tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post2642537297060805948..comments2024-01-02T17:38:32.872+00:00Comments on Economics of Imperialism: Russia, China, BRICS, World EconomyTony Norfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-9459843516666576162024-01-02T16:30:09.476+00:002024-01-02T16:30:09.476+00:00Very late arrival! You were prescient, Tony Norfie...Very late arrival! You were prescient, Tony Norfield. CSIS made some of the same observations as you, about Russia's munitions industry, around the same time as you (Sept 2022). They didn't anticipate how wartime fiscal stimulus in Russia would cause increased economic growth! That was made possible as Russia hadn't been profligate, and had minimal government debt as of January 20022, merely a few hundred millions dollars worth. <br /><br />Thank you for explaining how SWIFT is a messaging system, not a money transfer service for banks! I did not realize that. Speaking of banks, BIS is an odd entity. You mentioned it. It is considered "the central bank of central banks", thought not quite true. I thought it was more like a central banking think tank, but with more influence with the EU (although they have their own ECB). Any given country's central bank (and commercial and retail private banks) is not required to do as BIS says... though many seem to. This includes the U.S. which surprised me. Until I got ran afoul of the DEI police recently, I worked in risk management for a large U.S. retail bank. We didn't need to follow BIS dictat but we did, more so as time went on.<br /><br />I agree with you about Russia not having imperialist intentions regarding the Special Military Operation. Rather, they are understandably averse to having NATO encroaching on Moscow with expansion to Ukraine, including nuclear missile installations across the border. You liken modern Russia to the USSR more than I do. <br /><br />I'm unsure what motivates China: They are not communist! You're correct, that there is no readily apparent Chinese capitalist class. Who runs things? The politburo by another name? I'm unsure.<br /><br />As for U.S. domestic manufacturing, the situation is even more bleak than you described. In August 2023, Raytheon execs told Congress that it would be impossible for them to decouple their weapons production from China. As you remarked, most western developed and wealthy countries deindustrialized. Notable exceptions were Germany and northern Italy. Germany's near-vassal relationship with US/NATO has been ruinous (no affordable Russian fuel allowed!) and COVID19 plus bad EU policies hurt Italy.<br /><br />This was an excellent post! More please?Ellie Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11231840376889029260noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-14452480409538984242022-09-20T15:20:14.149+01:002022-09-20T15:20:14.149+01:00Many thanks for both ‘The City’ and this post. I’m...Many thanks for both ‘The City’ and this post. I’m delighted to see you resume blogging, even if only occasionally.<br /><br />I’ve been following the ‘Are Russia or China imperialist?’ argument for a while and would like, if I may, to ask a question and make a few points.<br /><br />My question: You say, “I do not see the ‘law of value’ having much impact on [Russia and China’s] development. I question how far they can be called capitalist countries”. I’m no economist but thought the argument back in the day was that the ‘law of value’ applied to the Soviet Union regardless of its polity whereas you seem to argue that it is inapplicable even to post-Soviet countries and China. Can you expand/explain?<br /><br />1. I share your contempt for cherrypicking Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’ as a tool for understanding the world as it is now. All else aside, the book was published 106 years ago – the same time gap as that between Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the outbreak of the First World War. The book should of course be studied but its current relevance has, to put it politely, limitations.<br /><br />2. Leading Western nations have over the last 40 years all but deindustrialised their home economies and now rely on the exploitation of low-cost overseas labour and on the political and military hegemony of the US and the EU ‘to keep the show on the road’. That hegemony is now seriously challenged on both the economic and political fronts.<br /><br />Commentators even call the US a FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate). Almost the only significant manufacturing left in the US is the defence sector with, as many writers describe, political corruption and military failure central to its modus operandi.<br /><br />(Grenada and Panama aside, when did the US or the UK last win a war? Has the US ever fought a defensive war?)<br /><br />3. The notion that Russia and/or China are imperialist is IMHO even more ahistoric than you suggest. The European colonial projects began in the late 15th Century, over 500 years ago. (The present, very different, state of those and other imperial powers is well outlined in your book and elsewhere.)<br /><br />OTOH, after the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago, Russia’s economy was looted and, for the first decade at least, its polity verged on that of a Western client state.<br /><br />Since then, many of the former Soviet countries, especially Russia, have rebuilt and developed what were already relatively advanced industrial bases. Also, as you stress, many formerly colonised nations are now significant industrial and political powers in their own right. <br /><br />Nevertheless, whatever one’s take on their foreign policies (my take is pretty much yours), using the same term to describe half a millenium of global predation and twenty years of political and economic recovery and development is, at best, absurd.<br /><br />Davedave_brucehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12273176406589223839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-50545593265501533732022-09-14T12:09:20.815+01:002022-09-14T12:09:20.815+01:00reply Part 2:
7. But I would not call Russia and ...reply Part 2:<br /><br />7. But I would not call Russia and China ‘socialist’ countries, let alone communist. They are political regimes that use state power to promote development and to prevent themselves from being swallowed up or dismembered by the major capitalist powers. So they greatly limit the role of the world capitalist market. In each case a defensive, national development was the only practical route that was open to them.<br /><br />8. China’s achievements in this regard are remarkable. Those achievements were helped by China being able to play on the anti-Soviet/Russian stance of the US, as well as its desire to get into the massive Chinese market (China previously helped the US on issues such as the intervention in Afghanistan). Russia did not have the same room for manoeuvre.<br /><br />9. There have been longstanding US plans to carve up Russia, and especially to prevent an economic alliance between Russia, Germany and the EU. Similarly, the US/NATO refused any accommodation with Russia, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and instead continued a hostile policy that led to the war in Ukraine. This is recognised by US political theorists such as John Mearsheimer, and even by the current head of the CIA, William Burns – but in the book, The Back Channel, he published before he took the CIA job! The anti-Putin hysteria now is because Putin stopped the disintegration of Russia and foiled the Western plans.<br /><br />10. China has foreign investments (Russia far less), and earns revenues from these, and it seeks to secure foreign markets and supplies of raw materials. But it has barely two or three foreign military bases and has not invaded anyone. Its build up of military power in the past 20 years or so has been in response to US hostility.<br /><br />11. The reason China’s BRI has so many takers is because it looks like an attractive option for development. Similarly for the growing SCO and BRICS membership. I do not pretend that these are socialist projects, or that all the participating countries are run by wonderful people. There are also many conflicts between these countries! But this set of projects is a progressive alternative to the current set up of a world economy run by a predatory group of imperialist powers. It is still in the early stages of development, but it is a significant challenge to the US-led ‘rules-based order’.<br /><br />Tony 14 September 2022<br />Tony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-46157718369760378842022-09-14T12:08:01.399+01:002022-09-14T12:08:01.399+01:00Reply to ‘Anonymous’, 14 September 2022. In 2 part...Reply to ‘Anonymous’, 14 September 2022. In 2 parts!<br /><br />Part 1<br /><br />I do not think Russia and China are imperialist powers. The only way to understand them is to put them in both the proper historical context and also to assess how the (imperialist) world economy works. That is a big topic, of course, but it doesn't rely upon ticking off yes/no points from Lenin's Imperialism! Here are my summary points on the matter.<br /><br />1. The Russian revolution could not really succeed without help from other significant countries, and Russia did not get it, given the failure of the German revolution, etc. That put Russia in a dreadful situation, and led to a ‘socialism in one country’ defensive policy. It is difficult to see what else could have been done to prevent Russia from being overcome by the imperialist countries.<br /><br />2. It would be a mistake to have considered the Soviet Union as a kind of imperialist bloc. After all, Russia ended up subsidising the regional countries (including Ukraine). Its post-1945 takeovers in Eastern Europe were a defensive move against Western encroachment, not to mention that many of these countries (the Baltics, Romania, etc) had been pro-fascist during WW2. Since the break up of the Soviet Union, Russia’s moves have also been defensive, including in Ukraine and Georgia.<br /><br />3. Look upon the question of imperialism from the standpoint of the world economy. It is quite clear that the US and a small number of other capitalist powers run things (IMF, World Bank, WTO, much of the UN and its agencies, the BIS, etc). The rest have to fit in with that system, or get sidelined/isolated. That was the case for Russia/Soviet Union even after 1991. Also for China up to the 1970s, and with a further attempt in more recent years by the US.<br /><br />4. For Russia and also for China, I do not see the ‘law of value’ having much impact on their development. I question how far they can be called capitalist countries, even though they have financial markets, etc. Of course the world market plays a role, but they use state action to prioritise defence and whatever development they can get in relation to the world economy. That has been relatively successful in Russia, so much more in China.<br /><br />5. Russia and China cannot be said to have a ruling capitalist class. While there are capitalistic companies, quoted on the stock exchange, etc, these do not run state policy, and neither is policy determined by what is best for those corporations in the longer-term. China made efforts to curb the formation of a domestic capitalist class, and Russia only got a small version of one with the ‘oligarch’ robberies of national assets after 1991. In each case, there have been plenty of restrictions on what privately run business can do, and many political warnings and ‘guidance’ to the large companies, such as China’s takedown of the tech companies and Putin’s threats to many of them. This has gone very much further than any so-called restriction of monopoly power one sees in the West. <br /><br />6. Neither do I think that calling them ‘state capitalist’, for example, answers anything. It tries to make them ‘big capitalist powers’ that do things overseas and so must presumably also be imperialist, but it relies on a superficial, flawed concept originating with Hilferding’s Finance Capital and Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy. It fails to understand what has happened, as noted above. That concept is used by some radicals in the West to malign Russia and China. It helps the radicals to avoid coming to terms with how the ‘revolution betrayed’ is due much more to the working class of most Western countries allying with their own imperialist states!Tony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-83502977958813377192022-09-14T08:10:21.151+01:002022-09-14T08:10:21.151+01:00Hi Tony. Thanks for your article, very interesting...Hi Tony. Thanks for your article, very interesting as usual. I noted that you used the term “imperialist” for US and other Western countries. But not for Russia and China, for example. Is my impression correct? If yes, how do you consider Russia and China in the context of the Leninist framework? Many thanks in advance for your reply. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-13286961178823436842022-09-05T15:00:40.176+01:002022-09-05T15:00:40.176+01:00Araz - the source is here: https://www.bea.gov/new...Araz - the source is here: https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/us-international-transactions-first-quarter-2022-and-annual-update<br /><br />Look at the pdf version. The items are in a table on p14, detailed under Exports of services.<br /><br />There are many reports on global tech, but none I can recall that do what you asked for.Tony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-4649194510987696702022-09-05T14:49:34.856+01:002022-09-05T14:49:34.856+01:00Thanks Tony for this wonderful piece.
May I pleas...Thanks Tony for this wonderful piece. <br />May I please know the reference for this:<br /><br />"in 2021, the US had export revenues of $56.4bn for the licences to use the outcomes of its research and development, and another $36.6bn for licences to reproduce or distribute its computer software."<br /><br />Is there an inclusive dataset that would capture performance of most countries in terms of technology production? I mean other than economic complexity index which has its own drawbacks.<br /><br />ThanksAraznoreply@blogger.com