Weak Links?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 10:52 AM -0500 12/12/02, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>  > *****   "The imperialist front was broken at its weakest
>>  link, Czarist Russia."
>>
>>  This is Lenin's splendid formula. Its meaning is that Russia was the
>>  most backward and economically weakest of all the imperialist states.
>>  That is precisely why her ruling classes were the first to collapse
>>  as they had loaded an unbearable burden on the insufficient
>>  productive forces of the country. Uneven, sporadic development thus
>>  compelled the proletariat of the most backward imperialist country to
>  > be the first to seize power.
>
>Russia collapsed because its economy was basically extractive - based on
>plunder of natural resources and ruthless exploitation of peasantry -
>with little or no investment and thus reproductive power (the Soviet
>system was basciallya remedy to this situation by implementing a state
>sponsored investment system).

*****   World Politics 51.2 (1999) 297-322

The Political Economy of the Resource Curse

Michael L. Ross *

......At first glance, the role of resource wealth in economic 
development looks like a question of dwindling importance. In 1970, 
80.4 percent of the developing world's export earnings came from 
primary commodities; by 1993 it had dropped to 34.2 percent. But most 
of this drop was caused by the fast growth of manufactured exports in 
East Asia and a handful of Latin American states. Three-quarters of 
the states in sub-Saharan Africa and two-thirds of those in Latin 
America, the Caribbean, North Africa, and the Middle East still 
depend on primary commodities for at least half of their export 
income. 1...

1. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (unctad), 
Commodity Yearbook 1995 (New York: United Nations, 1995).

<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/world_politics/v051/51.2er_karl.html>   *****

It seems there are a number of nations -- actually a large majority 
in the world -- whose economy may be easily described as "basically 
extractive."  A number of such nations have already collapsed -- 
quite spectacularly sometimes, as in the case of the "Democratic 
Republic of Congo" (formerly Zaire).


>At 2:34 PM -0500 12/12/02, Todd Archer wrote:
>>a truly capitalist system can reproduce itself (which is not to sya 
>>that it does not exploit those who provide labour power for that 
>>reproduction) - and that makes all the difference vis a vis 
>>quasi-feudal systems such as tsarist Russia.
>
>Yes, but it can't reproduce itself perfectly or indefinitely. 
>Business cycles show that, as well as the appearances of bubbles, 
>gluts, and crashes (productive capitl and paper), no?

Relatively advanced ones are subject to collapse, too.  E.g., Argentina.
-- 
Yoshie

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