The failure of mainstream development policy to deliver on the promise of eradicating global poverty is increasingly difficult to deny (World Bank 2024). As a result, theories of global development are opening to alternative and critical approaches. In this context there has been a renewal of interest in dependency theory as a rich heterodox tradition of political economy (Kvangraven 2021; Chilcote and Sal茅m Vasconcelos 2022; Antunes de Oliveira and Kvangraven 2024). In a , I turned to one of the foundational scholars of dependency, Walter Rodney (1942-1980), to work through some of the strengths and limits of dependency theory for contemporary studies (Johnson 2023).
It is an uncontroversial observation that the history of capitalist development in South America is characterised by its subsumption to global capital accumulation through the production and export of agricultural and mining commodities for the world market. From this common starting point, however, there emerge divergent ways to account for the reproduction, and development limits, of this mode of insertion into the global economy. For many working in Latin American traditions of political economy it is almost common sense to assume, depending on one鈥檚 political and theoretical tastes, that a combination of centre-periphery power relations such as imperialism, monopoly capital, declining terms of trade and/or super-exploitation are the conceptual tools to understand, analyse, and strategize the overcoming of so-called 鈥榗ommodity dependence鈥� and embark on genuine development. It is noteworthy that in this new book – , edited by Javiera Rojas Cifuentes, Gabriel Rivas Castro, Mauricio Fuentes Salvo, and Juan Kornblihtt, not only are these concepts eschewed but their underlying trade premise 鈥� the transfer of 鈥榮urplus鈥� from periphery to the centre through mechanisms such as 鈥榰nequal exchange鈥� 鈥� is turned on its head. As opposed to structural power relations operating as the barrier to development, this collection opens an internal window onto the impotence of capital to develop the productive forces and, in doing so, offers distinctive strategic implications for the centralised organisation of working-class political action across the region.
The book builds on work that has been developed under the auspices of the in Buenos Aires, following the original contributions of Argentine scholar Juan I帽igo-Carrera to the Marxian critique of political economy. It is I帽igo-Carrera鈥檚 opening chapter that frames the distinguishing features of this Marxian scholarship and the original critique of structuralist and dependency theories of Latin American development. Rather than the pitfalls of international exchange determined by direct power relations between geo-spatial containers, the cause of uneven development in South America is predicated on the valorisation of capital through its position in the international division of labour through production relations. This bears emphasis because, for all the authors, capital is not an asymmetric relation between countries, a factor of production, a social group, or a firm wielding monopoly power but an objectified general social relation of private and independent production (i.e., capitalism), subsumed under the movement of formation of the general rate of profit. Indeed, the antagonistic formation of the general rate profit is the concrete form in which capital organises and reproduces itself as a social relation behind the backs of states, capitalists, labour, and landlords. The crucial category here, and what all the chapters demonstrate, is the extent to which capital valorises in South America, as an aliquot part of the international division of labour of global capitalism, through the appropriation of ground rent.
In a compelling new contribution in the journal Development and Change, a political economy collective led by builds a strong case against calls to 鈥渦niversalize鈥� Development Studies shifting the focus from 鈥淚nternational鈥� to 鈥淕lobal鈥� Development. Indeed, many such calls at universalization 鈥� at least in the two influential 鈥減andemic papers鈥� the collective thoroughly revises, one is main-authored by and the other by 鈥� are misguided. As convincingly argued by the collective, these calls tone down the structural historical nature of the Global North-Global South divide; they erase development paradigms and understandings from the Global South and trivialize the nature of challenges emerging from long histories of colonialization and plunder, which still regenerate along global value chains and networks, as authors like have shown, as well as distinct regimes of social reproduction and contemporary crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as I explain here and .
Yet, universalizing and globalizing are not the same thing; they can be operated in distinct ways, and through entirely different intellectual projects. Moreover, the discipline of Development Studies, in its mainstream dominant avatar, badly needs 鈥済lobalizing,鈥� given its Eurocentrism 鈥� yet in ways that center the experiences in/of the majority world; think through plural frameworks and locations; and speak to the extraordinarily diverse material realities and practices of power, inequality, and subordination across our planet. Crucially, such experiences, realities, and practices are, at once, the result of trajectories mediated by the Global North-Global South Divide, as emphasized in critical International Development frameworks, yet also always been global in nature 鈥� calling for Global Development lenses 鈥� unlike what narrow development economic theorizing heavily relying on modernization theory has and still suggest/ed. Ultimately, one may wonder: in the debate between 鈥淚nternational鈥� and 鈥淕lobal鈥� Development, why and what exactly do we need to choose?
Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang is a brilliant, best-selling critic of neoliberal orthodoxy. But Chang stops far short of taking the necessary next step: questioning the capitalist system itself.
Ha-Joon Chang is a rarity in the contemporary world: an聽聽who is highly critical of the neoliberal free-market orthodoxy, advocates progressive social change, writes and speaks accessibly, and is very, very popular.
Chang鈥檚 books have sold millions of copies, and he is a regular contributor to mainstream media outlets. According to Chang himself, his aim is not simply to challenge free-market orthodoxy, but also to support, through his work, the kind of 鈥渁ctive economic citizenship鈥� that will demand 鈥渢he right courses of action from those in decision-making positions.鈥�
While socialists can learn a lot from Ha-Joon Chang鈥檚 work, we also need to read it critically and identify some of the gaps in his thinking. Chang鈥檚 self-professed aspiration is to promote an alternative form of capitalism, but our goal should be to develop an alternative聽迟辞听capitalism.
The commodity supercycle of the 2000s and 2010s gave rise to a rich debate in the academic literature about the possibility for resource-rich countries to muster the primary commodity price bonanza for development. As in past debates on the rise of Asia as the 鈥榳orld鈥檚 factory鈥�, industrial policy was once again at the forefront of discussion.
On the one hand, orthodox scholars insisted that the use of market distortions to channel resources towards industrialisation would be a risky gamble with little guarantee of success. Instead, as the Asian 鈥榯igers鈥� and China before them, developing countries would do well to make good use of the market to identify their comparative advantages. In this view, industrial policy continues to be inefficient and wasteful, especially as it creates plenty of opportunities for corruption rather than development. On the other hand, heterodox researchers argued that state intervention was crucial to divert resource rents to specific nascent industries that would never be able to withstand international competition without sustained support. As both the Asian 鈥榯igers鈥� and China more recently used robust industrial policy to develop globally competitive industries, developing countries should also use targeted policy intervention to 鈥榰pgrade鈥� to higher value-added manufacturing for export.
Still, one question that eludes both orthodox and heterodox literature concerns why, for decades, multinational corporations would consistently invest in manufacturing in resource-rich countries such as, for instance, Argentina, Brazil, and Egypt. This has been the case despite the small scale and high costs of production in these markets (making them inefficient, per orthodox scholars), whose output is mostly sold domestically rather than exported (pace heterodox scholars).
In a in Competition & Change, I applied Argentinian scholar 鈥檚 on Marx to the under-researched case study of the car industry in Uzbekistan to answer precisely this question. I found this same orthodox-heterodox binary to dominate the literature on 鈥榯ransition鈥� from the command to the market economy in Uzbekistan, too. Orthodox researchers averred that state-owned auto company UzAvtoSanoat failed to develop due to inefficiency and corruption, in particular due to the distortions of the government鈥檚 industrial policy. Heterodox scholars instead found industrial policy to be the very reason behind the creation of a successful export-oriented car industry, in particular during the commodity supercycle when part of total output was exported mostly to Russia. Neither, however, could explain why Korean Daewoo Motor Company (DMC) and American General Motors (GM) entered into a joint-venture with UzAvtoSanoat, despite the small domestic scale (hence high costs) of automobile production in the country, which is mostly purchased domestically.
It is widely believed that Marx did not systematically consider the role of colonialism within the process of capital accumulation. According 迟辞听, Marx concentrated on a self-closed national economy in his main work. Although he did mention colonialism in Part 8 of聽Capital聽Volume 1 on the so-called primitive accumulation, this would only belong to a pre-history of capital, not to its everyday development. Based on a similar assumption, some postcolonial scholars criticise Marx for being Eurocentric, even a complicit supporter of Western imperialism, who ignored the agency of non-Western people.
If we read some we could think that they are right. How can we explain otherwise Marx and Engels praising the role of the bourgeoisie drawing even the most barbarian nations into civilisation or the view that the liberation of colonised peoples depended on the victory of the revolution in Europe?
Before I start, let me make a short premise. In my first book I read Marx鈥檚 Capital in the light of his writings and articles on Ireland, China, India, Russia, and the American Civil War. At the time I believed that Marx only published a significant, but still limited amount of writings on the colonial question, those available in the Collected Works and in collections like Marx & Colonialism. But then in 2007 I worked at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, contributing to the complete edition of Marx鈥檚 and Engels鈥檚 writings. I thus 鈥渄iscovered鈥� some of Marx鈥檚 20,000 print page long notebooks (just to give you an idea, the printed notebooks alone would look like a new Collected Works). These writings show that Marx was interested in colonialism all his life, including when he wrote the Manifesto.
What came out of my reading? Let me start with the question of Marx鈥檚 field of analysis in聽Capital聽Volume 1. To analyse capital reproduction 鈥榠n its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances鈥�, Marx treats the world of commerce as one nation (1976: 727) and presupposes the full worldwide imposition of the capitalist mode of production. Does this mean that Marx analysed a 鈥渟elf-enclosed national economy鈥� as Harvey and others believe? In my view, this abstraction means exactly the opposite. Marx鈥檚 positing a coincidence between the national and global levels is a premise for conceptualising the world market, which includes both internal and foreign markets of all nations participating in it. This abstraction makes it possible to include expansionism into the analysis of capital accumulation. In this framework, a country鈥檚 economic system is not confined within its national borders but consists of all production branches where capital is freely transferable, including the colonies and dependent economies.
In his , Zimbabwe鈥檚 Finance and Economic Development Minister, Hon. Prof. Mthuli Ncube identified rising inflation and currency depreciation as the major challenges requiring 鈥渢he support of all stakeholders and citizens鈥�. Zimbabwe is failing to ward off persistent inflation. According to Ncube鈥檚 mid-term budget report, headline inflation increased from 60.7% in January to 191.6% in June 2022.
In this post, I will argue that whilst price and the exchange rate have some importance, preoccupation with them can constrain economic development. I start off by giving a brief background of inflation in Zimbabwe as well as inflation targeting policies, before arguing that sheepishly pursuing currency and price stability equates to commodity fetishism. I then look at the real beneficiaries of price and currency stabilisation policies. Finally, I attempt to demystify value and price in Zimbabwe鈥檚 context.
Cambridge Journal of Economics Special Issue / Deadline for submitting papers via CJE refereeing process: 30th April 2022.
2023 marks the fortieth year since the passing of Joan Robinson and her one-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary. This special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics aims at presenting a collection of papers that reflect the extraordinary breadth of Robinson鈥檚 career and examine what insights these might offer the economics profession and policy makers to address our seemingly most intractable problems of inadequate demand, rising margins with falling competition, and widespread and seemingly intransigent inequality and its consequences. For Robinson the purpose of our discipline is in understanding the real world to enable all global citizens to enjoy life to the full. It is therefore fitting that we follow her lead and demand that we ask of ourselves whether we have done enough to address her challenges to economic theory.
Despite making her international reputation in the Marshallian tradition of economics, she came to regard her generalisation of John Maynard Keynes鈥檚 theories and their integration with Kaleckian and Marxian insights as her more substantial contribution, along with a vigorous defence of rigorous evidence-based thought over inductive mathematical modelling. Among an impressive body of work, three books by Robinson mark key moments in the evolution of her ideas: The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933), An Essay on Marxian Economics (1942), and The Accumulation of Capital (1956) (Marcuzzo, 2003).
In 1933, she made her international reputation with brilliant work within the orthodoxy on imperfect competition, offering an internal critique of the marginalist theory of distribution. Only a decade later, her reflections on reading Karl Marx persuaded Robinson to question the Marshallian methodology, in particular its polite theory of income distribution which became so incongruous during and after the depression (Marcuzzo, 2003).1 Finally, in 1956, she had the courage to follow the logic of her argument to examine the whole neoclassical theory of income distribution and its predominant method, facing the might of the now dominant American economics profession in the [in]famous capital controversy. She had to accept the pyrrhic victory of her interlocutors accepting she was right, yet the profession moving on regardless.
黑料社区 