I beg to differ. The Portuguese wine industry is still there, alive and kicking (been there last year, excellent porto, itself a British invention as I was told by local wine makers). But where is the British textile industry today? In the same place as the British Empire, I suppose, on which the sun finally set (btw, as someone in a letter to the satirical column "Straight Dope" once observed, Great Britain should change its name to FGB - Formerly Great Britain).
More on the same subject:
I am pretty certain (I do not have time to look for quotes though), Marx saw British-style capitalism as a force of progress in India, a force that would eventualy dismantle its feudal structures.
As far as blaming 'the West/North' for 'exploitation' is concerned - this is a variant of one of the oldest tricks on the books, blaming foreigners for one's own misfortunes and kleptocracies. In the good old US, we have the Japanese, French and foreigner bashing, complete with smashing Japansese cars and electronics, boycotting French wine, and renaming French fries "Freedom fries." Elswehere, there is 'Western/Northern imperialist bashing' - for example in the Soviet bolc countries and China this was advanced to an art form, complete with suggestive posters and catchy labels such as "spit-soilded midgets of Western reactionism" or the 'paper tigers of US imperialism." All on the same ethnocentric assumption that "we" are the fine people and cannot do anything wrong; if 'our' country is in shambles, 'our people' kill each other or 'our' leaders are a bunch of bloody dictators and corrupted kleptocrats, it is only because 'foreigners' made 'us' do that.
This reminds me of a scene from the Monty Python's film "Life of Brian" in which the leader of the "Popular Front of Judea" is rallying support for an uprising against the Romans and asks the audience a rhetorical question "What did the Romans give us?" - to which the audience answers by listing itmes such as "roads," aqueducts," "education," "laws," "peace," etc.
Wojtek