World-Systems Theory, Dependency Theory and Global Inequality

In this video, I look at some of the causes of global economic inequality. Does World-Systems Theory and Dependency Theory offer answers, or are more nuanced explanations offered in works like The Bottom Billion and Why Nations Fail?

[ThenNow]

Sources:

Articles

Birkan, A.O. (2015) ‘A Brief Overview of the Theory of Unequal Exchange and its Critiques’, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 5(4/1), pp. 155-163.

Chorev, N. and Babb, S. (2009) ‘The crisis of neoliberalism and the future of international institutions: A comparison of the IMF and the WTO’, Theory and Society, 38(5), pp. 459–484.

Gereffi, G. (1978) ‘Drug firms and dependency in Mexico: The case of the steroid hormone industry’, International Organization, 32(01), pp. 237-288

Kapoor, I. (2002) ‘Capitalism, culture, agency: Dependency versus postcolonial theory’, Third World Quarterly, 23(4), pp. 647–664.

Korotayev, A. and Zinkina, J. (2014) ‘On the structure of the present-day convergence’, Campus-Wide Information Systems, 31(2/3), pp. 139-152.


UNCTAD. ‘Foreign direct investment, the transfer and diffusion of technology, and sustainable development, ’ (New York and Geneva: United Nations publication, December 2010).

Books

Acemoglu, D., Robinson, J.A. and Acemoglu, P.D. (2013) Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. New York: Crown Business.

Bourguignon, F. (2015) The Globalisation of Inequality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Collier, P. (2007) The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Shannon, T.R. (1996) An introduction to the world-system perspective. 2nd edn. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Wallerstein, I., ‘Structural Crisis, or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding’ in Derluguian, G. (2014) Does capitalism have a future? Edited by Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, and Michael Mann. United States: Oxford University Press.

[monki]

Interesting choice of Bill Gates and Microsoft for "not a monopoly."

[seivadmj]

RIP Immanuel Wallerstein. It’s kind of hard to know where to start with this video. On a channel that usually takes thinking and philosophy pretty seriously, it’s surprising to see ideas and schools of ideas reduced to parodies. The source of structuralism for the dependency thinkers came not out of communism (which isn’t necessarily structuralist) but out of the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, especially under the directorship of Raúl Prebisch. Getting the economics right is important here and so is the politics: dependency theorists in Latin America advocated very different politics to Latin American communist parties. Wallerstein’s thinking about historical time and long cycles was an important correction of the very ahistorical march of modernisation or the abstract theorising of neoclassical economics. And this is not to say that any of these ideas are necessarily right: Wallerstein has had many trenchant critics, such as Robert Brenner who argued that by defining capitalism in terms of trade amongst nations, Wallerstein and dependency theory tended to be economic determinists where starting the analysis from class relations would give a clearer political analysis of capitalism. As to the discussions of inequality, would it not have been better to ask what each of these thinkers in your video think capitalism is and then see if that idea is coherent and consistent, rather than asserting that there is something out there that is “capitalism” that has a record of lifting people out of poverty? Marx himself argued that capital revolutionises the development of the forces of production; you would expect it to generate ever more wealth. This might lift some or even many out of poverty, but why were they poor? How did they lose their access to subsistence? One might suspect that capital has something to do with that, too.

[blockparty]

This falls into a fallacy argument basically boiling down to: living standards are getting better, therefore this system must be the best system.
Chomsky lays out a pretty basic argument against this fallacy being: We could use this to justify any system. Slave societies saw a rise in standards of livings, even among the slaves. In fact this argument could be used to support the marxist-leninist model in the USSR, which brought russia from the third world into the so-called second world. Rising living standards or "bringing people out of poverty" isn't an argument for capitalism in the same way that they aren't an argument for slave societies. There is inherently something wrong with the system that must be tended to.

[Jackjaundice]

International institutions are undoubtedly governed by, financed by and run in favor of the Western capitalist ruling class. I think this video maps out the issue well but ends by presenting a 'bootstrap' view of the developing world. This is to completely ignore the historical importance of resource extraction through colonization, imperialism and even what we would tend to refer to as economic 'soft power' which often functions to tear down barriers to capital but build them with regard to labor. The global economy is premised upon a power relation that de facto and de jure represents the interests of the capitalist class and benefits states that themselves represent the greatest share of capital. The problems of corruption and bad governance in poor countries map onto that existing framework but DO NOT generate it.

[michaelthomson]

For a video entitled "dependency and world-systems theory", much of it seems to be used advocating for new institutional economics ideas of acemoglu and robinson etc. Even NIE authors have ceded that their previous thinking failed to relate the success of any particular institutional settings to the pre-existing power dynamics between actors within and beyond the country's borders. I recommend reading about Mushtaq Khan's political settlements theory if you're interested in how or why NIE has shown itself to be poor at explaining real-world development

[up]

I slightly disagree with the assessments for two reason:

-For starter, those countries you mentioned were never communist (eg: Stateless, classless, moneyless society, AKA community focus anarchy), those states were failed experiments of state capitalism. The wealth was never redistributed, classes were never abolished, political power was never descentralized and eventually abolished. They were simple dictatorships using the aesthetics of left politics to entice the populus to give any and all power to a selected few in a direct manner. Sort of how Hitler and fascism in general flipsflops between left and right aesthetics to achieve its goals.
Legitimately attempts at establishing descentralized leftist states were crushed by the US, example of that would be the Dominican republic in the 60s, after the populus decided they had enough of the US BACKED dictator Trujillo. Another example, Chile, argentina... You get the point. Those states elected DEMOCRATICALLY their leaders, not by violent revolution, those states wanted legitimate grow and openess.

-you don't need to be a cynic to see that the world is not getting better. *Living* and being alive aren't the same thing. The strategy of keeping the 3rd world in constant "development" for the exploration of the rich nation is basically an evolution of slavery. If you use the metrics but the IMF for instance, of course more people have gotten out of poverty, but why should the metric be based on a few dollars a day? If you use something like 15-20$ a day, the things flip and more people have fallen into poverty.

[rednegativity]

Our global environmental crisis is completely inaccessible from the perspective of texts like "Why Nations Fail." The term I've been seeing in recent scholarship is "fossil capitalism, " which describes capitalism not as a Marxist stage, but as a means of mastering and exploiting the natural environment for utility and profit. Inequality largely springs from this relationship; capitalism necessarily involves the systemic disparity and inequality that emerge from environmental exploitation. 

It seems very clear now, in 2019, that things are indeed getting worse. You don't have to be a cynic to see that. In this century, being hopeful without being in denial will mean boldly imagining new ways of relating ourselves to each other and the world.

[TATIANABUTTS]

I agree with most of what's in this video. I do believe that the current capitalist system we are in at the moment is not sustainable, not only from an environmental point of view but also for the labourers who are constantly being exploited due to the rich trying to maximise profit. The whole point of capitalism is profit maximisation and constant growth, but what happens after we reach that peak? Slavery? Environmental destruction? Exhaustion of resources? We can't just keep growing forever. However, I disagree with the narrator's quick jumping to conclusions about how Communism doesn't work, therefore we should just stay with capitalism and deal with the bad consequences. There are alternative economies, there are other options. We need to stop thinking about the world solely from a capitalist-communist perspective.

[lucassalgado]

"free market lifted billions out of poverty"
looks at the Global South:
oh no...

[heartache]

the middle of the video had my eyes start rolling up on their owm

[VivaLaSocialismo]

The level of inequality and the instability it creates cannot justify our systems ability to lift some out of poverty

[Gudest]

I agree with the critical comments here. This video false into a couple traps and therefore ends up supporting liberal capitalism.

[diegolatruwe]

Just saying communism doesn't work like that's the end of it is extremely reductive. Some aspects of communism worked extremely well, others didn't work at all.
Dismissing a way of thinking about economics and politics which has demonstrably benefited millions in it's entirety is just not a very smart thing to do when you know that capitalism can't last forever.

[davidcanatella]

What keeps poor countries poor is simple ; The flow of resource is greater from the poor countries to the rich countries due to the predatory society and economy of the industrialized nations. In this way it is the rich countries that are the dependent ones by simple mathematics. With money rich nations only appear to be giving more and they only look as though they are in a better position to give, yet their dependency on resources and labor from the poor countries actually make their systems more unstable.

[buffdaddddddddy]

great work presenting your process of thinking through this but um no. how are we defining innovation? there are many competing views regarding what we actually talk about (and don't) when we invoke Innovation™. it's like saying progress... what is progress? quite surprising to see your conclusion and process given that your other videos suggested that you would be fully aware of the blindspots of Enlightenment era notions.

[TSBoncompte]

Man, i studied sociology at uni but ended up doing IT consulting, and man I'm glad to have found this channel.

[apersonlikeanyother]

He lost me at “ the world is slowly becoming a better place.” Obviously untrue in 2019.

[mntnwzrd]

The presence of the Very Rich make democratic society impossible. Every problem mentioned is the fig leaf in front of the machinations of the very rich. Every single one. #TeamGuillotine

[tuncalikutukcuoglu]

The biggest error is measuring the size and health of economies with such narrow-minded and short-sighted measures like GDP. The concept of economic development is also faulty at its core, like the mainstream (neoclassical) economics that meticulously ignores or downplays the ecological and sociological facts of life.