-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: response to Parthasarathy
Date: 23-Jan-98 at 20:41
From: james m blaut, 70671,2032
TO: INTERNET:SKSANDERrove.iup.edu,INTERNET:SKSANDERrove.iup.edu
Steve Sanderson:
You make two egregious errors. Socialist-oriented Third World countries
have had to fight tooth and nail for survival, not to mention progress.
Capitalist-oriented Third World countries are flooded with capital and arms
from Uncle. The price they pay is immiseration and non-development.
Statistics of supposed growth are partly lies and partly glosses to cover
up the immiseration of the poverty-ridden majority. Third World countries
overall have not developed. (But Cuba, be it noted, has a life expectancy
of 76 years and an infant mortality rate of 7.4. Compare that with
capitalist-oriented countries.)
Secondly, you list the East/Southeast Asia "tigers" as a supposed shining
example of progress, a counter-example to socialist-oriented countries, but
the comparison is fallacious. I take the liberty of reprinting a comment I
made on h-world last month:
"South Korea was not and is not a neocolony in economic terms: it
benefitted from huge infusions of US aid, much of it tied to the US
military presence...[it was] a beneficiary of the Cold War. Taiwan had
much the same benefits, for the same reasons, but Taiwan also received vast
amounts of capital fleeing mainland China after the revolution -- again:
not an economic neocoloy. Singapore, a city-state, was *the* financial
center for most of Southeast Asia from the 19th century down through
independence (which didn't make much difference economically -- nor
politically, given the lack of democracy under Lee Kuan Yew) -- again, not
a neocolony. Hong Kong also was a long-time financial center; like Taiwan,
it received capital fleeing mainland China; obtained masses of low-wage
labor which could be matched to that capital (I am oversimplifying); and so
was not a neo-colony. This leaves us with Thailand and Malaysia. Thailand
is, through and through,
a neocolony, poverty-ridden to the poiont where children in large numbers
are sold into prostitution. Some foreign capital established a vigorous but
small industrial sector, using cheap labor, mainly for export, but this did
hardly anything for the masses of Thais. Malaysia, another true neocolony,
benefits from the huge deposits of minerals, and so has always had a higher
income than its neighbors, but it is still poverty-ridden: an economic
neocolony in spite of the twin skyscrapers in KL. Indonesia is a typical
poverty-ridden neocolony.
"There is a lot of mythology about the Asian 'tigers.' If you take away --
for the reasons stated somewhat over-simply above -- S. Korea, Taiwan, and
tiny Hong Kong and Singapore, and if you note that Japan has been a
developed capitalist country for a century, you are left with...no tigers.
Countries like Thailand and Indonesia are -- or were until last year --
tigers for speculative investors and boasted a few maqualidora-type and
free-port industries, but for their people as a whole they are no less
neocolonial and no less poverty-ridden than the countries of Latin
America."
Put all of this in a world-systems perspective. Capitalism dominates on a
world scale, and socialist countries do not simply enjoy progress or
nonprogress in isolation: they have to fight off world capitalism in order
merely to survive. And some do that.
By the way, I now understand fully why your review of my book was so
negative. A different world view.
Jim Blaut