A Little Aside on "Imperialism",
I realize that a previous post mentioned the fallacy of the popular leftist impression that the ordinary American person is a "beneficiary" of something called "imperialism". This view is held by Leninists and those influenced by them more as a matter of religious dogma than as anything attempting to "explain reality". But it is also held to by the American left for reasons other than lazy habit. It helps them to hold to some very self-defeating (in the sense of gaining popular approval) beliefs that have some very valuable (in the sense of reinforcing the psychological benefits of illusionary "superiority" vis-a-vis ordinary Americans that the "left"-including too many anarchists!- clings to today).
Let's try to convince those who believe in politics to adhere to "the scientific method" - or the simple common sense that science is a distillation of. Everything here is a matter of publicly available statistics, and you can verify it for yourself. Begin with the GDP of the USA and then go to the GNP. Note the following. The balance of payments for the the USA has been "negative" for decades. In other words the "profits drained" from the USA exceed the profits imported. Seems like the USA is the "victim" of imperialism rather than the other way around.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, let's assume that such gross economic statistics can't tell the whole story. Let's examine the record of trade and "economic transfers" between the USA and the rest of the world. Little comfort for leftists here. About 2/3rds to 75 % of US trade and economic transfers are carried out between the USA and other developed countries. That leaves about 1/3rd of these transfers to buttress the case of the guilt mongers in the American left.
Examine these numbers closely, and see if the ordinary American makes a dollar a year from "exploitation" of the 'Third World'.
Note that I don't deny the "reality" of imperialism here in terms of the desire of national entities to control "strategic resources". What I convinced myself of over 30 years ago and what has become even more apparent since then is that the economic theory of the "left" has been perverted for domestic reasons. It has elevated anecdotal evidence to the level of "laws" while ignoring the total picture. It has done this because it is no longer a "left" in the traditional sense of wanting to change it own society. It has become a "left" whose opponents are not the ruling class but rather a majority of the population in the countries that this left inhabits.
All the nonsense that the left produces hangs together upon this simple fact.
More later,
Molly