than the dictatorship of finance capital.
The supremacy of finance capital over industrial capital is a sure sign of historically low profit rates in manufacturing, which has been the case since the 1974-5 recession. Surplus capital is then swivelled towards financial operations, of which. these huge speculative bubble on Wall Street in the mid-'80s and again in the late *90s was one expression. "Financialisation' affects business as a whole, with multinational corporations using profits to establish their own banks and conduct their own forms of financial speculation. Companies sank or swam on their share prices not their expected profits, leading tions.
In capitalism there is no Chinese wall between economics and politics, there is just a division of labour between the structures which have as their agenda one or other aspect of the system.
Further, there is a hierarchy of states with the United States at its apex, and the poor countries of the South at the bottom. Marxists have usually described this whole interlocking system with the term 'imperialism'. How does this affect what global justice campaigners do politically?
There is no doubt that the campaigns against McDonalds, Nike and the rest, the fight against sweatshop labour, the fight to a frenzy of company mergers and i against unjust trade conditions, the fight : A FASCINATING insight into the motivation of Rwanda in maintaining its partial occupation of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been provided by the Financial Times.
Correspondent James Lamont reports that Rwanda has now pulled its troops out as a result of the dramatic fall in the market price of Tantalite -a mineral used in the production of micro-chips for the computer industry.
When Tantalite prices were at their height -5240 per pound - the 23.000 Rwandan troops in Congo in October: Congo were plundering supplies worth as much as S20m per month from the occupied area.
But after companies began to find alternatives
Tantalite, the price has now slumped to between $20.530 per pound. effectively removing the financial incentive to maintain the occupation.
The last of che Rwandan soldiers withdrew from
Similar plundering expenditions had also been carried out by forces from Uganda and Zimbabwe. Just more proof that war can be very profitable.
page 14 of the scan
European Social Forum