Re: dev’ts in world economy and foreign ownership
I don’t think capital is always pacific. The European colonization of
Asia, Latin America, and Africa had a lot to do with the pursuit of
profit. Capital was behind the long war against the USSR, the
overthrow of any number of nationalists and socialists in the Third
World, the 1980s proxy wars in LatAm, etc. The war against Communism
was a high-risk enterprise, but it was for high stakes. The
overthrows & proxy wars were important, but much lower risk.
But, to talk like an agency theorist, the exec branch may be the exec
cmte of the bourgeoisie, but it has its own interests, just like the
interests of corporate managers sometimes diverge from the
shareholders’. The state loves war - the health of the state, as the
man said. It increases the state’s power of repression and
surveillance, it makes the warriors feel bold and profound, it even
allows the state to interfere in the economy. I think the war in Iraq
has a lot of that aspect to it.
Doug