Re: Canada, Australia, Argentina

[Bill Burgess <burgess@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with Paul and Nestor's point about the difference in class
structure, and Paul's work on Canada's WW1 financing is an excellent
illustration of the consolidation of an indigenous bourgeoisie.

> Nestor, I think, has put his finger on the critical difference -- neither
> Canada nor Australia had a landed elite such that the role of
> Canada and Australia vs GB was one of subsidiary (dependent?)
> capital vs imperial capital.  In Argentina, there was an intervening
> class, the landed aristocracy. (See, for instance, Baran on this)
>
> I have not done comparable work for Australia and Argentina, but
> for Canada the turning point, in my opinion, was the 1st World
> War.  In Canada's case, Britain ceased to be a creditor to Canada
> because of war created debts.  Canada financed the war from
> borrowing from capitalists made rich by war profiteering on
> government contracts to supply GB.  After the war, the state
> helped smash labour and tax the working and middle class to pay
> off capital debt incurred during the war, a classic case of (marxist)
> primitive accumulation. (By the way -- more shameless promotion --
>  I have written a paper on this.) The railways went bankrupt and
> reneged on their obligations to British bond holders. Though
borrowing shifted after the war from GB to the US, it was not until
> the "American boom in Canada" after the 2nd WW that American
> (direct) investment in Canada came to dominate the resourse and
> manufacturing industries.

However, by the mid 1980s the US-controlled share of all non-financial
industres in Canada declined to levels below the post-WW2 buildup (the US
share has risen slightly since then, as has foreign control in all countries).

I consider this 'repatriation' partial evidence that Canadian capital never
lost _overal_ control of the domestic economy, which they originally
gained, as I think Paul agrees, by around WW1. Just as a 'national
bourgeoisie' was able to develop while formally still a British colony, it
was able to survive and even gain relative strength despite extensive US
ownership and control in _some_ industrial sectors. I don't think the
Argentine bourgeoisie ever developed this kind of hegemony over the economy
and state.

> As a well known member of Bill Burgess's detested left-nationalist
> cabal, I have also argued a form of Canadian dependency.

I winced here until I remembered how Paul has written far more and better
than I have against some forms of Canadian dependency.

> All one has to do is look at the Cdn
> and Australian $s and see how they dropped in parallel as
> "commodity currencies" (also NZ) to realize the dependency of the
> Cdn/Oz/NZ economies on the imperial centre dominated by the US
> but, in Oz/NZ also the Japanese economies.  Canada has
> recovered somewhat better than Ozzieland in large part because
> the US economy has done much better than Japan.  Since I don't
> know where Argentina's markets are dominated by, I can't
> comment.  However, one common denominator is grain -- more
> particularly wheat.  We are all part of the Cairns group trying to get
> the US and the UE to stop subsidizing agriculture so we can sell
> our grain at a decent price.  Right now our agriculture is in the
> tank.  This demonstrates, I would think, a certain dependence over
> which neither Canada, Australia, nor Argentina have little control.

Where we differ is that Paul interprets this as Canadian and Australian
dependence a la Frank. This would be appropriate for Argentina, but Canada
and Australia are in the qualitatively different position of secondary
imperialist countries. They get bullied by the US as do other secondary
imperialist countries (e.g. in Europe, by the US and Japan, Germany, UK,
etc.) but the politics of this relationship are very different than the
politics of Frankian-like dependency.

Sorry to harp on this issue but I think the failure to distinguish between
the two kinds of relations with bigger-power imperialism has long been a
key failing of socialism in Canada (and I think the same applies to
Australia and New Zealand).

Bill Burgess