This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.
Welcome to the eighth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.
We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.
Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.
This week, we will be reading Chapter 7: Isolating the Communist Bloc, which is approximately 16 pages.
Imperialism Reading Group:
(apologies if you haven't been pinged for a bit, I had a mixup in my ping list)
This week, the Americans want free trade for everybody except the people they hate and cannot exploit.
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That bit at the end:
"Free trade gave way to blocism and protectionism, and open investment policies to controls over international capital movements. American planners brought about precisely the drive for Soviet-style self-sufficiency that they had hoped to thwart. The isolation of Russia accelerated rather than removed its movement to become an independent national economy. It was the US economy that first became removed by the costs of the Cold War as Vietnam finally made it clear that the cost of pursuing a policy of economically isolating the Soviet Bloc was self-defeating."
My god, the present-day parallels (quite literally, American policies happening in the last week or so).
Michael Hudson is very big in China and should be bigger in the west.
Very interesting when I got to that segment, you're right, it seems almost comically relevant.