At 9:30 AM 1/17/95, jones/bhandari wrote: >On the importance of exports to a late capitalism, see Henryk Grossmann's >1929 discussion of "foreign trade and the sale of commodities at prices of >production deviating from their values." <material cut> > >Here's an indication of the argument: > >..an injection of surplus value by means of foreign trade would raise the >rate of profit and reduce the severity of the breakdown tendency....At >advanced stages of accumulation, when it becomes more difficult to valorize >the enormously accumulated capital, such transfers become a matter of life >and death for capitalism....The drive to neutralize the breakdown tendency >through increased valorization takes place at the cost of other capitalist >states. The accumulation of capital produces an ever more destructive >struggle among capitalist states, a continuous revolutionisation of >technology, rationalization, Taylorization or Fordization of the >economy--all of which is intended to create the kind of technology and >organization that can preserve competitive superiority on the world market. > On the other side accumulation intensifies the drift to protectionism in >the economically backward countries. What drift to protectionism among the backward countries? They've been pried wide open and have become production sites for center-based multinationals. How does this play of state-against-state, or Joan Robinson's New Mercantilism, play out in a world of MNCs, who may produce using plants outside the country? The only benefit derived by residents of the home state is profit drawn in the form of managerial salaries and banker/shareholder returns. >For a very valuable empirical discussion of the drift towards protectionism >in the neo-colonial world, see Chakravarti Raghavan, Recolonization: GATT, >Uruguay and the Third World. Protectionism? Where? Raghavan and other Third World analysts talk about First World protectionism, but my AT&T phone is made in Singapore, my Apple keyboard and my Sony TV were assembled in Mexico, my breakfast blueberries came from Chile.... Have the borders ever been so open since World War I? Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA 212-874-4020 voice 212-874-3137 fax
