{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":183,"pdf_page":183,"physical_index":183,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a9db4d8988587063ded12b30f002072651677f1206e8324b64435b1f1b0a64d3"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Even in Britain . . . the significance of capital exports has declined tremendously: latterly they have run at about 2 percent of gross national product compared with 8 percent in the period before World War One; they now absorb less than 10 percent of savings compared with some 50 percent before; and returns on foreign investment have been running at slightly over 2 percent of national income compared with . . .10 percent in 1 914.54\n\nThe foreign investment that did take place was decreasingly directed towards the less industrialised parts of the world: \"The concentration of activity is increasingly within the developed world, leaving all but a few developing countries outside the reach of the new dynamism\". 55\n\nThere was also a shift in the demand for Third World products. Raw materials from agricultural countries had been indispensable for industrial production in the West before the First World War, and colonial control was an important way for industrialised countries to ensure their own supplies and block access to their rivals. But now there were synthetic substitutes for most raw materials-artificial fertilisers, synthetic rubber, rayon, nylon, plastics. A parallel transformation of agriculture in Western Europe and North America reduced food imports from the rest of the world. By the late 1 950s withdrawal from colonies in Africa and Asia was no longer the threat it would once have been to the industrialists of the European countries. Companies which had made their fortunes from plantations and mines of the Global South began to diversify their investments into new lines of business.\n\nThere was one great exception to this picture-oil. Here was the raw material of raw materials, the ingredient for manufacturing plastics, synthetic rubber and artificial fibres, as well as providing for massively expanding energy needs and propelling the ever greater proliferation of motor vehicles, tanks and aircraft. And the supplies of it were increasingly to be found outside Europe and North America. By the mid-1970s Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and the petty sheikhdoms around the Arabian Peninsula were the countries that mattered-as was shown by the temporary interruption of supplies during the Arab-Israeli war of 1 973. It was not an accident that the one version of old style colonialism that continued to get untrammelled support from all the Western states was the settler state of Israel-fostered in its early years as a \"Jewish homeland\" by British imperialism, armed for its seizure of 78 percent of Palestine in 1 948 by the US and the USSR, allied with Britain and France in their attack on Egypt in 1 956, and backed wholeheartedly by the US in the aggression that gave it control of the rest of Palestine in June 1967.56\n\nThe Long Boom\n\n183","previous_page":182,"next_page":184}