-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Dennis Robert Redmond Enviada em: sexta-feira, 7 de setembro de 2001 19:43 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Re: RES: Brazil thread
On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
> -Italy, the Scandinavian countries and Japan were countries of
intermediate
> -level of development by 1900, the term underdeveloped is not good for
them,
> -Japan, for instance had already high levels of litteracy and was a minor
> -imperialist country by 1900.
On the contrary, underdeveloped is an excellent term for them. Italy was mostly a peasant economy in 1900, while Japan was a country of textile mills and mines; in relation to Britain or the US, both were about where southern China is vis-a-vis Japan today. Finland was little more than a timber-felling economy. All were integrated into the Victorian-era world-system on a range of levels.
-Looking at the data from Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Russia, Italy, -Austria, and Japan had almost the same level of industrialization in -1900 (1/5-1/6 of USA and UK), but they were much better than colonial -or half colonial countries like China or India, however, when you look -at the human development level, Russia was worse, with very poor levels -of litteracy (30%) and horrible life expectancy (35-40 years), which were -worse than that other countries. When you look at urban population you -also had 8,6% for Japan, 9,6% for Italy, and 4,8% for Russia, so I insist -on my thesis about "intermediate development", what you can claim is -that Russia was also a case of intermediate development and so I couldn´t -use it as an example of failure of late modernization.
> -South Korea still was not able to achieve "complete" development. Its per
> -capita GNP is still 30-40% less than the poorest countries of EU,and its
> -economy will probably face serious troubles in the next year.
Its GDP is around $9500 or so, while Greece has a per capita GDP of maybe $11000. South Korea really is an example of successful late development lots of high-tech, chip fabs, a serious industrial base, machine-tools, huge investments in R&D, very high levels of per capita investment, etc.
-Just like the USSR by middle 60´s, but my data is a little bit different -from yours, I had GNP of US$8,000 for South Korea and US$12,000 for -Greece, I will check again, and maybe a PPP comparison will give reason -to you, however, it must be pointed that the 1/3 of per capita GNP for -SK/USA was similar to that of USSR/USA by 60´s, so, when I talk about -SK, I´m using the USSR for "compared development" and pointed that SK -still didn´t make the "definitive step".
Alexandre Fenelon