Re: a question about Imperialism

[S Chatterjee <schatterjee2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ulhas,

Sorry for the late reply. You had asked why FDI flows to US is high
inspite of the low ROP. This is a good question. It is true that a large
part of the FDI of the industrialized countries are invested in other
industrialized countries (figure was around 80% some time ago with 20% for
the third world). In a *fully developed* capitalist system, capital will
flow from those sectors of low ROP (high C/V)to those sectors with high
ROP (low C/V) to bring about a general or average rate of profit.
Thereafter, the bigger more capital intensive sectors will siphon away a
part of the surplus value produced in the less capital intensive sectors.
There will be re-distribution of surplus value with the bigger capital
getting a larger piece of the pie and becoming even more bigger, very much
like the manner in which the giant planets were formed in our solar
system. Perhaps, this logic holds as regards the first world (high C/V) as
compared to the third (C/V).

Besides, the capitalist system is full of contradictory movements. Today,
the bourgeois (first and third world) in this decadent stage of the CMP,
are increasingly more conservative. Thay want a stable climate and
environment for their investments even if the ROP is low. This requires a
minimum amount of industrial development, infrastructure, rules and
regulations, banks, courts, strong currency, etc., all of which are
available in the core. It is safer to invest in a fixed-deposit scheme
than in the wild world outside the glass walls of your living room where
danger is constantly lurking and where your investment can suddenly vanish
like Baba Yaga. This is also the reason why China has attracted so much of
the FDI (directed towards the third world) rather than India because in
China, the groundwork (material basis) for the later capitalist expansion
was laid during the socialist period from 1949-1976 whereas India never
had such a type of revolution.

So capital seeks its own kind, it becomes increasingly concentrated in
certain sectors thereby leading to more and more uneven development and
the gulf between the haves and the have-nots widen. If you think of blood
flow in the human body, and the blood is increasingly flowing to certain
organs at the expense of others, a time will come when the entire body
will go into disequilibrium and die. (This is only an analogy. The total
amount of blood in the body is constant while capital expands).

All of this is a general description. You also have a valid point that
hard data are necessary to document the net transfers of wealth from
periphery to core. Many such estimates are available but they use
bourgeois measures. They should really be expressed in value terms and
this is where Marx's theory of value is absolutely vital. One can hope
that Marxist economists will begin to do such calculations.

Sid






__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com
=======
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message