From value to uneven development

A review of From Value to Uneven Development: Selected writings by John Weeks in the Marxist tradition edited by Ben Fine, Simon Mohun, Alfredo Saad-Filho (Monthly Review Press, 2024), £110

This book brings together a selection of the theoretical writings of the widely respected Marxist economist John Weeks (1941-2020).1 Weeks is probably best known for his 1981 book Capital and Exploitation, in which he explores the labour theory of value.

At the time of publication, most Marxists did not share Weeks’s view that the labour theory of value is central to Marx’s analysis of capitalism—something that is still not widely accepted today.2 This view is, however, shared by revolutionaries writing in the International Socialist tradition associated with this journal. Briefly stated, the idea behind the labour theory of value is that surplus labour appropriated by an exploiting class has characterised society for thousands of years. In a capitalist society, surplus labour takes the form of surplus labour time, which becomes surplus value and is expressed in terms of money. Labour time and value, however, are not the same. As a result of competition, it is only the socially necessary labour time that counts as value. The essence of the labour theory of value is that, in capitalism, it is the socially necessary labour time required for production that forms the value of a commodity and regulates competition between capitals. Marx used the labour theory of value to uncover the laws of motion of capitalist society and to explain the logical tendencies of its historical development.

This interpretation of Marx by the International Socialists and Weeks, who worked independently, explains why both arrived at a similar conclusion in other areas.3 Weeks dealt with a number of theoretical isues, including the central role of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in crisis theory, the rivalry between great powers as an essential feature of imperialism and exploitation in what is today commonly referred to as the Global North and Global South.

In this selection of writings, John Weeks develops the Marxist tradition around crisis theory and “underdevelopment”.4 It is in his critique of dependency theory that he is at his most original, offering an analysis that, to my knowledge, is not found elsewhere. Weeks was not just a theorist; he was also involved in debating strategy for revolutionary activity in countries such as Peru. This combination of theory and activity has left a legacy that continues to be relevant today.

Theorising imperialism

Weeks was critical of the dominant theories of imperialism at the time and, although he did not present a fully worked out theory, he did sketch out his own view of imperialism. Imperialism, he argued, is not simply a relationship between the “advanced” and “underdeveloped” countries. Instead, this division is a component part of the internationalisation of capital, not its definitive aspect. Weeks quoted Lenin, who criticised Karl Kautsky for not seeing this. As Lenin wrote, “an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers”.5 Weeks proposed that “the theory of imperialism has three interrelated aspects: (1.) inter-capitalist rivalry, (2.) the impact of capital export on social formations in the underdeveloped areas (3.) and the national question”.6 This selection of articles includes little on the first and third aspects of imperialism, concentrating on the second, more economic aspect.7 Weeks started by addressing the expansion of capitalism from its heartlands in Western Europe and North America to the rest of the world and, by doing this, he developed a theory of uneven development.

Uneven development

The development of capitalism is uneven. This is fundamental to Marx’s analysis of the accumulation of capital. To explain the divergence among countries, Weeks distinguished between primary and secondary uneven development, both of which arise out of the process of capital accumulation.

Primary uneven development refers to the early development of capitalism, which involved the emergence of dynamic capitalist economies in Western Europe and North America while much of the rest of the world was still non-capitalist. The historical emergence of capitalist social relations, wage labour within commodity production, also produced the uneven development and division of the world into different layers of development. One consequence was the establishment of colonies. This division, according to Weeks, will be enduring and difficult to overcome. In a capitalist society, labour power, the ability to work, takes the form of a commodity and is the basis of wage labour. For capitalism to develop within pre-capitalist society, labour-power and land must be transformed into commodities:

Pre-capitalist societies are not predominately commodity producing, though they may be drawn into capitalist exchange. As long as labour power is not a commodity, or is available only to a limited extent, capital lacks the basis for its unique system of exploitation. That is why the first export of productive capital was for mining and plantations, which were outside the pre-capitalist economy and produced for the overseas capitalist market.8

Before capitalism, merchants could pursue their trade in commodities, and financiers could pursue their profits without the development of wage labour. The prices attached to pre-capitalist products were superficial as they did not regulate production. Early capitalist development was not predicated primarily upon the extraction of a surplus from outside Western Europe but rather upon domestic class exploitation.

Secondary uneven development, which becomes more important as capitalism ages, is due to competition and technical change in countries once they have made the transition to capitalism. It occurs within the “advanced” countries due to competition and the adoption of technical change. Weeks saw competition and innovation as a source of instability that generates uneven development and, through the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, crises. Crises themselves contribute to uneven development. However, this tendency is a law that only fully manifests itself when the production of relative surplus value becomes
dominant in the process of accumulation. This, according to Weeks, only happens in the “advanced” countries. In other capitalist economies, surplus value predominantly takes the form of absolute surplus value, which is increased by lengthening the working day or employing more workers. In the “advanced” economies of the Global North, surplus value is increased relatively by reducing the amount of necessary labour time compared to surplus labour time. This is a process that involves technical change.

Weeks argued that the forces of competition and technical change drive a cyclical pattern of convergence and divergence between countries. Although technological innovation occurs in other social forms of production, only under capitalism is it the principal method of struggle within the appropriating class. Class struggle in capitalist society involves raising relative surplus value whereas in pre-capitalist societies the appropriating class is largely restricted to raising the absolute surplus value.

Weeks saw the penetration of capitalism into pre-capitalist societies as both creative and destructive at the same time. He was critical of views of the transition to capitalism that tried to categorise the process as being either all good or all bad for the Global South. He also criticised the linear view of history, which suggests that capitalism drives an unrelenting process of global convergence. Instead, he proposed that complex relationships driven by the forces of competition and accumulation involve both convergence and divergence. This non-linear interpretation of history, with the co-existence of different modes of production at different stages of the development of capitalism, is in contrast to the abstract logical sequencing of modes of production (slave, feudal, capitalist). Moreover, it opens up a way for a richer understanding of the expansion of capitalism. According to Weeks, “Inherent in the progressiveness of capitalism on a world scale is the simultaneous destructive impact of capitalism in particular regions”.9

It is, however, unclear in this selection of writings whether Weeks regarded the simultaneous existence of capitalist and pre-capitalist relations of production, linked by exchange, as two different modes of production or as wholly capitalist production with the continuation of some unorthodox forms of labour discipline. At some point in the process of capitalist expansion, we must surely start from a capitalist world economy and the application of Marx’s concept of totality to that world economy. I would have welcomed a discussion of when it is appropriate to do this.10

Critique of dependency theory

The dominant theory on the left explaining uneven development was and still is dependency theory. Weeks was critical of this theory from the standpoint of Marx’s value theory—as are theorists in the International Socialist tradition.11

Weeks wrote that there are two sets of approaches to the mechanism through which uneven development is produced and reproduced on a world scale. A first set of approaches includes dependency theory. It explains inequality in levels of development among countries primarily in the sphere of circulation, emphasising the appropriation of surplus of one country by another country. The second set includes his own and places the cause of inequality in the sphere of production and the relationship between classes reproduced on a world scale.

Dependency theory is not a unified school. However, the general idea is to start by dividing the world into “core” and “periphery”, with a focus on the economic relations between them. The extraction of surplus from the “periphery” and the transfer of this surplus to the “core” is seen as the main factor responsible for the “backwardness” of the “periphery”. High rates of exploitation in the “periphery” result in it lacking both the resources and markets for autonomous development.

At the heart of the dependency school is the assumption that capitalist development is blocked in “peripheral” countries by this lack of an internal market and by the extraction of a surplus that is appropriated by the “core”. This, in turn, eliminates the source of accumulation. By contrast, Weeks proposed an account of development in which class relations and the mode of production take centre stage, rather than international relations between “core” and “periphery”. Weeks stated:

(a) exploitation is a relationship between classes, not countries and international transfers of value are understood from this standpoint; (b) inequality among countries is the consequence of class exploitation in backward countries and the reproduction of this class exploitation through imperialism… While stressing that exploitation is a relationship between classes, it must also be stressed that the spread of capitalism on a world scale, particularly in the imperialist epoch, leads to oppression of countries and nations, as well as national minorities within countries. This oppression is inherent in imperialism and falls upon all classes in the oppressed nation or country.12

Dependency theorists differ when it comes to explaining the forms and mechanisms of surplus extraction and transfer of the economic surplus from the “periphery” to the “core”. Weeks has offered detailed critiques of the many versions of the surplus extraction argument and, in particular, the positions of Paul Baran, André Gunder Frank, Arghiri Emmanuel, Samir Amin and Ruy Mauro Marini.

Weeks made clear that to analyse appropriation between countries and the transfer of value is to ignore the process of production and obscure the class nature of societies. More generally, he wrote:

Surplus extraction plays in dependency theory the role which exploitation play in Marxian theory. Opposing the two concepts crystallises the difference between the two theories: extraction is a phenomenon between countries, while exploitation is a phenomenon between classes. However, the two are not complementary; that is, it is a fundamental error to imagine that dependency theorists, through the use of the concept of “surplus extraction”, have built upon Marx’s category of exploitation and extended it from the class level to the international level. In fact, what we have is a substitution of concepts, a break from Marx, a replacement of one concept with another. For it is at the class level that all “extraction”, appropriation, or exploitation of surplus product occurs, with the categories of community, region, or country merely providing the geographic context of this class appropriation of surplus product

The transfer of surplus product from one geographic area to another-an act of exchange-can never explain the poverty of the one and the wealth of the other. The explanation of the poverty of some countries and the wealth of others lies in the nature of production, not in the movement of products (the circulation of commodities). If there is a net flow of surplus product out of a country, this represents the fact that there prevail barriers to reproduction on an expanding scale. If there were no barriers to the expansion of capital in Latin America (and the rate of profit higher there than in the “centre”), the net flow would be into these countries.13

From here, Weeks set out an alternative to dependency theory. His argument was that the persistence of pre-capitalist relations of production act as a barrier to the development of capitalism in oppressed countries. Pre-capitalist relations of production retard productivity growth in the production of wage goods (the means of subsistence). Wage goods are predominately produced in the agricultural sector and these sectors still have either pre-capitalist relations of production or less developed capitalist relations. For him, the capitalist relations of production in agriculture have not developed to the stage of producing relative surplus value. This is crucial as profit comes from the difference between necessary labour time and surplus labour time, and necessary labour time can only be reduced by cheapening the production of wage goods (the means of subsistence) and increasing the production of relative surplus value. This cheapening is blocked by the pre-capitalist or less developed capitalist relations of production in the agricultural sector. Of course, the structure of global production has evolved since Weeks was writing. Weeks’s work needs to be developed and adjusted to a world of complex global value chains.

Weeks contended that the main method for raising relative surplus value lies in enhancing labor productivity in sectors that produce the means of consumption. This leads to a fall in the exchange value of the wage, implying that labour power can be cheapened while workers enjoy a higher standard of living. Relative surplus value is raised and profit increased by the cheapening of the commodities workers buy, relatively to other commodities:

Inherent in capitalist accumulation in advanced countries is the progressive cheapening of commodities and a rising rate of exploitation. For this reason the rate of surplus value tends to be highest in the most advanced countries.14

The point about the rate of surplus value, particularly that the rate of exploitation tending to be higher in the Global North than in the South, was also made by Nigel Harris.15 Weeks pointed out the inconsistency in dependency theories that argue that capital flows to the “periphery” because of higher profits, but those profits are then made in the periphery are invested in the “core”. This suggests higher rates of return in the core.

If capital in the “core” is exploiting the periphery, then it must follow that rates of profit in the periphery are extraordinarily high. Yet, if profit rates are high, why does imperialist capital repatriate such a large share of its profits, as the surplus extraction thesis maintains, rather than reinvesting it? Why is the surplus extracted and not reinvested in the “periphery”? Weeks assumed that the surplus is extracted because pre-capitalist or less developed capitalist relations of production persist in agriculture. A major part of the means of consumption, the use values that provide for the production and reproduction of labour power, are produced under pre-capitalist relations of production. There is a tendency in the Global South for the value of labour power to stagnate or not to fall as rapidly as the values of commodities produced in the economies of the Global North. Another aspect of capital accumulation is the ownership of capital, whether it is local or foreign.

Some writers are obsessed with the world of appearances and never discover that the uneven development that characterises countries of the capitalist world is a consequence of the capitalist mode of production itself, rather than a result of the ownership of capital.16 International transfers of value, Weeks explained, are the consequence of exploitation between classes, not countries. The net
outflow of value from the Global South, either through commodity trade or profit repatriation, is one of the forms that “backwardness” takes. It is a consequence of “backwardness” and not its cause: “To elevate this transfer of value to a cause of backwardness is to fall into the trap of petty-bourgeois nationalism”.17 In a similar fashion, Nigel Harris suggested that dependency theory and related ideas serve the interest of the emerging middle class.18

Capitalist crisis

In the 1970s, economic crises reemerged in the world economy after an extended period of growth. Two of the most influential Marxist framings of crisis theory at the time were underconsumptionism and the profit squeeze approach. Weeks looked at both critically.19 From the underconsumptionist perspective, crises are a result of wages being too low to sustain sufficient demand to realise all the surplus value produced. In effect, wages are pushed down in order to sustain profitability. The issue with this approach is that it locates the source of aggregate demand in the wages of workers, ignoring the source of aggregate demand in capital expenditure. More generally, underconsumption theories can be criticised because they locate the source of crises in circulation rather than in capitalist production.

From the profit squeeze perspective, crises are the result of wages being pushed too high to sustain profitability, so the rate of profit falls, precipitating a crisis. This puts the focus on class struggle as the cause of crisis. The central idea is that profit rates fall as a result of successful class struggle by labour against capital, which is then reversed by the rise in unemployment. For Weeks, “the accumulation process, far from being checked by rising real wages, requires them as the necessary condition for the social redivision of labour and the process of centralisation”.20 He continued, “it is incorrect to see all wage increases as a result of the distributional struggle between capital and labour, as the profit-squeeze hypothesis does… In capitalism, rising wages during accumulation primarily reflect the distributional struggle among capitals”.21

Instead of the underconsumptionist and profit squeeze theories of capitalist crisis, Weeks put forward an analysis of the economic crisis based on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.22 Here, profits rates fall because the process of capital accumulation involves the introduction of labour-saving technology, which tends to raise the ratio of capital to labour resulting in a falling rate of profit. Crises, Weeks argued, act as a restorative mechanism for profitability through the destruction of weaker capital, hence laying the basis for renewed accumulation.23 “The purpose of crisis is two-fold”, he notes, “first, to drive down the cost of labour power to the capitalists; but more important in the long run, to eliminate other capitalists and to restructure capital in the system as a whole”.24 This is accompanied by deep problems for the system as a whole: “as capital becomes more centralised, the seriousness of a crisis necessary to restructure capital, and to enable it to emerge from the crisis with a higher social rate of profit increases”.25