Doug, Anthony and Gar, et al. certainly set out the big picture of the global flows in a nutshell.
The underlying logic from _Capital_ for export of capital/foreign trade is that the home market is saturated with profitable investment. So, it is not only profits from investments in poor countries that follows this logic. And I think the concept of superprofits means "extra" profits. More like the icing on the cake in terms of proportion of the whole. So , a quarter of the total would be the right proportions ( 291 billion /1.3 trillion). They are extra profits in the sense of profits that couldn't have been made domestically, because the domestic market is saturated. The rise of the predominance of the transnational form of the corporation seems to say something indirectly about the importance of foreign trade and investment. The US auto industry nowadays reports making all its profits from overseas operations ( of course net they are losing money) Japanese auto companies may make a big chunk of theirs in the US. But of course, US auto-workers are turning into their opposites, (or in the opposite direction as their wages are being cut in half) with respect to being the leading labor aristocracy. That alone is an indicator of a qualitative change in the structure of imperialism. Also, as is often mentioned in this discussion, there is more investment in the US from other countries exporting capital than being exported from the US. This follows the logic from the standpoint of the other countries having their domestic markets saturated. All though I sense a contradiction in that how come the US is not too saturated for the foreign companies to invest here profitably ? This big picture seems to make 100 plus US military bases around the world obsolete from an economic standpoint, maybe. What good is US occupation of Japan or Korea doing for US profits ? Charles This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
