Part 1a. Hello Having emerged from my personal own salt-mines of Middle Ontario, after a rather long shift, I was startled to find a whole set of notes roughly under the rubric of Is India Exploited?
Seeing the whole lot together gave me an opportunity to think a little more than a standard reflexive key-pad hit the reply function. I trust that it is not too old hat a strand? & if it is, never mind, thanks for the opportunity to force me to think a little afresh about the matters. How to respond semi-intelligibly? Perhaps I will try to answer the various things that cropped up minor and major in a combination of temporal & more general manner. & Anyway, Ill start in a temporal manner & may drift into a slightly different format.
1) Dear Doug: I must fully accept your correction of my terminology
inquisitor
to interviewer
in Digest 2234; 21 Jan 2004. My terseness, was partly wondering where to start & how to explain my viewpoint. Also, I was conscious of the start of my work-shift. Anyway - like you am also trying to understand some of the issues. Let me place my own bias cards on the baize table- I instinctively feel that India & her toiling peoples are being exploited. To be frank perhaps my problem is that the mass of data seems rather impenetrable, & one needs both time, economic expertise, and an intellectual machete to cut through the floridly growing & richly fertilised foilage. The word India
placed as I have, may make the hairs on some Left peoples necks rise Does it smell of an un-warranted nationalism?? Well, I believe that the fabric of most peoples souls are currently deeply dyed with a national hue. I submit that this is especially true of countries which either have had to go through a liberation struggle or in some way are still doing that. I submit that India fits both these last two.
2) Digest 2235:
Message: 7: Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> Said: "Is India exploited by imperialism?" is a question that obscures class relations at the heart of the term exploitation in the Marxist sense. Shouldn't the question be something like, "Are Indian workers and peasants more exploited by capitalists and landlords in India and elsewhere because of imperialism?" or "Does imperialism help capitalists in India and elsewhere extract more surplus value out of Indian workers?"
Reply: I agree that the key is how imperialism may interact with the classes on the ground in the country in question including the various sections of oppressor classes. But then, that is the crux of discussions on the composition of the national liberation fronts that not only past generations have engaged in, but still informs current discussion in some circles today. At the ehart is who gains and who loses by the entry of imperialism in the country?
3) Digest 2235: Message: 9; Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004; From: "Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net>
MS: At least four questions are being conflated.
One is simply whether, due to foreign capital, Indian people are better off than they were otherwise.
The second is whether you want to call profit-making exploitation. If you're in a miserable state and I come along with some capital and devise a way to make you slightly better off and myself much better off, is or is that not exploitation.
REPLY HK: With all due respect, that may be a way of formulating the question that runs a serious risk of being seen as somehow excusing capital and imperialism. [Please do not excoriate me, I do not mean to imply this is your intent at all]. Let us transpose the question How would you say your own questions apply to the state of the Western most powerful countries, with respect to their own populations? Would you (MS) say for instance, that the improvement since Dickensian England allows one to not call metropolitan profit-making
exploitation ?
MS: There is also the long v. the short run whether foreign involvement provides some temporary benefits while precluding healthy economic development over the long term.
REPLY HK: Well, both 1, 2, 3 of your points are closely related to the tension between reform and revolution arent they? I do not know where to go with that one. I guess if someone is not as of yet convinced that both reforms & revolution are needed, that requires a separate strand and other participants will kick in no doubt.
MS: Finally there is the TINA question. There may be three possible states of the world. One is the miserable, isolated state; two is foreign investment, maybe good temporarily, indefinitely, or never; and three is some kind of independent, development-oriented alternative.
REPLY HK: TINA? Sorry you got me, I dont know how Ike & Tina Turner got into this matter. Is TINA= Trans Inter National Association?? Is that the same as Trans National Capital (TNC), or Multi-National Capital (MNC)? Im not being smart I sincerely do not know what you mean. In any case, if I assume you mean something like that you seem to assert that there is the possibility of some independent free choice. As for that miserable isolated state
can hardly apply in the quest for new markets that is at the heart of imperialism. [I will not discuss North Korea at this juncture it seems another strand to me]. As to the choice between numbers 2 & 3 they converge onto the political possiblites. I am ont really sure what you mean by this Final Question.
2a) At a later stage, on In reply to Doug, MBS answers his own questions: Message: 4 Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004; From: "Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net> Question 1) One is simply whether, due to foreign capital, Indian people are better off than they were otherwise.
Max answers: ***Probably yes.
HK Comment: My above remarks still stand in my view. It should be pointed out here that M certainly did not dispute that the entry of foreign capital in the form of the British ferunggee would lead to a major improvement in the lot of the Indian peasant&. In the long run. We might perhaps come back to that - no doubt with Michael Perelmans correction of Naom Chomsy&
Question 2:
>The second is whether you want to call profit-making
exploitation. If you're in a miserable state and I come along with some
capital and devise a way to make you slightly better off and myself much
better off, is or is that not exploitation.
MBS answers himself: ***Surplus value seems to me to be an important idea, but equating it with "exploitation" in the ordinary sense of the word is problematic.
HK Comment: Max forgive me, I am not an economist, but when someone takes my labour power & makes of it no whit else barring a profit how is that NOT exploitation? I think the painters and decorators in Robert Tressels Ragged Trosuered Philanthropists
might not have understood your fine distinction either.
Question 3:
>There is also the long v. the short run whether foreign
involvement provides some temporary benefits while precluding healthy
economic development over the long term.
MBS answers: ***Sometimes yes, more often no.
HK Comment: OK.
Fourth Question:
>Finally there is the TINA question. There may be
>three possible states of the world. One is the >miserable, isolated state; two is foreign investment, >maybe good temporarily, indefinitely, or never; and >three is some kind of independent, development->oriented alternative.
MBS Replies: ****The latter is worth talking about, though I'm no expert as to the particulars. The best I can do is some blather about developing internal markets and keeping key resources in public hands. Social-democratic trade regimes (labor/enviro standards, some regulation of capital flows, north-to-south aid).
HK Comment: I suppose Ike & Tina get it. I am still confused. Assuming the political choice is possible to jump to the third of your posits, imperialisms will not let it alone. It will harry that independent, development-orientated alternative
just as it did to India- one of the start points for this strand.................end part 1a.