ABSTRACT
Although global capitalism is expanding fast beyond the territorial boundaries of the traditionally-rich advanced countries, the inequality between the richest and the poorest parts of the global capitalist economy is sharpening. Free market mechanism is not leading to a neat reallocation of capital from capital-intensive economies to labour-intensive economies as the theoretical assumptions of Neo-classical economics will have us believe it should do. 1 The uneven development of capitalism is leading to a highly complex mobility of labour and capital around the globe. The impressive economic growth rates in China, India, East Asia and parts of Latin America on one hand and the deceleration of growth in parts of Africa on the other, are examples of this uneven development of capitalism globally and nationally. How do we understand the role of ‘Third World’ poverty and underdevelopment in the global functioning of capitalism? Is poverty in one part of the world essential for prosperity in the other or does the prosperity of the advanced part require elimination of poverty in the other? There is no consensus in the Marxian theoretical tradition on this critical question.
