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Abstract

This article argues that the contributions of Marxist Dependency Theory (MDT) can provide theoretical insights for the analysis of financialized capitalism dynamics, contribute to the debate about the rise of a globalized working class, and help guide a transformative praxis in the periphery, therefore being relevant for the debate of contemporary imperialism. I discuss which traditions of dependency theories were most featured in economics literature and why I believe that MDT is marginalized and misinterpreted, focusing on the historical and political aspects of that process. Next, I debate some contributions of contemporary imperialism theory, and conclude that MDT has the potential to advance some of its core concepts and formulate a powerful synthesis.

JEL Classification: B51, F54

Keywords

dependency theory Marxist dependency theory imperialism Latin America financialized capitalism

1. Introduction

The debate concerning imperialism as a central concept for the comprehension (and transformation) of the capitalist mode of production on a global scale was inaugurated by John Hobson with the publication of Imperialism, in 1902 (Hobson [1902] 2011). Shortly after, some of the most celebrated Marxists of the early twentieth century dedicated tremendous effort to develop this concept further, first with Rudolf Hilferding in 1910, followed by Rosa Luxemburg in 1913, Karl Kautsky in 1914, Nicolai Bukharin in 1917, and finally, Vladimir Lenin in 1917 (Luxemburg [1913] 2015; Kautsky [1914] 1970; Bukharin [1917] 1929; Lenin [1917] 1999). This literature influenced several further contributions using imperialism as a central concept of analysis, particularly for scholars that embraced the task of understanding the relationship between the advanced capitalist countries—the core—and the rest of the world—the periphery—focusing on the internal dynamics of the latter and how it is conditioned by the former. This research agenda was notably investigated by the dependency theorists, that mostly spread through the global South and not only contributed to the formulation of ideas but were also organically connected to the waves of anti-capitalist revolutions, confrontations with dictatorships, and active participation in class struggle actions in Latin America (Foster 2015).

The broad array of theories developed mainly by Latin American authors that forms the core of dependency theory were very prolific during the 1960s. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, the historical phenomena that once evidenced the pertinence of imperialism scholars and dependency theories started changing, urging the need for the inclusion of new financial and productive characteristics of capitalist accumulation—as an approximation of the magnitude of those transformations, Paulani (2009) estimates that, between 1980 and 2016, the world’s GDP grew 314 percent, while the world’s financial wealth rose by 1,292 percent. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1976: 103, author’s translation) states that “as a complement to theories of imperialism, dependency theory must, without a doubt, continuously review the periodization of world capitalism and characterization of the contemporary phase of imperialism.” Despite the efforts dedicated to embrace this challenge, political-historical processes and fierce criticism—not only by mainstream economists but also from heterodox schools of thought, from Marxists to Keynesians—widely discredited the contributions of such theories, which now occupy a marginalized position in economics.¹

The next section of this article presents an overview of the most celebrated work within the dependency theory research agenda, presenting a classification that differentiates the Weberian-Marxist contributions from the Marxist school, and focusing on the heritage of the classical imperialism debate (whose authors were outlined in the first paragraph). I argue that, because of particular conditions imposed by the civil-military dictatorships that swept through Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s, and also due to a language barrier, most of the criticism associated with dependency theory is based on the ideas of one specific trend of that research program, namely, the Weberian-Marxist stream. Further, I propose that the later political career of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (F.H.C.) was an important historical happening for the virtual abandonment of dependency theories, and this historical fact is typically overlooked by the literature focused on analyzing the contributions and criticisms of this research program.

Next, I debate the contributions of the new imperialism theory, notably the dynamics given by the emergence of financialized capitalism and the rise (or not) of a globalized working class. Finally, I conclude by arguing that Marxist dependency theory (MDT) has the potential to review and advance some of its core concepts in order to accommodate the contributions made by contemporary imperialism theory. I claim that MDT constitutes a solid theoretical foundation, and a fertile ground for understanding how changes in the dynamic center of accumulation impact the dynamics of the periphery. A synthesis between imperialism theory and MTD is a promising path not only for theorical development but also for engagement with transformative praxis that historically characterized MDT authors and scholarship.

2. Dependency Theory as a Research Program: The Weberian-Marxist and the Marxist Traditions

The definition of the works and authors that belong to the dependency theory tradition is subject to many controversies. Kvangraven (2021) proposes the conceptualization of dependency theories as a research program, establishing a “hard core” hypothesis that unifies the different traditions, and a “soft core” of auxiliary hypotheses that differentiate each stream. The main unifying hypothesis is the “polarizing tendency of capitalist development, related to both structures of production and the common constraints related to the peripheral development” (Kvangraven 2021: 80).

This definition is in agreement with a central proposition of this article—namely, that all dependency theorists understand that two major effects of capitalism’s polarizing tendencies are the international division of labor and the internationalization of capital, which are also common themes among all classical imperialist authors (Foster 2015). Here, internationalization of capital is defined with a high level of abstraction, describing the growing integration between foreign and domestic capitals, in the form of either money, productive, or commodity capital. The Weberian-Marxist tradition focuses on the internationalization of the domestic market, in which the increasing participation of (core) foreign capital in the (periphery) domestic markets is the main phenomenon. MDT, on the other hand, works with the concept of internationalization of systems of production, to highlight the integration of the domestic productive system as a whole (not only the market) in the world capitalist economy (Luce 2011). Despite the controversy, these two schools consider some form of capital internationalization as a central concept.

This consideration about the internationalization of capital exemplifies the usefulness of defining dependency theory as a research program, and how challenging it can be to define different streams of thought among such a diverse body of scholars and ideas. In fact, a lot of pages have been dedicated to this endeavor and, unfortunately, we can find more disagreements than convergences regarding the classification of different traditions. These disagreements become even more evident when comparing the literature produced in Latin America with the publications in the global North.

Blomström and Hettne ([1984] 1990) proposed the most influential classification, particularly in English-written work, which divides the literature into four streams: (1) the “orthodox Marxist” tradition, represented by F.H.C. and Faletto; (2) the “critic” or “self-critic” school, formed by the later writings of the “Cepalist” structuralists, such as Raúl Prebisch and Celso Furtado;² (3) a “neo-Marxist” school, represented by Vânia Bambirra, Ruy Mauro Marini, and Theotônio dos Santos; (4) and a school represented by André Gunder Frank, with no particular name, that cannot be included in any of the traditions above.

A significant body of work classifies Frank as being part of the “neo-Marxist” tradition (Chilcote 1974; Hunt 1989), but the differentiation suggested by Blomström and Hettne ([1984] 1990) seems proper, since Frank himself defines his methodological approach as rooted in neoclassical, Marxist, and Keynesian views (Frank 1969). Further, Cardoso (1977: 12) claims that Frank’s work fails to implement a proper dialectical analysis, ultimately proposing schemes that are “contrary to that of the dependentistas.” Cardoso (1977) sustains that including Frank as part of the dependency tradition is a mistake, one that is particularly common among scholars in the United States.³

Blomström and Hettne’s ([1984] 1990) identification of a “self-critic” school also seems appropriate, given the self-evaluation of Cepalist authors and their genuine attempt to include the critics from dependency scholars in their work (Saad-Filho 2020). However, this stream is not currently prominent in terms of further developments regarding the concept of imperialism, despite its relevance in terms of history of economic thought and the fundamental contributions of structuralists to dependency authors (Amaral 2012). Through time, the self-critic ideas merged within the heirs of the stream represented by Cardoso and Faletto and other schools of thought that moved away from the dependency theory research program (Vernengo 2006).

Our discussion, therefore, focuses on the other two streams, but I disagree with the “orthodox Marxist” and “neo-Marxist” denominations proposed by Blomström and Hettne ([1984] 1990), since Cardoso and Faletto (1979) do not identify with the former, and MDT does not identify with the latter (dos Santos 2000: 28–29). In Dependência e Desenvolvimento na América Latina (Carodoso and Faletto 1979), Cardoso defines two main streams of dependency theory: his own, which is not named, and a second tradition, which he calls “dependentista” or “neo-Marxist.” In the preface to the English edition of the same book (Cardoso and Faletto [1970] 1979), the authors present an extensive explanation about the origins of their eclectic method, and list their three main inspirations: structuralism, Weberianism, and Marxism. Therefore, it seems appropriate to consider these authors the exponents of the Weberian-Marxist tradition, while the “neo-Marxists” are just referred to as Marxists, a classification commonly used—yet still highly debated—by Brazilian scholars (Franklin 2016).⁴

2.1. The Marxist tradition

Represented by Vânia Bambirra, Ruy Mauro Marini, and Theotônio dos Santos, this tradition presents three main theses: (1) the understanding of development as capitalist development, meaning the increasing complexity of all the typical contradictions of capitalism, instead of a notion of “progress,” according to which development means moving from a worse to better situation; (2) the need for identifying the structural conditions of dependence and their dialectical articulation with distinct conjunctures;⁵ (3) the central role of super-exploitation of the labor force (Carcanholo 2013). In this section, I explore how these theses were influenced by the classical theories of imperialism—so, I start by providing a brief overview of these classical contributions.⁶

The most influential book from the classical imperialism theory was Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ([1917] 1999). Its influence was particularly pronounced among dependency theorists, given their orientation for revolutionary praxis and Lenin’s singular commitment with such an agenda (Foster 2015). The economic foundation of Lenin’s work was the same as the one presented by Hilferding ([1910] 2019), and very similar to the discussion pointed out by Bukharin ([1917] 1929)—a book to which Lenin himself wrote the introduction.

The main idea promoted by these authors is that imperialism is a later stage of capitalism, in which the movements of concentration and centralization of capital allow for the domination of monopoly and finance capital worldwide. The concept of finance capital was explained in detail by Hilferding ([1910] 2019), and it argues that the financial system emerges necessarily out of real accumulation. As the scale of production grows, monopolistic industrial capital increasingly relies on monopolistic banks for investment finance, so that banks become the most powerful institutions in the economic system (and, by consequence, in the whole superstructure). As a result, industrial and financial capital become increasingly merged within each other.

This monopolistic power allows for a decreasing role of the State on financial markets, but increases the need for governments to create exclusive trading zones as a way to exert imperial strategies. For authors like Rosa Luxemburg ([1913] 2015), the need for new markets is primarily pushed by the need of surplus-value realization, meaning that core capitalist economies must expand to pre-capitalist areas to sell commodities. This expansion occurs not only in the geographical sense but includes non-capitalist spheres of human interactions.⁷ For Lenin and Hilferding, on the other hand, such strategies are necessary because of the need of capital exportation, which transforms the core economies as creditors of the periphery and allows for finance capital to explore opportunities of greater surplus-value extraction—that is, surplus value extraction in the periphery. Bukharin ([1917] 1929) highlighted the surplus profits that monopoly capital can extract in the periphery because of the much higher rate of exploitation allowed by the cheap labor in those countries—an idea closely related with the concept of super-exploitation of the labor force, which I explain in the following paragraphs.

The influence of these ideas in the works of MDT is salient in the systematic periodization of dependency proposed by dos Santos (1970, 1978): (1) colonial dependency, that refers to the pre-capitalistic forms of domination; (2) financial-industrial dependency, which prevails during the end of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries and refers to the international division of labor, meaning the characterization of the core countries as producers of manufactured goods, and the periphery as the provider of raw materials and primary goods; (3) technological-industrial dependency, in which capital flows from the core, together with the use of patents by big capitalists, generating a constant need for “world-money”—in Marx’s terms—by peripherical countries. During this last stage, there is the installation of foreign monopolistic industries in the periphery, allowing the appropriation of profits generated elsewhere by big corporations of the core and preventing the possibility of domestic industries to engage in the market. Here, I observe the direct influence of Hilferding: it implies a decreasing autonomy of periphery states vis-à-vis core financial markets, since finance capital merges with productive capital both in the core—to guarantee technological advancement and the production of patents—and in the periphery—tying up the domestic productive structure with international finance capital, both through the increasing need for world money to import technologies and the installation of monopolistic core industries in their territories.

The idea of imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism and the interpretation that industrialization in the periphery happened through the invasion of foreign monopolistic industrial capital, instead of through the traditional phases dictated by the domestic dynamics narrated by Marx, constitutes a major backbone of dependency theories in general, and of MDT in particular. In Brazil—the country of origin of all MDT authors discussed above and henceforth—the official position of the Brazilian Communist Party was that the country was not fully capitalistic yet, so when the (US-encouraged) coup d’état put the military in power, in 1964, the party advocated for a bourgeois revolution, that would end the semi-feudal (agrarian) characteristic of the Brazilian economy and establish a proper capitalist society, allowing for the rise of socialism later.⁸ The MDT authors, however, organized under the Marxist Revolutionary Organization-Workers’ Politics (POLOP, in Portuguese), argued that Brazil was already a capitalist country—a dependent capitalist country—so that the focus of anti-capitalist movements should be the socialist revolution itself. In that sense, capitalist development must be understood as contradictory, and not as a linear set of steps, as advanced by the first main MDT thesis highlighted in the introduction of this section.

Such interpretation guided both their academic discussions and their praxis. Heavily influenced by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, POLOP was founded in 1961 and joined the armed resistance against the dictatorship established in 1964, actively participating in the guerrillas against the regime. dos Santos (1996: 22–23) declared that when he was elected national director of POLOP, in 1964, he found an active militancy that aligned with his intellectual production; Marini (1990) stated that the organization systematized a body of ideas and practices that profoundly marked leftist revolutionary movements in Brazil; and Bambirra (1991: 11) affirmed that the organization influenced the theory and practices of all leftist movements in the region. The need for a theory capable of explaining the dynamics of the periphery, but that was also engaged with the historical task of surpassing structural dependency, was a common theme throughout their work (Badaró 2007). Given that goal, the understanding of the conjuncture in each historical moment is key, which implies the need for theoretical update each and every time the core of capitalist accumulation changes—a point highlighted by the Dos Santos classification and presented as the second main thesis of MDT above.

To understand the third thesis (i.e., the super-exploitation of the labor force), I must dig deeper into the characteristics of the technological-industrial dependency phase. The monopoly stage of capitalism is central: since the advanced capitalist economies have monopolies over technologies with higher organic composition of capital, which means higher productivity, the surplus-value produced in the (labor-intensive) dependent nations—which, given the smaller organic composition of capital, is comparatively larger—gets appropriated by the core through various mechanisms, including direct profit remittances, financial mechanisms in capital markets, and unequal terms of trade (the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis).⁹

Given that most of the surplus value is appropriated externally, domestic capitalists need to compensate that loss in order to maintain positive profit rates. That is precisely where the concept of super-exploitation of the labor force appears, and it is because of that origin—the compensation mechanism of dependent economies—that this concept is particular to dependent countries and central for their analysis. Super-exploitation can only manifest itself through a higher rate of exploitation, which is common to all forms of capitalism; but it is the particular motivation of this increased rate of exploitation in dependent economies, and the ability of these capitalists to keep remunerating the working force below its value, which makes this concept unique. It is through super-exploitation that dependent economies can produce their domestic capitalist development (which is, by definition, constrained by the dynamic center), and because of that particularity that the high income and wealth concentrations typical of dependent nations are reproduced.

Marini ([1973] 1991) characterizes super-exploitation as the structural characteristic that demarcates the dependent condition. There are four main forms through which it appears: (1) increased intensity of work; (2) longer working hours; (3) appropriation (by the capitalists) of the workers’ consumption-fund; and (4) increased labor power value without compensation for the worker (Amaral and Carcanholo 2009). The first two elements are intrinsically related and tend to move in opposite directions, because of the natural limits of the human body and mind (Marx [1867] 1990). However, their relationship is determined by class struggle elements, and the maximization of sustainable levels of intensity together with a maximum level of working hours become paramount in labor-intensive (i.e., periphery) industries.¹⁰ This pushes workers to the labor market at earlier stages of their lives when compared to core countries (i.e., instead of investing in education, youth prioritize labor), and decreases life expectancy of the working class as a whole—since increases in the intensity and length of the work day simultaneously mean anticipation of future labor power, given the biological limits of humans.

The appropriation of workers’ consumption fund means the direct appropriation of more surplus value by capitalists by remunerating labor power below its value. As pointed out by Osorio (2015), this is one of the most significant forms of super-exploitation, since it magnifies the position of workers as producers and not as consumers in the capital circulation process. Facilitated by the higher relative contingent of the reserve army of labor in the periphery (due to higher populational growth, greater impoverished rural population, and other factors such as a diminished formal labor market), the prevalence of this form of super-exploitation perpetuates high levels of income inequality and creates a productive structure that relies on external markets.¹¹

Finally, the increased value of labor power without equivalent increase in compensation refers to the fact that the value of labor power is socially and historically determined, and the advancement of the productive forces (and, therefore, of human needs) increases without a similar increase in workers’ compensation. This form, again, maintains income inequality in peripheral countries, and approximates the national elites to the foreign (core) values through consumption habits and shared perspectives on minimal conditions for decent existence (a car, a phone, etc.).¹²

That structural characteristic of super-exploitation is maintained even with the expansion of monopolistic multinational corporations into dependent markets, which increases the organic composition of capital in the periphery. For Marini (1969: 17), it is precisely due to the demand created by external markets and the adoption of technologies that are increasingly labor-saving that the periphery maintains super-exploitation in its structure. Together with the reduced growth of domestic consumption capacity (due to the mechanisms described above), technological improvements that increase the organic composition can only be compensated with an increase in prices—thus increasing subsistence costs for the working-class—while wages are kept at very low levels, generating a perpetual situation of super-exploitation (Marini 1969: 17).

The transfer of some productive sectors for dependent nations keeps the super-exploitation while allowing specific countries of the periphery to attract more capital compared to their smaller neighbors, deepening the alliance between the domestic and the foreign bourgeoisie (while keeping their contradictions, so such interests are only partially and occasionally aligned) and allowing those particular nations to pursue their own expansionist projects locally, which frequently gives rise to particular forms of fascism (dos Santos 1973). According to Marini (1977), sub-imperialism is precisely the form that some dependent economies assume when the phase of monopoly and financial capital is reached (as defined by Lenin), which is characterized by the prevalence of an intermediate level of the organic composition of capital (i.e., lower than the core, but higher than other periphery countries). This expansionist project is not dictated by State armies, but through a superior integration with the imperialist productive system—in a subordinate yet associate position—that allows for increasing opportunities for the domestic bourgeoisie to extract surplus value from foreign (more peripherical) markets, through the same mechanisms that allow the appropriation by the core, which are still in place.

So, the system must rely on the super-exploitation of the labor force somewhere in the periphery, but the levels of exploitation vary, and the possibility of a country appropriating the surplus value of another country and having part of that surplus value appropriated by yet another third party is introduced. Such process was discussed by MDT authors during the civil-military dictatorships of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, which increased their industrial sector during that period while representing the interests of the core nations in Latin America—and, according to some, perpetrating particular kinds of fascism (dos Santos 1973; Albistur 2018).¹³

The dynamics of capitalist accumulation produce different syntheses in concrete economies, after engaging dialectically with conjunctural, specific characteristics of a given place in a given time. The mechanisms of the capitalist system can generate periods of growth, smaller inequality, higher levels of employment, and other desirable economic outcomes for periphery countries, but those do not change the structural constraints themselves, being part of the contradictions of the (dependent) capitalist development. Therefore, the dependency condition of the periphery is structural, and can never be surpassed within the capitalist mode of production. This conclusion is the main point of divergence between MDT and the Weberian-Marxist tradition.

2.2. The Weberian-Marxist tradition

Represented by F.H.C. and Faletto, the Weberian-Marxist tradition is the most well-known, widely cited stream of the dependency theory research program, frequently assumed—particularly for English-speaking scholars—to be dependency theory itself (Prado 2011). To highlight the points of divergence between these authors and the Marxist tradition, I focus the discussion on Cardoso and Serra (1978), a piece dedicated to criticizing Marini’s work—later answered by Marini (1978) and Bambirra (1978). This section also discusses the context that favored the Weberian-Marxist authors to achieve higher academic prestige when compared to MDT.

When the coup d’état installed the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964, Cardoso was already a respected scholar. Because of his critical thinking and Marxist influences, the censorship soon classified him as a “subverter.” Seeking safety, F.H.C. decided to exile in Chile, where he became Deputy Director of the Latin American Institute for Economic and Social Planning. Meanwhile, Bambirra, dos Santos, and Marini, together with other important leadership, were building direct resistance against the regime through POLOP, as mentioned in section 2.1.

With the heavy persecution against POLOP members, MDT authors (who were arrested and tortured several times in Brazil) also decided to exile in Chile, which started to constitute a privileged locus for progressive theory development. Particularly during Salvador Allende’s government (1970−1973), exiled scholars, researchers, artists, and anti-dictatorship leaders from all over Latin America converged to the country, attracted by the welcoming environment for socialist and social democratic ideas (Marini 1992: 88). Keeping their tradition of aligning intellectual work with revolutionary praxis, MDT authors joined the Chilean Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR, in Spanish); they stayed in the country until the coup against Allende in 1973, and then exiled in Mexico (Marini 1990; Bambirra 1991; dos Santos 1996).

Cardoso, however, considered that praxis naive, and believed that engaging in official parliamentary politics (while participating in the academic debate) was more fruitful. Following these beliefs, he moved from Chile to France in 1967, to teach at Nanterre University, and returned to Brazil in 1968, to teach at University of São Paulo (USP). By the end of that year, the hardening of the regime culminated in his compulsory retirement from USP and forced F.H.C. to exile again, this time touring as an invited professor in prestigious universities in the United States and Europe (such as Stanford, Berkeley, and Cambridge), which helps explain his consolidation as the most important name of the dependency theories among English-speaking countries.¹⁴ Back to Brazil, he joined the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) in 1978, the political party founded by the opposition tolerated by the dictators in 1966. Allowing two parties instead of just one served the interests of some military and bourgeois sections not totally aligned with the hardening of the regime, while providing a democratic appearance for the dictatorship.

This context helps us understand why a considerable amount of the MDT interpretations seems to be indirect, made through F.H.C.’s lens. Prado (2011) claims that he directly boycotted the spread of Marini’s and Bambirra’s writings, which together with the censorship by the dictators made his view the “official” interpretation of MDT. Regarding the contributions from dos Santos, Baptista Filho’s (2009) analysis shows that F.H.C. focuses his critiques on dos Santos’s later work, that moves away from MDT and converges on World Systems Theory. In Brazil, Cardoso had privileged access to publishing companies, being personally responsible for the editions of whole book collections (particularly through Editora Difel). The dissemination of his production was facilitated by the political affiliation with MDB, showing his alignment with the strategy supported by the moderate division of the dictatorship and some bourgeois sectors that aimed at a “slow, gradual, and safe” transition back to democracy, relying on class conciliations.

In English-written literature, the hegemony of the Weberian-Marxist perspective becomes very clear when reading the Latin American Perspectives (LAP) journal—arguably the most relevant journal for the critical yet sympathetic discussion of dependency theory in the United States. In the 1981 special edition on dependency theories, Chilcote (1981: 6) admits that “in US academic circles the sloppy work based on the superficial aspects of dependency tends to turn many of us away from the essential questions.” Despite this acknowledgment, most of the articles within the special issue dialogue with the Marxist frameworks of dependency using André Gunder Frank as the main theorist of this tradition (though some see differences between him and Marini), and claim that the focus is on the circulation of capital instead of on the production process—which is clearly not the case in MDT as defined here, given the emphasis on super-exploitation and its origins in the production process discussed above. Henfrey (1981) tries to approach the debate between Cardoso and Marini in his piece, observing that Marini indeed has a focus on the production process (unlike Frank); however, Henfrey’s analysis only leads him to claim that Marini’s argument is circular and lacks class analysis. Chilcote (1981: 15) supports that “class analysis, for example, is often lacking [in dependency theory] due to stress on relations of exchange rather than on relations of production.”

In 1990, LAP released an issue dedicated to the discussion of post-Marxism in Latin America, aiming to highlight what they saw as a new, important trend in the region—particularly in Argentina and Chile—that had been neglected by the journal: the emergence of anti-capitalist analysis that moved away from a class-centered perspective (Chilcote 1990). Most of the discussion is centered around the ideas of Ernesto Laclau, an Argentinian scholar notorious for opposing Gunder Frank’s perspective, so again MDT was not centered.¹⁵ The notable exception is the great discussion proposed by Dussel (1990), centering on Marini, dos Santos, and Bambirra. The essay examines their work in the light of Marx and Engels’s unpublished writings at the time and concludes that since MDT authors wrongly considered Marx’s theoretical analysis of capitalism complete, they considered that dependency theory should start from a lower level of abstraction, analyzing the historical particularities of dependent countries. Dussel (1990: 95) propose that a proper theory of dependency should not start from historical cases but develop a solid theoretical foundation nested in Marx’s essential categories of analysis, so that it can aid the “liberation from dependency (as national domination, via the national bourgeoisies and the total capital of the country), and liberation of the oppressed people in the nation (the social bloc of those who with their labor, be it wage-labor or available labor, create all the transferable value and surplus-value).”

More recently, in 2022, LAP released a volume with two issues focused on past and present Marxist theories of dependency and periphery debates. Most authors featured in these publications personally knew the MDT authors and/or are from Brazil, which helped the building of two high-quality, extensively argued publications that focused on the original writings of MDT, mainly featuring Marini’s work—the author that most explicitly relied on Marx’s writings (Chilcote and Salém Vasconcelos 2022). However, even these recent, excellent publications exhibit MDT interpretations through Weberian-Marxist lens, notably in da Silva (2022). The author relies on empirical data to claim that, since the industrial sector was never responsible for Brazil’s growth, Marini was wrong in claiming that Brazil would develop more than its neighboring countries through industrialization and exert a sub-imperialist power over them. This problematic interpretation of Marini’s work is aligned with what Cardoso and Serra (1978) call the “misguided theses” of MDT. They can be summarized as follows:

(1) The idea that development in the periphery is impossible. For Cardoso and Serra (1978), MDT provides no possible way out of dependency other than socialist revolution, which means no economic development for the periphery can happen. Since a nation’s mode of production cannot be delinked from the world’s mode of production, and considering (in a Trotskyist fashion) that it is impossible to perform a revolution on the basis of only one nation, dependent economies would never reach a higher level of economic development, which they consider to be a fatalist consequence of MDT.

(2) The concept of super-exploitation. For these authors, there is no particular characteristic of dependent economies that justifies a different kind of exploitation, so the super-exploitation of the working class is not a structural and peculiar characteristic of the periphery.

(3) The idea that the domestic bourgeoisie is not an active social force. Despite agreeing with MDT’s perspective that the capitalists of the periphery exploit the domestic working class on behalf of the core and consume imported luxury goods, differentiating themselves from the locals and increasing their identification with the foreigners, Cardoso and Serra (1978) argue that the dynamic nature of capitalism allows for the formation of national coalitions that, in specific historical situations, are capable of manifesting national bourgeois interests.

(4) The emergence of local expansionism (sub-imperialism) as a result of the expansion of monopolistic foreign corporations in the periphery. For them, this theory would entail that all projects of local cooperation among dependent nations would necessarily start from a hierarchical position of exploitation of one nation—the relatively more industrialized one—against the other. Instead, the authors highlight that such movements could mean the transference of technology and better living conditions for the countries involved.

(5) The conclusion that the Latin American political path is at a crossroads: socialism or fascism. This derives from the idea that increasing industrialization—a natural consequence of continuous capital accumulation in the core that generates technological-industrial dependency in the periphery—would be related to sub-imperialism, which gives rise to particular fascist trends. Since the only way to avoid dependent capitalist development is socialist revolution, Cardoso and Serra (1978) identify this as the ultimate conclusion of MDT.

The Weberian-Marxist tradition is also focused on understanding the dependent characteristics of the periphery that structurally condition the development of these countries—therefore, dialoguing with the core hypothesis of the dependency theories—but their notion of development is associated with an idea of progress, and not the concept put forward by MDT, according to which capitalist development just means the increasing complexity of all the typical contradictions of capitalism. This stream focuses on developing a theory that, instead of advocating for an anti-capitalist agenda or even for working-class interests, discusses how a country can grow (in terms of GDP) and achieve a “superior” level, being closer to the countries of the core according to capitalist measures of development—a process that they call “dependent-associate development” (Cardoso and Faletto [1970] 2004).

Similar to MDT’s technological-industrial phase of dependent capitalism, Weberian-Marxist authors argue that “new dependency” (i.e., the stage inaugurated in the second half of the twentieth century) is marked by the internationalization of domestic markets, which attract foreign capital in the form of multinational corporations, responsible for producing durable and capital goods. However, their approach differs sharply when it comes to the role of the national bourgeoisie, that here is considered a “producer-consumer” and is responsible for taking charge of the production of primary and non-durable consumption goods, providing some internal dynamics to the system. Cardoso and Faletto argue that “to increase the accumulation capacity of producer-consumers, it is necessary to restrain the demands of the masses. That is, the redistribution policies that would increase their consumption becomes ineffective and even, under-determined conditions, troublesome for development” ([1970] 2004: 131, author’s translation).

The dependent-associate development, therefore, appears as a solution to avoid the “crossroads” conclusion. In this framework, the development of productive forces—pushed by the presence of foreign capital—and the acceleration of surplus production in the periphery allow development (here understood as growth) with the dependent country being an associate to the core of the world system, made possible through the promotion of favorable conditions for foreign capital to grow in the domestic market. So, “dependent-associate development and neoliberalism are different terms for the same plan” (Carcanholo 2008: 258, author’s translation), since it requires the liberalization and deregulation of markets, together with worse conditions for the working class.

The main preoccupation of the Weberian-Marxist stream, therefore, is not to understand levels of development and the contradictions of capitalism, but to find ways of promoting economic growth within the dependent framework (Traspadini 2000). That requires the further subjugation of the working class under the imperial power—represented by foreign capital, in a hierarchical association with domestic capital—and the increasing accumulation of reserves in the form of world-money by the periphery, given the increasing external vulnerability brought by financial liberalization. These two movements are the two main phenomena analyzed by new imperialism theories (Vernengo 2021; Vasudevan 2016; Lapavitsas 2009). As a result, the Weberian-Marxist tradition is not a stream that allows us to understand the effects of the new forms of imperialism in the periphery; rather, it advocates for the deepening of these imperialist structures.

It is interesting to observe that the subsequent political career of F.H.C. represented, indeed, the implementation of neoliberal policies. As a Minister of Finance under Itamar Franco’s presidency (1992–1995), Cardoso traced the “Real Plan”—a stabilization plan to stop Brazilian hyperinflation—which was grounded in all traditional neoclassical assumptions, from austerity policies to the need for restricting money emissions. Despite not accomplishing the goals traced in the original plan, price stabilization was associated with his endeavor, guaranteeing F.H.C.’s triumph in the 1993 and 1997 Brazilian presidential elections (Carcanholo 2002; Santana 2017).

It was precisely during his governments (1994–2001) that the neoliberal era lived its heyday. The former advocate of heterodox and anti-imperialist ideas was now one of the most important promoters of the Washington Consensus in Latin America. Brazilian progressive movements mocked Cardoso’s privatization projects by claiming that he went from prince of sociology to the king of “privatology.” Since he was the most famous author of dependency theory, this movement helped to decrease the academic prestige of this research program.

3. New Imperialism Theories and a Possible Synthesis with MDT

This section discusses the imperialist logic under contemporary capitalism vis-à-vis the classical theories of imperialism, understanding capital accumulation as the driving force of imperial mechanisms. I acknowledge the existence of empire based on property and the empire of commerce, but assume that these are not the most important forms of empire in contemporary societies (Wood 2005). Capital accumulation coexists with extra-economic (i.e., political and military) means of international value extraction, but these structures are increasingly subordinated to the imperial expansion that occurs as a result of the abstract laws of the motion of capital itself (Went 2002).¹⁶ My goal is to analyze the particularities of contemporary imperialism and trace parallels with contributions from MDT, arguing that the latter can contribute to the further development of the former.

The popularity of classical theories of imperialism is mainly a result of their ability to explain and even predict events such as the two world wars, the stagnation of the economic development in the global South, the global flows of capital, and the growth of monopolistic corporations (Foster 2015). Changes in these structures during the past few decades—particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union—generated a prolific revision of these theories, with the creation of a vast array of neologisms to describe these developments, such as postmodern Empire, super-imperialism, transnational capitalism, New Deal imperialism, neoliberal imperialism, and new imperialism. Imperialism theories seek to provide an analysis of the historic-specific dynamics of the capitalist system as a whole at a lower level of abstraction (when compared to general laws of accumulation described by Marx), discussing how the international arena is used for capital accumulation and domination. The new forms of imperialism that characterize contemporary societies—discussed in detail below—are a consequence of new historical dynamics that give rise to different, improved methods of capital accumulation. It seems coherent, therefore, to keep using the term imperialism instead of a neologism. Paraphrasing the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa, if the main forms of manifestation of imperialism changed, it is most certainly to guarantee that everything remains the same.

Lapavitsas (2009) provides a good summary of the main characteristics of imperialism presented in Hilferding and Lenin’s work that suffered radical changes during the past few decades:

(1) Instead of banks and monopolistic corporations getting closer together and collectively promoting the primacy of financial capital, we can see banks and industrial or commercial enterprises becoming increasingly distant. Banks increased their profit extraction from households’ income in the core and increased their mediation over transactions in open financial markets, while corporations internalized the management of financial capital.

(2) The financial system evolved in a way that open financial markets have more weight than banks and industry enterprises (market-based or Anglo-American financial system), instead of the bank-based (German-Japanese) system predicted by Hilferding.

(3) The emergence of exclusive trade zones with competitive imposition of tariffs is not the main trend among international markets. Instead, we see a (not always effective) push for the abolition of these mechanisms, particularly for the periphery.

(4) The domination and stabilization of the financial system as a whole is a direct consequence of the actions of the State, which emerged as the ultimate guarantor of solvency of chosen large banks and financial institutions—the ones that are too big to fail.

(5) The international monetary system became increasingly unstable, with the US dollar effectively assuming the position of Marx’s “world money.” Since the US dollar is backed by the monetary liability of the United States instead of by gold (i.e., centered in fictitious capital instead of relying on a commodity), this produces an increasing supply of loanable capital by the periphery to the core—due to the rising need of reserve accumulation—and makes the core economy more susceptible to the creation of financial bubbles.

These are similar to the points proposed by Went (2002): (1) there is a great volume of capital transactions among core countries than between core-periphery, which increases economic competition in detriment of military competition; (2) the distance between banks and commercial enterprises increased (as mentioned above), but Went (2002) focuses on the integration of international banking and finance, which established global standards of financial profit; and (3) there is the emergence of a new political strategy that does not rely on military occupation but on a blend of market economy and “democratic” ideals, implemented in the periphery through several neoliberal restructuring projects.

Through the analysis of these new forms of imperialism, we can examine which fundamental characteristics of imperialism cited by Lenin, Bhukarin, and Hilferding are still prevalent. Following Leite (2014), I highlight four attributes: (1) monopolies are still the distinctive form of companies in contemporary capitalism, with the increasing emergence of international associations of monopolists; (2) financial capital continues to be hegemonic, but through the merger of financial and industrial capital within the same corporation; (3) international movements of capital remain paramount for the process of accumulation, with higher mobility and flexibility for both productive and fictitious capital; and (4) a certain level of world territorial division among imperialist nations can still be observed, although not necessarily through military occupations (but sometimes also through that mechanism). Since the connection between these characteristics of imperialism and MDT is already well discussed in economic literature, I focus my contribution on the new forms of imperialism.

Lapavitsas (2009) defines financial expropriation as the extraction of financial profits directly from the personal income of workers, through higher levels of household indebtedness. This allows commercial banks to become more distant from industrial and commercial capital, and is accompanied by core corporate enterprises financing investment (on a net basis) primarily through retained profits, or direct borrowing in open markets. Lapavitsas (2009) claims that these movements were influential on the 2007–2008 economic crisis, and correspond to new ways of (indirect) exploitation of the working class in the core—a phenomenon sold as “democratization of credit.”¹⁷ These tendencies spread throughout the periphery and raise the instability of the economic system, simultaneously exacerbating the role of the State as the savior of financial institutions (that increasingly become “too big to fail”) and limiting the autonomy of governments for conducting monetary and fiscal policy. A similar concept is discussed by Bin (2015), who considers consumption taxation and austerity policies a deepening of labor exploitation in the periphery, so that elected governments must increasingly rely on surplus-value extraction to finance public debt.

These debates directly dialogue with some of the issues presented by MDT, particularly the super-exploitation as a compensation mechanism for the core to appropriate part of the surplus produced in the periphery. Several questions can arise from this insight. If we assume that indirect exploitation happens through financial mechanisms in contemporary capitalism (both in the core and in the periphery), ultimately transferring value from the peripheral working class to the core nations (public debt creditors), can we identify a new concrete form of (indirect) super-exploitation in the periphery? Further, the advancement of productive forces has its dynamic dictated by the core, and can increase the value of labor power in the periphery (without proper compensation, as described in section 2.1); so how does higher exploitation in the dynamic center impact super-exploitation in the periphery?

If we disagree with the concept of indirect exploitation in the core, there are still some important inquiries we can derive from the MDT insights. Is the financialization of households in the core an instrument that keeps the value of their labor power higher in the productive process (when compared to the periphery), balancing the recent decrease of working-class living conditions in core countries (as well documented by authors such as Kiefer and Rada 2015)? Would this allow for the structural differences between levels of exploitation to continue, despite the conjunctural approximation we have seen in the past years? And, perhaps most importantly, if super-exploitation is intrinsic and particular to the dependent condition, what are the new forms of exploitation in the concrete that keep the structural differences among core and periphery at higher levels of abstraction?

That last question directly relates to the discussion about imperialism and globalization, a trending topic in contemporary imperialism studies. One line of scholars argues that the international hunt for cheap labor perpetuated by big industrial corporations gives rise to the intensification of exploitation as one of the main structural characteristics of contemporary imperialism, that now considers a global pool of workers from which surplus value can be extracted, instead of a local one (Vasudevan 2016). On the opposite side of the spectrum, other authors claim that globalization and imperialism cannot coexist in a coherent theoretical model, and nation-states are still the concrete framework in which specific social formations are reproduced under capitalism; there is no such thing as a global capital or a global working class, given that there is no unified globalized system of social relations (Sakellaropoulos 2009). The analysis of these specific social formations (or lack thereof) is at the heart of the MDT contributions, since the international division of labor and internationalization of capital are the two main focuses of analysis.

When we consider the new role of the United States as an importer instead of exporter of capital, there is much debate about the beneficiaries of this change. Some follow the territorial logic, arguing that this setting allows for the US State to pursue its geopolitical objectives without the need for domestic adjustments, highlighting the conflicts and occasional alliances between nations (e.g., Hudson 2003). Other subscribe to the capitalist logic, claiming that US structural power constitutes the means for expanding and managing capitalist accumulation globally, so that the State is not the direct beneficiary of imperialistic practices (e.g., Panitch and Gindin 2012). A not-so-controversial consequence of this new characteristic for the periphery is that countries become forced to maintain significant reserves in US dollars. Since periphery countries also manage higher interest rates on average, inward short-term capital flows aggravate the scenario, ultimately transferring capital from the periphery to the core. dos Santos (1970) saw this latent trend but believed that this transference of capital would be used to promote technological acquisitions. The question of how this structurally changes capitalist development in the periphery—not only in terms of changing the realm of policies that a government can choose but actively altering the production and appropriation of surplus value in the capital cycle—directly dialogues with MDT’s three main thesis.

Under MDT’s lenses, contemporary forms of imperialism adapt to the needs of capital accumulation in the current financial capital era, so a dynamic synthesis is created, in which the core capital (thesis) and the dependent capitalism of the periphery (antithesis) find a path through which capital can exert its intrinsic tendency of extracting surplus value. This path is increasing the levels of exploitation everywhere, but there is great discussion if it is either structurally approximating core and periphery, or conjuncturally increasing levels of exploitation in the core while maintaining a structural difference in the periphery. Similarly, we see a phenomenon that some call globalization, that includes the creation of a global pool of workers and capital, while others see an increasing possibility for capital to develop its natural trend of not respecting national borders without the creation of a globalized capital/pool of workers. This article argues that MDT provides an insightful framework to investigate these—and further—inquiries, producing a valuable theoretical synthesis with contemporary imperialism theories. This endeavor is not only relevant in terms of a research agenda, but mainly because it allows for the development of ideas oriented by the revolutionary praxis that guided the development of the original MDT and the classical imperialism authors. It constitutes, therefore, a tool to interpret the world and, above all, a tool to change it.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the valuable contributions from the Review of Radical Political Economics reviewers, which greatly contributed to the improvement of this article. I would also like to thank Ramaa Vasudevan (Colorado State University) and Marco Marques Pestana de Aguiar Guedes (Universidade Federal Fluminense), for their generous comments on early versions of this article, and Kendall Stephenson (Colorado State University), for his detailed review and final edits.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Débora Machado Nunes

1

Vernengo (2006) comments on the disappearance of dependency-theory authors in more recent versions of The political economy of international relations published by Robert Gilpin; such authors were featured in previous editions, but vanished in the 2000s. Vernengo (2006) also mentions the “obituary” of dependency theory published by in Foreign Policy as an example of how irrelevant this school of thought became. It is worth noticing that, in this publication, Velasco shares an anecdote about how well-dressed and pro-capitalist development Fernando Henrique Cardoso was, and how much that shocked him (and the audience). He goes on to affirm that dependency theory interpretated the world inaccurately, and wrongly suggested turning away from the world economy as a political strategy. Velasco’s piece is a good example of three very important premises of this article: (1) particularly for economists from the global North, dependency theory is seen as somewhat homogeneous; (2) they see the theory as best represented by Cardoso; (3) there is a gross misinterpretation of the theory as a whole.

2

The term “Cepalist” refers to the ideas produced by the economists of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC or, in Portuguese and Spanish, CEPAL) and their followers during the 1950s and 1960s.

3

Specifically, Cardoso (1977) claims that Frank’s work fails to acknowledge the specificities of dependent economies, preventing him from proposing a dialectical analysis that draws together the general and the particular in a specific whole. All questions associated with dependency theory have dialectical movement as their starting point (class struggle, possible alignments between domestic and international interests, etc.), so Frank cannot be considered part of the dependency theory tradition according to Cardoso (1977). This problematic methodology led Frank to focus on the discussion of feudalism in Latin America, and led US scholars to mistakenly associate dependency theory with the critique of Latin American feudalism ().

4

Despite using the term “neo-Marxists,” Cardoso acknowledges that MDT authors relied on Marx’s original writings to formulate their propositions (Cardoso 1977: 9). That is confirmed by the MDT authors themselves (Marini 1990; Bambirra 1991; ). Since the “neo-Marxists” label suggests a significant influence of authors such as Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, I use the term “Marxists” to highlight the direct influence of Marx’s writings on MDT.

5

Conjuncture is the concrete state of political-economic and especially class relations, in a specific society, at a particular point in time (). The term was popularized in English-written literature by structural Marxists such as Louis Althusser.

6

Dos Santos started to move away from the MDT around the 1970s, and became a relevant author of the so-called world systems theory tradition (which is, according to some classifications, also part of the dependency theories research program). Therefore, this paper only considers his work before this transition.

7

One of the most straight-forward examples of this capitalist expansion is in care work. Services like cooking, doing the dishes, and taking care of kids and other family members are increasingly substituted by market alternatives, making reproduction increasingly a class privilege under capitalism. For a comprehensive collection of essays on the subject, see .

8

There is a rich literature about the different interpretations of the Brazilian economy and how they led to different class struggle strategies within the left-wing movements. Particularly about the PCB and their arguments for a non-armed resistance during the military dictatorship in Brazil, some references are Ridenti (1993), Del Roio (2012), and Reis, Ridenti, and Patto Sá Motta (2014).

9

For the Cepalists, the terms-of-trade deterioration was the strongest and most permanent trend among international markets that would perpetuate the dependent condition of the periphery, so the developmentalist strategy of public-private partnerships aimed at industrialization, with imports substitution and the decrease in primary-goods exports, was the path for development (Saad-Filho 2020). Given this central importance of the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis for dependency theory authors that followed traditional political careers—which contrasts with the MDT authors, who opted for revolutionary alternatives and consider the terms of trade only one of the transfer mechanisms, as debated here—substantial research was dedicated to empirically test its existence, with overwhelming evidence pointing in its favor. Some references of empirical and theoretical formulations are Mollick et al. (2008), Harvey et al. (2010), Bloch and Sapsford (2000), Ram (2004), and .

10

An interesting debate about the historical relationship between work intensity and working hours, and how different strains of Marxists interpreted the problem, is presented in .

11

Marini ([1973] 1991) characterizes the reserve army of labor in the periphery as uniquely different and effectively larger than the reserve army of labor of core countries due to certain specificities imposed by the dependent social formation, as the ones listed above. Some authors, such as , use the term “expanded reserve army” to describe such phenomena in a lower level of abstraction.

12

An interesting debate about consumption habits and economic needs based on the social-historical determination of labor value, and how that associated with cultural imperialism in the periphery, is presented in .

13

Concepts such as neofascism, dependent fascism, fascism of the underdeveloped, and primary fascism are associated with the literature that explores this particular phenomenon in the periphery. A rich debate about that research is presented in .

14

On December 13, 1968, Army Marshal Costa e Silva—the Brazilian dictator occupying the president chair at the time—issued the Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5), which marked the beginning of the most authoritarian phase of the regime. The act suspended all constitutional guarantees, ultimately making torture a common and legal practice of the State.

15

It is interesting to notice that Cardoso’s contribution is classified as “non-Marxist or anti-Marxist” in the introduction of this LAP issue (Chilcote 1990). I argue this too is a misinterpretation of dependency theory, since I consider Cardoso’s contribution as Weberian-Marxist. : 22) himself notices the wrong classifications of his work as “a non-class-struggle style of analysis” in English-written work, highlighting a publication in LAP that presents this type of misinterpretation.

16

The prolific debate between Lenin, who defined imperialism as being the highest stage of capitalism, and Kautsky, who saw the possibility of later (post-imperialist) capitalist stages, generated an important division among the classical authors of imperialism, which is (in part) echoed in contemporary authors. , for example, despite relying on a lot of Lenin’s insights, directly align with Kautsky’s perspective when claiming that the imperialist phase of capitalism ended in 1968. Since the goal of this article is to propose a dialogue between insights of dependency theory and contemporary forms of imperialism, I focus on the literature that aligns with Lenin (i.e., the authors that consider imperialism a contemporary phenomenon), despite acknowledging the important contribution of this other group of authors in current Marxist literature.

17

Lapavitsas (2009) considers the process of financial expropriation a form of indirect exploitation, arguing that it ultimately constitutes a different way of appropriating part of surplus value in a different moment of the capital cycle (direct appropriation of part of the workers’ consumption fund through financial mechanisms). Such understanding is highly controversial among Marxist circles, since it implies that corporations (banks) can exploit workers not through hiring their labor but through direct appropriation of their income, so this type of exploitation does not happen in the production process. A more detailed discussion of this issue is provided by .

Author Biography

Débora Nunes is PhD candidate and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Economics Department at Colorado State University, and Research Assistant for the Feminist Economics Journal. She has an MA in Development Economics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Brazil) and a BA in Economics from the same institution; she was also an invited student at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE, Mexico). Her research interests and published works debate feminist economics, history of economic thought, Marxist theory, Latin American studies, and macroeconomic policy.

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