I agree with Gandall and Devine that there is increasing competition for
the labor aristocracy in the West on the part of workers elsewhere,
mainly in the developing world. But I don't see this as a new
development or a change in the situation - to some degree or another
this has always been the case, it's just more so now than before due to
the ever decreasing costs of transport and the ever increasing ease of
integrating global corporate efforts. It's quite possible for formerly
developing countries to become imperialist powers themselves and so
create a labor aristocracy in their own country, at the expense of
others - Japan famously did so, and one could say the same thing of the
USSR after 1945, although that is debatable. My view here is that this
is to an extent a zero-sum game; a labor aristocracy on one side can
only exist at the expense of another side, and if China and India are
truly going to become the new labor aristocracies, this will have to
largely destroy the ones in the West. After all, there is a limit to the
degree of exploitation of Africa, Asia and Latin America possible, all
the more since the vanishingly small elites in these countries already
take their own significant share as well. So to that extent I do think
the "new economic powers are destined to come into conflict with the old".
Whether China and India will truly be able to do this remains to be seen
though. I want to see it before I believe it. As for "foreign
governments, consumers, investors, and workers have become as essential
to the profits of the transnationals as their home markets and nation
states", this was true even in the days of the VOC. Only it seems modern
transnationals are increasingly liberating themselves from the fetters
of nation-state governments and their control & support.
Matthijs Krul
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