ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes critically the general dependency hypothesis, explains its specific hypotheses and discusses the ground for an alternative theory of underdevelopment or backwardness. A surplus is transferred from backward countries, reducing the rate of accumulation there for lack of a sufficient investable surplus. The surplus extraction thesis takes as given the existence of a surplus, and concerns itself only with the circulation or distribution of that surplus. A mode of production is characterized by the specific social relations which determine how the surplus product is produced, the method whereby the surplus product is appropriated, and the social and political forms consistent with these relations of production and appropriation. All of dependency theory suffers from an essentially circulationist approach, that underdevelopment need be explained in terms of relations in exchange surplus extraction, unequal exchange, monopoly.
