Rod Hay wrote: >If there was a benefit it >was likely that the exclusion of manufactured goods from the periphery >increased the demand for home production. The benefits of capitalism were >and continue to gained by excluding rather than including the periphery. This sounds similar to the argument that Ricardo is advancing, but it seems to have the same flaw. Primitive accumulation based on slavery and outright theft of silver and gold does not seem to get factored into an analysis revolving around the pros and cons of excluding manufactured goods. Were Bolivia and Peru "included" or "excluded"? >Even the current debt loads of African and Latin American countries result >in part because they are not allowed to earn foreign currency in >industrialised markets. This is a false statement of the problem. They are in debt because they produce agricultural commodities for the export market, whose prices have been falling historically while the price of machinery necessary to produce them have been rising. >Again as Joan Robinson said, in captialism the only thing worse than beiing >exploited is not being exploited. There is "not being exploited" in the sense of Madagascar. There is also "not being exploited" in the Cuban sense. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
