Backwardness, Foreign Capital, and Accumulation in the Manufacturing Sector of Peru, 1954-1975

Abstract

The process of capitalist accumulation is one of crisis and boom, uneven development and the insatiable greed for the surplus labor of one class by another class. In backward countries the essence of capitalist accumulation is no different than in advanced countries. But due to the low development of the forces and relations of production in the former, the manifestations of the basic laws of motion of capitalism may differ from the forms assumed in the advanced countries. A particular aspect which assumes great import in backward countries is the ownership of capital, whether it is local or foreign. Some writers are obsessed with this phenomenon of the world of appearances, and in their obsession never discover that the uneven development that characterizes countries of the capitalist world is a consequence of the capitalist mode of production itself, not the result of who owns capital. This obsession with form is the delight of the petty bourgeoisie, which in every country tends to see the thwarting of its pathetic hopes to rise out of its class to be the result of foreign domination and conspiracies, the dirty tricks of imperialists. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of accumulation in the manufacturing sector of Peru, and in so doing, to explore the role of foreign capital in that process. But before we can deal with the process of accumulation in Peru, it is necessary to lay to rest certain myths that plague the analysis of backwardness; namely, the complementary pseudo-scientific theses that capitalist development in backward countries is blocked by (a) the lack of an internal market and (b) the extraction of surplus, which eliminates the source of accumulation. These theses are, of course, the heart of the dependency school of analysis. We deal with the latter in section II, and in section III briefly develop an analysis which places the limits to capitalist development in the sphere of production, the barriers to the production of surplus value inherent in a backward economy. In section IV, we analyze Peru, emphasizing the role of centralization, the organic composition of capital and the wage in