2) >> Or that global monetary flows just
> > happen to flow through London, NewYork or Toronto... Nope nobodies
> > getting rich off managing global savings there...spread around by
> > lottery actually.
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1) If you stop off at the modern Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo and compare its contents with those of the British Museum, you might spot that the strength of your point has waned over time. It was a strong point in 1880. Now it's just wrong.
2) The point about monetary flows points to a fundamental issue about the nature of capitalism. Merchant capital and interest bearing capital predate the capitalist mode of production. Marx calls them "antediluvian forms of capital". Of course, merchants and bankers enrich themselves through trade and lending and, of course, London is a world financial centre because of Britain's economic and political history. London enables the UK economy to be the richer because of interest and dealing charges from the huge money flows that 'pass' through it.
But the capitalist mode of production, as I understand Marx, refers to the prevalence of generalised commodity production in a society in which the direct workers have been excluded from the means of production (of course, this exclusion produces both the need for and possibility of the isolated social production which lies behind commodities themselves.) The real force that drives capitalist production is the system wide market incentive to become more productive. And this drive to increase productivity lies behind the accumulation drive and crises (we all know that.) The modern capitalist market is itself a product of commodity society i.e. the forced separation into classes.
What worries me about the course of discussions on economic imperialism is not whether or not economic imperialism happens - that is essentially an empirical matter about which reasonable people will be open to persuasion.
It is that such debates tend to overlook the exploitation of wage labour as the driving force behind the world system. The word 'imperialism' is made to equate with looting, a form of exploitation understood by the bourgeois mind, but not characteristic of the capitalist mode of production (conceptually characteristic I mean. I'm not suggesting that there has ever been a pure capitalism untainted by blood and toil, or that their could be.)
Looting can be tackled with more law. This reflects a real respect for property. That is, even more bourgeois society.
Richard.