> >>>
>Btw 2: Sometimes I feel myself inclined to believe that the Soviet failure
>is not related to socialism, but is essentially a failure of "late
>modernization" in fact, no underdeveloped countries became developed in this
>century, and
>South Korea, which almost achieved it, is starting to face serious troubles,
>(I don?t know if Portugal, Spain and Taiwan are exceptions to this)
>Alexandre Fenelon
><<<
>
>I know everybody is supposed to know this, but I don't so somebody clue me
>in. Why is it that no undeveloped nation can modernize? Why do so many of
>these countries have a good decade or two, come close, but then fade away?
>Is there a well known theory about this that everybody accepts? Is there a
>well known book that nearly everyone quotes from when this subject comes up?
>What are the classics on this subject?
Check out "U.S. Hegemony in North America" by Michael Hoover at <http://www.greens.org/s-r/06/06-13.html>. It's short & available on-line.
For an overview of theories of imperialism, see _Imperialism: Theoretical Directions_, ed. Ronald H. Chilcote (2000). Classical as well as contemporary perspectives are excerpted in it.
Yoshie