A once perky behind that has begun to sag, so it constantly needs liposuction and fat injection (aka capital export from Japan, China, oil producers, etc.)!
> > Tactical differences exist, but what are exactly the interests of the
> > multinational empire in the Middle East?
>
> Broadly speaking, the same as anywhere else. The advanced capitalist
> countries led by the US want friendly regimes which will ensure access to
> their national resources, throw open their markets to their goods and
> services, and allow their multinationals to freely invest in their
> economies.
That's what we might be interested in if we were running the empire. But people who are running the empire do not think like profit maximizers.
John Ashworth wrote that slave owners did not switch from agriculture based on slavery to manufacturing based on wage labor, even though the latter had _clearly higher rates of return_:
<blockquote>"The average for all southern manufacturing," according to historians Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, "was 28 percent in 1860 and 25 percent in 1850." And prospects did not vary greatly from subregion to subregion. Moreover, these rates of return "were not simply high, they were substantially above the returns earned from slavery and slave-based farming." Why did southerners not engage in manufacturing to a greater degree? There can be only one answer (though it is one which Bateman and Weiss will not accept): they were not profit-maximizers in the way that neo-classical economics postulates.
(footnotes omitted, John Ashworth, _Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum South_, Vol. 1: Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995, pp. 91-92)</blockquote>
Those who run the empire, too, don't care about which way of running the empire might give higher rates of return. What they really enjoy and want to hold onto is class power, even if more of class power leads to lower rates of return than less of it.
> As far as the tactical differences between and within the advanced
> capitalist countries go, the liberal bourgeoisie favours economic weapons;
> the conservative wing is less cautious about using lethal ones. But the
> latter seems always to have to relearn how difficult it can be to employ
> imperial military force abroad from bourgeois democratic societies where
> people can vote, watch TV, and don't want their kids killed and maimed in
> incomprehensible foreign wars. Since the advent of the Bush administration,
> I've become fond of Chomsky's shrewd observation (maybe borrowed) that
> "small differences can have large consequences."
>
> I wasn't able to relate your newspaper analogy to what I'd written
> previously, and am curious about what you meant to convey.
The newspapers -- like the Guardian, the New York Times, and so forth -- read by people who think they ought to run the empire tend to endorse the view that reforms -- or many reforms combined with judicious use of force -- can help the rulers run the empire better than aggressive use of force combined with few reforms. That is indeed sometimes the case, but history doesn't tell us that the former works better than the latter on average.
The case of the Shah of Iran is instructive. He was a reformer -- most importantly, the land reforms during the Shah's White Revolution had increased the proportion of independent farmers from less than 5% to 76% of the rural population, sending massive numbers of former peasants to urban areas, on the eve of the Iranian Revolution (Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 429) -- who used force within the limits tolerated by Jimmy Carter, a liberal POTUS . . . till Carter withdrew his support, and look what happened! The result is the only revolution that began in the sixties and seventies that has managed to nationalize natural resources, modernize society (raising education*, lowering the fertility rate**), industrialize***, and control the commanding heights of national economy**** and still remains standing, posing the biggest challenge to the multinational empire's plan for the Middle East.
Those who run the empire remember that history vividly, while those who think they ought to run the empire -- mainly liberals out of power -- have forgotten about it for it contradicts their narrative.
* "While the overall enrollment rate for boys is 98 per cent, it varies significantly between provinces. For girls, the range is between 99 per cent in Tehran and 84 per cent in Sistan and Baluchestan. The enormous gains in the educational status of the Iranian population can be attributed to massive government's investment in public education (on average 45 per cent of the government's social affairs budget since 1989)" ("At a Glance: Iran (Islamic Republic of)," <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iran.html>).
** "The average marriage age for women has increased from 18 years of age before the Revolution to 21" (William O. Beeman, "The New Islamic Woman Flourishes in Iran," Pacific News Service," 27 February 2001, <http://www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/feb/0227lifting.html>), and the fertility rate has dramatically declined, to the benefit of women: "Having dropped from around 5 to just under 3 between 1989 and 1996, Iran's total fertility rate has again plunged -- this time to 2. Iran, an Islamic country, has followed a unique and rapid path to replacement-level fertility. The speedy fertility decline, which has surpassed demographers' projections, coincided with the revival in late 1989 of government efforts to slow population growth through a national family planning program" (Allison Tarmann, "Iran Achieves Replacement-Level Fertility," Population Today, May/June 2002, <http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=5679>).
*** Iran Khodro is the largest vehicle manufacturer in the Middle East, an import substitution success story!
**** Compare Iran and Venezuela:
Iran: "The World Bank reports that the government consumed 14 percent of GDP in 2003. In the same year, according to the International Monetary Fund's Government Financial Statistics CD–ROM, Iran received 53.83 percent of its total revenues from state-owned enterprises and government ownership of property. However, the Economist Intelligence Unit reports that 'major sectors (such as oil and gas, transport, telecommunications, industry, and banking and finance) remain overwhelmingly under the purview of the state and its entities. The state directly owns well over 500 companies, and there are another 1,000 or so semi-public companies.' Based on the apparent unreliability of the reported figure for government consumption, 1 point has been added to Iran's government intervention score"; and "All banks were nationalized following the 1979 revolution. Iran's constitution requires that the banking sector be fully state-owned. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, "The central bank issued a licence in August 2001 to Bank-e-Eqtesadi Novine (Modern Economic Bank), making it Iran's first private bank since the sector was nationalised in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution…. Other private banks established in Iran include the Karafarin Bank, which received a full-service banking licence in December 2001, and Saman Bank, in August 2002.' Private banks are extremely small, however, and the state dominates banking activity. The ability of banks to charge interest is restricted under Iran's interpretation of Islamic law. 'The bulk of commercial banks' loan portfolio,' reports the EIU, 'is taken up with low-return loans to state agencies and parastatals….'" ("Index of Economic Freedom 2006 -- Iran," <http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=Iran>).
Venezuela: "The World Bank reports that the government consumed 7.5 percent of GDP in 2003. In the same year, according to the International Monetary Fund's Government Financial Statistics CD–ROM, Venezuela received 49.36 percent of its total revenues from state-owned enterprises and government ownership of property"; and "According to First Initiative, 'The banking sector is the most substantial part of Venezuela's financial system, consisting of 50 commercial banks, with foreign banks controlling about half of the banking sector's assets (2003). It is highly consolidated, with 60% of deposits held by the six largest banks in the country…. [T]he insurance sector [also] has seen increased levels of foreign participation and consolidation, with the top 20 companies holding approximately 95% of all premiums in 2003.' The government permits 100 percent foreign ownership in banking and financial services" ("Index of Economic Freedom 2006 -- Venezuela," <http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=Venezuela>).
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>