Rod Hay wrote: > You could on and on with the moral outrage. War and conquest extract > terrible penalties on the defeated. Inside Europe as well as outside it. Has > no one read the history of the thirty years war? > > But the question is how dependent was the development of capitalism on the > exploitation of the peripheral countries. Few of the quantitative studies > indicate that the dependence was large. _____________ I think the relevant question is not whether it was large or small, but rather whether it was critical or not. Let's suppose that the take off industrialization might have needed investment of about 8% of the GDP. The domestic savings could provide say 5 to 6 per cent and the rest 2 to 3 per cent came from the plunder of the colonies. The 2 to 3 per cent by itself may appear small but it may have caused the difference between the first world industrializing or not industrializing. On the other hand the overse logic could be applied for the colonies. They may be generating about 8 per cent surplus but fell short off taking off because the critical 2 to 3 per cent was siphoned off. So one has to understand everything by putting it in broader context and not by just looking at one number. Cheers, ajit sinha > Capitalism depended and continues to > depend for the most part upon the exploitation of workers within the core > countries. Even with higher wages, the amount of surplus extracted is many, > many times higher. This should not be surprizing given the differences in > capital accumulation (both physical and human). Workers with higher > educational accomplishments and more machines and more modern technology > produce more. This is why the larger percentage of foreign investment is in > already industrialised countries. That is where the surplus can be obtained > more easily. > > Globalisation may change that, but even here the spread of industrial > production is encompassing a small number of new countries. > > Rod Hay > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > The History of Economic Thought Archives > http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html > Batoche Books > http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html > http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
