-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Marxism] Krugman and capitalist successes Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 18:19:46 +1300 From: Philip Ferguson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
One of the things about Krugmann and others who hold up South Korea and a couple of small Asian countries as examples of the viability of capitalism to transform the Third World, is that capitalism has been operating in these parts of the world for hundreds of years and, in its imperialist phase, for about a century.
South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Two small-medium countries and two city-states have made the transition to something approximating First World living standards since Japan. Even if we simply accepted this view that they've made it and they've made it because of capitalism, it's hardly a lot to show for all that capitalist history and blood, sweat and tears globally.
In any case, these are rather bogus examples. South Korea and Taiwan succeeded for a couple of very specific reasons. During the Cold War, the US needed to oversee a couple of capitalist success stories in Asia to counteract the example of China. So the US specifically helped South Korea and Taiwan in a way that imperialism normally wouldn't.
Secondly, South Korea and Taiwan had brutal military dictatorships up until very recently, which extracted vast amounts of surplus-value through intense exploitation of their own workers. So is Krugmann saying, or admitting, that the only way you can have 'success' in the developing such modern capitalist economies is through brutal dictatorships and that the path to capitalist success has to come at the expense of basic workers, indeed basic human, freedoms? I think not. Instead, he is simply leaving out of the picture the reality of capital accumulation in these countries.
Thirdly, while SKorea and Taiwan may have achieved a high level of capitalist development they have not really escaped their position in the Third World. Politically, they are dominated by Washington and economically they are intensely vulnerable, as revealed during the Asian meltdown in the late 1990s.
And, this is without even visiting the reality in *the vast majority of the Third World*. It is not difficult for capitalism to develop some limited areas of the world - even feudalism could do that. What capitalism has not been able to do, in 400 years or more, is create unified, developed world. Capitalism can't even banish hunger, let alone poverty and under-development, globally.
Let Krugmann answer why that is.
Philip Ferguson
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