Uneven and Combined Development and Unequal Exchange: The Second Wind of Neoliberal ‘Free Trade’?

Andreas Bieler,Adam David Morton

doi:10.1080/14747731.2014.860334

Abstract

With capitalist social relations emerging in a prior system of absolutist states in Europe, the outward expansion of capitalism through conditions of uneven and combined development became dependent on the existence of multiple political entities. States in turn are brought into relations of unequal exchange within the global economy. This article analyses the way in which current neoliberal ‘free trade’ policies are related to these fundamental capitalist dynamics, deepening further processes of uneven and combined development as well as unequal exchange.

Highlights

With capitalist social relations emerging in a prior system of absolutist states in Europe, the outward expansion of capitalism through conditions of uneven and combined development became dependent on the existence of multiple political entities
His research interests include state theory, the political economy of development, historical sociology and Marxism in their relevance to the study of modern Mexico. He is the author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (Pluto, 2007) and Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013 Updated Edition), which was awarded the 2012 Book Prize of the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG)
This article has attempted to sketch the relationship between capitalist outward expansion linked to processes of uneven and combined development and relations of unequal exchange in order to assert the particular role of ‘free trade’ in these processes

Summary

Introduction

With capitalist social relations emerging in a prior system of absolutist states in Europe, the outward expansion of capitalism through conditions of uneven and combined development became dependent on the existence of multiple political entities. This article analyses the way in which current neoliberal ‘free trade’ policies are related to these fundamental capitalist dynamics, deepening further processes of uneven and combined development as well as unequal exchange. Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy and Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) in the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, UK. He is author of The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and EMU in Times of Global Restructuring (Manchester University Press, 2006) and co-editor (with Ingemar Lindberg) of Global Restructuring, Labour and the Challenges for Transnational Solidarity (Routledge, 2010). If treated as a universal process, uneven and combined development can be reduced to a triviality telling us very little about capitalism and capitalist restructuring (see Smith 2006, p.182)

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