I am not clear as how to read Maddison's numbers in terms of the idea I was updating from Boudin:
Industrialization of former colonies goes from relieving the system of excess capacity to exacerbating its contradictions.
As a holdover from Luxemburg's bizarre idea that non capitalist modes were capable of ensuring the realization of the enormous surplus product of the advanced industrialized countries, the dependency theorists seem to have never understood that fast industrializing colonies do the most good for the imperialist countries.
And indeed such industrialization did *overall* relieve *excess* capacity and provide an outlet to excess capital (other than the stock market and hedge funds) in the building up stages. The new industrialization thus has a *motor* force quite disproportionate to its actual size.
The tanking of the Newly Industrialized Countries is a much greater blow than would appear if one simply took at face value how big of an export market they have provided to the OECD countries in the last decade.
What I am trying to underline here is that this crisis has a world historic significance that a casual look at the numbers may disguise and that the industrialization of those ten big emerging countries while providing a strategically crucial market for some time does not, alas, allow the system to escape its contradictions.
best, rakesh