[lbo-talk] New Imperialism?

[Charles Brown]

On the "contribution" of the periphery to the center's 
prosperity today , I imagine someone ( Walter Rodney , et. al) has argued
that imperialism restricted and "underdeveloped" the colonies' economic
development ( cash crops, mono-products), and TODAY ,the result of this long
term imperialist action, impoverishes many neo-colonies. By preventing the
all-around and full development of the colonial economies over the last 200
years or so, imperialism caused today's relative poverty there. 

So, impoverishment of colonies is not due mainly to the direct extraction of
surplus. 

The Leninist theory of superprofits from imperialism is that superprofits
are "extra" profits, the icing, not the cake. The theory is not that a major
fraction of the total wealth of the imperialist centers comes from the
colonies today. To repeat, the idea is not that the exploitation of
superprofits impoverishes the exploited nation. It is that the extraprofits
give the imperialists extra money to play with in critical matters like
buying off the labor lieutenants of capital and other leading sectors of the
working class; buying off compradors within the colonial nations.

Charles