Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> No import, no export, no
> investment, no movement of manpower, no debt service, nothing -- no traffic
> between rich nations and the rest of the world. I doubt that capitalism
> could survive under the above conditions.
There is another way to image the same thing. Let us assume for the sake of argument that everything in the advanced capitalist world is peachy-keen for everyone, even black residents of the Bronx. Then there are two ways to legitimate the gap between this first world and the third world.
One way is that pushed by Perikles in defense of the Athenian Empire: We've got ours and screw you!
The other is to claim (as I believe Max and Brad in different ways do) that the third world countries are on track as it were to achieve this same peachykeen status. The whole world is first world. Say divided into about 7 superpowers, all with the industrial and military capacity now possessed only by the U.S. Is such a world possible?
If it is not possible (or even, as I would suggest, imaginable), then advanced capitalism depends in some sense on imperialism -- regardless of what direction the surplus flows.
Carrol