On Mar 8, 2009, at 11:17 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> That process does indeed 'push war', as one group of territorial
> elites generates coalitions aimed at pushing the devalorization onto
> a different group of territorial elites, as well as onto their own
> subordinate classes (the point you make next). The elites of Africa
> were the easiest to push devalorization onto since the early 1980s,
> along with some of the Latin American, East European and Rustbelt
> elites (and Asians too, in the late 1990s). Sometimes this process
> is contested, though, and wars are the logical outcome of a
> geopolitics of overaccumulation.
With war, you basically have a sample size of 1: the Great Depression leading to WWII. Otherwise, we've had devalorizations with nothing like world war. In the late 19th century U.S., we had deflation coexisting with huge industrial investment.
As for displacing losses onto rival elites - that's competition. That's how the system works. You make it sound like three-card monte.
> But there may also be a new spirit in the anti-capitalist movements.
> What we witnessed in terms of resistance to devalorization in Africa
> was a series of 'IMF Riots'.
To the ruling class, riots are just the downtrodden blowing off steam. The cops can take care of them. If they lead to systemic instability, or worse, revolution, that's another thing. But riots come and go.
Doug