this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
32 points (97.1% liked)

marxism

3688 readers
21 users here now

For the study of Marxism, and all the tendencies that fall beneath it.

Read Lenin.

Resources below are from r/communism101. Post suggestions for better resources and we'll update them.

Study Guides

Explanations

Libraries

Bookstores

Book PDFs

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I was watching this interview with Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff, and Hudson said something that I completely accepted at first, but mulling it over now it seems contradictory. He says that the IMF and World Bank, as neo-colonial powers, arrest the development of capitalism within the colonized countries, by enforcing austerity and making them privatize everything. He says that the purpose of doing this is to prevent the saturation that happens naturally as local finance capital develops and begins to deindustrialize the economy, which grinds industrial development to a halt as finance capitalists only exist as leeches that make their money by creating rents.

Now, where I take issue with this analysis, is that a great deal of what the IMF and World Bank do is steer countries into privatizing public healthcare, education, and other natural monopolies. When these services are public, they don't hold industry back from booming because they take care of a significant social cost, so if the state takes care of them the state is subsidizing industry to keep developing. Yet when they're private, they hold a monopoly position and exploit it to charge rent on everyone else because of the obvious necessity for these services. This keeps industry from developing.

If imperialists need the industrial capacity of the periphery, why kneecap it with privatization?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You might be interested in the following lectures about the financialization of healthcare through the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is an arm of the World Bank:

Part 1: Marco Angelo

Part 2: Maria Jose Romero

Part 3: Sarah Hughes-McClure

Part 4: Felix Stein

The short version is that you’re dealing with finance capitalists who have a lot of profit to make by financializing the healthcare sector of peripheral countries, whereas Michael Hudson was talking about industrial capitalists who wanted to maximize profit through industrial labor. These two are diametrically opposed to one another and their oppositions can manifest in the Global South as well.

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago

I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

Link 1:

Link 2:

Link 3:

Link 4: