You can doubt the category of total FDI inflows all you want, but the IMF published those numbers, and they, evidently, still believe in the category. I don't understand what the capitalist state has to do with this. The IMF is not a state, and it's only nominally an official agency. Its mandate has only been renewed in the most ad hoc fashion since the 1980's, when James Baker recognized that it might prove useful for the U.S. and G-7 during the 80's debt crisis. If you want to imagine a Tobin Tax having any effect at all, you have to pass through it or the World Bank. It doesn't matter what the dreams of African states are, on this score, since no one is going to hand Tobin Tax revenues over to them. Or rather, the only people that could are working for the IMF, and the IMF made capital account convertibility a condition of membership. So there goes your Tobin Tax.
Christian
----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 6:00 PM Subject: Re: New approach to debt called for
>
> Thanks for coming back to clarify our differences. Thanks for conceding
> that $200 billion dollars could make a difference to Africa.
>
> I doubt the merit of your category of total FDI, however. The great amount
> of this is presumably capitalist investment for profit. Posing the
question
> this way assumes that that is the only way capital gets transferred. In
> fact even the most laissez faire capitalist state has always used state
> policy to transfer large sums for social purposes. It is not capital in
the
> strict marxist sense in that it does not exploit labour, but it is
> certainly a significant part of the social product. This could be anything
> from a giant stature of Bismarck, to a new embankment on the Seine, to a
> new ring road around Vienna to replace the 17th century city walls. It
> might be a cholera or an influenza hospital. It might be to fund
> missionaries to China. It might be more recently to stop adolescents
> passing HIV through infected needles. It might be a vast Bill Gates or
> George Soros charitable fund to earn fame and honour which money does not
> automatically carry with it.
>