[lbo-talk] Immigration and International Inequality

[Seth Ackerman]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>No, it isn't, but there ought to be truth in advertising
>  
>
Agreed!

>To make a country richer in absolute terms, the country has to raise
>its productivity (unless the country has a lock on some very
>profitable international market niche like oil), but capitalism tends
>to be better at raising productivity than socialism.  After all,
>typical capitalist means of raising productivity -- except education
>-- tend to go against the socialist ideals of egalitarian social
>relations and all-around human development, and when socialist leaders
>try them, workers under socialism tend to resist.
>
>To decrease international inequality, making poorer countries richer
>in relative terms, there has to be transfer of wealth from the global
>north to the global south, the opposite of what normally happens under
>global capitalism.  For such a transfer to take place, developed areas
>such as the EU, Japan, and the USA must go socialist first of all.
>
>  
>

Yup, it's a problem that runs deep. To raise productivity the surplus 
has to be "protected" from workers' claims on it. That's true under 
socialism as much as under capitalism. And even if North-South 
redistribution were to happen, the redistributed surplus would still 
have to be "protected."

The other problem is that raising productivity can't be done by simply 
redistributing wealth. The poor country has to increase its capabilities 
- that means education, technology, and institutional organization. 
These capabilities can't be simply bestowed upon the poor country. It's 
not only that you have to teach the man to fish. He has to learn how to 
keep up with continually improving fishing techniques.

It's not obvious how socialism can change any of this. Once upon a time, 
communism's great appeal to the underdeveloped world was precisely that 
it would allow poor countries to become rich. Now it turns out that that 
can best be done under some form of capitalism. No wonder socialism has 
gone out of fashion in most of the underdeveloped world.

>Socialists in areas such as Latin America can aim for a regional block
>of countries whose economies are integrated on a basis other than
>neoliberal capitalism's (if not on a fully socialist basis yet), which
>I take the Bolivarian process has been all about.  That's an uphill
>struggle, given economic and political disparities within the region,
>but it may be possible to make some progress on that path.
>  
>

Agreed. But just look at how hard it's turned out to be to coordinate 
the rich economies of Western Europe, which have a lot of advantages. 
Uphill, indeed.

Seth