The Longue Durée of the Marxist Theory of Dependency and the Twenty-First Century

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Carlos Eduardo Martins
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211052029
• Subject Matter: Articles: Reflections on Historical Thought

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211052029

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 242, Vol. 49 No. 1, January 2022, 18–35

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211052029

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

18

The Longue Durée of the Marxist Theory of Dependency

and the Twenty-First Century

by

Carlos Eduardo Martins

Translated by

Patricia Fierro

A critical review of the 50-year-old Marxist theory of dependency and its current situ-

ation includes discussion of its analyses of the world-system, the concepts of superexploi-

tation and subimperialism, its reflections on development, democracy, and proposals for

emancipation, and its perspectives on the rise of the Latin American left in the twenty-first

century and the prospects of neoconservatism. It concludes that with the globalization of

capital, Marxist dependency theory must oppose not only internal structures of depen-

dency but the imperialist world order, and this will call for the development of national,

continental and global strategies.

Uma revisão crítica dos 50 anos de debates sobre a teoria marxista da dependência e seu

estado da arte, que inclui a discussão de suas análises do sistema-mundo, os conceitos de

superexploração e subimperialismo, suas reflexões sobre desenvolvimento, democracia e

propostas de emancipação, e suas perspectivas sobre a ascensão da esquerda latino-ameri-

cana no século XXI e as perspectivas do neoconservadorismo. Conclui que, com a global-

ização do capital, a teoria marxista da dependência deve assumir sua vocação de luta não

apenas contra as estruturas internas da dependência mas também contra a ordem mundial

imperialista, e isso exigirá o desenvolvimento de estratégias nacionais, continentais e

mundiais.

Keywords: Dependency, Development, Superexploitation, Subimperialism, World-

system

The Marxist theory of dependency was initially formulated between 1967

and 1982, in response to the crisis of national developmentalism, by exiles in

Chile and Mexico, deepening preliminary thoughts during 1961–1966 in the

Organização Revolucionária Marxista–Política Operária (Marxist Revolutionary

Political Workers’ Organization—POLOP) and the Universidade Nacional de

Brasília. The Centro de Estudios Socio-Económicos (Center for Socioeconomic

Studies—CESO) in Chile and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

(National Autonomous University of Mexico—UNAM) in Mexico, where the

exiled individuals were received, played a fundamental role, focusing on the

socialist transformation at the former and the redemocratization of the Southern

Carlos Eduardo Martins is an associate professor at the Instituto de Relações Internacionais e

Defesa of the Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro and a professor on the permanent staff of

the university’s graduate program in international political economy. Patricia Fierro is a translator

living in Quito, Ecuador.

1052029LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211052029Latin American PerspectivesMartins / LONGUE DURÉE OF MARXIST DEPENDENCY THEORY

research-article2021

Martins / LONGUE DURÉE OF MARXIST DEPENDENCY THEORY 19

Cone at the latter. Among the main formulators of the theory were Theotônio

dos Santos, Ruy Mauro Marini, Vânia Bambirra, Orlando Caputo, and Roberto

Pizarro. The following publications may be highlighted: CESO (1967), Dos

Santos (1968; 1969; 1972; 1978a); Marini (1968; 1973; 1978b; 1979a; 1979b; 1982),

Bambirra (1974; 1978), and Caputo and Pizarro (1974).

This period was preceded, from 1890 to 1930, by a first flowering of depen-

dency theory in anti-imperialist thought whose main expressions were the

works of José Martí and Jose Carlos Mariátegui (Marini, 1992). Martí denounced

the cultural colonialism of Latin American oligarchies as the basis for submis-

sion to European and American imperialism. He pinned his hopes on a radical

liberalism that broke with the internal colonialism that had survived indepen-

dence and established an alliance between the nationalist middle classes and

the masses based on liberating political parties that forged a greater awareness

of a national project and Latin American and Caribbean integration. Mariátegui

pointed to the persistence of colonial capitalism in Latin America because of the

place that the world capitalist economy had reserved for it in the international

division of labor. Analyzing the Peruvian case, he argued that the severe limits

to industrialization that ensued had prevented the full development of a pro-

letariat, turning the indigenous into the agents of the transformation to social-

ism because of their hybrid condition as semiproletarians and bearers of the

communal relations in which the values indispensable for the reproduction of

the workforce were produced. For him it was up to socialism to pursue the path

toward development and national sovereignty.

The second flowering of dependency theory, crystallized in the Marxist the-

ory of dependency, was established when the international division of labor

was restructured after the crisis of the world market and the establishment of

U.S. hegemony. Multinational corporations prioritized investment in the

domestic markets of host countries, industry was partially decentralized and

transferred to the periphery, import substitution was established and pro-

moted, and most of the countries in the periphery were freed from European

colonial rule. The Marxist theory of dependency analyzed dependency as part

of a monopolist, dynamic, and competitive world capitalist economy that tran-

scended national states, creating relations of complementarity, subordination,

commitment, and/or conflict among its various hegemonic internal bourgeoi-

sies. The analytical emphasis was not primarily on colonial relations but on the

dynamics of capitalist accumulation that created them and on the structures of

the world economy that they forged.

For the Marxist theory of dependency, dependency was based on internal

features of peripheral economies that incorporated them in a subordinate way

into a capitalist world economy initially based on European colonialism. These

features were linked to a pursuit of extraordinary profits that, under condi-

tions of asymmetry, took the form of access to foreign technology, the markets

of the central countries, and international credit. This ensured, internally, the

formation in the periphery of monopolist bourgeoisies that were limited by

their incorporation into complementary branches of the international division

of labor, where they suffered transfers of surplus value through commercial,

productive, and financial relations. The higher value transfers imposed on

dependent countries by big international capital in all these formations—and