This chapter presents a critical analysis of the wealth current practices of multinational firms as wealth predators; and relevant references from the theory of multinational corporations and globalization from a Marxist perspective. The Marxist approach has also contributed to a theory of the self-expansion of capital (internationalization of the circuits of capital) on a global scale, within an analysis of the differentiation and of inequality.
The cycle of external indebtedness of dependent countries has become a huge constraint on any strategy for radical social change.Argentina has recently entered a new process of debt overhang and renegotiation with the International Monetary Fund and private global creditors. The dominant debate around the country's foreign debt revolves around the conditions that can guarantee the sustainability of repayment. The underlying objective is to remain in the debt system that produces and reproduces dependency.This chapter will seek to analyze the question of debt sustainability from another point of view: Is it possible to guarantee the (financial) sustainability of the debt at the same time as guaranteeing the sustainability of life? Our argument is that by remaining in the global debt system, Argentina creates conditions that violate the requirements for the sustainability of human and nonhuman life. Drawing on a discussion from Marxist dependency theory and the traditions of Marxist feminism and environmentalism, we will discuss how the debt sustainability argument presupposes the impossibility of reproducing life. In particular, we will show how the conditions required to guarantee debt sustainability in Argentina entail the deepening of the superexploitation of the “productive” and “reproductive” labor force, and the exacerbation of extractivism, putting social reproduction in crisis.
This chapter starts from the issue of debt in the context of a national economy by contrasting two opposed views: policy prescriptions based on the Washington Consensus prioritize low public debt and a limited role of the government in the development process whereas a more heterodox view considers debt as logical, necessary, and helpful in order to allow the government to pursue an ambitious growth and development strategy. However, things change when the economy is considered in its international context: foreign debt is different from domestic debt and while the same heterodox analysis still rejects the Washington Consensus' demand for trade and financial liberalization, its own ambitious development strategies for the domestic economy get constrained by trade deficits, the threat of capital flight, and exchange rate instability. The question arises how the government can still significantly contribute to economic development beyond the limits of a purely private sector–driven approach. This is why this chapter reviews proposals to relax or overcome the balance-of-payments constraint. Finally, it considers a reform of international payments, which can be implemented by a single country unilaterally, and which enables it to stabilize its current account, avoid foreign debt accumulation, and support domestic development strategies.
This chapter addresses the issue of the Global South external debt by mobilizing insights from Modern Monetary Theory, Ecological Economics, and Dependency Theory. It argues that the external debt problem of Southern governments is a reflection of their subordinate economic and monetary status. It shows why the argument of foreign currency shortage often used to explain the need for Southern governments to issue foreign currency debts remains superficial. In contrast to the usual focus on creditors, the chapter highlights the role played by foreign direct investment in the genesis of the chronic external indebtedness of most Southern countries. It argues then that the external debt of the South must be understood holistically not only as a manifestation of the unequal ecological exchange between the North and the South but also as an instrument that has contributed to reproducing and amplifying this pattern. Under these conditions, the cancellation or restructuring of the South's external debt stock and a few other unlikely concessions by the Northern countries will not be enough to abolish the “debt system.” This is an important lesson from the antiimperialist critique of the mid-1970s New International Economic Order (NIEO) agenda that current movements for Southern debt cancellation and Climate Justice would do well to remember.
Considering that the rate of profit constitutes a key indicator for the analysis of the evolution of capitalist economies, this chapter proposes to study the case of France from 1896 to 2019, that is, over 124 years in total. From a series of stock of productive capital reconstructed for the occasion, a rate of profit is calculated at the macroeconomic level within a conceptual framework faithful to Marx. Over this period of more than a century, three successive long waves are identified, as parts of a secular trend toward the fall in the French rate of profit. The latter, however, recovered several times during these three subperiods, but finally reoriented downwards, with fluctuations of an amplitude tending to decrease more and more and a deployment in a decreasing spiral of French capitalism. This long-term downward trend is mainly due to the rise in the organic composition of capital.
