[PEN-L:28720] Re: Re: Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ulhas Joglekar wrote:

> What was the population of say, Germany, when Germany began to develop
> industrially in later half 19 the Century? Compare that with the population
> of China, India and Indonesia at the corresponding stage economic
> development. Elimination of poverty of 2.5 billion people and of 25 million
> people are not comparable challenges.

Implicit in this is the assumption that imperialist powers, especially
the USA, would tolerate India, China or Indonesia having the capacity to
compete with them in the world market. My reading of history indicates
that this would not be tolerated. As I tried to point out in my series
of posts on Argentina, Great Britain sabotaged that country's bid to
become a sovereign industrial power after WWII. If anything, dependency
has deepened.

Japan was the last Asian nation to try to join the imperialist club.
Look at the price it paid: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In many of Ulhas's posts, I find an odd indiffererence to the global
setting as if India's economic development was entirely a function of
internal needs and rules. The one thing that seems obvious about the
successful capitalist nations in Europe is that their economies were
determined at the outset and still rely on vast holdings overseas. I
find it hard to imagine India muscling its way into Latin America or the
Middle East.

Finally, on the question of India's rising status as an industrial
power. The comparison with Germany is instructive. Germany has 82
million people but produced 42 million metric tons of steel in 1999. By
comparison, India produced 24.9 million tons around the same time but
with a population over 12 times the size of Germany. One website puts it
this way: "Although the grand total of 24.9 million MTPA places India
among the top ten producers of steel in the world, the per capita steel
production of only 26 Kg/person is much below the world average of 150 Kg."

http://www.corporateinformation.com/insector/Steel.html

So, then while India's steel production might be impressive in absolute
terms--it is in the top ten worldwide--from the standpoint of capitalist
modernization, it seems rather less promising. Germany's capitalist
economy was able to absorb vast numbers of peasants during the 19th
century, but with India and China we cannot expect the same sort of
internal "primitive accumulation" process, can we? Furthermore, those
who could not be transformed into wage earners in Germany simply got on
the next boat to America. Will this be the case for India or China? I
don't think so. There are already signs that the strained economies of
the first world will be increasingly offlimits to immigrants, no matter
Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's rather daft belief in the possibilities
of "nomadism".

All in all, the PEN-L'ers who seem most hostile to Vandana Shiva's
rather illusory brand of neo-Ghandianism appear just as committed to
another kind of illusion, namely that capitalist modernization or
"industrialization" as they put it in rather classless terms can be
ultimately achieved across the board by any nation, just as a child
eventually and naturally reaches puberty. My reading of history tells me
that the ruling powers would rather blow up the world than allow
newcomers into their club. The world capitalist system is predicated on
advanced development in one sector and underdevelopment in another. Any
upstart that threatens to bust down the door will soon be challenged
militarily. Even if in the unlikely event that India began to catch up
with the West, I doubt that the USA would accept demotion into the
second tier. If India's bid to become a world industrial power is
somehow connected with the emergence of the ultraright BJP, whose
program is reminiscent of German and Japanese nationalist parties before
WWII, our future is dim.

--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org