>Although I'm sure you've demonstrated
>it before, could you briefly give
>the figures on this ? ( or
>a page reference in your book ?)
>How you calculate it ?
>The obvious
>question is are the categories used
>to calculate neo-colonial plunder
>in 1998 even there in
>the statistics of bourgeois
>institutional statistics ?
>
>Wouldn't it take a lot of
>digging below the surface
>to do a Marxist calculation
>of this ?
No, I've never demonstrated it, never even tried. That's why I was asking if anyone else knew of attempts to do so. I think Lou is right that you couldn't estimate the contribution quantitatively alone - there are a whole lot of political questions that couldn't be modeled statistically. But what I'd like to figure out is how much the wealth of the rich countries today depends on imperial plunder - is it the main course, or merely dessert?
I think one of the most interesting things about the Asian collapse is that South Korea, which seemed on the verge of joining the inner circle, has been rebuffed - transformed from potential rival/colleague into a dependency once again. If SK can't make it ("graduate," in development jargon), it's hard to imagine any country doing so.
Doug