Internationalist research: about an international exploitation mechanism little discussed
This is a translation of this text, originally in spanish.
Geopolitics is generally seen as a contradiction between nation-states, when in reality the bourgeoisies of the "oppressed" countries are agents and partners of the superpowers. Colonialism does not come from "outside" the nation only, but it is internal; it is not only "foreign", but local. If the great powers have advantages in commercial surpluses or purchasing power, or have a higher profit rate in poor countries, this means greater purchasing power and higher profit rates for the bourgeoisie here. The currencies of the great powers are so repreciated with regard to poor currencies like the colón (in Costa Rica), that they need a very small amount of capital to import many more costa rican products, creating unequal terms of trade. And the exporters and the commercial capital receive their profit also in that foreign currency (dollars, in the case of the American currency, or any other currency highly repreciated and with hegemony in foreign trade exchanges), putting them in the same position of having a greater purchasing power together with the great powers. The same goes for low production costs in poor countries and the arrival of foreign investment or multinationals: the profit rate of these multinational companies is the same as that of the local bourgeoisie. Whenever the rate of profit rises or purchasing power rises (for example measured by the PPP or purchasing power parity) for the currencies of strong countries, the rate of profit and the purchasing power of the exporting and commercial bourgeoisies of weak countries also rises. They are connected by the same economic mechanism, so to speak. And this mechanism is international. It has nothing to do with a bourgeoisie that exploits a proletariat here, and another there simultaneously, but international exploitation allows national exploitation and vice versa. It is not that the powers take away part of the proceeds of the poor bourgeoisie, or remove from them some value that otherwise would remain in their hands, no. On the contrary: the extraction and plunder of the value that is taken out of the country, benefits the local export and commercial layer. Hence, it is not true that the bourgeoisies of poor countries are subject or obliged to stay behind, but that backwardness is what benefits them. They don’t lack capitalist spirit, but on the contrary: they pursue capitalist motives with the greatest force. They are international agents of the world market, not simply national.
Geopolitics is generally seen as a contradiction between nation-states, when in reality the bourgeoisies of the "oppressed" countries are agents and partners of the superpowers. Colonialism does not come from "outside" the nation only, but it is internal; it is not only "foreign", but local. If the great powers have advantages in commercial surpluses or purchasing power, or have a higher profit rate in poor countries, this means greater purchasing power and higher profit rates for the bourgeoisie here. The currencies of the great powers are so repreciated with regard to poor currencies like the colón (in Costa Rica), that they need a very small amount of capital to import many more costa rican products, creating unequal terms of trade. And the exporters and the commercial capital receive their profit also in that foreign currency (dollars, in the case of the American currency, or any other currency highly repreciated and with hegemony in foreign trade exchanges), putting them in the same position of having a greater purchasing power together with the great powers. The same goes for low production costs in poor countries and the arrival of foreign investment or multinationals: the profit rate of these multinational companies is the same as that of the local bourgeoisie. Whenever the rate of profit rises or purchasing power rises (for example measured by the PPP or purchasing power parity) for the currencies of strong countries, the rate of profit and the purchasing power of the exporting and commercial bourgeoisies of weak countries also rises. They are connected by the same economic mechanism, so to speak. And this mechanism is international. It has nothing to do with a bourgeoisie that exploits a proletariat here, and another there simultaneously, but international exploitation allows national exploitation and vice versa. It is not that the powers take away part of the proceeds of the poor bourgeoisie, or remove from them some value that otherwise would remain in their hands, no. On the contrary: the extraction and plunder of the value that is taken out of the country, benefits the local export and commercial layer. Hence, it is not true that the bourgeoisies of poor countries are subject or obliged to stay behind, but that backwardness is what benefits them. They don’t lack capitalist spirit, but on the contrary: they pursue capitalist motives with the greatest force. They are international agents of the world market, not simply national.
This completely contradicts nationalism: in the nationalist theory of the world market, each nation-state is exploited by its respective bourgeoisie, and the emergence of the foreign nation-state comes to take away the value produced outside the country. If it were not for the appearance of this foreign nation-state, the nation would have much more local value, and the national bourgeoisie would seize much more value. This is the famous dependence or subordination of the lumpen bourgeoisie of the "third world" against the great powers, or is supposed to be so. But this is not true. The neo-colonial lumpen bourgeoisie of commercial capital and the export sector of weak countries perceives exactly the same mechanism of benefit than a multinational from a super power, with the great difference of the absolute mass of profit (probably due to the high productivity of labor, relative surplus value as opposed to absolute capital gains, etc) and the exchange rates in one society or another. Agricultural and industrial capital, on the other hand, depends and is subject not only to foreign or multinational capital, but to commercial capital and the type of export model. Once the third industrial revolution allows the industrialization of poor countries without breaking the export model, then the industrial bourgeoisie (and then services, etc) will be subsumed not by the world market through commercial opening, but by the world market through this mechanism of rate of profit and purchasing power of the foreign currency of strong countries. Although this implies that both exporting agricultural and industrial capital belong to the same international mechanism, this does not eliminate the predominance of commercial capital thanks to the export-import model: whether agricultural or industrial products, commercial capital will always extract its profit margin indifferently. It will make profit not only from the export of products, but also by the agricultural or industrial needs of imports (inputs), and by the aggregate demand in general of a country dependent on imports for its consumption. Therefore, there is no "Third World" bourgeoisie (especially exporting and commercial) that does not benefit from economic exploitation in the same way as a foreign company or bourgeoisie: the rate of profit and the purchasing power of the currency they have increases or it is reduced by benefiting or harming these bourgeois layers in the same exact way.
This can help explain how a transition is possible just like the one we live in today, where Southeast Asia and the Pacific leads in gross capital formation, exports of capital goods, and industrial and high technology value added, and at the same time co-existing with the great powers of the Triad: the transformation is not a break in an asymmetric relationship between powerful and weak nations, but there was never an asymmetry to break; beyond the absolute masses of profit and the relative relations between the nominal exchange rates, the rate of profit and the purchasing power of the foreign currency still benefits the bourgeoisies of the Triad and of Southeast Asia equally and in the same way. The absolute difference in the mass of profits (reflected in the high GDP of Southeast Asia and the BRICS in general), would simply allow to reproduce the ratio of capital exports that existed between north and south, or between metropolitan countries and peripheries, or between great powers and weak countries. And this in effect is what we see with the rise of multinationals in emerging countries. Each time they buy more assets, invest in portfolio or make mergers & acquisitions with companies and in regions of the Triad. If we take Paul Baran as reference, it is possible to say that there is no longer only multinational extraction of value from the north to the south, but in all directions.
But as the world market was based not on an essential difference between central and peripheral countries, but rather on the contrary: in their communion through this profit and monetary mechanism, and all the nation-states of the world were agents of financial capital and capitalist in the same way, these recent transformations in the hegemony within the world market do not produce the rupture of an asymmetry, but rather sustain a classical characteristic of capitalism and the international world market. Hence, although the BRICS imply a great geopolitical change in the market, this does not mean that they will become the new central countries and that the central countries will become peripheries. Apparently the process is more complex: powers like those of Southeast Asia and the Pacific would reach the Triad, or in the same way as China or India, but without overcoming the power reached to this point in history by the Triad itself. The roles are not reversed, and China or India will not begin to colonize Europe or the United States as in the nineteenth century, but will acquire and are acquiring such a weight within the world market as to redefine geopolitics in a completely different way than that of the simple and plain domination of the Triad. The comparisons with ultra-imperialism are eloquent, of course, with the difference unnoticed by Kautsky , that other countries seem to be entering imperialist 'predatory wars' when they were formerly “third-world” neo-colonies: for example Turkey in Afrin and Syria, Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Iran in both territories. All are countries with the characteristics mentioned here, especially their entry into multinational competition in the world market. They do not seem to be 'proxy' wars, but open forms of "Third World" countries subordinating weaker countries with imperial intentions and agendas. In a way, this is not a surprise, since that is precisely the point of the text: the mechanism of rate of profit and foreign currency shared by the bourgeoisies of the Triad with the smaller or weak bourgeoisies, makes all the nation-states agents of imperialism. There are no blocks of "Third World" bourgeoisies that do not benefit economically through the same mechanism as the multinational bourgeoisie. What happens, and the great difference today, is that previously weak countries are reaching the degree of development of central countries, and this is altering the geopolitical scenario. It is a transformation of neo-colonialism: all countries become susceptible to colonization, and all countries become susceptible to enforce colonization. It is the internationalization of neo-colonialism, just as the export of capital exports and surplus value exploitation in all directions of the world market. All countries, even the smallest, enter into the game of exporting imperial capital (Brazilian multinationals exploit Costa Rica, as well as South African multinationals exploit sub-Saharan Africa), but only with enormous and abysmal divergences between some economies and others. More precisely, and not to forget the asymmetries: although all countries now participate in the export of imperialist capital, not all do it in the same magnitude. Transformations in the hierarchies between societies will then depend on the international / multinational monopolistic profit rate.
Moreover: despite the rise of the BRICS and other acronyms for emerging countries, there are still heterogeneities that put themselves in the way of such a radical inversion in which the countries, for example, of Southeast Asia, become powers such as those of the Triad. There are factors in their economies that still hinder such a scenario. From the fragmentation of integration, the number of small and medium enterprises, the dependence on exports, the absence of vertical integration, and the lack of support for the internal market, etc, all prevent them (even China) from being compared with the Triad. We insist: more than an 'inversion' between the roles of the north and the south, it is a 'repositioning'. It is not that the countries of the South have suddenly become 'imperialist', but that they have always been, and that ability and possibility of becoming imperialist countries at the same level of super powers is finding its unfolding in the world market.
