Anthony asked me: >What exactly do you mean by investment goods? Capital goods, like >self-reproducing machinery? Or more "knowledge-intensive" goods, such as >medical equipment? I don't have the most recent data but a beakdown of US >exports by type of goods shows that US exports (a small % of GDP) embody >more of the high-tech. Aircraft and software being two examples from the >Pac NW. The demand for these products is very high and growing in Asia >and I think US capital has found a way to beat the insufficient demand. >No wonder the US economy looks rosy just as we hear of the all bad news >from the labor front. As a reply, I am forwarding a post which appeared on both the marxism-international and marxism-science lists; it was written by Louis Godena: Re: Autonomy, dependency & Third World technology: In 1974, Henry Nau argued that increased global interdependence made it possible for the West to employ their superior scientific and technical expertise to impose "a more subtle and total form of imperialism than was possible in any previous period of history." Later, as a senior staff member for international economic affairs on Reagan's National Security Council, he helped make this largely academic scheme a reality. Between 1982 and 1990, for example, the US surplus in R&D-intensive goods rose from $40 billion to nearly $65 billion; during the same period its deficit in non-R&D-intensive goods grew from $8 billion to nearly $45 billion. Fully 50% of the increase was due to sales of R&D-intensive goods to the Third World - exports that rose from $25 billion to nearly $50 billion over that same period. Fees and royalties paid by other industrialized nations for the use of American know-how increased over 500% (!) from 1974 - 1990. Overall, the latest report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science concludes, more than 40% of an average multinational company's returns on R&D comes from foreign sales (*Science and Exports: the West and the Third World* Washington, DC, 1996: AAAS Publications) . The significance of the transfers of knowledge that take place through such transactions, however, is much broader than their commercial value. Included in the broad category of "R&D-intensive goods" is equipment that can be employed to produce new goods that can subsequently compete in the same markets as American-made goods. Such exports of course are of strategic importance; they embody the capacity to compete, in the modern world a source of political power. Those who own such technology are in a much stronger position than those who do not. Evidence of this is underlined by the contrasting degrees of enthusiasm displayed by multinationals in exporting new products and in exporting new production processes. A recent survey of twenty-five major companies bears this out. In cases where new technology was developed as a product, in 72% of cases it was transferred abroad through a foreign subsidiary, 24% by unaffiliated licensing, and only 4% by direct exports. In contrast, when the technology took the form of new production processes, foreign subsidiaries were used in only 17% of all cases, unaffiliated licensing was never used. In the remaining 83% of cases the innovation was transferred through the export of finished products; the process itself remained protected at home (Travis, Johns, and Stoudenmire, *Foreign Trade and US Research and Development* Baltimore, 1997: Johns Hopkins University Press for the National Science Foundation).
