> East Asia is a highly integrated economic space, criss-crossed by networks
> of Korean, Chinese and Japanese firms, all of which increasing buy and
> sell from/to each other, rather than the US.
The world is a highly integrated economic space, criss-crossed by networks of European, North Asian and other firms, all of which increasing buy and sell from/to each other, rather than the US. Trade is not political integration.
> > As I'm sure Ulhas (et al.) will point out, India is nobody's "periphery"
>
> Sure it is. That's not a moral judgement, just an economic fact. India has
> a huge agricultural sector, lots of primary commodity production, and a
> comparatively small industrial base. Uneven development is making a thin
> slice of India very wealthy indeed, and spawning a new professional class
> in the cities, but that's not the same thing as climbing the global
> socio-economic food chain.
Who said anything about moral judgements? I simply think it's incorrect, a subjective notion based on popular stereotypes and a misunderstanding of what "development" is. India _may_ have a socio-economic profile which resembles, in some ways, other developing countries and, like China, it will face growing problems related to the rapid growth of its "relative surplus population", held in check at present by agrarian policy. But check the vital stats at http://www.nationmaster.com: India already has the world's 4th largest GDP, and had the 12th highest rate of GDP growth during 1980-2000 (105%). It has nuclear weapons and growing geopolitical clout. The sheer quantity and sheer growth of its economy reveals the irrelevance of notions like "core" and "periphery", except in symbolic measures like India's exclusion from G8 membership and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
All (capitalist) economic activity, wherever it occurs, is "uneven development", because of class. As Marx pointed out, a key difference between non-capitalist and capitalist societies, was that in non-capitalist societies the surplus population, whatever its level, grew in proportion to the population as a whole. Whereas: ' . it is capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of labourers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus-population.' Marx, 1867,_Capital, Vol. 1_, Part VII 'The Accumulation of Capital', Chapter 25: 'The General Law Of Capitalist Accumulation'. (cf Marx, 1857, _Grundrisse_, 'The Concept of the Free Labourer Contains the Pauper. Population and Overpopulation etc.')
regards,
Grant.