Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada

["Grant Lee" <grantlee@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill B.:

> Hong Kong               65.7            72
> Saudi Arabia            22.7            1.3
> s. Korea                6.1             6.5
> Taiwan          7.8             14.7
> New Zealand             66.2            11
> Israel                  11.1            6.8
> Spain                   21.5            12.5
> Austria         11.3            8.2
> Sweden          22.5            41.3
> Belgium         61.7            50.2
> Switzerland             26.5            69.1
>
> I cited the FDI/GDP ratios against the suggestion that FDI from the likes
> of Malaysia and Indonesia is dissolving the cardinal difference between
> imperialist and imperialized countries.

That wasn't my contention, which is more accurately that except for actual
formal/military imperialism, (e.g. Britain in India) "imperialist" and
"imperialised" have always been poles on a notional axis, rather than being
distinct and permanent things. I mean are you saying that there is little
difference between the present positions (relative and absolute) of the
economies and overseas political influence of Malaysia and Indonesia,
compared now with what they were 50 years ago?

> HK and Singapore are entrepots, and
> they are city-economies, which indicates the need to qualify the
> significance of their numbers

It seems to me that if no "western" state is very similar --- and I'm not
convinced this is the case --- to HK and Singapore it would  have a lot to
do with the latter being extremely small, densely populated city states and
therefore more focused on foreign trade.

> The
> best recent candidate for the 'imperial' club is probably s. Korea, but,
> hello, this country is divided in half, occupied by US nukes...

Forces which, some would argue, have assisted the South Korean national
bourgeoisie in the same way that the capitalist economies of Japan, Taiwan
and the old West Germany grew significantly as "armed camps".

S Korea ...
>could do
> _nothing_ if Japan, Europe and the US stopped imports from s. Korea with a
> stroke of a pen.

Why would they do that? And there's always China...

> I think the difference between
> presenting a NZ passport and a Malaysian passport helps clarify the social
> relationships in world imperialism.

That would depend on where they travelled to I think.


> Don't know what you mean with the Kenya stats, but there is _zero_  danger
> of Kenya going imperialist in any serious use of the term.

One point of the stats was that the highly "imperialised" Kenya is
"imperialist" in regard to neighbouring countries, as shown (e.g.) by the
restrictions on Kenyan investment. Nigeria is an even stronger case.

>
> As you can see, Belgium and Switzerland show high rates of outward FDI,
and
> most FDI is to and from Europe - and almost nothing is _from_ the likes of
> Argentina, Malaysia or Saudi Arabia.

I note that the HK and Singaporean outward FDI figures cited are higher than
any of the European states you have cited, except Switzerland.

> Trade/GDP in Austria is 44% and 38% in Switzerland, again, most trade is
> with fellow imperialist countries, not semi-colonial countries. They enjoy
> 'free' trade, not the imperialist protectionism and unequal exchange faced
> by Malaysia or Indonesia. The price index for their manufactured goods
> _rose_ from 72 in 1980 to 108 in 1997, while logs from Malaysia dropped
> from 272 to 221, Indonesia's coffee producers faced a coffee index decline
> from  450.4 to 161.2  !!!!!!! The index for cotton fell from 284.3 to
162.2
> and for rubber from 197.9 to 94.5 (indexes from World Bank, World
> Development Indicators).

Yes, these are striking downturns. Substitute longer term declines in prices
for wheat (which in the 1950s was worth more than three times what it is
now), beef and other commodities and you have substantial structural
problems for Argentina and Australia, both of which (unlike Indonesia or
Malaysia) have also both experienced a withering of their manufacturing
industries in the last 30 years.

> If we can't distinguish between a big thief taking from a smaller thief
and
> theft from non-thieves we will never stop thievery.

There are obviously more "non-thieves" and fewer "thieves" in "imperialised"
countries than in imperial ones; we will never stop "thievery" by
encouraging the "smaller thieves".

Regards,

Grant.