Status Updates From Unequal Development: An Ess...

Gradually, the Palestine problem became the pivot of the 'Arab question', the test of capacity for the various social classes that aspired to lead the anti-imperialist national movement. It was on this test that there came to grief both the comprador, latifundia-owning bourgeois generation and then the petty-bourgeoisie.

None of the features that define the structure of the periphery is thus weakened as economic growth proceeds: on the contrary, these features are accentuated. Whereas at the center, growth means development, making the economy more integral, in the periphery growth does not mean development, for it disarticulates the economy — it is only a ‘development of underdevelopment’.

Exports that are destined for the center cannot grow faster than demand at the center — that is, approximately at the rate of growth of the center: it is impossible for a country to catch up on its historical handicap while sticking to the basis of international specialization.

The international division of labour [reproduces] its own conditions, splitting the world labour market into watertight national markets with big differences in rewards. It deepens unequal exchange by internalizing this in the firm.

"To say that the theory of unequal exchange means that ‘the workers at the center exploit those at the periphery ‘ is meaningless, since only ownership of capital makes exploitation possible…To say...that it means that the bourgeoisie of the periphery is...interested in shaking off the domination of the center, [forgets] that this bourgeoisie has been formed...in the wake of the bourgeoisie of the center."

A policy of development for the benefit of the masses would have to base itself upon a fundamental revision of priorities in the allocation of resources, implying rejection of the rules of profitability. That is what a strategy of transition would mean.

The doctrine of free trade has only ever been preached by the stronger, after they have established a dominant position by other means.

It is thus not the ‘laws of the market’ that explain the way wages have evolved in the periphery (which is the basis of unequal exchange) but quite simply the policies of primitive accumulation that are practiced there.

Delink, divest, dedollarize.

The only way forward for capitalism – faced with the transcending of the system by socialism, with the contradiction between productive forces and production relations – is state capitalism.

Chapter 1 is a solid rundown of:

1.) Precapitalist "tribute-paying" formations and how Europe was geographically/politically/economically situated to be the epicentre of a global outbreak of capitalism.

2.) Rejection of Orientalist framings of the 'Asiatic' mode as 'more despotic' (quite the opposite!).

This essential reference to the production process cannot be reduced to 'ownership' of the means of production. The state-class in the tribute-paying mode does not own the land, which belongs to the community. The feudal lord enjoys only dominum emelinens...But both the state-class and the feudal lord organize and plan production, and in this way 'dominate' the production process.