20220423.06

Beyond Eurocentrism

Imperialist rent, for Amin, derived from extra surplus value. In other words, more value could be extracted from the workers through production in the periphery – generating an additional rent for the capitalist, when compared with workers in the centre doing similar jobs. Amin argued that, while low-paid workers in the periphery are no less productive than their counterparts in the centre, the value they create is less rewarded – and this is what creates such an (imperialist) rent.

… the nature of capitalism is to exploit value differences… the less developed world is the periphery… capitalists exploit the periphery, pumping the value difference back to the center, leaving little of the value with the periphery…

Amin changed the terms of the debates on unequal exchange. Until his work, the orthodoxy among economists was that workers in the periphery are simply less productive than those in the centre.

… and this seems, once presented, obvious, for, if the workers at the periphery were not as or nearly as productive as those at the core, there would not be the substantial value difference to exploit into profits at the core…

It is important to note that the idea of unequal exchange and of ‘super’-exploitation remains controversial among Marxists. In Das Kapital (1867), Marx himself discusses the futility of comparisons between different degrees of exploitation in different nations, and the significant methodological problems that arise. Many Marxists argue that the neo-Marxists such as Amin focused excessively on market relations at the expense of exploitation of labour.

… and this…

So, he proposed a new model of industrialisation shaped by the renewal of non-capitalist forms of peasant agriculture, which he thought would imply delinking from the imperatives of globalised capitalism.¹

… and this…

It is important to note that delinking is often widely misunderstood to mean autarky, or a system of self-sufficiency and limited trade. But this is a misrepresentation. Delinking does not require cutting all ties to the rest of the global economy, but rather the refusal to submit national-development strategies to the imperatives of globalisation. It aims to compel a political economy suited to its needs, rather than simply going along with having to unilaterally adjust to the needs of the global system. To this goal of greater sovereignty, a county would develop its own productive systems and prioritise the needs of the people rather than the demands on international capital.

… it occurs to me that what the current conflict in Ukraine may be accomplishing is a kind of decoupling of western capitalist hegemony… as western nations turn to produce more at home, and be less dependent on regimes that seek to weaken them through destabilization, even while profiting from them… a kind of decoupling will be happening… as we learn to produce and pay more for production at home… we will to some degree decouple… also, China, Russia and other countries will begin to develop economic structures that circumvent the power of the dollar… all of this is leading to a realignment of capitalism’s ability to exploit the value difference between the core and the periphery… the problem with this world order emerging is that it returns states to being in tense competition for control as it abandons the interdependent, if destructive to the planet, world order of new-liberalism… is there some combination of small is beautiful that none the less interconnects with markets around the world?…