> as far as I can see. Specific conjunctural conditions meant that S Korea
> broke out of the trap of underdevelopment. I would cite
> a. the virtuous circle created by US aid to post war Japan and S Korea's
> specific relation to that growth
> b. the relatively insignificant political role played by the Korean
> working class (giving the elite much more room to manouevre)
> c. the specific role of the S. Korean state as a (relatively) efficient
> organiser of investment.
The Korean workingclass was always hellaciously restive, and often combined with student protestors to regularly rock dictatorial governments to their foundations (the response of the state was to create the KCIA). Also, the postwar South was mostly an agrarian country, the factories were in the North; land reform probably did more than anything else to spur industrialization.
Not all of the Irish boom can be written off as a price-transfer scheme by Intel. Some parts are real: EU aid averages 5-6% of Irish GDP, money which gets invested in education, telecoms and infrastructure; apparently, EU funding and social democratic-style institutions also helped spur an indigenous software industry. The most you can say is that the Eurobourgeoisie, for whatever reason, are investing for the long haul in their semiperipheries, which suggests that the Visegrad economies are going to take off like a rocket.
-- Dennis