CRIME OF EMPIRE:  A Case Against Globalization

and Third World Poverty as a World System

By Ricco Alejandro Santos

Sidelakes Press and Literary Agency

LA, CA, 2003.  599 pages

The book, Crime of Empire, is an attempt to help provide answers to the burning questions of the day:  what is globalization and is it good for the world's people?  Will it bring about real development in the third world?  Has the third world turned capitalist already, and if so or if not, then why? 

Part A reviews and synthesizes the most important and relevant ideas of Marx, especially his mature ideas in Capital.  Part B updates information about monopoly capitalism and monopoly pricing in the capitalist world.  Part C describes the imperialist and semicolonial plunder of the third world, through unfair and unequal trade, direct and speculative investment.  Part D provides a factual picture of the semifeudal nature of the third world.  Part E ends the book with an explanation of the logic underlying an imperialist-capitalist world interdependent with a semicolonial-feudalistic third world, and its impact on world poverty, jobs, health and safety, the environment, and consciousness.

In the spirit of scientific rigor and on the basis of Marx's theory, the book arrives at precise computations of the unpaid value from unequal exchange and investment in the third world that make up half of the superprofits of monopoly capitalism worldwide (1.4 trillion U.S. dollars in 1997) and constitute the outflow from  the Philippines of at least two thirds (nearly PhP 2 trillion or 67 billion U.S. dollars in 1997) of its real income.   It also supplies concrete figures proving that the Philippine economy remains semifeudal.

Prof. Jose Ma. Sison and Juliet de Lima-Sison have described the book as a " brilliant product of the author’s ceaseless efforts to deepen and broaden our understanding of the oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism and thereby to help sharpen the revolutionary struggle of the people for national and social liberation from the persistent semi-colonial and semi-feudal conditions in the Philippines".

AVAILABLE AT POPULAR BOOK STORE, near Timog Circle, Q.C.  372-20-50.  For particulars, please contact Ms. Julie Po.

Back to top

We want to know what you think of this article.