superprofits

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

By the way, cheap consumer goods are as old as capitalism, and not as
new as Wal-Mart's sourcing in China. As a coupla dead guys put it:

> The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
> production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
> draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The
> cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it
> forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to
> capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt
> the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what
> it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois
> themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.


Doug