the global melodrama

[Louis Proyect]

Brad DeLong:
>Exports to the first world are the best way to get the purchasing power to
>buy the industrial capital goods that embody so much modern technology--and
>those countries that have exported and used the proceeds to boost their
>investment rates have done much, much better than other developing
>countries over the past half century.
>
>Of course, there are those developing countries that have boosted exports
>and used the proceeds to pay for elite vacations in Davos. Those have not
>done so well...

This is nonsense. The exports to the first world come at the expense of
social needs in the exporting countries. Somoza threw peasants off the land
so he and his cronies could start cattle ranches under the protective
auspices of the Alliance for Progress. This period actually saw
simultaneously the most rapid increase in Nicaraguan GDP in the century and
the immiseration of the bulk of the population. The elite vacations took
place not because the Somozas were scum like the Duvaliers, Marcoses, etc,
but because the reward system of capitalism makes this a natural corollary.
The notion of an enlightened bourgeoisie in Latin America is absurd.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)