ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a critique of dependency theory and focuses on those authors who have made important contributions to the development of the theory. It discusses a theoretical discussion of the barriers to economic development that emerge from the nature of precapitalist social relations of production. Competition in all stages of capitalism necessitates reinvestment, technical change, and the expansion of production. The forces of production are not as highly developed in the backward countries as in the advanced countries. Ruy Mauro Marini argues that the extracted surplus is appropriated by the working class in the imperialist countries. Paul Baran argues that the surplus generated in underdeveloped countries is appropriated by the capitalist classes of the advanced countries, and is a major source of their profits. The theory of monopoly capital, closely akin to dependency theory, provides an explicit formulation of the mechanisms of surplus extraction through profit remittances and monopoly.
