Spatial hierarchy and/or contemporary geopolitics: what can and can't uneven and combined development explain?

Abstract

This article reviews the current Marxist debate on imperialism through an examination of the concept of uneven and combined development. This has been used in two ways: first, to show that geopolitical competition between advanced capitalist states continues to be of primary importance in the international capitalist order; second, to show how global capital accumulation is an intrinsically uneven, unequal and cumulative process. The article argues that uneven and combined development is limited in its utility for explaining the former, but is of greater utility in the case of the latter. This is further briefly illustrated in the concluding section, which returns to a consideration of imperialism; first, through an examination of the rise of China and ‘decline’ of the United States in the context of the global economic crisis; and, second, through a demonstration of how a Marxist approach that accepts the primacy of cooperation between advanced capitalist states can still provide a critique of a liberal—and imperialist—international order.