Crisis and Accumulation in the Peruvian Economy,1967-1975

Abstract

This paper analyzes the contradictions in the process of accumula tion in the context of backwardness, looking in detail at the Peruvian economy over an eight year period. A general theoretical framework is developed in which the barrier to accumulation is derived from the sphere of production, following the method of Marx (a fuller development of this analysis is found in a forthcom ing joint work by Elizabeth Dore and John Weeks). The economic crises of 1967- 1969 and 1975 to the present are explained in terms of this theoretical analysis. Annual and quarterly data are employed to describe the form of these crises. It is argued that these crises are not the result of deficiencies in demand, either in the domestic market or in exports, but result from fundamental contradictions in the sphere of production. It is these contradictions which gave rise to the coup of 1968, in which the local industrial capitalist class seized power from an alliance of financial and exporting capitalists and pre-capitalist expropriators.