Good piece. In Lenin’s time, 44% of all US industrial output was carried out by just 3,000 firms. Now the output of just 130 firms is equivalent to 48% of US GDP. The US became an importer of capital because the growth of the economy was insufficient to maintain both the growth in living standards of the population and to fund the Viet Nam war. The US became an importer of capital in the course of the Viet Nam war and in order to pay for it. The US did not become an economically oppressed nation while it was raining more bombs on Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia than were dropped in the whole of the Second World War. Instead, imperialism and the dominant imperialist power has entered a new phase, where it sucks in capital from the rest of the world. It does so without in advance being either a net exporter of goods or of capital. Yet the most remarkable feature of the current economic aspects of imperialism is that the US, a country which has no net assets but only net debts, achieves a surplus on its investment income account. As the dominant force in the global financial system, the US directs resources for its own needs. It charges vastly higher rates of interest when it recycles capital overseas than it is willing to pay. This explains how it is possible for the US to draw in interest income when it owns no net assets. At the same time, the US and its junior partners in France and the UK have not grown as rapidly as the world economy over a prolonged period, and yet they are continually able to draw in capital from the rest of the world. This too is only possible because of the US dominance over the global financial system, with Britain and France playing an important subordinate role. The US dominates all global transactions through the trading pre-eminence of the US Dollar, which accounts for approximately 85% of all foreign exchange transactions. It is only possible to rob someone repeatedly if a knife is held to their throat. The extraordinary US expenditure on its military and the willingness of its French and British aides de camp to support its military adventures (even their disappointment when the US was obliged to refrain from bombing Syria) is explained by this imperative to plunder the rest of the world. Military dominance and repeated shows of military force are necessary to underpin a system of global financial extortion. All manner of chauvinist and racist explanations are advanced for this unequal distribution of global income, and the accumulated wealth it brings. But in reality it is only possible if most of the world is dominated by a global system of imperialism, the forcible transfer of incomes and wealth from most of the world to a minority of it. This system includes ideological, legal, institutional, commercial and financial strands. All of these are underpinned by the aggressive exercise of military dominance, led by the US.
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 19:22:47 +0000
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