> "Devine, James" wrote:
>
>
> >
>
> I should mention that I am far from being a hard-core Wallersteinian
> (especially since I don't read his stuff very often). In some ways,
> the core/periphery distinction is useful, while in some ways it's not:
> the model doesn't seem to allow for the fact that low wages in China
> encourage low wages all around (as part of the world-wide "race (or
> creep) to the bottom").
I think this relationship is partly obscurred when anti-imperialist
theoreticians fail regularily to make some essential discriminations. To
speak of the US gains from imperialism may have at least three different
(though compatible) meanings:
1. The U.S. ruling class benefits from imperialism.
2. The U.S. _as a nation_ (whatever that may mean) benefits from
imperialism.
3. The mass of the U.S. population, i.e., the working class, benefits
from imperialism.
It is quite possible (I think probable) for Proposition 1 to be true
while Proposition 2 is simply meaningless and Proposition 3 is false.
I would add what I consider the core of Lenin's perspective, namely that
imperialism is _not_ a choice or policy followed by an imperialist
nation or ruling class but the very mode of existence of capitalism in
its present stage(s). I do not think that Lenin's view necessarily
entails his conception of "superprofits" made from imperialism. That was
an empirical judgment.
Carrol
