Abstract
With The Global Development Crisis, Benjamin Selwyn contributes to the investigation of capitalist processes of development from the perspective of the labouring classes. By introducing recent figures of immense wealth concentration and widespread poverty, especially in the global South, the author contends that mainstream development thinking and practice stifle genuine human development on a global scale. Especially after the current global economic crisis, with ‘the simultaneous numerical and geographical expansion, increasing exploitation, immiseration and fragmentation of the global labouring class’ (p. 18), the author claims it to be imperative to problematize development thinking based on economic growth that concomitantly generates poverty and to challenge the idea of free markets as arenas of freedom. In this sense, drawing on the critique of residualist and monoeconomic conceptions of development in which ‘the global poor’ are seen from the inclusion/exclusion viewpoint in that they are disempowered yet potentially rescued by capitalist processes of development and economic growth (that never trickles down), Selwyn assesses diverse development lineages in order to build the labour-centred approach as an alternative developmental proposal.
To this end, Selwyn engages with Marxian and Marxist political economy and positions class analysis at the core of the development debate. Therefore, human development is understood as a relational process of struggle and conflict between social classes, ultimately determined by the groups’ positions within social relations of production. Thus, contemporary mass poverty, instead of being considered a residue, is conceived as a relational outcome of the capitalist economic system. Given that capital-labour relations are based on exploitation, Selwyn argues for a labour-centred approach that focuses on the multi-dimensional nature of capitalist exploitation as expressed in five elements: production (labour process); exchange (labour market); private sphere (family); workforce segmentation through racialization/racism; and environmental destruction and commodification. However, the main focus hones in on the first two elements as the main arenas of capitalist exploitation and reproduction. Race, gender and environmental questions, although sidelined in Selwyn’s investigation, are highlighted throughout the book to complement his approach.
In Chapters 2–7, Selwyn examines some of the most influential frameworks of post- (or non-)liberal development, including state-led catch-up development (Friedrich List and Alexander Gerschenkron), the capitalist dynamics of entrepreneurial innovation (Joseph Schumpeter), the institutional political economy of embedded markets (Karl Polanyi) and the capability approach (Amartya Sen), offering a critical appreciation of each proposal of development thinking. While thoroughly considering each of these authors’ formative influences, key problems and core conceptions of development, Selwyn points out each theorist’s critical contributions, the implications of their adopted methodology and their resulting impacts on the labouring classes – all done in a frank debate with Marxist scholarship. As a result, Selwyn argues that despite the theorists’ critiques of the drawbacks of (neo)liberal development, their frameworks reflect the obscuration of class relations and the neglectful response to exploitation and unfreedom of labouring classes under capitalism.
In the concluding chapter, the labour-centred approach evolves into practice stemming from and undertaken by the labouring classes and their social struggles. Using evidence from his own empirical findings in Brazil and recent literature on other countries in the global South (including China, India, Argentina and others) and brilliantly overcoming the local/global disconnection in his discussion, the author provides a rich account of processes of development posed by workers in their political mobilization for equality and democracy, especially in the labour market, making the labour-centred approach a promising theoretical tool.
Finally, two limitations of Selwyn’s investigation are evident. First, further consideration of how gender and ethnicity/race intertwine with the concept of exploitation is lacking. Work regimes under neoliberalism often operate through profiling strategies and employment discrimination, for the sake of surplus value extraction and to the discontentment of those subjected to the system in the global South, such as women, indigenous groups, migrants and Afro-descendants. Therefore, struggles taking place in the global South, from micro-resistances at different workplaces to strikes at regional and national level, do not occur solely in reference to a general scheme of capitalist exploitation, but target specific socio-historical, gendered, racialized and institutional demarcations within the division, management and regulation of the labour force. Thus, there enters a second point: Selwyn’s analysis lacks incorporation of the southern theories of capitalist development. To strengthen labour-centred development as a platform ‘to conceptually connect these struggles and their potential outcomes to a vision of human development free from exploitation’ (p. 208), it would be important to integrate locally constructed theories by southern thinkers to illuminate the multiple and uneven trajectories of development into and beyond capitalism. That being said, this book is an important contribution to development studies and related disciplines. Moreover, it is appropriate for students, professors, militants and activists concerned not only with processes of capitalist development, but especially with the generation of alternatives to neoliberal development thinking.