,
>
>>There's nothing on the political horizon to replace US hegemony --
>>therefore Ellen's dissertation on dollarization holds up, I think,
>>despite the alarms sounded by Wynne Godley who writes as if the USA
>>had already entered into the same twilight of the empire that the UK
>>had earlier.
>
>The premise only supports the conclusion on the condition that hegemony is a
>zero-sum game. US drops ball; someone else picks it up. Uh-uh. Much more
>dangerous possibilities have presented in the past, such as during roughly
>the first half of the last century. In the hegemony sweepstakes "nothing" is
>something too.
I don't disagree at all. Jim analyzes the problem of the interregnum
very well at
<http://clawww.lmu.edu/faculty/jdevine/subpages/depr/d2.html>. I
maintain, however, that we are not in the interregnum today.
>The USA entered into the twilight of empire between 1968 and 1974. Any
>semblances of glory since then have been mirages sustained by the
>obsequiousness of USA's "partners" and the relentlessness of the public
>relations campaign.
If the USA had really entered the twilight of empire, it would have
by now suffered from the same indignity that the UK -- an imperial
has-been -- had:
At 11:03 AM +0300 7/17/01, Keaney Michael wrote:
>Can't remember where I came across it, but I
>read an interview with Godley recently in which he talks about having to
>teach himself economics while at HM Treasury in order to unlearn the rubbish
>he was expected to practise/spout. This was at an important juncture for the
>UK economy of course, as its perennial balance of payments problem was about
>to be "addressed" once and for all by the IMF.
When the ruling class is global, rather than national, an imperial
state (= the state whose politico-military powers guarantee the
reproduction of capitalism) doesn't have to be a mercantilist
success. In fact, practicing mercantilism even after becoming a
great economic power is likely to get you into deep economic trouble
(= overinvestment), in the process dragging down others a bit. See
Japan.
Yoshie
