About the Book

This major intellectual exploration seeks to deepen our understanding of the way in which modern capitalism works. The author argues, in particular, that it has always rested in part on the unremunerated labour of women, the non-sustainable extraction of natural resources and the racist exploitation of the non-European periphery.

Robert Biel explains and illuminates how it has integrated the South into a Western-dominated system of exploitation and prevented it from making the promised transition from marginality on the periphery to prosperity at the centre. And the racist implications of this.

He also explores two fundamental questions. Are there really any indications that the global economy is slowly entering a long-term structural crisis? And would any significant disruption open up opportunities for new popular movements to fundamentally challenge it?

Robert Biel’s work constitutes a major revitalisation of the tools of Marxism and Dependency Theory. In addition to scholars of political economy and development, it will interest activists seeking to reconstitute left politics in the age of globalisation.

About the Author

Robert Biel

Contents

Contents
1. Capitalist Development in Historical Context
2. Imperialism and the Issue of Large-Scale Changes in Capitalism
3. The Post-World War Two Era
4. Development: Theory versus Practice
5. The Socialist Challenge to Development
6. The Third World Challenge
7. Realities Overlooked - Women’s Labour and Nature
8. New Technologies and New Management Systems to the Rescue?
9. The Role of the Capitalist Centre in the Current Phase of the International Political Economy
10. From Periphery to Centre? The Newly Industrialising Country (NIC) Strategy
11. Permanent Subordination? Structural Adjustment as Control
12. Political Implications of a New Economic Order
13. Globalization versus Regionalism
14. Future Challenge: Grassroots Movements and the Prospects for a New Social Order
Bibliography
Index

Commendations

"The importance of this book is its focus on the essential nature of capitalism as it really operates as a global system - namely that it does not permit the ‘backward regions‘ to catch up with the more advanced but, on the contrary, produces and reproduces a widening gap between them. This reality is simply ignored by conventional economists who, as a result, are not analysing actually existing capitalism, but an imaginary system of markets governed by socalled pure economic laws" - Samir Amin

"A must-read for scholars and students of political economy and those interested in globalisation issues" - Christian Aid News

"There is an emerging debate about what the British development specialist Robert Biel calls ‘The New Imperialism‘...the new Northern imperialism sucks out what‘s best from the South and grafts these assets onto their winning societies, leaving the carcase of underdevelopment behind" - G. Pascal Zachary in ‘In These Times‘