David’s Reviews > Unequal Exchange > Status Update

Bettelheim's contention that Emmanuel's "common language" situates him in pre-Marxian political economy is laughable. What was bro smoking? We are to just pretend that Marxism is intellectually dominant rather than marginalized and to work from there? Antithetical to Lenin's alliance of materialist intellectuals and wider Marxist analysis in my view.

Bettelheim's critique of "apocalyptic economism" is genuinely ridiculous. I don't even think it follows from his own position, it negates the entire structure of imperialism itself.

Interesting how quickly the switch to free trade orthodoxy and the rise of outsourcing would destroy Bettelheim's argument linking inequality of wages to productivity.

Didn't realize Giovanni Arrighi and Arghiri Emmanuel were different people so I managed to miss this entirely during grad school despite reading up on unequal exchange/dependency theory through Wallerstein and others.