Re: subimperial practices Re: Overseas investment by China's private and public corporations

SUBJECT: Re: Subimperialism, and What A Ranking Of States Cannot Settle

While Patrick’s response provides a good basis to respond to him, rather than merely add another layer of slot assignment, I am going to begin with the aspects of his post that I believe provide the most compelling argument.

Firstly, the link to Marini is a strong argument based on a specific mechanism. Superexploitation leads to a reduction in domestic consumption, which results in a persistent "realization" problem. This problem prompts an expansive tendency towards the periphery (subordinate) and center (aggressive). While this can certainly be viewed as a mood or an epithet, it creates expectations about where capital flows and how the state acts in response to those flows. In many ways, Patrick's evidence regarding BRICS' behavior in Africa and Gordon Moyo's support these expectations. To reject subimperialism, therefore, an explanation for this same evidence is required. Using an alternate name does not provide an explanation for this evidence. Furthermore, unless Michael's intermediate power of a semi-colony includes its own mechanism to address the problem it intends to resolve, the very problem it intended to address will simply be inherited.

This is where Patrick’s application of the concept begins to break down rather than being dissipated by his critics’ attacks.

Many of the items listed are determined by the mechanisms described. As such, export of surplus capital resulting from overaccumulation, position within the global value chain, exploitation of non-renewable natural resources without compensation, and dependence upon commodity-based export processing: all of these are expected outcomes consistent with the underlying logic. Other items, however, are not determined by the mechanisms described. Evangelicalism associated with Bolsonaro, Russia's homophobic policies, the autocratic tribalism of the Emirates, Ethiopia's ethnically driven authoritarianism, Indonesia's violent policing: none of these have any relationship to a medium organic composition and reduced domestic consumption due to a compressed home market. Authoritarian officialdom can exist in conjunction with virtually any position in the world market—including the imperialist center whose present incarnation is hardly lacking.

Inasmuch as the original conceptualization of subimperialism has been replaced by a symptom checklist rather than an understanding of the processes of accumulation, Marv's objection regarding dilution becomes irrefutable on Patrick's own terms. The checklist will include virtually any state possessing a highly concentrated corporate sector, an export surplus, and a poor human rights record. In effect, the mediating role between the value relations and the regional actions of states has been substituted by the checklist. It is established through accumulation and subsequently evidenced by evangelicalisms.

As Mark pointed out in the best comment in the thread (and unfortunately it passed unnoticed), if superexploitation is understood to mean paying labor power less than its value, and if the value of labor power includes a historical and normative component, then paying labor power less than its value necessarily implies some standard against which this payment is measured—a standard that is neither national nor conventional. For reasons that are well-known, Marx treated such deviations as variations in market prices from values and bracketed them from consideration in analyses of accumulation. Marini transforms these deviations into a structural mode and bases the entirety of his derivation on them. Therefore, Marv has no option but to choose whether superexploitation represents a third form of surplus value (in addition to absolute and relative) or a variation in the value of labor power across various national modes of reproduction. If the latter interpretation prevails (which appears to be supported by Patricia McFadden's analysis of subsidies obtained by the unpaid labor of women), then while it offers a superior understanding of uneven development, it cannot establish the existence of a unique type of state.

Furthermore, Marv is correct that the theoretical debate is performing proxy service for a question concerning who bears war responsibility and that the debates we observe reflect our pre-existing views as to which state we are willing to see defeated. That is a perfectly reasonable way to describe how this list argues. However, he also presents an alternative that suffers from the same omitted mediators as his opponents. He identifies forced adaptation to pressures of market forces as the resultant outcome and calls it explanatory. Charles gains traction at this point, although his traction fails to persist since he substitutes two warring lines for mediation with will and, in doing so, makes the debate personal—which ultimately kills threads.

I believe that everyone involved is attempting to determine which rung on a ladder each state occupies and treating their identification as settling what socialists ought to do. I think it would be better to contest that inference rather than to challenge the taxonomy itself. Is Chinese capital exporting value or receiving it? These questions represent empirical issues with determinate answers. Yet they do not inform us that China’s government is an instrument of anybody’s liberation. And it is that desire to force this connection that is creating the entrenchment that Marv describes.

Therefore, accept in full Patrick’s empirical findings regarding BRICS’ conduct in Africa. Accept Michael’s claim that subimperialism has reached the limits of its analytical utility. Both errors stem from positing the issue as one of alignment among states rather than as one pertaining to the class relation existing internally within them. An employee working in Rustenburg or Manaus does not experience the world market as a hierarchical ordering. Rather, she experiences a wage relation enforced domestically by her local bourgeoisie according to standards located elsewhere in the world market, and her adversaries reside on either side of this sentence. Every conceptual framework presented within this thread is designed to indicate which adversary you may wish to forgive.
--
Tony


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