Without more specific information, i.e. what countries you are referring
to in specific, my educated guess would be that capital flow tends to
follow wherever there is immediate profit potential. WHat I mean by this
is that captial tends to be invested in places that show immediate, or at
least short-term improvements, which usually almost always is coupled with
some kind on non-democratic regime as the basic political structure. A
marxist might point out that it is better to share the economic wealth
with the proletariat, but provisions to do so generally take longer to
implement and even longer to have any substantial results. The critique of
capitalism is that it has a tendency to ignore the long term effects,
whether the long term effects are good or bad. In places where there is
a substantial move toward modernization, and almost always also
substantial economic stratification, Core countries will have a tendency
to invest there, becasue the chances for $profit$ are greater. Again, this
may not be the case with all periphery countries, but it may help to
explain some of it. Let me know what you think.
-Jason Brooks
On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Karl Carlile wrote:
> KARL CARLILE:Can anyone offer an explanation as to why capital flows
> to sub-Saharan Africa have dminised to a trickle flow over the last
> decade or more?
>
> Given that the rate of profit must be higher in this region why and
> how does it happen that capital fails to accumulate there in a
> substantive way.
>
> Marxist political economy's failure to explain this yet offer cogent
> expalanation of the character of capital accumulation in the West or
> in economies of the gang of four.
>
>
>
>
>
> Yours etc.,
> Karl
>