With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS
What is ‘dependency theory’?
Dependency theory reveals the ‘hidden skeleton’ underpinning capitalism today, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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DEPENDENCY theory emerged in the 1960s and ’70s as a Marxist critique of the ideology of “modernisation” which argued that “poor” countries could “develop” by following the same path as ”wealthy” capitalist states.
Over a century-and-a-half ago, Marx and Engels declared in The Communist Manifesto that “The bourgeoisie […] has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.”
In his 1867 preface to Volume one of Capital, Marx wrote: “The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.”
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Most currently popular arguments for degrowth describe a real problem without recognising its true cause – capitalism’s insatiable need to accumulate, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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Most phenomena have an explanation, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY, but occasionally ‘anomalous’ events have led to new scientific understanding
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The fight to defend public services is as important as the struggle over wages, but presents different challenges to workplace organising — especially with regards to bourgeois propaganda and conditioning, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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Marx and Engels’ concern with soil provides a focus for understanding the relationship between capitalism and the environment, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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The ‘degrowth’ debate raises critical issues to which only a Marxist approach can provide answers, argues the Marx Memorial Library
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The increased efficiency of any aspect of capitalism will not automatically lead to its collapse and transformation — avoiding the dangers and realising the potential of AI will involve struggle, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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The impact of AI depends on who controls it and for what purpose, argues the Marx Memorial Library
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The arms industry is at the heart of capitalism today; we need to confront both, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY