Part 1 presents the results of empirical analysis of neo-liberal globalisation’s key transformation, namely the global shift of production to low-wage nations, and identifies its key feature: imperialist super-exploitation Part 2 seeks a theoretical definition of this, looking first to the debate in the 1960s and 70s between exponents of dependency theory and their ‘orthodox’ Marxist critics, then to Lenin’s theory of imperialism, and then uses the result of this review to inform a critical re-reading of Marx’s Capital. As a result of these two abstractions, the theory of value in Capital no longer immediately connects with the capitalism of today. describing the “reduction of wages below their value” as “one of the most important factors in stemming the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.” Yet he excluded this from his theory, because “it has nothing to do with the general analysis of capital.” Expanded super-exploitation of southern low-wage labour cannot be reduced to either of the two ways to increase surplus value analysed in Capital, and instead corresponds to the third form of surplus value increase which Marx mentioned but excluded from his theory of value.
He makes several fleeting references to a third, e.g.
In Capital Marx analysed in detail two ways in which capitalists can increase the rate of exploitation: by lengthening the working day or by reducing necessary labour time through introducing labour-saving machinery (he called these absolute surplus value and relative surplus value respectively). Marx’s subject was capitalism in general, whereas our object of analysis is its modern, fully-evolved imperialist stage of development. Marx’s Capital is a prime source of wisdom about capitalism’s contradictions, yet this towering work does not contain ready-made formulae which can be directly applied to the contemporary reality. Invited guest paper to international conference in Delhi, ‘Imperialism: Old and New’, sponsored by Indian Council of Social Science Research, 9-10 February 2015.
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