Zak Cope - The Wealth of (Some) Nations: Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer

The Wealth of (Some) Nations

Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer

Zak Cope

First published 2019 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Zak Cope 2019

The right of Zak Cope to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 3886 6 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3885 9 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0417 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0419 8 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0418 1 EPUB eBook

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America

FIGURES

TABLES

I would like to acknowledge the late Malcolm Caldwell as the author of a brilliant 1977 book with (almost) the same title as the present work. I would like to thank Immanuel Ness of City University New York for his personal and professional support, and Timothy Kerswell of the University of Macau and Gerry McAleavy of the University of Ulster for the opportunities and encouragement they have given me. I would also like to thank David Shulman of Pluto Press for his insights and his constructive comments on the draft manuscript of the present work, and Elaine Ross of Pluto Press for her careful work on the manuscript. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife Brona, and my young daughter, Aoibhe, for always being there for me. This book is dedicated to them with love.

The Wealth of (Some) Nations builds on the analysis presented in my earlier work examining the segmentation and stratification of the labour market in the capitalist world system and its effects on the dynamics of the global class structure. It explains the hierarchical division of labour internationally as the product of imperialism and relates this to the present crisis of capitalism. The book argues that for a century at least the Western left has largely repudiated labour internationalism in favour of struggles to procure for itself a larger share of value extracted from oppressed nations. The book aims to establish a durable strategic orientation for the labour movement in the contemporary era as based on consistent anti-imperialism and opposition to the sectional privileges enjoyed by metropolitan, settler and native labour aristocratic workers over their counterparts in and from oppressed nations. The book develops a clear and detailed theoretical account of the mechanics of value transfer from the global South to the global North, and presents recent data providing empirical evidence to support its theoretical claims.

The book presents a taxonomy of the labour aristocracy raising the concept to new prominence by documenting in detail the ways in which a bourgeois section of the working class is established in and through imperialism. Hitherto, there has been a variety of theories of the labour aristocracy.

Considering these views, and especially those of writers such as H. W. Edwards, Arghiri Emmanuel, Samir Amin, Hosea Jaffe, Torkil Lauesen and Henry Park, the present work defines the labour aristocracy as that section of the international working class whose relatively high incomes, more comfortable occupations and greater social security are dependent upon the expropriation of value from the exploited nations. Even within the imperialist countries, the lower wages, job opportunities, housing conditions, health care provision and labour market precarity of the poorest sections of the metropolitan working class cannot be properly understood without acknowledgement of the legacy and ongoing reality of imperialism and labour aristocratic privilege.

The book argues that capitalism is inherently a system of imperialist international political economy. Imperialism is conceived as a historical and ongoing transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest countries in the world economy through the mechanisms of colonial tribute, monopoly rent and unequal exchange. Imperialism produces an international class structure characterised by the unequal occupational division of labour and the unequal remuneration of labour internationally such that mass embourgeoisement may be observed in the leading imperialist countries. As such, The Wealth of (Some) Nations examines a subject that is virtually taboo on the left, namely, the connection between imperialism and the massive disparity in living standards between workers in the First World and workers in the Third World. It thereby fills a necessary gap in the established fields of dependency theory, world systems theory and imperialism theory. While these schools of thought tend to concentrate on the impoverishment of the global South and the enrichment of the global North, they do not usually examine how the attendant processes transfigure the class structure internationally. In particular, the extent to which ever larger transfers of value from abroad produce processes of de-proletarianisation and embourgeoisement in the major imperialist countries is largely unaccounted for in much left analysis. Likewise, the problems that enduring imperialist relations pose for socialist struggle internationally remain unclear. This work is intended to contribute to the labour movements understanding of international solidarity, emphasising that this means much more than distinct subsections of the global working class winning a larger share of the national income. Building on the anti-imperialist writings of a wide plethora of scholars and political activists, both historical and contemporary, the book argues that the ostensibly socialist struggles waged by the metropolitan working class extend its incorporation into imperialist institutions insofar as much of the material wealth to be made available for redistribution is the product of the exploitation of nations. Whereas even the most insightful critics of imperialism tend to reduce the phenomenon to the capture of additional profits by monopolies, the book argues that imperialism affords the mass labour aristocracy of the developed countries high wages, abundant leisure time and white-collar employment at the expense of labour in the underdeveloped countries.

Part I of the book articulates in depth and with reference to the large body of scholarly literature key concepts in the political economy of imperialism, namely, value transfer, colonial tribute, monopoly rent and unequal exchange. These are the key mechanisms by which imperialism operates, ensuring the transfer of value from the global South to the global North. describes the unequal exchange of embodied labour whereby divergent sums of productive labour are exchanged in international commodities trade, leading to a huge drain of value and capital from the global South and affording a concomitant economic advantage to both capitalists and workers in the global North.

Part II of the work presents various empirical calculations and findings on international value transfer, providing an evidence base in favour of the existence of the labour aristocracy. I attempt to calculate the quantum of value extracted from the global South by means of the mechanisms of value transfer identified in earlier chapters of the book, and by providing current data on the material position of the labour aristocracy itself. compares the foregoing estimates of transfer value to the value of profits, wages and fixed capital in the global North. It also compares transfer value to the costs of various social and economic goods in the global South (including the costs of poverty reduction and the elimination of hunger, as well as the value of savings and capital investment therein). In describing how divergent rates of exploitation internationally have profound consequences in terms of the wealth that workers in different countries consume, I compare total contribution to global production to share of total working class and middle class household consumption for the worlds population, ranked in order of income deciles.