Well, there was Bill Warren and Geoff Kay, e.g. :>
Anyway, was there one traditional theory of imperialism or several? Seems to me like there has been a debate, sometimes arcane, from the word 'go'.
>Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley
><http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/latest-digest.html#anchor0>
>says that 96% of global growth after 1995 was accounted for by the
>U.S. alone - directly. Indirectly, that U.S. demand for other
>countries' exports was their major source of growth.
A short while back there was a bit of bashing over 'countries' and over 'domestic' and 'foreign' capital. Ulhas himself pointed out that India didn't need to export, etc.
Now we have the suggestion that the rest of the world requires capital accumulation in the US for its own growth, and the US economy is a condition for growth elsewhere.
Well, quite obviously, if it is a condition, then it is far from sufficient, most of the rest of the world (in country, not population, terms) being evidence for that.
Big exception -- E and SE Asia. And it would seem that the period of greatest growth in the US in the 1990s corresponded with a falling back of the region ex-China.
I think we can bracket Japan, S Korea, Taiwan and HK off as special cases for the better part of the last fifty years, direct beneficiaries of the Cold War.
The others -- not exactly a case of "US demand for other countries' exports" so much as US demand for the output, direct and outsourced, of US and Japanese companies located in those countries. If we take Malaysia, manufacturing exports account for something like 85% of total exports, with electronics and electrical machinery and appliances accounting for 75% of that, i.e. electronics and electrical machinery and appliances account for some 60% of total exports. The bulk of that comes from FDI firms, primarily US and Japan.
Without much knowledge, it would appear that China's pretty much in a similar position. Although it's probable that China's pretty good at reverse engineering -- so, e.g. Sony, having shifted a good chunk of its manufacturing facilities there, has shifted its higher end electronics back to Malaysia as reverse engineered copies of its products were appearing in the China market a few months after being first manufactured there.
The US is -- what -- some 60% services? So can it be said that we are the workshop that oils the services -- from lowly retail to high end services that's at the heart of US growth? Sure, we make a better living being a workshop. But structurally, how different is that from the living we made as the rubber and tin supplier for the world -- in the process doing down the tin mines in -- was it Cornwall -- and supplying Britain with the dollars it needed after the war (we were the largest dollar earners in the whole empire). In return we got a better infrastructure, physical and financial, than, say, Burma.
On the question of profitability in the US post 1995 -- what gives, Doug? Having seen your book, it seems that whatever the disputes about the productivity figures, there was an uptick in the later 1990s. So, productivity went up, and profitability went down? On the other hand, in a period apparently of the re-organisation and re-structuring of capital -- it might be objected that since when has there never been such a period? -- does it make sense to talk about "US profitability" rather than the profitabilities of different branches/sectors, even of firm types? On the third hand, it would then appear that a period of decline of US profitability coincides with one in which average real US wages finally exceed those of thirty years ago, a period of rising real incomes. Is this independent of the world economy?
Re international comparisons, I think it better to use exchange rates rather than PPP. I think Arrighi is right on this -- the exchange rates measure relative command over global resources and output in a way that PPP doesn't. PPP would be fine if we all lived in closed national economies; we don't -- e.g., after 1997, my book purchasing power dropped by 50%.
kj khoo