The Bill of Gates fallacy

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rob:
>Then there's the Marxish reservation that you can't go around impoverishing
>the rest of the world for long, seeing as how you have to grow markets if
>you want to grow profits.

It is important not to rely on too literal an interpretation of this bit of
"Marxish" doctrine. Impoverishment has to be seen in a dialectical manner.
In point of fact, for those in the Third World who have managed to get
hooked up with some imperialist commercial or industrial venture, there is
evidence to support the claim that their living conditions might have
improved. Specifically, when a peasant who has been pushed to marginal
lands gets the chance to take a job in a maquila, there is little doubt
that his or her economic indicators might show an uptick.

I suspect that until a serious worldwide depression on the scale of the
1930s erupts, we will be facing a general political and economic situation
where "impoverishment" does not quite describe the reality. There will
instead be 3 distinct socio-economic realities:

1. The imperialist countries will continue as they have since WWII, fraying
around the edges but not undergoing any kind of crisis in the true Marxist
sense. Workers in the US, Japan and Western Europe will not be interested
in alternatives to the system.

2. The third world will consist of pockets of trade, commerce and
industrialization not unlike the East Coast development zones in China. In
these zones, workers will not be thinking in terms of alternatives despite
the fact that the level of exploitation is much higher than in the first
world.

3. The third world will also be host to very large sections of completely
disenfranchised peasants and subproletarians who will not even be sharing
in the dubious bounties of "globalization". Instead of a job at Nike, they
will be lucky to be able to sell chewing gums in the streets of some
megalopolis like Mexico City or Dakar. Often this segment of the population
is so consumed with frustration and despair that it will throw itself into
senseless civil wars based on ethnicity. This is the reality all across
Africa. In other cases, it will be attracted to Marxist-oriented struggles
that challenge capitalist rule. This is the case in Colombia where the US
is poised to become embroiled in another Vietnam. In this case, the shock
to the system might provoke a crisis that will bear no relation to the
actual level of economic indicators in the wealthy imperialist nations
making war on desperately poor peasants and subproletarians.









Louis Proyect

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