• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      7 hours ago

      China and Russia are not imperialist, they are closer to global south countries in their position with respect to imperialism as a global phenomenon. In order to fight the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, capital either seeks new markets, ie new inventions to flood with capital or geographically new markets, or it seeks to establish monopoly. The former allows for greater profits in absolute terms, the latter temporarily raises the rate of profit. The natural consequence is imperialism, where this is combined by having financial capital dominate the global south, super-exploiting labor for super-profits, and via unequal exchange, where technology and tech development is kept in the global north and thus monopoly prices are charged.

      This is also why south-south trade is the path to escape underdevelopment, and is why China in particular has been a progressive force for the global south, as they don’t withold tech knowledge but instead share it through cooperation and trade. China also doesn’t charge the same monopoly prices for tech, which is why global south countries are seeing huge electrification, expansions in EVs, etc.

      The west used to have a monopoly on cutting edge tech, they witheld the technology used for creating firearms from African countries for hundreds of years while selectively trading firearms in limited quantities for huge amounts of slaves, as an example. The west forces the global south to rely on them, and forces them into remaining at lower levels of industrial development and refinement. It’s also why countries like the Sahel States are working towards cutting unrefined gold exports and upping refined gold exports, ie moving from unfinished raw materials into more finished goods or ancillary materials, and why porkie is terrified of them.

      It isn’t that goods further along in the commodity production process have more valuable labor time at the higher end, it’s that the upper end of the production chain is easier to keep a tech and skill monopoly on. This is what liberals mean by “higher value add” industries, made more naked through Marxist analysis.