As an aside, he mentions power but completely skips over it. Power relations
set the stage for economic relations and that is seminal to all forms of
hegemony:
Only complete political confusion and naïve optimism can prevent the
recognition that the unavoidable efforts at trade expansion by all
civilized bourgeois-controlled nations, after a period of seemingly
peaceful competition, are clearly approaching the point where power
alone will decide each nation’s share, and hence its people’s sphere of
activity, and especially its workers’ earning potential (Hobsbawm
1987:Ch. 3).
It is the terms of power that set the terms of trade.
As to the substance of power, one might say that it is knowledge or consensus
making. I doubt that a highly unevenly developed China can do this. In the ebb
and flow of Chinese history, it would be rather unusual for China to hold
together for long given the immense inter regional disparities. What holds a
capitalist entity together is the pacifying function of welfare and
redistribution (long effort), notwithstanding state violent coercion of course
(short effort). In Keynesian parlance, the better the economic stabilisers in
times of crisis, the better the structure from which power stems. And of course
once more, since this argument can lead I do not know where… that China can in
its present mode of operation make a volta face and revert to socialist
redistribution is highly unlikely. The very class content of the communist
party is anything but communist.
There is something called war making for economy saving, and control withers
all debt. So, if the dollar decline holds by the relation by which dollars
abroad come home to roost and buy up American national assets-the final call
that is, the US can sell its assets in its colonies and semi colonies.
Imperialism galore.
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