File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9804, message 119


Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 03:31:27 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Little red flags


In message <CMM.0.90.0.891481811.kbevans-AT-panix.com>, boddhisatva
<kbevans-AT-panix.com> writes
>       The position that first world prosperity comes principally from
>third world exploitation doesn't hold water.  The percentage of cost in a
>finished first-world good that natural resources represents is low and
>dropping. Prosperity comes from industry, not natural resources. 

Spoken like a true Marxist. As explained in the chapter on national
differences in wages (Capital, vol 1), exploitation is far higher in the
more developed nations, where labour productivity is higher.

Looked at in class terms it has always been the height of liberal
hogwash to accuse the working class in the first world of exploiting the
working class in the third world. (It is the capitalist class that
exploits workers in both hemispheres). To put it another way the working
class in the developed world has a high standard of living (ie many use
values) relative to that in the third world, but as a proportion of the
total value produced it gets far less of what it produces.

What is true is that there is a far greater throughput of natural
resources in the first world, many of which are mined or grown in the
third. But as it happens, both Britain and American are oil-producers,
and America is an exporter of agricultural produce as well as industrial
goods.

The real damage that capitalism does in the third world is in holding
back the development of industry and scientific agriculture, as Walter
Rodney explains:

'The countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America are called agricultural
countries because they rely on agriculture and have little or no
industry: but their agriculture is unscientific and the yeilds ar far
less than those of the developed countries.'

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, East African Education Publishers p 24
-- 
James Heartfield


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