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

From: Paul Cockshott <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Wed Jan 13 2010 - 17:39:53 EST

By the definition I gave, the actions of the UK and US in Iraq were imperialistic. I fail to see however the justification for saying that Sweden is imperialistic.
When Jerry says that Swedish capital is invested abroad - yes of course it is, but in what way is that imperialism or part of a struggle by Sweden to divide the world?
________________________________________
From: ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu [ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu] On Behalf Of D. Göçmen [dogangoecmen@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 6:45 PM
To: ope@lists.csuchico.edu
Subject: Re: [OPE] Britain--parasitic and decaying capitalism: A comment

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 and Paul C,
when I read your posts I think of a day dreamer. Sorry, when not very diplomatic. The architects of EU say they pursue this project because they are not able to compite with USA individually. Since 1990 German politicians say "we want to have more responsibility in the world politics", which just means "we want to have more power in world affairs". How would you ýnterprete this move by Germany? Is is to end the empire or is it about the new division of the world?

Remember when US and Britain wanted to occupy Iraq Germany and France opposed it becasue they denied to support USA. They wanted to show to the world that they are again "something" in the world politics; that they do not necessarily rely on USA. Within few days EU was spilt. And you say the age of empire came to its end? The term "empire" is a nonsense. Unfortunately the age of capitalist-imperialism did not come to its end.

D.Göçmen
http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/
http://www.dogangocmen.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Zachariah <davez@kth.se>
To: ope@lists.csuchico.edu
Sent: Wed, Jan 13, 2010 7:50 pm
Subject: Re: [OPE] Britain--parasitic and decaying capitalism: A comment

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 17:46:36 2010

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