Doug Henwood:
>
>What does it mean to say that capitalism is in "ok shape"? It means that a
>polarizing system of exploitation is reproducing itself pretty
>successfully. The creation of poverty alongside of wealth is an ancient
>feature of this charming economic form. I didn't think I had to make that
>point with every post to PEN-L, but apparently I do.
>
>From the late 1800s until now, the appearance of wealth is very much
related the presence of poverty across international boundaries, which
makes the system a lot different than the one that Marx wrote about in
Capital. For example, Nigeria generates $10 billion in revenue yearly for
Shell and Chevron, but Nigeria is the 19th poorest nation in the world just
above Mali. The problem is that for all of the pain of the Ogoni people or
the indigenous peoples in Ecuador or Papua New Guinea, there is no gain.
Standard Oil might have brutalized oilworkers and ruined small farmers in
the process of building an oil empire in Oklahoma, but there was capital
accumulation.
I have just read the first three chapters of Joshua Carliner's "The
Corporate Planet" Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization", which
deals with all of this in extensive detail. It is one of the best books on
the environment I have come across. Joshua did a very fine review of "Wall
Street" for the Nation, so he is not hostile to Marxism. What's
interesting, as a matter of fact, is that the book is published by the
Sierra Club, so there's some life in that old carcass I suppose.
One of the things that doesn't come across nearly as strong as it should in
Doug's comments on global capitalism is the illusory quality of
"development" in the third world. When Engels wrote "Conditions of the
Working Class in England", he was describing insufferable working and
living conditions. But to some extent a person reading the book who had the
hindsight of history would understand that--like Stalin's Russia in the
1930s--some form of capital accumulation was taking place.
Is this true of Thailand today? Or Nigeria? Or Brazil? I don't think so.
Louis Proyect
