ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines six theses on neoextractivism and capitalist development in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Neoextractivism is a capitalist dynamic associated with crisis and reform in global capitalism. Capitalist crisis heightens nationalist struggles over natural resources.
Neoextractivism is essential to the reform and maintenance of capitalism and is not intended as an alternative path to human development. Neoextractivism lies within the general framework of development theory, and has been used to perpetuate capitalist economic relations globally. The forces of global capitalism – colonial, neocolonial, postcolonial, neoliberal or post-neoliberal, play a central role in bringing about political change that is favorable to capitalist development in peripheral countries that are rich in natural resources. An essential feature of the struggle for alternatives to capitalism requires clarification on the subject of neoextractivism as a development model. The historical evidence from Guyana, a Caribbean country demonstrates that as capitalism marches forward driven by crises and reform, there is a tendency for the domestic elites who control state power to agitate for national ownership and or control of natural resources.
