Development and Globalization in Latin America: Theories and Practice

In Dependency, Neoliberalism and Globalization in Latin America, Carlos Eduardo Martins systematically sets forth a Marxist theory of dependency and its relationship to the world-system alongside a study of subordinated development that rarely references dependency theory and succeeds in its Marxist analysis of the impact of capitalism on Latin America, with Brazil as a case study. In his brief foreword Theotônio dos Santos, one of the early thinkers on the idea of dependency, enthusiastically suggests that it provides “a new chapter in the history of social ideas by looking at the connections between dependency theory and world-systems theory.” In his prologue, Adrián Sotelo Valencia lauds Martins as “one of the most prominent theoretical exponents of critical thinking and Marxism,” focused on dependency theory along with such “classic” theorists as Dos Santos, Vânia Bambirra, and Ruy Mauro Marini. In my view Martins is important also because he clarifies what is Marxist and essential in the world-systems literature and identifies the underpinnings of Marxist thought in the dependency writings of a half-century ago.

The purpose of his book, originally published in Portuguese in Brazil in 2014, is explicit, as expressed in a preface to the English edition: “It seeks to articulate Marxist dependency theory with world-systems analysis and thereby contribute towards a Marxist theory of the modern world-system.” The principal theses that shape it are that (1) conjunctures or cyclical phases occur in the longue durée, with the contemporary period impacted by the techno-scientific revolution and U.S. hegemony in a crisis in the capitalist world-system; (2) the current expansive cycle reflects a splintering of the world-system—the rise of China and a decline of U.S. domination—but not a dismantling of the neoliberal model; (3) the crisis of U.S. hegemony is accompanied by a decline in U.S. imperialism and an increase in social conflict within North American society; (4) the techno-scientific revolution produces knowledge and intangible services around health, education, leisure, and environment rather than consumer goods, thereby interfering with the production of surplus value that is transferred from workers to capital; (5) neoliberalism is the precursor of fascism and the ideology that promotes the crisis of capital, and big capital relies on fascism to destroy working-class social and democratic gains; (6) neoliberal globalization and imperialism drive dependency in extreme ways so as to challenge and eventually bring down elected center-left “pink-tide” governments and their implementation of state capitalist projects along with the commodities boom and the increase in popular consumption in the period up to 2014; and (7) a Marxist theory of the world-system is possible by integrating the Marxist theory of dependency with world-system approaches, especially those of Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi.

This book is complex and detailed, schematic, but useful in its reach for an overview. The first chapter looks at five visions of globalization within the social sciences, identifying each by reference to the contributions of major social scientists: global theories of harmony and integration or of polarization leading to socialist revolution, shared hegemony, financialization, world-systems, and Marxist dependency. This classification leads to a critical analysis of globalization with attention to the thinking of Wallerstein drawn from German “State Science,” the French Annales School, and Marxism viewed as antisystemic and revolutionary and as a means of explaining the capitalist world economy through theories of imperialism, Nicolai Kondratiev’s theory of cycles, Radovan Richta’s theory of the techno-scientific revolution, and the theories of dependency set forth by Dos Santos and Marini. Wallerstein sees the modern world-system established in the sixteenth century as the means for “understanding the development of historical capitalism.”

The second chapter synthesizes Wallerstein’s now classic four-volume The Modern World System’s historical analysis of the rise of capitalism and contrasts his approach with that of Arrighi, Fernand Braudel, and Samir Amin. He briefly traces the progression from mini-systems to world empires to the modern world system and goes on to discuss hegemony and systemic cycles (Genoese-Spanish, Dutch, British, and United States), with emphasis on Kondratiev cycles of 48 to 60 years dating to the late nineteenth century, and critically compares this with Leon Trotsky’s criticism, Ernest Mandel’s model of long waves and the rate of profit, and Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of long cycles. Interestingly, he points to Dos Santos’s interest in the Kondratiev cyclical approach, dating to 1971. Finally, he elaborates on the usefulness of the idea of Kondratiev cycles and turns to Marx’s theory of capitalist collapse and the tendency toward a falling rate of profit in capitalism. This clear discussion builds on the way Martins integrates Marxism with the world capitalist system and his Marxist theory of dependency.

The third chapter turns to globalization and the crisis of the modern world system brought about by the worldwide spread of the “techno-scientific revolution,” a concept advanced by the Czech writer Radovan Richta, who after the 1968 Prague Spring questioned bureaucratic constraints on socialist societies and later influenced the work of Dos Santos. This leads to discussion of the links between dependent countries and the world market and the spread of superexploitation from the periphery to the central countries and the global economy—a process of globalization leading to the crisis of surplus value that interested Marini. The fourth chapter focuses on the successes and failures of U.S. hegemony in the twenty-first century and assesses whether it is to be interpreted as being in an advanced stage of crisis or a stage of expansion. He eventually opts for the former interpretation, arguing that U.S. hegemony has been in decline since 1967–1973 because of deficit pressures on the dollar, the crisis of neoliberal legitimacy, and the exhaustion of U.S. imperialism.

The ensuing chapters dispel any doubt that there is a Marxist theory of dependency. This is the principal argument running through the fifth chapter, a substantial revision of what appeared in the Brazilian edition of this work and focused on the impact of global capitalism on dependency and theoretical approaches to development in the periphery. The concern here is with the contributions and limitations of theories of modernization, national developmentalism, endogenism, neodevelopmentalism, and neoliberalism and the development of theories of dependency between 1964 and 1973 under the influence of Cuba and a “creative” Marxism free of Communist dogmatism. A Weberian perspective on dependency set forth by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto is contrasted with a creative Marxist view of dependency in the writings of Dos Santos, Marini, Vânia Bambirra, and Orlando Caputo. Martins identifies the early contributions to dependency theory of the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui and argues that the “pioneering” writings of Dos Santos and Marini advanced a “mature” analysis of dependency and “captured the dynamic relations between the external and the internal.” Carefully examining the political economy of dependency “in the light of Marx and contemporary capitalism,” the sixth chapter concentrates on the contributions of Marini, examines the major criticism of his approach, and concludes with a discussion of how his work might be updated to mitigate that criticism. In my view this attention to Marini not only is a major contribution to this ambitious project of confirming the importance of the early work on a Marxist theory of dependency but also justifies and lends credibility to the theoretical and empirical contributions of a contemporary generation of younger scholars.

Rubens Sawaya does not mention Martins or refer to a Marxist theory of dependency in Subordinated Development, but his analysis draws on Marx’s theory in a review of capital accumulation in Latin America. He organizes his study into five “blocks,” the first three drawing upon Marx with occasional reference to Arrighi, Amin, and others: (1) the accumulation, concentration, and centralization of capital; (2) the movement and globalization of capital; (3) the strategy of implanting capitalism through import substitution with foreign capital, resulting in increasing subordination of the peripheral economy and its development strategy in line with the process of global capital accumulation; (4) Brazil’s incorporation into the global accumulation of capital through its industrialization in alliance with foreign capital; and (5) the submission of the periphery to the movement of global accumulation in the 1990s.

Turning to Brazil as a case study, Sawaya argues that the introduction of capitalism in Brazil was due to a definite state strategy and its subordination to global accumulation “a deliberate process” that ensured dependency. He identifies attempts of governments since 1930 to regain control of Brazilian development—establishing state enterprises and attempting to link nationalism to development—that led in the 1990s to a “structural subordination to external capital.” The problem for Brazil, he argues, is that the movement of capital in the world is oriented not to new installations in the periphery but to a world restructuring of production through mergers and acquisitions. Thus, Cardoso’s associated dependency theory became reality once he assumed the presidency; state corporations were auctioned to the private sector, national capital combined with foreign enterprise, and the Brazilian economy became more vulnerable to the movement of global capital, culminating in the failure of what had become neoliberal policies. He goes on to analyze the Lula and Rousseff governments after 2003; despite their strategy of conciliation with power blocs and implementation of policies aimed at resuming economic growth, ultimately the economy fell into recession and a coup toppled the government.

Sawaya wraps up his provocative discussion by asking how the global economy might be changing, pointing, for example, to “the forced disconnection” in which capitalists may decide that parts of the world offer little opportunity for profitable business or capital itself may “centralize” in lucrative parts of the world and ignore others. Deindustrialization in some places, especially in the peripheral world, may result in lack of interest among capitalists. Globalization of capital may discourage the national state from attracting capital in times of crisis or depression. The gap between center and periphery may be widening in the face of global capital accumulation. Under such conditions, some parts of Latin America may not experience a “new dependency.”