Unearthing the Sources of Global Uneven Development

• In Event: 3555 - Section on the Political Economy of the World-System Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Uneven Development, Revolutions, and Global South

Abstract

Drawing on contemporary Marxist scholarship, I put forward a theoretical framework that addresses the dynamics of uneven development today. I outline an explanation of contemporary uneven development by drawing on the works of Neil Smith and William Robinson. Additionally, I explain how an ecological reading of uneven development fit four our current era can be advanced by drawing on James O'Connor's and Jason Moore's political ecology. In my framework, uneven development denotes the realities of chaotic capital flows and spatial competition. I show how unfettered capital mobility since the 1980s creates economic and environmental problems. Drastic movements of money-capital in and out of different regions, under the imperative of profitability, create cycles of boom and crises. A concomitant process of spatial competition, in turn, coerces zones (either countries or regions) into combining cheap labor and exploitable nature in ways that attract highly mobile capitals. In this context of globalized capitalism, at any given moment in time capital is free to flow out of regions considered as low profit/high cost, and into high profit/low cost zones. This inflow of capital itself “develops” a zone. But it develops zones by building infrastructure subordinate to profit-seeking. This capitalist development, however, triggers the process of rising cost, rising wages and declining profitability because of intensifying labor militancy and environmental change. In time, the combined processes of environmental degradation and rising inputs costs lead to erosion of capitalist profitability in places that seemed perfect for accumulation. A new cycle of re-localization and capital (out)flow ensues. These cycles of capital mobility driven by labor struggles and environmental conflicts, I argue, explain the dynamics of development and underdevelopment today. I conclude the paper by commenting on how this framework provides a clue as to why the resurgence of a “protectionist” and “proto-fascist” right the global north.

Author

• Roberto Jose Ortiz Ortiz, Binghamton University