To my knowledge, no one on this list claimed that "the primary source of the center's wealth is the periphery," except Doug's summary of the MIM theory; nor have I. So, what's the problem? Imperialism's main raison d'etre is *to keep the world capitalist*, period (hey, they _are_ rich, so they don't necessarily count nickels and dimes all the time, though that's not to be underestimated either). What we need to look at is a systemic need of capitalist reproduction -- hence the thought experiment I proposed. Anyhow, you can only see low *prices* put on the Third World products, if you insist on being an *empiricist* and forget to consider how wages are determined (think about how imperialism has kept *the cost of existence and reproduction of the worker* very low outside the capitalist core).
>No catching up? How do you account for postwar Japan? or Japan since the
>Meiji Era?
If you haven't noticed, Japan has been *imperialist* and *never* become a *colony* of any nation. And that is the main reason why it has been the only nation outside Europe & North America to become truly rich, in addition to the fact that the post-WW2 American policy fostered Japanese economic reconstruction as a pillar of capitalist prosperity against the Red tides!
Yoshie