Marxism is a highly complex subject, and its contribution to the analyses of imperialism and capitalist development in backward countries is no less so. It is in these areas that we find the widest divergence between the writings of Marx and Engels and those of many contemporary Marxists, who claim that capitalist development in the periphery is no longer feasible, or that it is so distorted that it can no longer lead towards socialism. These views go against the spirit and the letter of Marx's writings. Nevertheless, as a general rule, we do not find in these contemporary Marxist writers any effort to explain this divergence. In this context, what is important is to ask whether the differences are attributable to changes in circumstances or in diagnosis; that is to say, whether capitalism has been transformed in such a way that capitalist development in the periphery cannot take place within the modern capitalist system, or whether Marx and Engels' analyses were themselves overoptimistic regarding the possibilities of this development in the backward areas of the world. At the same time, the writings of most contemporary Marxists give the impression that Marxist interest in the problems of capitalist development in the periphery only began in the 1950s, ignoring the important debates on these issues that took place before. One of the main aims of this thesis is to rectify this matter. Another aim is to clarify the conceptual issues around which the debates revolves, and to show how many debates among 'dependency' writers echo similar debates which took place earlier within the Marxist tradition, although in most cases their relevance has not been duly appreciated. I also try to show the problems involved in seeking 'general' implications for contemporary socialist political strategy from the analysis of imperialism and capitalist development in the Third World. In this thesis I have divided the analysis into 4 parts; first, the period from the early writings of Marx and Engels to Lenin's Development of Capitalism in Russia; second, the 'classical' writers on imperialism; third, the period from Lenin's April Theses to Bukharin's and Kunsinen's 1928 theses (during the Sixth Congress of the COMINTERN), to the Seventh Congress and subsequent developments until the Cuban Revolution; and in the fourth, the Latin American 'dependency' debates. This thesis also contains an analysis of how both the Seventh Congress and the 'dependency' approaches were transformed into specific interpretations of the political and economic history of Chile. My analysis of the fourth period concentrates on the Latin America 'dependency' debates, without discussing the works of other writers like Saair Amin, Rey, Arrighi, or Emmanuel. It is not possible to review properly, within the word limit of a thesis, the period I cover and also include these writers, and the overwhelming mass of other writings relating to this fourth period which have appeared, aimed at either supporting or refuting its basic theses, or simply reflecting its sudden ascendancy in academic and intellectual circles hitherto relatively closed to radical critiques of current orthodoxy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:605157 |
| Date | January 1988 |
| Creators | Palma, Jose Gabriel |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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