Re: Marshall Plan for Third World?

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 19/05/02 11:46 -0400, Louis Proyect quoted:

> ?Marshall Plan? for Third World


From

> Full: http://www.dsp.org.au/links/index.htm (from Doug Lorimer's
> "Imperialism in the 21st Century", current issue of Links Magazine)

Quite an impressive thoughtful article. I understand Lorimer is a member of
the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia.



> Many liberal commentators have called for a similar ?Marshall Plan?
> to be applied to the Third World in the naive view that this would
> have similar results there. However, imperialist domination of the
> semicolonial countries prevents the development of a class structure
> and value of labour power capable of supporting an internal market
> that can either meet the profit needs of a broad developing local
> bourgeoisie or absorb massive imports of capital and commodities from
> the imperialist countries.


Interesting specific argument.

I accept that most of the countries of the third world could not have the
privileged mass consumer economies of the USA and Europe.

> These semicolonial class relations permit
> the emergence of isolated pockets of ?prosperity?: layers of wealthy
> export and service- oriented capitalists and a narrow, relatively
> prosperous, middle class.


Nevertheless a mass market for mobile phones is developing in India and China.




> But there neither is nor can be a
> relatively well-off population of employed wage workers or prosperous
> farmers able to purchase a wide range of consumer durables on a level
> comparable to the imperialist countries.


It is necessary to make a distinction between the marxist categories of
exchange value and use value. The extraordinarily unequal flows of exchange
value in the world can only be mitigated somewhat, prior to the abolition
of capital on a world scale. Nevertheless it is possible for Keynesian
policies in principle to produce an increase in the utilisation of the
means of production that would lead to a boom in use values available to
the masses of the people of the world.


> Since the late 1960s imperialist governments, banks and international
> finance agencies have foisted hundreds of billions of dollars in
> loans on the semicolonial countries. The Marshall Plan has been
> repeated.


I do not accept this, because the capital flows have mainly over the
decades gone from the poor countries to the rich countries.

Since the Asian crisis the Marshall Aid went to the USA, as the magnanimous
spender of last resort.

> In small handful of semicolonial countries?South Korea, Taiwan,
> Mexico, Brazil and Argentina?imperialist loans facilitated a process
> of broader industrialisation in the 1980s. In the 1990s these
> countries became the targets for a substantial shift of international
> capital flows, as the bulk of imperialist capital flowing into the
> Third World switched from loans into portfolio investments?that is,
> into buying up stocks and bonds in the big private companies and
> newly privatised state enterprises of what are known as the ?emerging
> markets?. As the experience of each of these countries has
> demonstrated, this buying up of shares is simply a stepping-stone to
> imperialist capital directly taking over and running the largest and
> most profitable enterprises in these countries, which were formerly
> in the hands of local capitalists?that is, to reversing the limited
> gains in independent industrialisation that were made by these
> capitalists during the 1980s.


It is true that any prospects for a national bourgeoisie in third world
countries would be ver limited, even with a more generous Keynesian IMF
under the influence of Europe rather than the USA.

Nevertheless the processes of unequal exchange on a world scale could be
mitigated by struggle.

I would expect a left wing citizen of the USA to think twice before
dismissing as unmarxist or impossible a Marshall Aid plan from Europe that
is ten times bigger than a Marshall Aid plan from his or her own country.

Sorry to press the point.

Chris Burford