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 --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005