Yoshie had written:
> > Is there a good theory of imperialism today, > > which is strongly focused on the Middle East, that > > takes into account solid empirical studies of economies > > and class structures of these societies? I have yet to find one.<
me:
> I thought you dismissed leftist economists for being concerned with > questions of imperialism.
now, Yoshie Furuhashi writes:
More specifically, a crisis theory debate (underconsumption vs overproduction) in the context of competing theories of imperialism was the sort that I dismissed . . or rather dismissed itself.
I don't know how a theory can "dismiss itself." That's crazy -- or perhaps Hegelian. I don't think people who don't know much about that debate should dismiss it. Similarly, I don't try to intervene in literary criticism debates, except perhaps about specific books. (I do object to the application of lit-crit shit to economics.) Since Yoshie works with MR, it seems that she's simply siding with one camp of the crisis theory/imperialism debates, i.e., the Magdoff/Baran/Sweezy/Bellamy view. In desperate brevity, that camp sees a chain of causation as follows: monopoly capitalism --> inherent stagnation tendencies --> counteracted by imperialism. like Marx's TRPF of old, sometimes it seems that there are so many counteracting tendencies (the sales effort, etc., etc.) that the main tendency is swamped.
Is anyone still trying to explain today's imperialism from the laws of motion of capitalism?
I tried to do so once. Look at my dissertation or my big article on the origins of the Great Depression, for example. (The latter is available on my website.) There, the emphasis was that macro-political expansion (imperialistic aggression, etc.) was the result of the normal tension that is part and parcel with capitalist competition and class antagonisms (inherent in the structure of capitalism). Of course, the success of such expansion depends on the nature of the resistance encountered. Similarly, the competition amongst capitalists and class antagonism drives a capitalist economy ahead, into over-accumulation. The nature of the crisis that result (if one does, natch) depends on the nature of the barriers faced. I distinguish between "strong labor" and "weak labor" periods (e.g., the 1960s, the 1920s, respectively). The strong labor period resulted in over-accumulation relative to supply, while weak labor periods result in over-accumulation relative to demand (and the underconsumption trap). [This is quite abstract, while reality is concrete: government can change the specific way in which crisis tendencies are expressed.] In this view, imperialist expansion and crisis theory are joined at the hip. It's like what N. Bukharin wrote: he saw imperialism as leading to either war or depression. His "imperialism" is similar to the structure of capitalism that I posit (except that he rightly sees state-vs.-state competition as often a form of capitalist competition). "War" of course plays the role in his theory as imperialistic expansion does in the one I just sketched. "Depression" plays the role of crises. in sum, the basic structure of capitalism (competition, including between states, and class antagonism) is the basis for _both_ crises and imperialistic expansion. -- Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
