>>> Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/15/99 12:03PM >>> Charles Brown wrote: > >>> Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/14/99 04:48PM >>> > >If there really were vast superprofits to be made by investing in the >"Third World," there'd probably be more of it. So while the official >stats may not tell the whole story, they're probably close to telling >something like the truth. > >(((((((((( > > >Charles: Let me give you some important inside information. The club >of superprofiteers has a very limited membership. It is not part of >the system that most profiteers are superprofiteers. The financial >oligarchy is an exclusive, not inclusive, club. Gee, I hadn't known that. (((((((((((( Charles: I thought you did, but the significance of it here is that it explains why there is not more investing by ALL profiteers in the "Third World". The limited investment in the Third World which you note confirms rather than contradicts the Marxist-Leninist theory of supeprofitting (today , not only in 1900) ((((((((((( CB >Official stats are used to tell something like a lie more than the >truth. The best lies are close to the truth , i.e. demogogy. Doug: Bourgeois stats have their flaws, but they're collected by the bourgeois state for the use of the bourgeoisie. All the authorities you quote, from Lenin to Perlo, use them too. (((((((((((( Charles: Yes, but Perlo uses the stats you mention to conclude that investment in the Third World is where much superprofitting goes on. You seem to be using the same stats for the opposite conclusion. The limited size of the club of superprofiteers explains how to interpret the same stats you are using but with an opposite conclusion with respect to the importance of investment in the Third World in the current ( not 1900) world capitalist system. So, perhaps more specifically the demogogy is in how the bourgeois stats are interpreted. Official stats are used to tell something like a lie more than the truth BY THE ECONOMISTS OF THE BOURGEOSIE not by Lenin and Perlo. You know Marx used the Bluebooks to tell the truth. Other economists used the same stats to coverup. (((((((((((((( >The mass or gross amount of superprofits is small relative to the >total profits of the whole system. But as Lenin demonstrated in >_Imperialism_, by the holding system, a relatively small amount of >money can control many times its value in capitalist property. Lenin was hardly the discoverer of leverage. (((((((((( Charles: I said "demonstrated" not discovered. It was the bourgeoisie who discovered it, that's pretty clear. Lenin didn't say he discovered it. He said "look what the bourgeois have discovered". On this thread it is important to mention leveraging and holding systems because people wonder how the financial oligarchy with a small percentage of the gross profits can be said to be controlling most investment both steering their investments to superprofitting and steering others' investments to normal profiting. Preventing most investments from equalling their superprofits. If every profiter becomes a superprofiteer, the current superprofiteers will no longer have the level of control they have. Thus, they erect the barriers to entry to superprofiteering. That's why only a small percentage of investment is in the foreign investment superprofitting , as your statistics show. The control of the superprofiteers depends upon FDI and other superprofitting remaining the small percentage of overall profitting that your stats show. Mention of the holding system is important for interpreting the stats you adduced on investment in Third World countries as a percentage of total investment, intepreting them as consistent with the Leninist theory of superprofiting on colonial investment by the financial oligarchy today as well as in 1900. It explains why Lenin's theory still matters today,not just historically. (((((((((((((( > The conglomerate system, which has arisen mainly after Lenin's era, >is one way that the holding system has been augmented. The conglomerates in the classic sense - those put together in the 1960s and early 1970s - have largely been dismantled. I'm not sure what you're talking about here. ((((((((((((( Charles: Puleeze. Conglomeration is part of monopolization , as in state-monopoly capitalism. As Perlo says in 1988, long after the early 1970's: "The proliferation of conglomerates formed by industrial giants represents a new and significant stage in the development of monopoly capitalism. Traditionally, monopoloies - both "horizontal" and "vertical" - expanded within a broad grouping of roughly homogeneous products. That is, the most powerful manufacturer of a given product might expand "horizontally" by gobbling up weaker rivals, and "vertically" b buying up raw materials sources, parts fabrication plants, and wholesale and retail distribution facilities. But the corporation's final products would remain in the same category: electrical equipment, or automotive products, or chemicals, or textiles, as the case might be. After WW II, corporations increasingly expanded beyond those limits. The formation of _conglomerate_ corporations became important by the1960's and decisive in the 1970's. By the 1980's most large, financially secure industrial corporations had become conglomerates. (Gives examples of the Allied Corporation , formerly the Allied Chemical Corporation, GE and Xerox)... Most of the $ 125 billion per year of mergers shown in Chart 8-1 were of the conglomerate type..." ((((((((((((((( CB: >Why do you think the government of the superprofiteers, the US, is >so interested in controlling the Third World ? Why do the IMF , >World Bank and U.S. Treasury want to make Brazil, Mexico, Korea etc, >wholly owned subsidiaries of themselves, organs of transnational >capital, if superprofits are not to be made from that capitalist >penetration ? Doug: Korea had, until recently, been largely closed to foreign investment. Brazil and Mexico are two of the dozen or so major targets I mentioned the other day - but even so, at the year of peak FDI inflows, 1997, $12.8 billion went into Mexico from all countries, compared with $861 billion in domestic nonresidential fixed investment in the U.S. alone - 67 times as much as FDI into Mexico from everywhere else on earth. (((((((((( Charles: This does not answer the question posed. But returning to the same point made before, the 1 to 67 ratio is explained by the fact that the superprofiteers are 1 to 67 or so of the number of profiteers. Superprofiteers are a small minority of all profiteers. What is the ratio of billionaires to millionaires ? Thus, the great bulk of investment is not in the superprofitable FDI. Same point as before. There is some domestic superprofitting too. FDI is not the only source of superprofits ((((((((( >Your answer does not address the following in my post, the most >important part. > >Perlo: >"Bear in mind that the principal recipients of income on foreign >investments directly and indirectly, were a small circle of the >very rich and powerful, connected with the New York and the smaller >financial centers, and major stockholders in the giant TNCs. for the >members of this ruling-class group, income on foreign investments >would typically account for 25%-50% of their total revenue..." > > >This suggests looking, not at the source of the great mass of the >profits of the MNC's , but at that of a small elite minority , the >financial oligarchy, who control the MNC's. Hey, I wrote a book about those people, I know a thing or two about them. It's a bit of an oversimplification to say that the "financial oligarchy" lords it over the MNCs; the CEOs of the Fortune 500 are themselves members of the ruling class with very substantial stockholdings of their own. ((((((((((((( Charles: Hey, Victor Perlo has written several books about them and he disagrees with you. It is not at all oversimplification to say that the "financial oligarchy lords it over the MNC's" The financial oligarchy, as Lenin defined it and I always use it, as I mentioned the last time we discussed this, is a merger of finance and industrial capital. It is not just the lords of the fiancial institutions, but those and the lords of the industrial corporations. For example, the CEO's of GM, Ford, Daimler-Chysler are members of the financial oligarchy as much as the CEO's of the biggest Wallstreet instituions. ((((((((((((((( Charles: > The superprofits from foreign investment Foreign investment everywhere, that is. The stock of U.S. direct investement in Canada is over twice that in all of Latin America, and almost 25 times as much in the Netherlands as in Mexico. (((((((((((( Charles: Superprofits are defined by the rate of profit. What is the rate of profit on foreign investment in Canada , not the gross size of investment without regard to return on investment ? (((((((( CB: > are had by a tiny minority, but that tiny minority is the ruling >class and they direct and control the MNC's. Thus, the mass of the >superprofitting doesn't have to be that big as a percentage of the >total profits. Does this make sense ? The pea brain of the dinosaur >directs the whole giant body. Doug: Actually they had a big struggle over that in the 1980s - just how much direction major corps were going to take from Wall Street. Wall Street won, but the very fact that there was a struggle suggests that it's not quite so top-down as all that. Charles: As I said above, the financial oligarchy is not all on Wallstreet literally or geographically. The CEO of General Motors "is in" Detroit, sort of . But he and other heads of GM are members of the financial oligarchy. The ruling class is not monolithic and the transnationalization of capital today means that the financial oligarchy is much more spread out geographically. The oligarchs in Germany have more control in the U.S. than in the past, for example. Thus, Daimler-Chysler. (((((((((((((( >Charles: Imperialism today has most of the features that Lenin used >to define it at the beginning of the century, There are almost no directly owned colonies left in the world today; there were scores of them in 1900. There was no IMF or World Bank in 1900. Aside from that, I guess Lenin got everything else right. (((((((((( Charles: Didn't you just tell us that someone said that Korea is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. Treasury ? Guess Lenin still has some wisdom on that too. Paleo-colonialism of Lenin's day has been replaced by neo-colonialism of today. Scores of neo-colonies are "owned" by the financial oligarchy especially the G-7 countries. The IMF and World Bank are just what one would predict extending Lenin's observation on the increasing internationalization of capital to the present. What has changed from Lenin's day is that the existence of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries ( with which Lenin had something to do) forced the main imperialist countries to reduce drastically the intercapitalist rivalries and competition, to unite against world socialist revolution. The don't fight socalled world wars between themselves over the colonies and the like. The unity of the G-7 , allowing international organs like the IMF or World Bank, along with the shift from paleo to neo colonialism is a qualitative change from Lenin's era ( As dialectics, Leninism teaches us to expect changes such as this) ,but the political economic significance of this change can only be understood by starting from the Leninist baseline of 1900 or so, and by taking account of the impact of the Leninist socialist countries on the restructuring of the world capitalism. The capitalist system's centralization to fight socialism has left it now much more centralized (multinational, transnationally united) than it was in 1900, and now without the SU/European socialism again. , as there was no SU in 1900. This drastic reduction of interimperialist rivalry AND the loss of socialist rivalry, gives the greatest efficiency of control the financial oligarchy has ever had. Capital is a more centralized dictatorship of the bourgeoisie than ever. Lenin got it real correct. One might say beyond right , to "left". CB
