tools and empire

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Apr 15 04:32:35 PDT 2002


pms aks:


>US neoliberalism has become a barrier on the development of the
>multinational productive forces, and now comes the reckoning.
>
>-- Dennis
>
>How so?

In the days of Lenin's imperialism, empires exported capital to their respective peripheries:

***** The export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. While, therefore, the export of capital may tend to a certain extent to arrest development in the capital-exporting countries, it can only do so by expanding and deepening the further development of capitalism throughout the world.

<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch04.htm> *****

Today, far from exporting capital to and accelerating the development of capitalism in the periphery, the Empire sucks it out of it (in the form of debt service, etc.), arresting its development.

***** Financial Times 4 February 2002

...Given the country's huge net debtor position of about $2,700bn in 2002, will even more sharply rising foreign indebtedness be a problem in the future? For the US, it will not be a problem in the usual sense -- ie, when creditors suddenly demand their money back from an impecunious and overstretched debtor. Because the world is on a dollar standard -- the dollar is the definitive currency in making inter-national payments and US debts to foreigners are all dollar-denominated -- the US cannot literally go broke. As long as the dollar's purchasing power over goods and services remains stable, the US economy collectively (though certainly not every household and company in it) can always find a way to roll over existing dollar claims held by foreigners.

By serendipity, America's central position in the world's monetary system gives the country a virtually unlimited international line of credit. Hence its ability to run trade deficits for the past 20 years without having to pay higher interest rates on that dollar-denominated debt as it was accumulated by foreign creditors.

Nevertheless, a big problem remains: an across-the-board decline in America's international competitiveness into the new millennium.

As the real value of the dollar appreciates from the extraordinary capital inflow with continuing US trade deficits, aircraft exporters such as Boeing will become less and less competitive with Airbus of Europe, steel producers will continually claim unfair foreign dumping, movie moguls will shoot more films abroad, high-technology industries will outsource even more, and so on. US productivity growth could well diminish.

Already, American companies and unions are becoming even more protectionist -- which puts the World Trade Organisation at risk in trying to preserve free multilateral trade.

Another consequence is that the world's richest, most mature industrial economy is essentially draining the rest of the world of capital. This is particularly hard on emerging markets and other developing countries. Declining support for the US's modest overseas development programmes for poor countries may be no bad thing but inadvertently grabbing the lion's share of internationally available private financial capital certainly is....

<http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3UP7CPAXC&live=true> *****

What we have here is imperialism without any "civilizing mission" (= investment that expands and deepens "the further development of capitalism throughout the world"). Nothing but swords and dollars. The Empire's expanding military commitments is a symptom of its inability to rule otherwise. -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



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