/edu/ - Education

>Why would the vast majority of capitalists benefit from colonialism?
They don't need to.
If the East India Company is the only beneficiary of colonialism they are still going to do it.
There are plenty of intra-class conflicts that exist. The bourgeoisie are by no means united on all matters. The only ones you can really take as a given are private property rights and the bourgeois state.
>They obviously benefit more from decentralized, competitive, non-monopolized supply chains, and keeping costs down isn't their only economic interest.
There's several parts to this, let's break them down.
>decentralized
Actually no, capitalism is more efficient when it's monopolized which means the tendency is to seek vertical integration (owning all steps of producing a given thing) and horizontal integration (owning competitors and other semi-related industries). The overwhelming tendency under capitalism is consolidation, because (A) it's harder for your competitors to buy you, (B) economy of scale makes production more efficient, (C) the basic operation of capitalism is based on accumulation: M->C->M' where the ' denotes an increase.
>competitive
Absolutely not, businesses actively avoid competition and have historically had to be forced to compete instead of engaging in price fixing and similar practices. And of course part of the appeal of buying competitors is to reduce competition. Sometimes they do this and don't even use them as a subsidiary, just sell off their assets afterward because the point was to remove a competitor.
>non-monopolized
Monopolies have had to be actively regulated against (and that still doesn't do much). Monopolies are only disliked by consumers and governments for the most part (the latter because they pose a threat to power).
>keeping costs down isn't their only economic interest.
Costs down and profits high. They may have long-run economic interests that would favor a "healthy economy" but this doesn't matter because the way corporations make decisions doesn't generally account for that. They must be responsive to their shareholders on a quarterly basis or else their stock price drops.

>Maybe I can get how the aristocracy and some settlers benefitted from it, but for the bourgeoisie as a whole, it just doesn't make sense.
You're correct, it doesn't necessarily benefit most of the bourgeoisie. They don't need to benefit however, because colonialism was carried out by particular groups within the bourgeoisie, those capitalists running companies that were actively involved in and profiting from colonialism. The petty-bourgeois shoe shop owner in the imperial core probably didn't directly benefit from colonialism that much (a bigger leather market for example), and the indirect benefits are pretty small compared to the profits reaped by the colonial bourgeoisie. It's those directly involved in colonialism and linked to the national wealth management who are seeing most of the plunder.

>I don't like the vulgar "Marxist" attempt to connect European colonialism to the rise of capitalism, instead of seeing it as a more pre-capitalist historical attempt at accumulating mercantile wealth which was eventually overtaken by industrialization which itself catalyzed the century-long process of decolonization.
Well, the pre-capitalist conditions helped produce the capitalist conditions, so there's a definite historical link there. And of course during the rise and prominence of capitalism there has been a continuing colonial project. So they do are connected. It's not quite as simple as "capitalism is what happens when Europeans do colonialism" or something like that, but the two systems can and do work together very effectively. Decolonization doesn't really spell the end of colonialism so much as the transformation into neo-colonialism which achieves similar results through more "persuasive" means (economic extortion, vid related).

>>19301
>video
The US government "printing" USD doesn't mean it creates value out of nowhere. Those US dollars get circulated in value creating markets where they help drive up liquidity between different forms of value. The fact that a country in Africa uses US dollars to denote exchange is also nothing like colonialism.

>>19302
denote international exchange*

>>19302
>The US government "printing" USD doesn't mean it creates value out of nowhere.
Correct.
What it does mean is that it controls the units of measurement of value in which the world tracks debts. This means two things:
1. The US controls the rate at which values measured in US dollars appreciate or depreciate by controlling the money supply.
2. In order to pay down debts owed in US dollars, the debtor must acquire US dollars. That means they must engage in business that pays in US dollars, which means that they must produce use-values that concretely benefit the US (can be traded for currency the US controls).

>Those US dollars get circulated in value creating markets where they help drive up liquidity between different forms of value. The fact that a country in Africa uses US dollars to denote exchange is also nothing like colonialism.
It's not the fact that the currency circulates there, but the fact that the debts owed by that African country or other entities located there are owed in US dollars and must be paid down in US dollars, meaning they must acquire US dollars, meaning they must deal with the US. This is explained in the video. It's not long.

>>19304
>The US controls the rate at which values measured in US dollars appreciate or depreciate by controlling the money supply
No, they don't. They can regulate, but they're not gods.
>the fact that the debts owed by that African country or other entities located there are owed in US dollars and must be paid down in US dollars, meaning they must acquire US dollars, meaning they must deal with the US
You have this the wrong way around. Countries deal in US dollars because they want access to the US economy, the most powerful industrial economy in the world.

>>19305
>Countries deal in US dollars because they want access to the US economy, the most powerful industrial economy in the world.
lurk moar

>>19305
>Countries deal in US dollars because they want access to the US economy, the most powerful industrial economy in the world.
no, countries deal in dollars because the United States has global political hegemony backed up by violence. They sanction people who misbehave, who try to exert economic sovereignty, who try to design their own independent political and/or financial systems.

>>19302
This guy tries to argue against the basic tenants of Michael Hudson when the US government itself uses his books as training material for their military staff and central bankers so they can understand the exploitative nature of their montary system better lol. The basic bitch econ 101 shit your are spouting doesn't hold up in reality.

>>19307
Why does a merchant/capitalist in Nigeria need to use a regional currency when they mostly trade beyond the region and need an international reserve currency from an internationally significant industrialized economy as a result?

>>19300
>Why would the vast majority of capitalists benefit from colonialism? They obviously benefit more from decentralized, competitive, non-monopolized supply chains
colonialism makes foreign territories into "decentralized, competitive, non-monopolized supply chains" while keeping domestic shit planned and subsidized. imperial core markets control and exploit periphery markets. comprador bourgeoisie versus national bourgeoisie. learn the difference.

primitive accumulation. the world was enclosed & proletarianized by colonialization. the current situation of nominal sovereignty and neocolonial largely financial & diplomatic now indeed benefits the bourgeoisie more, which is why the post-war US was fine with and in some cases eager to see the decline of the old european empires

>>19311
also, its not that it was in the "self-interest" of capitalists as a class of people to pursue colonialism, its that capitalists self-interests are tied to the basic tendencies of capital reproduction, which includes the expansion to new markets (including new labor markets to drop the price of wages). yes, such tendencies are often self-undermining, capitalism contains its own contradictions and so far has successfully cannibalized itself when faced with them

>>19300
The English invested their colonial wealth in industrial expansion, while the other early colonial powers spent money on their militaries instead. The former outcompeted the latter and became dominant.

Industrialization benefitted colonialism for the first bit
Industrial scale production in the metropole meant that they could easily begin to economically dominate the artisanal economies of their colonies by exporting their surplus to them
The skyrocketing demand for cotton by industrial textile mills meant that slave plantations in the southern US prospered, even buying more slaves to scale up for the new demand
Of course, industrialization inevitably had to spread and rely on more efficient wage labor for even raw material extraction, leading to the abolition of chattel slavery and eventually decolonization, but for a while it was responsible for some of the most feverish peaks of colonialism

>>19301
>Video
Oh the guy whose economic analysis is virtually fucking identical to the economic theories of the Third Reich?

>>19309
Because the last time someone tried creating an alternative international currency for the people of Africa to use, NATO came in guns blazing and wrecked the place so hard it hasn't recovered to this day.

>>19302
given you need dollars to do international trade, especially for oil….
yeah its effectively a colonial tax retard

>>19310
Nah, it's just bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. Learn the non-difference.
>>19316
It was NATO that stopped the idea that literally no one wanted anyways. Amazing analysis.
>>19317
>international trade is a colonial tax
Stick to calling people "retards" for having the wrong opinion on anime video games

>>19308
Not who you're responding to, but proof, any links or evidence on US Govt using Michael Hudson's work for military staff or central bankers?

>>19319
They don't. Capitalists have more complex interests than just getting something for cheap.

>>19307
>countries deal in dollars because the United States has global political hegemony backed up by violence
That's in the background, but the other person is essentially right. This is from Tony Norfield's "The City":
>Given the fact that most world trade and finance is denominated in dollars, the US can be seen as the provider of ‘global money’, able to decide which policies to pursue based upon its domestic interests and on what it deems viable for the global economic and monetary system.25 However, the mechanism through which this power is exerted is usually discussed in purely political terms, for example by citing the inordinate influence of the US on the regulation of international finance and on the policies of the IMF. The economic mechanism is left to one side. Yet it is this that illustrates most clearly how the financial system is a means of exercising such power.
>An exceptional, but realistic and practical example will illustrate the point. Consider what happens when a company in China needs to pay Venezuela for oil imports. At first sight, no US company, still less the US state, would appear to be involved in this transaction, and neither country has a friendly political relationship with the US. Nevertheless, a US-based company will normally be involved in the deal and US state acquiescence is necessary. This is because oil is priced in US dollars and the payment, for example $50m, will go through the US banking system. The Chinese company does not post dollar cash from Beijing to Caracas in a large envelope! The companies in each country will likely have a US dollar account with their local banks. However, these accounts will be held in the US monetary system, possibly via a US ‘correspondent’ bank with which they have dealings or the US branch of the relevant Chinese or Venezuelan bank, if it is allowed to operate in the US. The Chinese company will tell its bank to credit the Venezuelan company’s dollar account with $50m, either by deducting the sum from its existing dollar account or by asking the bank to exchange the appropriate amount of its local currency into dollars. In either case, it is the US-based bank that will, on behalf of the Chinese company, transfer $50m to the account of the Venezuelan company at another US-based bank. The dollar transfer between banks is made via a payments system based in the US, either the Fedwire Funds Service, which is under the direct supervision of the US Federal Reserve or, more usually, the Clearing House Interbank Payments System, a privately run international bank-owned system whose US membership is regulated by the US government.
>If the Chinese and Venezuelan companies did not want to use the US banking system, they would have to agree on a separate, nondollar-based means of transacting. This could be done, but it would mean agreeing on another currency basis for the deal, for example either Venezuela accepting China’s renminbi (ISO dealing code CNY) in payment,26 or China agreeing to pay in terms of Venezuela’s bolivar (ISO code VEF). This would mean that the Venezuelan company would end up with CNY, which it may have little use for and which it might then need to exchange into VEF. Or, the Chinese company would have to buy VEF to deliver to the Venezuelan company. There is a relatively active foreign exchange market in USD versus CNY and in USD versus VEF, but the foreign exchange costs of dealing in CNY against VEF are relatively high, given that very few banks do this, and it may not be easy to do such a deal in terms of market liquidity, making it commercially unattractive. In any case, in existing financial market conditions, the CNY-VEF exchange rate transaction would probably be done via the US dollar as the intermediary currency (sell CNY and buy USD, then sell USD and buy VEF). But of course this would return the transaction to the US system! The consequence of all these aspects of currency dealing is that even the opponents of US imperialism tend to fall under its commercial rules.
>Given the role of the dollar in world trade and finance, a company planning to make significant and repeated foreign deals will need a bank account in US dollars. Some countries have agreed barter deals to avoid such foreign exchange transactions, for example, exchanging barrels of oil for a quantity of other goods. But this is even more cumbersome: what is the exchange rate of a barrel of crude oil in terms of tractors, cement, sheet steel or televisions?
>While there have been attempts by political opponents of the US to bypass the dollar with direct deals – as with plans initiated in 2009 by Russia and China – for some time to come this will leave the US government with an astonishing power to isolate opponents economically. This can happen without the US necessarily having to do anything extra in the political or military sphere, although such measures often follow. All it need do is declare economic relationships with a particular country out of bounds and that country’s economic links with the rest of the world will be severely restricted, putting its economy under drastic pressure. The impact does not depend on a country dealing directly with the US, only with its banking system, even indirectly as in the previous example. Furthermore, even if a country in political conflict with the US plans to avoid dealing in dollars altogether, thus avoiding these restrictions, the US government can still, in practice, prevent other countries’ banks from dealing with the targeted country. As one legal adviser in Dubai, which has close business relationships with Iran, noted in relation to US sanctions on the latter:
<The real tipping point was at the end of 2011, with the latest round of US banking sanctions, potentially exposing non-US banks to sanctions by the US … That was a real wake-up call for banks outside the US still dealing with Iran. They didn’t want to run the risk of being cut off from the US banking system.27
>Being cut off from the US banking system would severely damage a major company’s international business operations, so the real power of this sanction is that it rarely has to be implemented. A number of major international banks in Europe and Japan have escaped this penalty after paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to the US government, apologising profusely and promising not to do it again.28 The US has found it easy to threaten other countries in this way whenever it so wishes. The fact that there has been widespread compliance with US policy, particularly in Europe, indicates that financial power is a tool that can be used against other rich countries, not only those that are evidently subordinate in the world hierarchy.
>Another dimension of US financial power derives from the Federal Reserve’s provision of dollar liquidity to global financial markets. All central banks influence the availability of funds, and the level of interest rates, in their domestic monetary system, but the international role of the US dollar makes the US central bank critical for the functioning of the global system. In ‘normal’ times, the Fed need play no role, and private banking relationships will service the liquidity needs of the market. However, the financial crisis of recent years has put the Fed more obviously in a key position. It has provided extra funds, for a fee, to the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and other central banks to redistribute to their local banks and support financial market stability. The New York Times reported on why this move was also in US interests:
>In recent days some European banks have faced difficulties in borrowing dollars, whether from other banks or from money market funds in the United States. There was fear that if they could not borrow dollars, they would be forced to cut off loans to American companies or sell dollar-denominated assets, perhaps forcing prices down in already unsteady markets.29
>The vulnerability of the European banks was a consequence of much of their business being conducted in US dollars, especially for international trade finance, so that it was (and is) critical for them to be able to access dollar funds. This illustrates once again how the US is arguably in an even more privileged position in the midst of a financial crisis, even if it did not necessarily profit much from these particular funding operations.

>>19321
>capitalists have interests before accumulating more capital as much as possible
Retard confirmed.

>>19323
Raw material isn't capital. Please stick to calling people "retards" for insulting your favorite loli rape simulator and leave actual stuff to actual people.

>>19321
yes, but no