File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 463


Subject: Re: Corporations and societies 
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:00:03 +0100
From: L.Connell-AT-herts.ac.uk



Before I launch off - UK members of the list may like to know that 
there is a documentary about the Union Carbide disaster on Channel 4 
tonight (22 Oct)

Salil,

Maybe some of this has already been covered but I thought that your 
refusal to engage with my actual definition of Imperialism within a 
dispute which was largely about what MNC are doing (a term which I 
think is a bit of a misnomer - Companies Trading in Multiple Nations 
seems more accurate if more clumsy) rather than with the systemic 
environment in which they do what they are doing.

Let me state my position as boldly as possible.  If we are going to 
define Imperialism economically - as monopoly capitalism where a few 
powers determine the conditions in which all economic occurs - rather 
than historically - c1870 until c1919-c1945 - then imperialism does 
seem an apt description for today's international economy.  Your 
refutation of this seems largely to refer to micro rather than macro 
economic factors and when you engage with macro economics you talk too 
much about bureaucracy and corruption in India.  Neither quality is 
exclusively Indian by the way and the corruption of say, the Italian 
government doesn't debar it from membership of the EU and thus to entry 
into a privileged econimic fraternity.

I deliberately referred to GATT and WTO rather than Coke or Nike 
because whatever these companies do is assisted by the systems which 
GATT and now WTO enforce and regulate.  The WTO may be in the thrall 
of "big business" but it has regulatory powers which individual 
companies simply cannot match.  The systematic manipulation of non-
Western economies to the needs of Western economies is a central 
consequence of its activities if not its stated aim.  You yourself 
mentioned the World Bank, again in the context of profligacy and 
corruption.  More pertinent surely - I know this word is currently 
upopular on the list - is the fact that the conditions of World Bank 
assistance are the sort of right wing free-market economic policies 
which were disasterous for the poor in economies like Britain and the 
US let alone on a global scale.

This isn't to absolve corrupt governments.  The fact of government 
corruption in India is doubtless a major concern for the welfare of the 
Indian population especially its poorest portion.  I think I'm right in 
saying that Aranduti Roy's campaign against the dam partly makes this 
point.  However it is to simplistic to simply say that this is the 
reason for India's present economic welfare.  Systems of tarrifs, 
currency regulation, debt relief, 'aid', economic sanctions all aim to 
ensure that any economic success in India disproportionally benefits a 
series of international third parties within the economies of the 
West.  I regard this to be a system of imperialism - as defined above.  
This has nothing to do with the history of your country and everything 
to do with real economics today.

As for Paul Brians typically liberal intervention I would be interested 
in hearing his defence of the way that international capitalism 
generates inequalities between nations than some utopian assertion of 
the lack of any credible alternatives.  How are we to find these 
alternatives without a sustained critique of the status quo?

Liam


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