Re: [OPE] Britain--parasitic and decaying capitalism: A comment

On 2009-12-30 14:26, Jerry wrote:
> what *specific* factual claims which David made in his article are you challenging?
>
I am not disputing the figures in the article but the incomplete
empirical picture from which weak or even faulty deductions are made in
order to force a theoretical framework from 1916 onto the global
political economy of the 21st century.

I have made them quite clear in previous posts but since you asked I'll
make this final effort:

   1. The failure to distinguish extra-economic coercion from the laws
      that operate through the market;
   2. to distinguish the specific global operation of the British state
      and economy in 1890 and 1990;
   3. to assess the present-day relevance of the items in the vague list
      that is said to define the specificity of imperialism;
   4. to provide data on the wage shares in developing economies;
   5. on the *net* outflow of incomes from them relative to NDP;
   6. on the *net* income flows into the advanced economies from other
      advanced and developing economies relative to NDP;
   7. on the above flows relative to the wage bills to assess even the
      possibility of the bribe mechanism.
   8. Failure to identify which sections of the working class are
      actually bribed and how the mechanism is supposed to work;
   9. to assess the extent to which wage differentials that occur within
      an economy are due to relative bargaining powers on the labour
      market and in the workplace, rather than being the cause of 'bribes';
  10. the proportion of workers involved in reproducing the real wage
      vector;
  11. the relative differences in labour productivity on a global scale;
  12. the impact of labour productivity on real income levels;
  13. the relation between the growth of productivity and real wages,
      independent of 'bribes';
  14. the cause of the differentials of rates of return between advanced
      and developed economies which are deduced on the basis of missing
      data on wage shares (yet can be shown to be independent of wage
      shares).
  15. The faulty extrapolation of the exceptionally unproductive British
      economy to all advanced economies.
  16. The reification of the nation and nation-state, conflating
      oppressed and exploited classes with nations.
  17. The anomalies that result when applying the said criteria, since
      they apply to countries not considered to be 'imperialist' in the
      first place, e.g. Japan, China, etc.

Given the past replies I have no illusions that these issues will be
dealt with. And it should be abundantly clear to any reader why that is
the case.

In conclusion, no amount of Lenin quotations can make up for the lack of
empirical accuracy and theoretical coherence.
//Dave Z
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Received on Wed Dec 30 10:26:06 2009