Super-exploitation is one of the key

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

concepts, developed by Marxist dependency theorists, of the impact of

imperialism Imperialism is the maintaining and extending of Power (international relations), power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultura ...

on nations and regions of 'the periphery', also widely categorised as the '

Global South Global North and Global South are terms that denote a method of grouping countries based on their defining characteristics with regard to socioeconomics and politics. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Global South broadly com ...

' in contrast to the Imperialist 'core' or metropolitan countries in which

Capital Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

historically accumulates.

Unequal exchange Unequal exchange is used primarily in Marxist economics, but also in ecological economics (more specifically also as ecologically unequal exchange), to describe the systemic hidden transfer of labor and ecological value from poor countries in ...

between countries and regions is another concept to which is attributed the actualising of the continuing wealth transfer from periphery to core, and is frequently linked in the associated theoretical discussions. Super-exploitation is the systemic condition where

labour power Labour power (; ) is the capacity to work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do the work, i.e. labour power, and the physical act of working, i.e. labour. ...

is employed at rates, and under conditions, below the general levels of remuneration, or value, such that ordinary expectations of quality of life, life expectancy are systemically limited or threatened. These have in the past been contentious topics among Marxists - partly because in

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

's ''

Das Kapital ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' (), also known as ''Capital'' or (), is the most significant work by Karl Marx and the cornerstone of Marxian economics, published in three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. The culmination of his ...

'', for analytic purposes, he explicitly assumed for the development of his initial abstractions that Labour was remunerated at its general social average value, sufficient for the worker's necessary means of social reproduction. Marx himself however frequently commented on exceptions to this, and documented many recorded instances when this was not the case, particularly in the employment of Women and Children, exploitation of Slaves, and the indigenous in Colonial situations. Marx indicated the importance of these effects without fully integrating their consideration in his published work, and the consequent observation and debate around these questions has its own history''A Review of the Marxist debate on unequal exchange and its relevance as a determination of uneven development in the capitalist world system'' p.75-148 in Osorio, Jaime and Reyes, Cristobal (2024) Labour Super-Exploitation, Unequal Exchange and Capital Reproduction: Writings on Marxist Dependency Theory ibidem Verlag, Hannover, Stuttgart

''Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment'' London: Routledge * Andy Higginbottom (2023) ''Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini’s ‘Dialectics of Dependency’ Goes beyond Marx’s ‘Capital’'' Monthly Review Press 2023, Volume 74, Number 11 (April 2023) * Marini, Ruy Mauro (2022) ''The Dialectics of Dependency'' trans. and Introduction Latimer, Amanda Monthly Review Press, New York * Osorio, Jaime and Reyes, Cristóbal (2024) ''Labour Super-Exploitation, Unequal Exchange and Capital Reproduction: Writings on Marxist Dependency Theory'' ibidem Verlag, Hannover, Stuttgart

References

{{reflist Marxist theory Marxian critique of political economy Imperialism studies

Further reading

References