ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a theoretical framework for understanding the development and resistance dynamics of extractivism. The key to this framework is capitalism, a system that provides an institutional and policy framework for advancing society’s forces of production (economic and social development)—and its underlying driving force. The theory outlined by the author regarding the workings of the system highlights three fundamental contradictions that help us understand both the dynamics of economic and social development and the forces of resistance that are inevitably generated at each stage of the capitalist development process. The first contradiction has to do with the capital-labour relation, a relation of economic exploitation that defines the situation of most people as wage workers. This contradiction is manifest in the resistance of workers to being exploited, which leads to and takes the form of a class struggle for higher wages, improved working conditions and, in the case of rural workers, land. The second contradiction is manifest in the centre-periphery relation, a relation of uneven development between countries at the centre and the periphery of the world system. The third fundamental contradiction of capitalist systems, exposed by the advance of extractivism in the development process, is based on the society-ecology relation, a contradiction manifest in the dynamics of a global environmental crisis.
