Grant Lee wrote:
>
> These policies were
> possible because Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia were front line states in
> regard to.....Chinese communism. A small number of local capitalists did
> very well under the umbrella of the global capitalist military alliance.
> Further generalisations are difficult.
>
This is one of the cruxes in understanding imperialism: it's not clear that _countries_ (in contrast to capitalist elments within them) benefit from imperialism. Clearly the british workers described in the chapter on the working day in _Capital_ were not profiting from the ravaging of Africa, India and China; just as clearly both the textile capitalists and the bankers who managed the surplus _were_ profiting. And the 'marvelous' british civil service was, I think, paid for out of the profits of imperialism. But Britain _as a whole_ put more wealth into conquering and occupying India than Britain _as a whole_ got out of it.
It is fairly certain that the bulk of Africans lived better before 1800 or 1850 than _the bulk_ of them have been living since. Generalizations are _very_ difficult.
Imperialism is essential to capital (in fact capital doesn't exist independently of imperialism), but that fact can't always be measured in simple numerical terms. If the U.S. were forced back inside its continental borders in the next 25 years, capital would be ravaged, and probably forced into a bloody civil war to survive, but it is unclear (with the usual caveats about other things etc) that the bulk of u.s. residents would be worse off.
Carrol