On 2010-01-13 18:13, GERALD LEVY wrote:
> Look at the direct foreign investment by Sweden's capitalists.
> Look at the character of Swedish - trans-national - corporations. Look at
> integration of Sweden in EU. Look at financial integration
>
The problem of this vague laundry list is that 'imperialism' as a
concept loses its specific meaning. What you are broadly describing is
the integration of capitalist economies. Capitalist firms based in
Sweden do invest outside of the territorial boundaries of the
nation-state, but the converse operation occurs too. The same goes for
the financial operation of rentiers.
At one point in time this process of integration occurred across the
counties of Sweden. Capitalists based on Stockholm invested in Skåne,
and vice versa. Was this imperialism or was it just capitalism? While
Paul C gave an operational meaning of imperialism, the theoretical
structure above is simply not rigorous enough.
I say this because I think imperialism was up to 1945 central part of
the global political economy and that the anti-imperial struggles that
brought the end to the empires was one of the great achievements of the
20th century. This should not be conflated with a rentier-dominated
global capitalism.
//Dave Z
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Received on Wed Jan 13 13:48:07 2010
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