#80 The Changing World Economy and Today’s Imperialism
On Geoeconomics
In a recent International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE) conference held in Istanbul, Turkey where the theme was: The Changing World Economy and Today’s Imperialism - it brought together radical and Marxist economists to discuss the latest theories of and developments in capitalism.
A presentation by Trevor Ngwane of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, expressed that socialists should not only rely on the BRICS (or BRICS+ including new entrants, Iran, Saudi Arabia and soon Turkey) and its expanding institutions to resist the hegemony of the imperialist bloc led by the U.S.
While Utsa Patnaik - the Marxist Indian economist (along with her husband Prabhat) - has developed the ‘drain theory’ of exploitation: that India’s revenues in the 19th century were siphoned to provide profits for Britain’s world hegemonic rise; part of the framework as applied to the Malayan colonial economy is posted in STORM September 2024: trends of the political economy of Malaysia.
Of late, Kabeer Bora of the University of Utah demonstrated a novel concept to measure the transfer of value appropriated by Britain from its ‘jewel in the crown’ colony India during the 19th century whence transfer of this surplus value was invaluable to the British economics’ wealth. In his analysis, he relied on Marx’s law of the falling rate of profit whereby as the rate of profit fell domestically, British capital counteracted that with increased profits drained from India.
Bora found that an increase in this colonial ‘drain’ of 1% increases the rate of profit of Britain by around 9 percentage points. Similarly, such a phenomenon was observed in then Malaya as cited in Li Dun Jen, British Malaya. An Economic Analysis, InstitutAnalisa Sosial., Kuala Lumpur, 1982); supported by Michael Morgan in his contribution in Malaya: The Making of a Neo-Colony – (edited by Malcolm Caldwell and Mohamed Amin : a collection of articles with a socialist analysis of Malayan History from 1874 to independence).
At the Istanbul conference proceedings, it was further demonstrated that China’s poverty definitions are recognised by the World Bank. That China’s reduction in the number of those below the World Bank ‘higher threshold’ poverty level, (see World Bank, 2022 whole of government and whole of society approach) is acceptedly admirable.
There were also several sessions by the IIPPE China working group. The sessions were recorded in the IIPPE China YouTube. The sessions covered China’s development model, its high investment in EVs and solar, and on the likelihood that China would ‘catch up’ with the U.S; Fanqi Lin has a paper on A case study of China’s NEV industry whereas a blog on this theme is available in csloh.substack.
From his contribution, Professor Dic Lo of SOAS London made some telling points on China, the U.S. and the Global South referring to the necessary conditions for economies in the Global South to break out of what has been called the ‘middle-income trap’ and instead reach the living standards of the Global North.
These conditiolns are the ‘three Is’: investment, infusion (taking in new technologies from other countries) and innovation (developing new technologies themselves) that are successfully applied in China thus ‘closing the gap’ with the imperialist North; see csloh.substack's China’s Revolving Economy
Meanwhile, Robert Veneziani et al from the LSE, London also developed an ‘exploitation index’ for countries which showed that “all of the OECD countries are in the core, with exploitation intensity index well below 1 (ie less exploited than exploiting); while nearly all of the African countries are including the twenty most exploited”; (see John Smith, Imperialism in the Twenty-first century).
Whereas, China and EU economies are thrusting forward:
This surge is definitively what also frightens the U.S. which could eventually lose its hegemonic status.
Publications posted during the week that was:
1] Paraguayan Sorrow - a radical voice in a dispossessed land, monthly review book review
2] Great Power Strategy - in an era of change, Yao Yang (姚洋)
3] Economic liberation must be seized, Progressive International
4] Resistance to US Bases - the continuing struggle, PRWC,
5] Exploding pagers in Lebanon, China Academy
6] Financialisation Capitalism in Public-Private Partnership, STORM
7] MOMENTUM #217
8] FRIDAY FILES 20/09/2024