Top Menu

Imperialism in the 21st Century reviewed in Marx & Philosophy

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis
384 pp, $28 pbk, ISBN 9781583675779
By John Smith

Reviewed by Bill Jefferies

“John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century was the Inaugural Winner of the Paul A. Baran – Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Prize. According to the back cover blurb at least, it is a “seminal examination” of the relationship between the core capitalist countries and the rest of the world in the age of neoliberal globalization.” It shows how modern day imperialism exploits oppressed nations through transfer pricing or what Smith calls “global labor arbitrage”. Output is produced at very low prices in the global “South” and then sold at much higher prices in the developed “imperialist” North. The value added is credited to the selling, not the producing nations, and so the transfer of wealth is hidden in official statistics. Explaining this is the “central task” of the book….”

Read the entire review in Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

Comments are closed.