América Latina: ¿clase media de las naciones?

ey. But on the whole the desmilitarizationof Japan has meant de faeto America,n hegemony in the military fieJd. This l'elationship was stabilized by the rather unusual and contro. versial Chapter 2, Artide 9, of the Constitution of }apan. Under this provision, the peopIe of Japan would aspire to peace and "for ever renounee was. as asovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling intemational disputes". The Artide was originalJy interpreted to mean that Japan would not maintain any land, sea or air forees, 'or permit other war potential on its sou. But subse. quent constitutional usage has permítted. mínimal forces of self><defen. se. However, Japan is on the whole a case of self.castration in the mrIitary fieId. Lenin did not reeognise any distinction between subjugation of one industrialized country by another (macro.dependeney) and ¡rope– ria:list subjugationof an underdeveloped. country by an industrialized one (vertical dependency). Kaut:sky had asserted: 1 , "Imperi:Ílism i5 a product of highly deve10ped industrial capital. It consi5t in the striving of every industria! capitalist nation to bring under its control or to ilnnex larger and la:rger areasof agracian terd– tory, irrespective of what nations inhabit those regions." Lenin rejects this formulation as '~utterly worthless because it. .. Arbitrarily and inaccurately connects this questions only with indus– trial capital in the countries which annex other nations, and in an equaHy arbitr.ary and inaccurate manner pushes into the forefront the annexation of agradan regions". unin continues to emphasize tbat the dialectic of imperialism in– cluded a strivrng for annexation, but it was not simpIy a case of in. dustrial states sceking ,agrarian calonies. 2 uThe chll'racteristk feature of imperialism 1S precisely that it stri– ves to annex not only agrarian territories but ev,en most highly indus– 'trialized regions (German appetite for Belgium, Freneh appetite for Lorraine) ..." This was a rejection oi any clear distinction between vertical de. pendency and macro~dependency. Others later on might have referred also to the Soviet Union's appetite for the Baltic States, or for por– tions of Polrund and Fioland. unin mistook the dynarnic oi impeda. lism fo! the dynarnic of capit,ali$m. In the history of the West, the two were indced inter-coonected; but history has since prov,ed that the abolition of capita1ism in a major power was no guarantee that the power would not become imperialistic. 1 Die Nene Zeit, 1914, 2, Vol. 32, p. 909, Séptember 11, 1914. The emphasis is K~utsky's. 2 Lenin, InI,perialism, op. cit., pp. 783-784. 71