Introduction: The New International Division of Labour and the Critique of Political Economy Today

GUIDO STAROSTA

The New International Division of Labour. Global Transformation and Uneven Development

Palgrave Macmillan

Año: 2016; p. 1 - 22

While accepting the veracity of some of the criticisms levelled at the original NIDL thesis and the version of it that became common currency by the 1990s, we believe that the NIDL thesis now deserves to be revisited. We propose that a properly reconsidered and revised NIDL thesis can still shed light on the specificities of capitalist development in various parts of the world today, as well as the nature of uneven development across the capitalist world market. Taken together, the contributions to this book represent the basis for such a reconsideration of the NIDL thesis which rests upon the Marxian distinction between the global economic content that determines the constitution and dynamics of the international division of labour, and the evolving national political forms that mediate its development. More specifically, the book argues that national developmental processes across the world have been but an expression of the underlying essential unity of the production of relative surplus-value on a world scale. The fact that the approach taken in this book is rooted in the critique of political economy ? originally developed by Karl Marx over 150 years ago ? does not detract from its contemporary significance. Moreover, a revised NIDL thesis as put forward in this volume represents an original contribution to key debates in international and critical political economy, insofar as, firstly, its theoretical foundations lie in research that moves to some extent beyond Marx; and, secondly, it departs in significant ways from not only Fröbel and his colleagues, but also a variety of contemporary approaches that seek to understand the nature of ? and the relation between ? global transformation and uneven development today.