Unequal Exchange in Extractive and Productive Peripheries: Delinking, Degrowth, and Global Eco-Social Transformation

Structuralist dependency theory traced underdevelopment to unequal exchange between a productive Center exporting manufactures and an extractive Periphery exporting primary commodities. It inspired import substitution industrialization in the Periphery, combining trade protectionism and financial liberalization, which proved unsustainable. Neoliberal globalization later fostered two export-led development strategies: free-trade industrialization in Asia, based on global value chains, and neo-extractivism in Latin America and Africa, based on state appropriation of natural rents. The resulting new international division of labor, with the relocation of world manufacturing, has not reduced global inequalities. Drawing on a Marxist approach to unequal exchange, this paper argues for a complementary path of dependency, with ecological plunder and labor exploitation of the global South both rooted in the international law of value. This configures a functional differentiation between an extractive Periphery providing natural resources and a productive Periphery providing labor for monetary accumulation in the Center, rather than an economic upgrading of newly industrialized countries, except China. In this framework, escaping dependency requires delinking from global capitalism for autocentric economic and ecological circular practices and South-South cooperation. This radical alternative intersects with new critical visions facing the global socio-ecological crisis. In the Center, radical environmentalism advocates degrowth for sustainable living. In the Periphery, grassroots movements reject universal commodification by drawing on the traditional values of non-Western indigenous cultures. An alliance of traditional and new social movements around the nexus of delinking Global South and degrowing Global North can promote social and environmental justice for an eco-socialist transition.