Now, whether it would in fact benefit them to give up imperialism, that is a question that is worth discussing,a nd it is one on which I have an open mind. On the one hand, there is the point you make here, that having the ability to take advantage of low wages and the like benefits capiatlsits in theirstruggles with domestic labor, and improves their profitability. But there is the Keyesnian point on the other side: they have to be able to sell the stuff they make so cheaply. That's why most foreign investment is in the developed or developing countries, and not in the most expoloitaed parts of the third world. Wouldn't the US capitalist class do much better, collectively, if China were rich and buying boatloads of goods made by US companies?
And so we have the paradox I mentioned at the start: it is in the interest of each capitalist that all the other capitalist pay workers well enough to buy his products -- but that he pays his own workers much less. Thsi suggests that imperialsim is a logical result of capitalism, all right, but not one that is in the interests of capitalism. Rather, it is an example of the collective goods/public choice/prisoner's dilemma behavior that leads rational actors to choose a result that is worse for them than if they could cooperate to choose a result that is better if not best.
This would explain: (1) why imperialism issues from rational capitalist choices, (2) why it is robust and unlikely to change without a structural transformatoion of the system, (3) despite being possibly opposed to the interests of capiatlissts both individually and collectively.
Incidenatlly, the message that I draw from my view is not that the third world should heal itself, that its poverty is its own fault and that the advanced capitalsit countries have nothing to do with it. That seems quite unlikely, given for example, the behavior of the IMF and the World Bank. I don't knwo what W thinks.
jks
--- Michael Dawson -PSU <mdawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
> "We are doubting that it would mean the
> collapse of capitalism as a system."
>
> While you lecture me about logic and accuse me of
> things I don't claim, you
> might try asking yourself the proper question, which
> is not "Can we imagine
> the survival of capitalism without imperialism?,"
> but "Can we imagine the
> actually-existing overclass dropping imperialism and
> foregoing the many
> benefits it receives from having its boot on the
> neck of the Third World?"
>
> You and Wojtek subscribe to the idea that it's all a
> big mistake, and that
> the world's business elites would not mind losing
> their ability to move
> factories to ever-lower-wage areas, buy extra-cheap
> Third World commodities,
> and not having to deal with the massively increased
> political pressure from
> below that non-imperialism would unleash. None of
> this really matters much
> to them, you claim.
>
> Conclusion: We disagree, in spades.
>
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