Poverty

[core_1]

I have a strong impression that the third world is locked in a position of poverty by the advanced capitalist countries. I basically know it but I don't no why and I cant elaborate on it.
So how is the the third world economically exploited??
hxc cheers!

[gla22]

Long answer but in short the consumers with the desire and ability to pay for a good dictates what is produced and where it is distributed. The first world countries have a populace with the desire and the ability to consume so a large amount of goods are shipped to the U.S and Europe while the third world countries produce but they don't have the means to consume.

[mykittyhasaboner]

basically put its like this.

the vast amount of wealth that is accumulated by first world/imperialist nations(USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan etc) is consolidated by the ruling classes of those states, and distributed among their own populations unequally. because of the inequality of wealth, each nation is trying to accumulate more and more capital via natural resources, technologies, industry, arms/military operations.

the third world lacks the amount of wealth that 1st/2nd world nations have, so they depend on trade with advanced capitalist countries to sustain themselves. when there is a high demand for certain products (i.e. petroleum, food etc) monopolies are created by multi-national corporations to control and dominate the trade market of that product.

[Decolonize The Left]

I have a strong impression that the third world is locked in a position of poverty by the advanced capitalist countries. I basically know it but I don't no why and I cant elaborate on it.
So how is the the third world economically exploited??
hxc cheers!

This sounds like a question about dependency theory. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_theory)'s the wikipedia article. And this is a caption from the "basics" section which can be found through the link:
"
The premises of dependency theory are as follows:


Poor nations provide market access to wealthy nations (e.g., by allowing their people to buy manufactured goods and obsolete or used goods from wealthy nations), permitting the wealthy nations to enjoy a higher standard of living.
Wealthy nations actively (though perhaps unconsciously) perpetuate a state of dependence by various means. This influence may be multifaceted, involving economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics), media control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model), politics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics), banking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking) and finance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance), education (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education), culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture), sport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport), and all aspects of human resource (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources) development (including recruitment and training of workers).
Wealthy nations actively counter attempts by dependent nations to resist their influences by means of economic sanctions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sanctions) and/or the use of military force.

Consistent with these assumptions, many dependency theorists advocate social revolution as an effective means to the reduction of economic disparities in the world system."

Does this answer your question?

- August

[jake williams]

The picture is complex (as we're talking about total world economic relations), but there are many factors that contribute to the belief that the now-wealthy countries are at least in part responsible for the poverty of the least poor countries. I can offer a few off of the top of my head for you to look into, because I've been researching the issue specifically for awhile.

- Debt & Aid. One of the most important systems in international finance is the process by which wealthy countries "lend" money to poorer countries, sometimes calling it "aid" because we always save the day, and it is squandered, often by very undemocratic governments, on things like trinkets for the wealthy and American weapons, the latter sometimes used for "internal security". Because it's a "loan" though, and these countries are poor and can't pay them back, they end up with huge interest they can't pay off. So because they end up indebted and poor, they need more Western saviours to give them "aid". You essentially get whole countries on their third mortgage.

- Violence. The history of Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Arab world is replete with examples where the West or West-backed governments fight huge, massively destructive wars against the local population, typically against "leftist" (real or claimed) or nationalist forces. Vietnam, Indonesia, Iraq, Nicaragua, Angola, all over the place. This has killed millions upon millions of people and destroyed whole societies and economies. It's not a recent phenomenon either, I'm just naming recent cases. It's been the same deal for the entire history of imperialism.

- Trade policy. There's strong evidence that protectionism and large state intervention are the best, maybe only way to develop a national economy except in very rare cases. There's evidence that the large economies today, both in the West and on the Pacific Rim, developed exactly this way. American economist Ha-Joon Chang has probably done the best and most direct work on this. But these countries enforce through political, military an economic means an orthordoxy whereby poor countries are not allowed to do this, and they're not able to develop. This point is actually fairly simple. Trade policy is also used to essentially steal resources.

- Capitalism. Taking the definition that capital is property used to develop wealth, or in a money economy is wealth; and given that capitalism is based on the private ownership of capital and its use to develop more capital, with a tendency to take it from others who have less capital; the imposition or maintenance of capitalism in the world today explicitly calls for a strengthening of the wealth and development gap between countries. Capitalism tells us that it is moral to have the rich countries we do and the poor countries we do, and moreover, wealth itself is considered a moral virtue and those that have it should be given more, and those that don't have it deserve less. It's a very sick system.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Well its pretty simple. Capitalism is a zero sum game. Zero sum games are situations where there is a certain amount of x to be won, and that is it. Under capitalism that x is what we call wealth. Think of it as a big money pie. Because capitalism is based on the extraction of value from working people there are some folk with enormous slices, and others with very small slices. This is a game with a few winners and a whole lot of losers. No matter how much education or other opportunities you provide, there will always be some that employ and others that have to work.

Now when you apply this to global economics, a similar thing occurs. Because there is a limited body of wealth, third world nations do not receive a larger slice of the pie. They are perennially locked into their tiny slice, via imperialist machinations of developed capital. The only way that they can change this is to grab hold of a larger slice, displacing some other nation. We this with China, Ireland, and some of the other Asian tigers. But while these nations have developed, Africa has gone from a developing economy to a undeveloping economy. Economic output has collapsed in Africa while the Tigers become powerhouses. We see then that capitalist "development" is not necessarily some magical miracle, but the process of reshuffling capital from one part of the globe to another.

[jake williams]

Well its pretty simple. Capitalism is a zero sum game. Zero sum games are situations where there is a certain amount of x to be won, and that is it. Under capitalism that x is what we call wealth. Think of it as a big money pie. Because capitalism is based on the extraction of value from working people there are some folk with enormous slices, and others with very small slices. This is a game with a few winners and a whole lot of losers. No matter how much education or other opportunities you provide, there will always be some that employ and others that have to work.

Now when you apply this to global economics, a similar thing occurs. Because there is a limited body of wealth, third world nations do not receive a larger slice of the pie. They are perennially locked into their tiny slice, via imperialist machinations of developed capital. The only way that they can change this is to grab hold of a larger slice, displacing some other nation. We this with China, Ireland, and some of the other Asian tigers. But while these nations have developed, Africa has gone from a developing economy to a undeveloping economy. Economic output has collapsed in Africa while the Tigers become powerhouses. We see then that capitalist "development" is not necessarily some magical miracle, but the process of reshuffling capital from one part of the globe to another.
This is very generally very true, but it's not absolute. One of the biggest problems with neoclassical economics is its radical dedication to oversimplification, and we shouldn't do the same thing. There are some times that workers gain in relative or absolute terms, even within capitalism, which isn't itself a pure system (because it can't be).

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

This is very generally very true, but it's not absolute. One of the biggest problems with neoclassical economics is its radical dedication to oversimplification, and we shouldn't do the same thing. There are some times that workers gain in relative or absolute terms, even within capitalism, which isn't itself a pure system (because it can't be).


Workers gain, but usually at the expense of the ownership class. Workers in the first world had it pretty well during the 60s when the ownership class had to give back a larger proportion of their profits. Now the divide is broadening as the cappies steal more.

[trivas7]

OT but it's good to remember that two-thirds of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day. :blink:

[Lost In Translation]

I have a strong impression that the third world is locked in a position of poverty by the advanced capitalist countries. I basically know it but I don't no why and I cant elaborate on it.
So how is the the third world economically exploited??
hxc cheers!
It's like what the other comrades have said.

The wealth gained by the countries in the northern hemisphere keeps circulating in the Northern Hemisphere (sometimes down to the southern capitalist countries). All the capitalist countries are doing is play catch with their money. Sometimes they lose a lot (like the US), and they end up going in debt. None of this money is used to make SUBSTANTIAL improvements in the lives of people in developing nations. In many cases, the leaders there are totalitarian and corrupt. You could say the Red Cross, World Vision, and Doctors Without Borders are doing their part, but as a whole, the developed nations aren't doing much.

I remember when the Boxing Day Tsunamis occured. Many countries pledged money. However, a very small fraction (something like 10%) was actually donated in cold hard cash. Even then, there is still corruption in the ranks, and an even smaller amount of money reaches those in need.

Hope that answers your question.

[Dros]

I find it sad that the word imperialism has only been used once in this thread despite the fact that that one word essentially answers the OP's question.

The Third World is "locked" in a position of poverty because the first and second world coercively remove the capital that they generate through imperialism.