On 2012-10-09, at 3:44 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Oct 9, 2012, at 3:37 PM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>> No. International capital benefitted. It was NEVER "part of the plan" to
>> secure Iraq (oil, customers, etc) for the United States (as was the case in
>> the overthrow of Mossedegh). Capital has become thoroughly international.
>> The U.S. is the primary enforcer for it.
>
> This is one of the major points of Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin's new book - only it's not such a recent innovation. They argue that U.S. imperial design from the 1940s onward has been oriented toward the health of global capitalism and not the narrow national interests of the U.S.
It'a trend which qualitatively accelerated with the development of international supply chains and markets over the past two decades, made possible by the revolution in communications and transportation technology and the opening of new zones of exploitation in China, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere outside the core capitalist countries. US and European corps are now generating an increasingly greater share of profits and jobs in developing economies than in their own home markets, and they consequently seem less perturbed about the decline of working class purchasing power and less receptive to Keynesian policies than they were in the 30's when they were much more dependent on their domestic economies. But international competition between capitalists for markets and resources has not disappeared, and they still turn to the state in their countries of origin to defend and advance their particular interests within an overarching framework of cooperation to maintain the stability of the global system.