[PEN-L:11173] Re: interimperialist rivalries (IV)

["James Michael Craven" <CRAVJM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Craven: > > Interestingly, since the late
> >1960s, the notion of the USSR as a "Social Imperialist" formation has
> >been very widespread in India and many Indians denounced the
> >relations with the USSR as being equivalent in nature and impact as
> >those with the British in the past and Americans and others in the
> >present.
>
> Louis P:
> What does this mean other than there is a large Maoist contingent in India?
> Rakesh raised the question of Soviet "exploitation" of India over on the
> Spoons list in a "state capitalism" thread, but could provide no numbers
> only a reference to a book that did. Does anybody believe that the Soviet
> Union had the same kind of bloodsucking relationship to India that England
> did? England owned tea plantations. What did the USSR own?
>
> Craven:
>  The arming of Pakistan and so-many other
> >machinations in the region (divide-and-rule donations to
> >various political parties, arming groups like the Tamil
> >Tigers, social systems engineering through culture/technology
> >transfers etc) suggest that India- - like Vietnam-- is regarded still
> >as an enemy and potential threat from the "demonstration effect"
> >point of view.
> >
>
> Louis P:
> Vietnam on the US enemy's list? Where has Jim been for the last 5 years or
> so? Poor Vietnam is under the US's thumb, as recent Doonesbury cartoons
> decrying the coolie labor conditions of Nike factories there dramatizes. As
> far as India is concerned, isn't it the case that it is privatizing like
> mad and considered the next big "capitalist miracle" about to explode?
>
Response:
The assertions here are so varied, that I'll respond in point form.

1. The notions of political/economic relations between the USSR and
India have analogous effects with those relations between India and
the UK in the past go far beyond those who are self-professed Maoists
in India. When I was in India in the early 80s, I saw work from
economists at the Center for Development Studies that illustrated
interest rates on USSR loans to India 2-3% points above the going
IMF/World Bank rates for countries with much higher default risk
levels; the usual enclaved/disarticulated patterns of investment
flows from the USSR to India (heavy industry, trucks,
cement, defense )that exacerbated rather than ameliorated intra-India
inequalities were common;India was one of the few countries licensed
to produce Soviet weapons (relatively highly educated workforce, high
productivity extremely low wages) and operated for Soviet weapons
contractors much like what enclaved areas of Mexico do for U.S.
corporations; barter arrangements between the USSR and India
(textiles and specialized agricultural products in return for heavy
machines, machine tools etc) were such that the shadow prices given
for purposes of figuring "barter equivalence" and the money prices
for exports were well under average world prices for comparable
commodities. Further, there were many instances reported where once
Soviet technologies were acquired--with the result of increased
dependence on the USSR for critical inputs and replacement parts--the
forms of acquired technological dependence were used as leverage for
political purposes--e.g. UN votes etc (much like what the U.S. does
with its client States); I personally saw and used Soviet textbooks
in Indian Universities that went well beyond the usual primers etc in
Political Economy and many of those texts served as outright
propaganda for idealized versions about the Soviet System--sans
contradictions and some ugly features--and about the necessity of the
Soviet-Indian relations for any hope of Indian development (these
texts closely resembled--in tone and imperial arrogance--the kinds of
texts sent by the U.S. to the so-called "Third World" countries (you
people are poor and ignorant and without us you have no hope of
sustained development or "protection" from the U.S. and other
encircling imperialist powers)

2. Yes there are Nike plants in Vietnam and yes they are certainly
exploiting the Vietnamese, but to say that Vietnam is therefore
"under the thumb" of the U.S. ignores many present-day and
historical realities. We still hear the usual drumbeat about the MIA
issue and hatred of Vietnam (the first nation to decisively beat the
world's largest imperial war machine) goes on and on in the culture,
in the political polemics, in the very late and very guarded
diplomatic relations between the States etc. Hatred of the government
of Vietnam went so far as to cause even covert alliances by the
U.S. Government with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The U.S. Government
has still never forgotten India's role in the Non-Alligned Movement,
India's votes in the U.N., India's past relations with the USSR,
India's stand on the Vietnam War and India's refusal to participate
in embargoes of States designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. Yes
privatization and monopoly capitalism is alive and well and certainly
ongoing in India, but the forms and levels of privatization are not
exactly what the U.S. has been looking for as witnessed by denial of
several IMF/World Bank loans to India and India's repeated resistance
to IMF "conditionality" and austerity measures--although they
accepted some other forms of "conditionality"; further,
Communist/Socialist forces in India are much more open and
influencial--and even more tolerated--than in the West (noting of
course the past suppression campaigns against the Naxalites) and
certainly not all--or even a majority--of  those forces are "Maoists"
(they even have a few Troskyites who meet in their post office boxes
and have faction fights);

I'll return to this later with more elaboration.

                                 Jim Craven

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