Carrol Cox schreef:
Doug Henwood wrote:
On Jun 18, 2008, at 6:19 AM, Matthijs Krul wrote:
Instead, we should recognize that the social-democratic movement
has had success in sharing the profits gained from the real
immiseration of the Third World
I don't doubt that colonialism was central to Europe's initial rise
to wealth, but how well does this describe contemporary capitalism?
Most FDI flows to rapidly growing regions in Asia, and very little to
poor regions like Africa. Africa still suffers from the ravages of
the slave trade, but it's barely a measurable source of profits
today. Or did you have something else in mind?
Are there figures available on the net inflow/outflow of funds from
Africa? From Latin America?
Or in real terms: do more products flow from Africa to core capitalist
nations or from core capitalist nations to Africa? To Latin America?
The concept of "sharing profits" with workers is of course absurd, since
it implies that u.s. workers (a) do not produce surplus value (in
empirical terms, that their employers make no profits from their work)
and (b) share in the profits that come from abroad.
But that does NOT establish that u.s. workers do not benefit from
imperialism.
And Doug's figures by themselves tell us nothing either way about
contemporary imiperialism.
Carrol
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I don't see how it 'implies' anything of the kind. That the profits from
Third World exploitation since 1500, and particularly since 1800, have
over time (basically from the late 19th century on) increasingly been
shared with the (white) working class in the West does _not_ in any way
imply that these workers are not themselves also exploited by the First
World capitalists. It implies instead that while they are exploited,
they profit at the same time from the exploitation of the Third World.
This explains also why social-democracy historically has been
'patriotic' about imperialist wars and favored colonialism, while at the
same time supporting the First World labor movement. I think the
traditional, Maoist, version of this theory tends to exaggerate the
degree of complicity of white workers in the West in this imperialism,
but I don't think it can practically be denied that A) the workers have
become vastly wealthier than they would have been without the income
from colonialism and imperialism, B) this has made First World workers
on the whole very disinclined to support anti-imperialist movements in
the Third World, and C) this has also made them generally very
disinclined to revolution, since capitalism is _partially_ 'paying off'
for them. None of this in any way denies that they are still exploited
in the production process themselves in the First World.
So I would deny your A) but I do confirm your B). They do share in the
profits that come from abroad. The point about FDI is not very useful in
that regard because I don't intend this in literal terms, that direct
profit remittances from Third World investment are 'doled out' in the
very short term (although they can be in terms of taxes which are then
spent on social-democratic welfare), but rather that historically the
activities of First World governments in the Third World has given them
the extra power and wealth that enabled them to 'bribe' the First World
workers to a significant degree. This goes all the way from the Belgian
social-democrats' support for the plunder of the Congo to Japanese
workers supporting the invasion of China and American workers supporting
the Cold War. I think a geopolitical, large-scale and indirect process
of this kind can't be measured by short term FDI investment, but is
better deduced from the evidence from the works of people like Andre
Gunder Frank (and other economic historians) and Lenin's 'imperialism'
thesis.
Matthijs Krul
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