Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada

["Grant Lee" <grantlee@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis:

If it isn't already clear, I find references to monolithic, single-minded
exploitative entities called "Great Britain" or the "United States" to be
untenable generalisations, which ignore the complexity of real class
structures and the historical agency of indigenous layers of capital (in
particular).

For example, you say "Great Britain" built railways in Argentina as though
it was
the British state/society and not a few British companies, backed by the
occasional gunboat. (BTW Is the "Argentine parliamentarian" you cite a
Marxian political economist?)

No, Whitehall didn't have to send gunboats to Australia because British
state force was there in large numbers from day one. And they were also
quite willing to use force against their own
subjects.

To say that you have never heard anybody refer to "Australia" as a victim of
imperialism is to also overgeneralising; obviously
millions of Australians were and are victims of imperialism, if not
necessarily in the same ways that workers in Nepal or the Netherlands are
victims.

British finance capital used its market dominance to "rip off" everyone in
the 19th Century, including other layers of British capital. One kind of rip
off was bullying weak states to pay exorbitant amounts for infrastructure.
Yes, they did this to the weak 19th Century colonial states in Australia. Is
that surprising? US-based capital still does it to Australian governments.

"Was Australia based on something like the latifundia?" Not in the sense of
peasant agriculture; however in some ways Australia was arguably more
"backward" prior to 1850 and until well into the 20th Century in northern
Australia, since the main productive activities in those times/regions,
especially large scale pastoralism, relied on unfree labour: at first
British convicts,
later Aborigines, South East Asians and Pacific Islanders.

What I wrote to my Argentine friend in consolation was pretty much what I
said to you: it is a failure of the global bourgeoisie, the Argentine
bourgeoisie in particular and the Argentine bourgeois state, not Argentine
wage earners.

"During the early years of the Great Depression, unemployed men would blame
themselves for their failure." A pertinent metaphor, since the economies
focused on exports of raw materials, like Argentina, Australia and Canada
were actually the worst affected by the Great Depression. "Eventually a mass
radical movement gave them the understanding that the fault is in
capitalism, not theirs. This is the lesson I am trying to impart for
Argentina." I fully appreciate that; but why let Argentine capitalists off
the hook?

Regards,

Grant Lee.