It's not the outcome anywhere in the world. Name a country that is deeply impoverished primarily as a result of the growth of wealth in other countries. Maybe you're thinking of scenarios like the Banana Wars; there is an overlap where imperialists and businesses get along just fine, I fully acknowledge, but that's usually because of protectionist sentiments. Further, even if that counts as capitalism, it isn't what holds nations down long-term. It creates temporary war and economic depression, then usually followed by a gradual improvement of the citizens' standard of living. Cuba was wealthier under an admittedly shitty capitalist leader than under Castro. Venezuela was far wealthier in the 1950s when they sold their oil freely rather than every time the government tried to nationalize things and kick the capitalists out. Almost every nation that could currently be called third world is either
1) An African hellhole with no respect of property rights (a fundamental component of capitalism)
2) A landlocked ex-USSR -stan with no natural resources (limited ability to trade) and more interest in Russian than English (the language of capitalism)
3) North Korea
Frankly, denying the universal benefits of global trade should be treated like denying the Holocaust. The former has certainly killed more than the latter.
I don't deny the benefits of global trade. I'd agree that capitalism was a positive development in the history of a) economic productivity and b) individual prosperity, and that globalism is directly responsible for the level of technological development we enjoy today. One critical aspect of capitalist development, however, is that it's historically tied to the dynamics of imperialist expansion, which is part of what Deleuze and Guattari describe as the modern State. Given this historical connection, it's impossible to extricate poverty from success.
You respond to many of my points already, which is that protectionism and imperialism were crucial components of capitalism (and still are today, to perhaps a lesser degree). You suggest that this leads to "temporary war and economic depression," which is accurate; but it's not followed by significant improvement of the standard of living for all citizens (additionally, all citizens didn't enjoy higher standards of living before communist revolutions; only some did). More often than not, the extraction of imperialist powers either a) opens the door for corrupt local officials to swoop in and take over, or b) establishes a dictatorial regime that leads to the kinds of coups we see in Cuba and Afghanistan. The resultant effects aren't unrelated to the capitalist efforts of imperialist nations that colonized and occupied these territories. Venezuela's current situation isn't a result of their government's meddling or "kicking the capitalists out"; it's an effect of the 1973 oil embargo and its lingering impact. Likewise, as Orwell suggests in the piece quoted by Dak, India's poverty was an effect of Britain's domestic standard-of-living (that is, the British could enjoy the products and wealth that they did only because India couldn't fully enjoy the fruits of their labor, most of which went to the Brits). This is all part of global markets and trade as much as it is part of government meddling or other purportedly "anti-market" activities.
I won't deny that countries like Cuba and Venezuela are poorly managed and that their internal economic policies are insufficient. I won't deny that capitalism has done more for global development in the past two centuries than socialism. I will deny that capitalism can solve the third world's problems.
The current economic standing of countries like Afghanistan, Guinea, Haiti, and of colonies like Puerto Rico, are results of capitalist history. There's no way around this point. Does that mean capitalism is
primarily responsible for their current situations? I won't argue that, no, because I don't think I have enough information to figure out what the primary factors are. But I can say with certainty that these situations aren't unrelated to capitalist intervention over the past century or more.
Ok, but the mode of living pre-capitalism was material poverty for like 99.5% percent of persons, and even well to do persons didn't enjoy the material comforts a "welfare queen" has access to. Blaming poverty on capitalism where capitalism has not penetrated to any significant degree either lacks knowledge or shows a baldfaced agenda.
But capitalism has "penetrated" the places I'm talking about. Countries don't need to have established capitalist economies in order to experience its global effects.
Socialism is simply an ideology of transfer of existing wealth, so of course it can't exist on its own past the depletion of capital, as it lacks any system of its own for productivity.
Exactly--there you go.
This quote has a tenuous connection to any historical timelines or economic theory, and doesn't follow from the quote from D&G. While the Third World is understood from a post-industrial revolution framework, the industrial revolution didn't cause the conditions in the third world. Those conditions already existed, and only are recognized as problematic due to the improvement in places which embraced capitalism. Socialism is post-capitalism, but can't differentiate itself not because of the existence of capitalism, but because it is purely a robbing peter to pay paul scheme - it doesn't offer a functional alternative mode of production.
I'm not saying that capitalism or the industrial revolution
caused conditions of poverty, and that's not what D&G say either. Saying that A relies on B is not the same as saying that A causes or creates B.
The allure of capitalism is that it has the capacity to extract production and value from impoverished regions by exploiting the poverty that already exists. This isn't in itself a bad thing; but once goods are produced they're often distributed elsewhere, and most of the value accumulates in other regions. So the standard of living for those in the third world might increase slightly; but this increase is disproportionate to the massive amounts of wealth distributed elsewhere as a result of third world labor and resources. This is why first-world countries often enjoy such high standards of living (for some people, at least).
The third world is neither a logical or empirical outcome of capitalism unless one wants to argue purely on a semantic basis. I agree that capitalism cannot empower everyone - someone with Downs or some other severe handicap cannot contribute, and as technology progresses, the list of who cannot contribute will continue to grow. However, the surplus and even the "trash" generated by these advancements renders concerns moot, at least relative to alternative modes of economic theory.
If you don't agree then you don't agree.
