International Division of Labour

GUIDO STAROSTA

Companion to Development Studies (4th edition)

Routledge

Año: 2020;

This chapter discusses the International Division of Labour (IDL) from the standpoint of the Marxian critique of political economy. It argues that the historically-changing modalities of the IDL, with their respective uneven developmental potentialities between ?Global North? and ?Global South?, are grounded in the ?laws of motion? of capital accumulation on a world scale. The article thus identifies a ?Classical? form of the IDL (CIDL) that revolves around the appropriation by capital of an extraordinary mass of social wealth flowing into the ?Global South? under the form of ground-rent. The chapter subsequently maintains that, since the 1960s, the planetary production of surplus value has constituted a ?New?, co-existing constellation of the international division of labour (NIDL), which, premised on the further automation of the production process and advances in means of transport and communication, has been structured around the international fragmentation of the different types of labour power that comprise the global collective worker.