The Pattern of Capital Reproduction in Dependent and Financialized Capitalism

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211061878
• Author: Bruna Ferraz Raposo,Marisa Silva Amaral,Niemeyer Almeida Filho
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles: Contemporary Theoretical Debates

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211061878

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 242, Vol. 49 No. 1, January 2022, 166–181

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211061878

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

166

The Pattern of Capital Reproduction in Dependent and

Financialized Capitalism

by

Bruna Ferraz Raposo, Niemeyer Almeida Filho, and Marisa Silva Amaral

Financialization is the result of the development of social forces and relations of produc-

tion translated into legal and institutional changes including the increasing importance

of the financial sphere of capital and international financial circuits compared with the rest

of the economy. An analysis from a lower level of abstraction, as proposed by the Marxist

theory of dependency and Jaime Osorio’s work on the pattern of capital reproduction, must

consider the differentiated incorporation of the periphery into financialized capitalism and

its effects. A proposal that encompasses the cycles of capital and its reproduction in specific

geo-historical contexts and establishes a dialogue between the pattern of capital reproduc-

tion and the changes in contemporary capitalism serves to extend Osorio’s ideas, includ-

ing the identification of financialization as a new coil of the spiral of dependency.

A financeirização é o resultado do desenvolvimento das forças sociais e das relações de

produção traduzidas em mudanças jurídicas e institucionais, incluindo a crescente

importância da esfera financeira do capital e dos circuitos financeiros internacionais em

comparação com o resto da economia. Uma análise de um nível inferior de abstração, como

proposto pela teoria marxista da dependência e o trabalho de Jaime Osorio sobre o padrão

de reprodução do capital, deve considerar a incorporação diferenciada da periferia no

capitalismo financeirizado e seus efeitos. Uma proposta que englobe os ciclos do capital e

sua reprodução em contextos geo-históricos específicos e que estabeleça um diálogo entre

o padrão de reprodução do capital e as mudanças no capitalismo contemporâneo serve para

estender as ideias de Osório, incluindo a identificação da financeirização como uma nova

bobina do espiral de dependência.

Keywords: Marxist theory of dependency, Pattern of capital reproduction,

Financialization, Latin America

The Marxist theory of dependency is a theoretical perspective that seeks to

understand the specificities of capitalist development in Latin America. It is

one of the strands of the dependency theory that had serious repercussions on

the region in the 1960s–1970s (Hette, 1990; Hunt, 1989; Kay, 1989; and Lechman,

1990). It originated in a prolific intellectual movement of the Latin American

left and had as its main exponents the Brazilians Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotônio

dos Santos, and Vânia Bambirra, who were dedicated to understanding the

subordinate incorporation of Latin America into world capitalism and the

structures that emerged from it.

Bruna Ferraz Raposo is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Universidade Federal Fluminense.

Niemeyer Almeida Filho and Marisa Silva Amaral are professors in the Economics and

International Relations Institute of the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia.

1061878LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211061878Latin American PerspectivesRaposo et al. / CAPITAL REPRODUCTION IN DEPENDENT CAPITALISM

research-article2021

Raposo et al. / CAPITAL REPRODUCTION IN DEPENDENT CAPITALISM 167

According to Marini (2005), the region became integrated with central capi-

talism through the commercial expansion of the sixteenth century. This integra-

tion reached another, more consolidated level in the nineteenth century with

the Industrial Revolution and the increased demand of the central economies

for raw materials and agricultural products along with their greater provision

of manufactured goods. The uneven and combined development of the world

capitalist system, as captured by the classic theories of imperialism, engen-

dered a hierarchical structure that enabled the transfer of surplus value at the

level of international relations, confronting us with the center-periphery bino-

mial and the need to understand the dynamics of capital accumulation in dif-

ferent geographical spaces.

Marini (2005) argues that the transfer of value as unequal exchange1 causes

a situation in which part of the surplus value produced in the periphery par-

ticipates in the dynamics of capital accumulation in the central countries (at the

expense of capital accumulation in the dependent ones). Thus, limits are

imposed on the full reproduction of capital in dependent social formations.

Restricted access to cutting-edge technologies and innovative capacity—which

are not produced in the periphery but common in the central countries and

protected by the high cost of access and patents—makes it impossible to

increase the rate of surplus value by increasing productivity, forcing capital

accumulation in dependent economies to depend on strengthening the mecha-

nisms for exploiting the workforce. The superexploitation of the labor force is,

then, a mechanism for compensating transfers of value and is the distinguish-

ing feature of dependency. This mechanism, while explaining the split in the

cycle of capital reproduction in the dependent economy, occurs because of it.

There is a divorce between the requirements of capital accumulation and the

needs of the majority of the population—between the production and the real-

ization of value (Marini, 2005).

Since the early 2000s, the seminal works of Dos Santos, Bambirra, and Marini

have been recovered and placed in the historical context of neoliberal hege-

mony through the eloquent contributions of an expressive group of organic

intellectuals and social movements. Among them we highlight the work of

Jaime Osorio, an activist and professor at the Universidad Autónoma

Metropolitana–Xochimilco and a student and coworker of Ruy Mauro Marini

in the 1980s. Osorio expanded, in the framework of the Marxist theory of

dependency, the concept of the pattern of capital reproduction—originally for-

mulated by Marini—as fundamental for the concrete study of dependent socio-

economic formations. The concept makes it possible to apprehend the

movement of capital in specific geographical and territorial spaces and at spe-

cific historical times. Thus the Marxist theory of dependency identifies and

develops the distinctive feature of dependent capitalism in all its historical

stages to this day, given the necessary understanding of movements of global

capitalism development as occurring from the center and being incorporated

by the periphery (Dos Santos, 1970).

Our discussion starts from the hypothesis that the crisis of the 1960s–1970s

engendered significant changes in the reproduction of capital on a world scale.

Since the end of World War II, the central countries had been sustaining high

growth rates and the Latin American countries had had a degree of autonomy