Transcript Topics for Today: Marxism and Dependency Theory

Plan for Today: Neo-Marxist
Approaches and Postcolonial Theory
1.
Neo-Marxist explanations for Third World
underdevelopment.
Dependency theory.
2. World Systems theory.
1.
2.
Postcolonial theory: Said on Orientalism.
Marxist IR Approaches:
Dependency Theory


Andre Gunder Frank
Hypotheses:
Metropoles develop; satellites underdevelop.
2. Satellites develop when ties with metropoles
weakest.
3. Most underdeveloped regions today had
closest ties to metropole in past.
1.
Marxist IR Approaches:
Dependency Theory

How metropoles subjugate satellites:
Foreign investment in poor countries limited
to extractive industries.
2. Westernizing domestic elites in poor
countries.
1.
Marxist IR Approaches:
Critiques of Dependency Theory
1.
2.
No direct relationship between states’
reliance on extractive industries and
poverty/ underdevelopment.
Why do some satellite states escape
(NICs)?
Neo-Marxist IR Approaches:
World Systems Theory



Immanuel Wallerstein.
Accepts dependency theory’s division of
world into regions with development
uneven and benefiting rich.
But rejects idea of feasible alternative to
integration with world capitalist system.
Neo-Marxist IR Approaches:
World Systems Theory


Combines elements of realism with
Marxism.
International system has division of labor
with three regions:
Core: powerful industrialized states.
2. Periphery: weak states providing raw
materials to core.
3. Semiperiphery: mixture of core and
periphery (NICs).
1.
Neo-Marxist IR Approaches:
World Systems Theory

Adds idea that states important:
Help capitalism to maximize production.
 Somewhat autonomous from bourgeoisie.




Not only under capitalism; also earlier.
Less emphasis on class struggle than
standard Marxism.
Criticized for sense of inevitability – no
room for escape.
Neo-Marxism vs. Modernization Theory

Modernization theory: “traditional” vs.
“modern” societies.
3rd world problem is bad traditional cultures.
 3rd world inferior to West; needs to “catch
up.”
 Development = Westernization.


Neo-Marxism: West has systematically
exploited 3rd world to destroy
development capabilities.
Postcolonial Theory
Used in many disciplines.
 Tends toward postmodernism.
 Cultures/ groups define selves by defining
“other” – opposite of what they are.
 Edward Said, Orientalism (1978).

 Western
depictions of Arab world and Islam
as dark, frightening, full of terrorists.