Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> Implicit, of course, in the notion of imperialism is the control it gives
> the lending countries over the economic and political development of the
> debtor nations. It remains to be seen how this will play out, for example,
> in China's case. The Chinese government lends on more favourable terms than
> do those of the OECD countries, and though the heightened activity of
> China's banks, energy and other corporations have raised some concern in
> Africa and elsewhere, the Chinese still seem to be mostly viewed as
> counterweights to rather than adjuncts of imperialism. Certainly, at this
> stage, China can't be said to control the domestic or foreign policy of its
> largest debtor, the US, (if only) although its role in financing the US
> current account deficit has given it invaluable leverage against US
> protectionist efforts to block its exports and against efforts of the US
> state to isolate it militarily and diplomatically.
A few observations (with no attempt at analysis).
Mao predicted long ago that if China ever "changed its color" it would become a serious enemy of the world's peoples. And while counterweights to u.s. power are greatly to be desired, the points 'New Angel' made about Europe would certainly apply to China also were it to become a major capitalist power. (Let us not forget that France was _the_ prime villain in the Rwanda genocide and that Germany was _the_ prime villain, to begin with, in the ravagaing of Yugoslavia. The U.S. represents the greater evil in the world today merely because it is militarily the strongest of the capitalist nations, not from any inherent features of u.s. culture or 'national character.'
As different as were Lenin & Luxemburg in their analysis of imperial power, and as outmoded that analysis now is, they were in agreement on one point, that the "successes of capitalism" could not be universalized -- that the living standards of the working classes of the core capitalist nations would never be equaled outside that core. This has not yet been disproven.
Have workers in the u.s. benefitted as much from cheap commodities imprted from China et al as they have suffered in their wages and working conditions from that same fact? Imperialism _never_ greatly benefitted the bulk of the population of the imperialist nations (and this was even true of pre-capitalist empires) but only sectors of their ruling classes and some strata of other classes. The chapter on the working day in Capital illustrates that.
Carrol