Table Of ContentWhether one agrees or not with the basic premises and analysis of this book, it
will provide an intellectual challenge to everyone. Focusing on issues related to
planning, development and globalization, particularly in Latin America, Ruccio
questions the prevailing wisdom in circles of both the Right and the Left. His
privileging of class analysis provides the unifying thread to the wide variety of
themes covered in the sixteen chapters. In our post-crisis search for new economic
thinking and alternatives for social transformation, Ruccio's book comes at a
perfect time to contribute to the debates.
Lourdes Beneria, Cornell University and author of Gender, Development, and
Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered
Pathbreaking in its originality and breathtaking in its coverage, the truly
outstanding volume David Ruccio has delivered is indispensable in critiquing a
variety of prevailing developmental paradigms. Rather than simplistically noting
the “failures” of capitalism, this book reveals how neoliberal development policies
can be considered successful in terms of promoting the emergence and strength-
ening of capitalist class processes and the appropriation of surplus-value in Latin
America and beyond. It is obligatory reading for scholars and students seeking to
construct Marxian class analyses and to formulate alternatives to the world
economy today.
Adam David Morton, University of Nottingham and author of Unravelling
Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy
Development and Globalization is antiessentialist social theory at its very best.
Whether re-reading socialist planning debates, economic and social development
struggles in the global South, or capitalist and alter-capitalist theories of globaliza-
tion, David Ruccio engages the contemporary conjuncture in fresh and exciting
ways, demonstrating throughout the successes of the rethinking Marxism project
and the immense potential and range of contemporary Marxian analysis. What
Maurice Dobb did for twentieth-century critiques of socialist planning, capitalist
development, and imperialist expansion, Ruccio redoubles for a new age of post-
Communist and globalized political economy.
John Pickles, Earl N. Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies
and Chair of the Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, and author of A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping,
and the Geo-Coded World
David Ruccio is a central figure in the exciting and innovative “postmodern”
school of Marxian thought. Through his own writing and his stewardship of the
journal Rethinking Marxism he has contributed immensely to this tradition. In this
collection, Ruccio draws together, sharpens, and extends central insights from that
school of thought and applies them to debates over socialist planning, economic
development, and globalization. The essays demonstrate the depth of Ruccio’s
intellect and the range of his expertise, to be sure, while also conveying the power
of the postmodern Marxian tradition in helping us to overcome the malaise that
now affects much contemporary left scholarship about prospects for radical
reform in the Global South. In Ruccio’s hands, Marxism emerges as a vibrant tradi-
tion that continues to generate new avenues of scholarship and practical politics in
pursuit of a more just world.
George DeMartino, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of
Denver and author of Global Economy, Global Justice: Theoretical and Policy
Alternatives to Neoliberalism
Development and Globalization
Since the mid-1980s, David F. Ruccio has been developing a new frame-
work of Marxian class analysis and applying it to various issues in socialist
planning, Third World development, and capitalist globalization. The aim
of this collection is to show, through a series of concrete examples, how
Marxian class analysis can be used to challenge existing modes of thought
and to produce new insights about the problems of capitalist development
and the possibilities of imagining and creating noncapitalist economies.
The book consists of fifteen essays, plus an introductory chapter situ-
ating the author’s work in a larger intellectual and political context, and a
foreword by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff. The topics covered range
from planning theory to the role of the state in the Nicaraguan Revolution,
from radical theories of underdevelopment to the Third World debt crisis,
and from a critical engagement with regulation theory to contemporary
discussions of globalization and imperialism.
Ruccio demonstrates that, in the current crises of capitalism, a
rethinking of Marxian theory serves both to challenge the existing terms of
economic debate and to contribute to the project of fostering noncapitalist
alternatives. As such, it makes an invaluable contribution to the literature
in this field and will prove useful to both researchers and professionals
alike.
David F. Ruccio is Professor of Economics at the University of Notre
Dame, USA.
Economics as Social Theory
Series edited by Tony Lawson
University of Cambridge
Social Theory is experiencing something of a revival within economics.
Critical analyses of the particular nature of the subject matter of social
studies and of the types of method, categories, and modes of explanation
that can legitimately be endorsed for the scientific study of social objects,
are re-emerging. Economists are again addressing such issues as the rela-
tionship between agency and structure, between economy and the rest of
society, and between the enquirer and the object of enquiry. There is a
renewed interest in elaborating basic categories, such as causation, compe-
tition, culture, discrimination, evolution, money, need, order, organiza-
tion, power, probability, process, rationality, technology, time, truth,
uncertainty, value, etc.
The objective of this series is to further facilitate this revival. In contem-
porary economics, the label “theory” has been appropriated by a group
that confines itself to largely asocial, ahistorical, mathematical “model-
ling.” Economics as Social Theory thus reclaims the “Theory” label,
offering a platform for alternative rigorous, but broader and more critical,
conceptions of theorizing.
Other titles in this series include:
1. Economics and Language 5. Rules and Choice in Economics
Edited by Willie Henderson Viktor Vanberg
2. Rationality, Institutions and 6. Beyond Rhetoric and Realism
Economic Methodology in Economics
Edited by Uskali Mäki, Bo Gustafsson, Thomas A. Boylan and Paschal F.
and Christian Knudsen O’Gorman
3. New Directions in Economic 7. Feminism, Objectivity and
Methodology Economics
Edited by Roger Backhouse Julie A. Nelson
4. Who Pays for the Kids? 8. Economic Evolution
Nancy Folbre Jack J. Vromen
9. Economics and Reality 21. Toward a Feminist Philosophy
Tony Lawson of Economics
Edited by Drucilla K. Barker and Edith
10. The Market Kuiper
John O’Neill
22. The Crisis in Economics
11. Economics and Utopia Edited by Edward Fullbrook
Geoff Hodgson
23. The Philosophy of Keynes’
12. Critical Realism in Economics Economics
Edited by Steve Fleetwood Probability, uncertainty and
convention
13. The New Economic Criticism Edited by Jochen Runde and Sohei
Edited by Martha Woodmansee and Mizuhara
Mark Osteeen
24. Postcolonialism Meets
14. What do Economists Know? Economics
Edited by Robert F. Garnett, Jr. Edited by Eiman O. Zein-Elabdin and
S. Charusheela
15. Postmodernism, Economics
and Knowledge 25. The Evolution of Institutional
Edited by Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Economics
Amariglio and David F. Ruccio Agency, structure and Darwinism
in American institutionalism
16. The Values of Economics Geoffrey M. Hodgson
An Aristotelian perspective
Irene van Staveren 26. Transforming Economics
Perspectives on the critical realist
17. How Economics Forgot History project
The problem of historical specificity Edited by Paul Lewis
in social science
Geoffrey M. Hodgson 27. New Departures in Marxian
Theory
18. Intersubjectivity in Economics Edited by Stephen A. Resnick and
Agents and structures Richard D. Wolff
Edward Fullbrook
28. Markets, Deliberation and
19. The World of Consumption, Environmental Value
2nd Edition John O’Neill
The material and cultural revisited
Ben Fine 29. Speaking of Economics
How to get in the conversation
20. Reorienting Economics Arjo Klamer
Tony Lawson
30. From Political Economy to 32. Development and
Economics Globalization
Method, the social and the historical A Marxian class analysis
in the evolution of economic theory David Ruccio
Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine
31. From Economics Imperialism
to Freakonomics
The shifting boundaries between
economics and other social sciences
Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine
Development and
Globalization
A Marxian class analysis
David F. Ruccio
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2011 David F. Ruccio
Typeset in Palatino by
Book Now Ltd, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ruccio, David F.
Development and globalization : a Marxian class analysis / by David F. Ruccio.
p. cm.
1. Marxian economics. 2. Social conflict. 3. Capitalism. 4. Economic development.
5. Globalization—Economic aspects. I. Title.
HB97.5.R75 2010
335.412—dc22
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77225–9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77226–6 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–84318–5 (ebk)
In memory of
Chuck Craypo
&
Julie Graham
