You could on and on with the moral outrage. War and conquest extract terrible penalties on the defeated. Inside Europe as well as outside it. Has no one read the history of the thirty years war? But the question is how dependent was the development of capitalism on the exploitation of the peripheral countries. Few of the quantitative studies indicate that the dependence was large. Capitalism depended and continues to depend for the most part upon the exploitation of workers within the core countries. Even with higher wages, the amount of surplus extracted is many, many times higher. This should not be surprizing given the differences in capital accumulation (both physical and human). Workers with higher educational accomplishments and more machines and more modern technology produce more. This is why the larger percentage of foreign investment is in already industrialised countries. That is where the surplus can be obtained more easily. Globalisation may change that, but even here the spread of industrial production is encompassing a small number of new countries. Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
