tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.comments2024-01-02T17:38:32.872+00:00Economics of ImperialismTony Norfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comBlogger389125tag: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-75500298540855256552022-10-26T11:27:22.208+01:002022-10-26T11:27:22.208+01:00Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B), a gigantic aggreg...Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B), a gigantic aggregate and one of the world’s biggest organizations was made by Warren Buffett, the current director, and CEO. Berkshire Hathaway was founded in 1955 when two New England textile manufacturers merged. Buffett bought the company in 1965. It is currently a holding company for Buffett’s numerous acquisitions and investments throughout the years.<br /><br />Chase Carolinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07608696907479986825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-66478136570754665182022-09-22T18:22:07.872+01:002022-09-22T18:22:07.872+01:00There is an interesting account by Max Beer who wa...There is an interesting account by Max Beer who was asked to assist Lenin in establishing the facilities for Iskra in London, in Beer's Fifty Years of International Socialism (TM)Anonymousnoreply@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.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-40411571553908363372021-11-02T14:02:31.251+00:002021-11-02T14:02:31.251+00:00Great blog, thanks! About Mussolini and Fascism (a...Great blog, thanks! About Mussolini and Fascism (and even Hitler and Nazism), this topic is always muddied because we remember them through the lens of WWII and the Holocaust. Fascism was based on a philosophy of corporatism, basically organizing society the way a corporation is organized, through representatives at the top. In the unorganized industrial world of the early 20th century, we can understand its appeal as something that worked. Even with Nazism, one can understand the appeal in a society that had just disintegrated in WWI. People were searching for political philosophies that actually worked, and we can imagine the sense of admiration of two leaders in Europe who had found something that worked. Nazism drew on Hegel's idea of "Geist" and Heidegger's philosophy of being as submergence in the Geist of the nation. We all know how all this ended, but we need to keep the times in context. We like to philosophize about the world we live in, but that's not how the world actually works. Leaders don't sit around theorizing, they're looking for models that work. That's what any system of political economy is, a model that can be important and exported, whether it's socialism, liberalism, fascism, etc. The crisis we're in right now is the failure of all models. Right now "illiberal democracy" is in vogue, in the 90s it was liberal democracy. The masses of people don't have any clue what to do, they're expecting their leaders to figure out what works. But no politician today is going to invest in big ideas, except people like Trump and Orban who have revisionist ambitions. The name of the game now is managing the global financial system and controlling technology innovation. I was reading a long piece in the New York Times magazine about the American' right's newfound solidarity with Hungary as a vanguard model of white nationalism. Hacks like Rod Dreher are making pilgrimages there. It has nothing to do with political philosophy, they're just looking for models that work in a world where nationalism is no longer a viable ideology. What is nationalism? The essence of nationalism is not language or ideas or even people, nationalism is a regime dedicated to using national assets for the benefit of all citizens. Nationalism was a sort of bourgeois socialism, but is that sort of nationalism even possible anymore when "national assets" are global assets owned by foreign investors? Trump et al. have appropriated all the superficial aspects of nationalism but they are not nationalists anymore than Bernie Sanders is a socialist. These are just political brands now. Bernie wasn't actually building a socialist party, he just used the socialist brand to rally the Left in America, as Trump used the nationalist brand to rally the Right. This is how we have to remember people like Mussolini and Churchill. They weren't theorists they were politicians, but if we try to read them through a lens of theoretical political philosophy, then of course we'll find things they said and did that don't square with our ideas of how the world should be. Another way of saying this is we're all naive, and people like Churchill are less so.Jasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03011630125025524992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-28377200518963993582021-10-19T14:38:45.006+01:002021-10-19T14:38:45.006+01:00Slavoj Zizek thinks the left should embrace decenc...Slavoj Zizek thinks the left should embrace decency, because he believes decency no longer exists in politics. He used Trump as an example, and he also used the argument that we now live in a society where Torture is not covered up, whereas, he says, in the past torture was hidden, because it was seen to be indecent.<br /><br />I take the totally opposite view to Zizek, I think we have gone into decency overdrive in the last quarter of a century, where politicians dress up their criminality in good deeds, in decency.<br /><br />These comments show that in the past things were much more transparent!<br /><br />In my view, one job of the left is to strip away the decency and expose the indecency that lies behind it.SteveHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-41580791761477831362021-10-18T21:33:56.943+01:002021-10-18T21:33:56.943+01:00Another one for your collection, excerpted from &#...Another one for your collection, excerpted from 'Zionism versus Bolshevism’, Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), February 8, 1920 (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zionism_versus_Bolshevism) <br /><br />“International Jews… [are a] sinister confederacy… [who] have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This… world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing… now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.<br />There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews… It becomes, therefore, specially important to foster and develop any strongly-marked Jewish movement which leads directly away from these fatal associations. And it is here that Zionism has such a deep significance for the whole world at the present time… <br />In violent contrast to international communism, it presents to the Jew a national idea of a commanding character. It has fallen to the British Government, as the result of the conquest of Palestine, to have the opportunity and the responsibility of securing for the Jewish race all over the world a home and a centre of national life… <br />If, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown, which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event would have occurred in the history of the world which would, from every point of view, be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.<br />John Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16017412607423567331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-88178798215481054492021-10-18T17:25:43.895+01:002021-10-18T17:25:43.895+01:00Here's another gem: 'One may dislike Hitle...Here's another gem: 'One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.' -- Winston Churchill, <i>Step By Step, 1936-1939</i> (London, 1939), p 170, and reprinted unaltered on page 158 of the London, 1947 edition.Dr Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07163651179353887227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-53475700467917636282021-09-18T10:52:32.518+01:002021-09-18T10:52:32.518+01:00I totally agree with this, Marx and Engels make ma...I totally agree with this, Marx and Engels make many other remarks about this in their notes on Ireland. It is important because large swathes of the left buy into the women’s rights baloney. I.e. they sugar coat the criminality with humanitarianism. This is just a modern version of the old colonial justification that the natives were sub human. <br /><br />I would say though that Engels underestimated how much workers generally benefit from imperialist supremacy, the point though is that the workers themselves fully understand!<br /><br />My assessment of the current situation is that Britain is at a bit of a crossroads, could Brexit undermine the privileges of the British working classes or will Britain play an even more nefarious role in world affairs to retain these privileges (if it is possible for them to be any more nefarious)?<br /><br />The last point is even more pessimistic, I see no real evidence that that workers in nations that are oppressed are any more taken with socialism!<br />SteveHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-32499536626233800312021-09-13T09:13:24.008+01:002021-09-13T09:13:24.008+01:00This is a necessary counter to the many other piec...This is a necessary counter to the many other pieces I keep reading elsewhere in Left media which place the blame for the lack of socialism in the UK and the USA entirely on the shoulders of Left leaders. Are ordinary people really completely unable to make their own bad decisions and act in their own selfish, short-term interests? I give you this example:<br /><br />"PRESTON, UK - Jack sits down with his pint in the Fielden Arms in Mellor and contemplates his latest shift making Typhoon warplanes for the Saudi air force. Tucking into steak and chips, the 25-year-old talks of moving in with his girlfriend, his good pay at the nearby BAE factory - £40,000, almost twice the local average - and the security it brings. And then he thinks of the people those planes will be sent to kill.<br />"You see the children in Yemen starving on the 10 o’clock news," he tells Middle East Eye. "But you try to not pay attention and just get on with it."<br />His friend, Harry, interjects: "It's really weird and there is no way to describe it, because you are in essence building a weapon of mass destruction."<br />So why don't they quit? "Good pay and job security," Jack responds, taking another sip of his beer. "If the military contracts go, 7,000 people go with them." Jack is like thousands of others who works at the BAE Systems factory in nearby Samlesbury, outside Preston in Lancashire, making parts that will be assembled in nearby Warton to create Typhoons, the most advanced jet fighters operated by the Saudis over Yemen. There, the Saudis have contributed to a civil war with the most terrible violence: bombing civilians, blowing up hospitals and imposing a siege that has condemned millions of Yemenis to slow starvation and poverty."<br /> <br />https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/made-britain-tested-yemenis-reality-working-bombmakersThis Wreckagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14142858380774928433noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-82110147127851711082021-08-15T22:11:45.024+01:002021-08-15T22:11:45.024+01:00Reply to Unknown, 15 Aug 2021: No, the bank values...Reply to Unknown, 15 Aug 2021: No, the bank values include only international lending and borrowing of funds. Commonly, high values for these also correlate with high values for the other things you mention. For example, the UK has (maybe 'had' now!) the biggest OTC market in interest rate swaps. But the US market is the biggest market in derivatives more generally, although most of that business is domestic to the US.Tony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-18329373090770925962021-08-15T21:54:38.254+01:002021-08-15T21:54:38.254+01:00Hi Tony, do the bank values above contain the valu...Hi Tony, do the bank values above contain the value of OTC and exchange traded, stock and derivatives markets, across all asset classes? Thanks. Keval.<br />Revolutionary Reparationshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17342362457485656834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-46206210760997022172021-06-27T08:25:29.101+01:002021-06-27T08:25:29.101+01:00Reply to Tom: Unfortunately, almost all the books ...Reply to Tom: Unfortunately, almost all the books I have come across on the global financial system have at least one of the following problems!<br />(a) They do not understand how the system works or many of the relevant details about financial operations.<br />(b) They focus on more historical events or previous aspects of the global system's development that are not so relevant today.<br />(c) They are gripped by a facile anti-finance populism that essentially endorses the idea that regulation, nationalisation, etc, can solve the underlying problems.<br />(d) They are almost exclusively focused on the USA (maybe adding in the IMF & World Bank), so ignore how the financial system is part of the overall mechanism of imperialist rule by all the major powers. <br /><br />The only books that come to mind now that do not have these issues are: <br />(1) My own book, 'The City: London and the Global Power of Finance' (of course!), and <br />(b) the book by Francois Chesnais, 'Finance Capital Today: Corporations and Banks in the Lasting Global Slump', reviewed on this blog, here: https://economicsofimperialism.blogspot.com/2016/11/financial-claims-on-world-economy.html<br /><br />I would suggest that to help overcome any problems you may have with technical definitions and jargon, etc, that you look up the term on Wikipedia.Tony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-45236606932983233962021-06-27T06:54:44.841+01:002021-06-27T06:54:44.841+01:00Hello
Are there any books you could recommend to ...Hello<br /><br />Are there any books you could recommend to socialists who want to better the global financial system but who are not fluent in financial jargon and maths?<br /><br />A simple guide to different types and qualities of securities and fund managers etc?<br /><br />TomAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-34427103900651672392021-06-10T19:19:18.209+01:002021-06-10T19:19:18.209+01:00Hi Mr. Norfield,
Sorry to read you don't like...Hi Mr. Norfield,<br /><br />Sorry to read you don't like Bitcoin and other crypto currency (which you chose to all lump on one pile). I think your argument lags depth. <br />Bitcoin obviously has some weaknesses, but also a lot of potential. There are a host of other crypto currency technologies with a host of different configurations and options. Given that decentralized finance is a relatively new field, there is a lot of room for new ideas from all sorts of directions. I recommend you steer your thinking towards how crypto currency can be a force of good instead. Who knows, you might just become art of something amazing. Either way, good luck with your research,<br /><br />All the best,<br /><br />Erik<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08533101832122587813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-64321661425646802012021-03-28T11:47:12.565+01:002021-03-28T11:47:12.565+01:00John: The best quotation I have seen from Churchil...John: The best quotation I have seen from Churchill was given in a blog post I did in June 2011, where ahead of WW1 he talks of the importance of Britain keeping its 'vast and splendid possessions'! Here https://economicsofimperialism.blogspot.com/2011/06/winston-churchill-told-it-like-it-was.html<br />Tony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-92184668551060178032021-03-27T18:59:55.356+00:002021-03-27T18:59:55.356+00:00I read a quote from a Churchill speach before that...I read a quote from a Churchill speach before that war in which he said the same thing. I read the quotation in a wsws some years ago, but I've been trying to find it but so far unsuccessfullyJohnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13743221104027822909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-61144401160230089142020-12-27T12:24:02.129+00:002020-12-27T12:24:02.129+00:00Reply to Harris: Yes, you are right about Cuba and...Reply to Harris: Yes, you are right about Cuba and Vietnam, and this is rarely noted by people on the left. <br /><br />I noted the China-US-Afghanistan deal briefly in the 'Xinjiang Crossing' section of my article on 'China and US Power', here: https://economicsofimperialism.blogspot.com/2020/07/china-us-power.htmlTony Norfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03896437404164741498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-61365314976119882842020-12-27T08:54:35.944+00:002020-12-27T08:54:35.944+00:00"But Mao would have been happy to come to som..."But Mao would have been happy to come to some kind of deal with the US – not the colonial British and French – to get support for economic development."<br /><br />That is true, not just for Mao, but even for Castro or Ho. Eventually, such a deal was made and (unfortunately) the chinese played an opportunistic role in the arming and supplying of the mujahedeen against the Soviet Union.<br /><br />HarrisAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591186784456519139.post-20182819395037451972020-12-14T21:36:46.599+00:002020-12-14T21:36:46.599+00:00Tony, Please disregard my previous comment, if you...Tony, Please disregard my previous comment, if you have received it. I just realized I was searching the wrong report. I found the reference you quoted and thank you for alerting us to this sample of imperial reasoning.Dida Selimnoreply@blogger.com