Capitalism, development, imperialism, globalization: a tale of four concepts

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns a series of controversies that have surrounded the concepts of ‘development’, ‘globalization’ and ‘imperialism’ – controversies as to whether or how these concepts can serve as descriptors of capitalist development. The paper provides an overview and critique of the dominant discourse on these concepts from a critical development studies perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Development
• globalization
• imperialism
• capitalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 On this emerging tradition see Veltmeyer and Bowles (2017).

2 Although Marx did not theorize the contribution of imperialism in the evolution of capitalism as a world system his later works include a rather extensive discussion of oppression in Britain's colonies (Ireland and India in the periphery) by British imperialism, and African slavery in conditions of colonial rule. Also, although Britain invested capital in India by undertaking a vast construction of railway networks across the subcontinent, it did so to extract raw materials for its own further development back home – what we describe and discuss below as the advance of extractive capital and extractive imperialism. I cite here the comments made in this connection by a review of this paper.

3 This raises several questions about an ongoing debate surrounding the advance of resource-seeking ‘extractive’ capital in the capitalist development process unfolding on the Latin America periphery of the world system. At issue in this debate is the source and diverse components of the ‘surplus’ generated in this process, as well as mechanisms of appropriation of this surplus. The theoretical point – which we cannot go into for lack of space (but see Petras & Veltmeyer, 2014) – is that the contribution of labour in the form of surplus value is only one, and not the dominant, factor in this surplus and its appropriation; other factors include the exchange value of nature's bounty of natural resources, which in colonial times were extracted under conditions of slave labour rather than wage labour, the value of which is appropriated in the form of ground and resource rents, which, when added to technology rents, exceed the production of surplus value. In addition, the surplus, or the total value of commodities on capitalist markets, includes the contribution of the direct producers under conditions of superexploitation (pricing commodities at below the value of agricultural labour).

4 Capital invested in the acquisition of land and the extraction of natural resource wealth in the form of fossil fuels, minerals and metals, and agro-food /biofuel products (Gudynas, 2010; Veltmeyer, 2013).

5 The IDRB or World Bank was but one of three institutions of a new world order planned by representatives of the capitalist democracies that met at Bretton Woods in 1944. Other institutional pillars of the ‘world economic order’ planned as Bretton Woods included the IMF, an institution designed to help out countries experiencing temporary balance of payment problems, and the ‘ITO’, an institution stillborn in the face of US protectionism, taking form as GATT until it finally emerged as the WTO 50 years later.

6 On Overseas Development Assistance (foreign aid) as a US foreign policy tool in the post-second world war context of the problem of ensuring the ‘global containment’ of the USSR see Dratler Finney (1983).

7 In addition to theories that view imperialism through the lens of geopolitical interests or the rational pursuit of power for its own sake liberal theorists of imperialism often resort to cultural and even psychological ‘explanations’ of imperialism, viewing it in terms either of an imputed psychological drive to power or, as in the case of Razack (2004), the ‘idea of empire’, deeply held belief in … the right to dominate others’. Razack (2004, pp. 9–10) expands on this rather fanciful theory in the following terms: ‘Imperialism is not just about accumulation but about the idea of empire … .Empire is a structure of feeling, a deeply held belief in the need to and the right to dominate others for their own good, others who are expected to be grateful’ (Emphasis in original).

8 This image of imperialism as ‘external domination’ that Robinson here disparages is associated with a view that Robinson for some reason associates with theories of ‘new imperialism’, namely that ‘world capitalism in the 21st century is made up of domestic capitals and distinct national economies that interact with one another, as well as a realist analysis of world politics as driven by the pursuit by governments of their national interest’ (Robinson, 2007, p. 11). Here Robinson lumps together all sorts of contemporary theorizing about imperialism, whether Marxist, structuralist or realist, purely on the basis of the shared assumption, which Robinson problematizes and ridicules, that, in the words of Meiksins Wood (2003, p. 23) ‘the national organization of capitalist economies has remained stubbornly persistent’.

9 World system theorists of ‘transnational(ised) capital’ such as Robinson (2007) and theorists of ‘neoimperialism’ such as Harvey (2003) coincide in the view that capital is ‘economic’ and inherently ‘global” (no longer takes a national form) but that the state is ‘political’ and inherently ‘national’ (territorial-based and ‘geopolitical’) – and that they therefore pursue distinct (albeit, according to Harvey, interconnected) ‘logics of power’.

10 In his critique of ‘neoimperialism theory Robinson conflates (and confuses) the views of Marxists in this tradition, lumping together ‘structuralists’, ‘realists’, and ‘neomarxists’.

11 China, Japan, South Korea, the high growth East Asian countries are an excellent example of countries moving beyond dependency to independent high growth economies (Financial Times, 25 March 2010; and 22 February 2010). On China see ‘China Shapes the World’ in Financial Times on 21 January 2011.

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Henry Veltmeyer

Henry Veltmeyer is Research Professor of Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico and annually engages in an extended programme of research and public lectures across Latin America. Dr Veltmeyer conducts research, writes and teaches about diverse issues related to the political economy and sociology of development, with a particular focus on issues of Latin American development, globalization processes, government policies, alternative models and approaches and social movements.