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On 2017/08/20 09:01 AM, RKOB via Marxism wrote:
The China-India Conflict: Its Causes and Consequences
/A Pamphlet by/ /Michael Pröbsting (RCIT),18 August 2017/
...
3. Is the Category of “Sub-Imperialism” Useful?
Thanks for this. It's got great material in it. But let me jump to the
end (see below), to ask why Pröbsting has only two categories of
exploitation, when it is evident (as Marini showed in Brazil from the
1960s) that there are semi-peripheral - or 'sub-imperial' - powers that
act as deputy sheriffs and whose firms do far better in relation to
accumulation within the South, than the fully exploited countries?
"As Marxists we must focus on the law of value and the transfer of value
between countries and the political order associated with this."
Right then, I would add, here (were Louis not .txt-dogmatic rather than
.html-friendly), a small .jpg of a graph that comes from the South
African Reserve Bank, whose mid-2015 Quarterly Bulletin measured the
extent of profit transfers. It's quite obvious that there are imperial
powers whose corporates take more than 100% of repatriated profits; a
middle layer - including all the BRICS - whose profit repatriation
ranges from 20-50%; and an exploited layer with 10% or less profit
repatriation. I'll send this to you off-list, but I discuss it as part
of the theory of sub-imperialism - which also relates to other features
of accumulation and class struggle - in the Marini tradition, here:
https://peoplesbrics.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/bond-2016-brics-banking-and-the-debate-over-subimperialism-in-third-world-quarterly.pdf
The "political order" associated with this value transfer includes the
IMF (where 4 BRICS countries are expanding their influence dramatically
at the expense of poor countries), the WTO (where 3 BRICS helped destroy
food sovereignty at the last summit in 2015), the UNFCCC (where the
BRICS and West are the main beneficiaries of the "bullshit" agreement,
in the words of Jim Hansens) and the G20. The latter's role in the
expanded super-exploitation of Africa became abundantly clear last month
in Hamburg, with Schauble's Compact with Africa, which is a public
subsidy system for both Western and BRICS corporates to amplify the
looting. Next month in Monthly Review, I will publish a long article
explaining this, but here are a half-dozen more short pieces if you want
to explore this problem.
https://www.pambazuka.org/emerging-powers/falling-brics-endanger-their-citizens%E2%80%99-health-starting-south-africa%E2%80%99s-jacob-zuma
https://www.pambazuka.org/economics/world-economic-forum-africa-germany-pitched-dubious-new-g20-corporate-strategy
https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-governance/brics-new-development-bank-meets-delhi-dashing-africa%E2%80%99s-green-developmental
https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-governance/taking-down-trumpism-africa-delegitimation-not-collaboration-please
https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/will-washington%E2%80%99s-new-pro-moscow-anti-beijing-gang-drive-wedge-through-brics-2017
https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/brics-fantasies-and-unintended-revelations
https://www.pambazuka.org/emerging-powers/imperialism%E2%80%99s-junior-partners
If anyone would like our irregular newsletter discussing what we term
'brics-from-below' (focusing on social struggles and BRICS sub-imperial
contradictions), please let me know: pb...@mail.ngo.za (We are having
seminars in Johannesburg on 31 August and 18 September, as well as a 2-3
September counter-summit in Hong Kong.)
Cheers,
Patrick
***
*Is the Category of “Sub-Imperialism” Useful? *
**
A number of progressive theoreticians support the conception of a
“transitional” or “sub-imperialist” state as a third, additional
category of countries in addition to colonial and semi-colonial
countries. We have elaborated our criticism of the theory of
sub-imperialism in /The Great Robbery of the South /and we will only
summarize here briefly some conclusions.
Naturally if states undergo a process of transformation from an
imperialist to a semi-colonial country or the other way around, they are
“in transition” and in this sense it can be useful to describe a
temporary process of transformation. However, the supporters of the
theory of sub-imperialism don’t understand this as a category to
describe the transition process but rather see it as a separate,
independent category. And here lies the fundamental problem.
Capitalism unites all nations in the world via economic and political
expansion and the formation of a world market. This process has taken
place from the beginning of the capitalist mode of production and has
tremendously accelerated in the epoch of imperialism. Under these
conditions, no nation escapes the formation of ever closer economic and
political ties with the dominant imperialist powers. Such close
relations automatically create, modify, and reproduce mechanisms of
exploitation and superexploitation. In other words, under capitalism –
and even more under imperialism – all nations are sucked into the
process of super-exploitation. Either they are strong enough and become
part of the oppressing nations, or they are pushed into the camp of the
majority of humanity – the oppressed nations. There is no “third camp”
in between.
Of course, there are significant differences in the development of the
productive forces among the imperialist states as well as among the
semi-colonial countries. This is only logical given the unequal dynamic
of development between nations. Hence, it is indeed true that there are
bigger and smaller imperialist countries which are unequal. However, the
point is that the smaller are not exploited by bigger imperialist
powers. For example the USA and Canada are certainly not equal but also
don’t systematically exploit each other. The same is true for Germany
and Austria or France and Belgium, Luxemburg or Switzerland. However
they are all imperialist nations. Why? Because they have developed
significant monopoly capital and financial capital which is used to
systematically exploit and transfer value from the South, and they are
part of an international imperialist order from which they profit and
defend by various means. Likewise there are advanced semi-colonies which
have a certain regional influence (e.g., Brazil, India, Greece) and
others which have none; some are stronger and others are weaker. But as
Marxists we must focus on the law of value and the transfer of value
between countries and the political order associated with this. And here
it is obvious that the industrialised semi-colonies are also dominated
and super-exploited by the imperialist monopolies. For these reasons we
reject the usefulness of the category of “/Sub-Imperialism/” as part of
the Marxist analytical apparatus.
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