essay outline 09 Feb 2 post & Feb 9 post
Essay topic: Compare the impact of core-peri. integration on the lives of …
Peripheries integrate into Core countries’:
• Market (Capitalism)
• Production
• Ruling Class
• Ideology
•Thesis: (an example)
•Successive stages of capitalism intrude into the economies of India and Honduras, structure the core-periphery relations, establish market power & integrate them into the world-system.
•Colonial power has imposed capitalism on a subsistence economy. The capitalist market commodifies the land, instigates class conflicts, and inserts the superiority of Western values on Rukmani’s village.
The next stage, market power shaped by corporate capitalism, i.e., MNCs in Honduras, acquire land for export production, integrate international elites, and use religion as an ideology to control the poor from resisting the inequities
Hypothesis 1: Differential impact of the capitalist market on India & Honduras.
Hypothesis 2: Production: Cr controls the economic power to make decisions on Peri.’s land use; In Peri., control of land shifts from the community to the market.
Hypothesis 3: Interests of the ruling Classes of Cr and Peri. are integrated by capital accumulation.
Hypothesis 4: The Ideology of the “Whiteman’s Burden” (a blend of colonial/corporate power & religious ideology) discredits the local values to promote westernization
Outline of H 1: Differential impact of the capitalist market on:
India:
• British colonial capital: market (factory: tannery) power intrudes into Rukmani’s village
• Disintegrates the community
• First stage of integration into the world system.
Honduras:
• MNC’s corporate capital: Investment in export of fruit
• Tightens the integration into the global market
• Elite appropriation of common land belonging to the rural poor.
Outline of H. 2: Production: Cr controls the economic power to make decisions on Peri.’s land use; In Peri., control of land shifts from the community to the market
India:
• Cr’s industrial market demands for raw materials
turns village land into a commodity
• Rukmani loses her customary right to cultivate the land
Honduras:
• MNCs and local elites deprive Elvia of her right to access poor people’s common land.
• MNCs & local elites profit from the demand in the world market for Hondura’s agriculturalexports.
Outline of H. 3: Interests of the ruling classes:
India:
• Colonial capitalism (e.g., factory) destroyed the sense community and created a hierarchy of class interests.
Honduras:
•Corporate capitalism (MNC) polarized the society into the powerful vs. powerless: the propertied elites (political or military or economic) vs. landless poor.
Outline of H. 4: The Ideology of the “Whiteman’s Burden” (a blend of colonial/corporate power & religious ideology) discredits the local values to promote westernization
• Superiority of the West and destruction of the community
• Commodification of commonly shared resources and resulting destitution.
Detailed discussion with examples, of the 4 Hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Differential impact of the capitalist market on India & Honduras:
•The power of market capitalism advances through successive periods of world market development:
•16th –mid 20th C: Colonial: Nectar in a sieve
•Mid-20th C on: Corporate: Don’t be Afraid
World Market :
• Commodity & financial instruments traded globally
• Trade based on supply and demand
• Bid for buying
Two stages of capitalist market integration & control:
•1. Colonial: (16th C -20th C): Imperial power of the colonizing states push commodities into the world Market, e.g.: Rukmani’s village becomes a target for raw materials for the world market
•2. Post-colonial: Corporations begin to establish their monopolies in the world market, e.g., Honduran fruit and raw materials are exported to the world market
Colonial capital & market integration: Evolution of capitalism: (“Nectar …” ).
• Colonial trade & Mercantile capital
• Peri.’s Labour moves to Cr’s capital
• Rise of Industrial capital & factory system
Power of the corporate capital & MNC’s: (“Don’t Be Afraid…”)
• Cr’s MNCs & Corporate capital
• Cr’s Finance capital moves to peri.s’ labour
• Rise of Monopoly capital in the Cr
Corporate capital: MNCs
• economic power and ownership of capital is concentrated in the hands of a small number of powerful corporations.
• Concentration of capital into large monopolistic or oligopolistic holdings by banks and financiers
India: colonial/ imperial power
1. Colonial trade in raw materials accumulates mercantile capital
2. Industrialization process
•Mechanical energy and technology
•Emergence of the factory system
Honduras
- MNCs are Direct Foreign Investments (DFI)
- Accumulation of Finance capital (Banks and foreign investors)
- Military & foreign weapons
4. Rise of monopoly capital
Hypothesis 2: Production: economic power to make decisions on land use, shifts from the community to market
India:
Impact of the changes in production on Rukmani:
•What happened to her land?
•What happened to local food production?
•What happened to community’s survival?
India:
- Colonialism changed the ownership of all landed property in India to private hands and eliminates the communal land in villages
- These changes released a mass of landless workers (serfs) for international labour market
- Throughout the 19th C, the poor lost their subsistence due to loss of land.
- Millions faced famine every two years.
- Desperate, starving, land-less Indian peasants - British rule bankrupted the Indian economy.
Hypothesis 2: Production: economic power to make decisions on land use, shifts from the community to market : Honduras
Impact of the corporate production on Elvia:
•What happened to the land once owned by the native population?
•What was the corporate interest in Honduras?
•Why did food producing land become a Commodity?
•1913 on: American banana companies control plantations and production
•Until 1950s: Honduras was the world's leading source of bananas (MNCs capital production)
•Now: account for about 30 % of the export value
•Agriculture contributes about 25 % of GNP and most foreign exchange
•Land ownership: concentrated in the hands of the richer classes & MNCs
•Banana MNCs own 5 % all agricultural land
•Exports. bananas, coffee, meat, and sugar.
Source: (accessed Aug 2007)
How was land production transformed through the two stages of capitalist market power?
India:
Commodity: buy & sell for profit
•Rukmani’s land becomes a commodity for sale
• Elvia’s communal land becomes a means for accumulating corporate profit
•How do owners of export products view the needs of the poor in a subsistence economy?
Rukmani’s concept of productive use of land :
• Grows pumpkin (10, 13)
• She predicts market relations (28)
• Tenancy & land ownership: (31, 132)
• Seed (75)
• Drought & water (76)
• Working the land (48)
• Labour supply to Ceylon (67)
Owners’ and investors’ concept of the land & production for the market :
Land as commodity:
•Moneylender: profit from pawn shop ( 73)
•Foreigners: invest capital for extracting rawmaterial (26-28)
• Zamindar: profits from increase in land value - a result of the factory
Honduras: Peasants’ view of the land’s productive use:
•For producing food for subsistence (17)
•Surplus crops for cash for basic needs (18)
•Land distribution to peasants (xvi-xxv)
Honduras:
Land & production: Views of the military, politicians, and the richer classes:
• Capital investment in fruit and mines
• Export of resources
• Maintain control of land with weapons(32)
• Corporate profit from the world market
Export value: $1.5 billion (2004)
Hypothesis 3: Power of the ruling Class:
Self-interest (Marglin)
Why affluent countries promote the power of individualism in the III World?
market profit
‘modernization’
Which of the following is useful for the poor to maintain their counterbalancing power?
Self-interest
or
Interdependence in a community
Self-interest in ‘Nectar…’
Creates a hierarchy of classes:
- Owner class: Zamindar, investors, & money lender:
Interests: Make profit, accumulate capital & increase their wealth.
2. Middle class: Go-between or overseer
Interests: self-interest (26, 72, 76)
3. Working class: tenants and factory workers:
Subsistence on land
Subsistence wages
Unemployment
Insecurity & loss of life
Classes in Honduras: ( ‘Don’t be Afraid…’)
- Propertied classes, political rulers & military elite
Capital accumulation, political stability, urban housing developments, domestic workers, consumer goods etc.
2. Middle class: Police, military, bureaucracy, religious leaders
3. Working class: Native Indians
Dependence on govt. distribution of land
Lack of basic needs
Unemployment
Military oppression against resistance
Hypothesis 4: Ideological power of the “Whiteman’s Burden” (a blend of colonial/ corporate & religious power)
What do the missionary or church think of the poor countries and people?
•Rukmani, Elvia and their people consider the missionary & the church initially as helpful
•The missionary and the church consider the poor people as backward and therefore responsible for their poverty
Why do the missionary & church not continue to help the village or the community?
• Colonial or corporate interests
• Belief in Whiteman's burden
• blame the poor for not being ‘modern’ like the West
Religion conceals the exploitive power of the West’s self interest:
Colonial extraction:
•Market for raw materials (leather)
•Import of technology (factory)
•Instant urbanization (town)
•Impoverishment of rural people
Corporate extraction:
•Monopoly in the world market (tropical fruit)
•Capital investment in poor countries (UNFC)
•Military presence justified as fighters against communism (against El Salvador)
•Impoverishment of the poor (Elvia & others)
•Why do we use an ideological metaphor for understanding world problems?
•White Man’s burden: Eurocentric view of the world and global economy
• Missionary (Nectar …p111)
• Church (Don’t be…p.31)
What are the solutions?
• Reject the historical White Man’s Burden
• Reject the cultural superiority of the West
• Acknowledge the uniqueness of each
country’s social and political culture
• Foster a development path suitable to each country (Marglin).
Conclusion:
Integration of markets, production and ruling classes into the world system:
•Core countries: (see, WST: PUT-NDL)
• P: Militarily strong
• U: Appropriate much of the surplus of the whole world-economy
• DL: Concentrate on higher-skill, capital-intensive production
• Peripheral countries:
• P: powerlessness & poor economies
• U: low trading value & cheap labour
• DL: focus on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials
Integration of markets production and ruling classes into the world system (cont’d):
Ruling classes (in core (Cr) & peripheral (Peri.) countries)
• Colonial: rulers vs. ruled
• Corporate:
• Both Cr & Peri. economic and political elites share the same ideology of power and profit.
•It solidifies the common bond between ruling groups in Cr & Peri. , which ensure their affluence.
ODL (colonial) and NDL (corporate)
• A single division of labor within one world market: Cr controls capital and Peri. supplies cheap labour
Here ends the essay test answer
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For your ready reference of WST and PUT NDL (Notes on WST: PUT NDL)
lec3 sep29 08
What is human poverty:
Lack of basic needs:
Food
Water
Shelter
Clothing
Which arguments of the DW authors exemplify WST’s explanation on ‘development’?
WST explains:
- World system represents a hierarchy of power
- The system reinforces unequal trade relations between core and peripheral countries, which increases differential flow of surplus to the core
- Technology is a central factor in the positioning of a region in the core or the periphery.
- The world-system is a "multicultural territorial division of labor.”
- New Division of Labour (NDL): Periphery does labor-intensive and the Core does capital-intensive production
PUT-NDL
Ppower
Uunequal exchange
Ttechnology
NDLnew division of labour