Global Exploitation in Marxist and World-Systems Analysis: Dependency, Core-Periphery Structures, and Critiques

Within Marxist thought, the emergence of Western capitalism is also analyzed through the lens of global exploitation, emphasizing the indispensable role of the non-West. This interpretation manifests in two primary varieties. The first focuses on primitive accumulation, where the plunder of non-European regions provided the initial capital and resources fueling capitalism's prehistory. The second, originating with Lenin, J.A. Hobson, and Rudolf Hilferding, analyzes imperialism as capitalism's highest stage, where monopoly capitalism becomes fundamentally dependent on overseas markets, resources, and investment outlets. Here, the systematic exploitation of the periphery becomes central to the system's survival, not merely its genesis.

The thesis of non-Western essentiality to Western wealth has been robustly defended, particularly by scholars from the Global South. Eric Williams linked Caribbean slavery to capital formation, while Walter Rodney detailed Europe's active underdevelopment of Africa. Nationalist Indian historians documented British plunder, and scholars like Jim Blaut have continued emphasizing windfall profits from exploitation. This intellectual tradition crystallized into dependency theory, pioneered by Latin American thinkers like Raul Prebisch, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Theotonio Dos Santos, and popularized in the West by Andre Gunder Frank.

Dependency theorists argued that integration into the global market did not foster convergence but "the development of underdevelopment." They highlighted structural exploitation and unequal exchange, where a core-periphery division of labor forced poor countries ("the South") into exporting primary commodities with deteriorating terms of trade, creating "dual economies." Profits were siphoned off by a domestic elite or transferred to the "metropolis" (the North), perpetuating poverty. This framework was profoundly influential in the Third World but faced skepticism in mainstream Western academia.

A more systematic and globally impactful model emerged with Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems analysis, deeply influenced by Fernand Braudel. They redefine capitalism not as a market economy but as a system where anti-competitive forces like monopoly, protection, and state-capitalist collusion dominate. Capitalism here is a "world-system" with an internal geographical hierarchy: a core (with high-wage, skilled labor), a periphery (with coerced, low-wage labor producing essentials), and a semi-periphery. This system, originating in 16th-century Europe, expanded to engulf the globe.

Critically, underdevelopment is not a prior stage but a co-constituted condition. The core's wealth, located historically in shifting parts of Western Europe and later North America, depended on peripheral exploitation. Examples include Britain's alleged deindustrialization of India, the distortion of China's potential capitalist sprouts, and Africa's underdevelopment via the slave trade and colonialism. Japan remains a notable exception that achieved core status through its own imperial expansion.

These theories have faced significant critiques. Central concepts like "unequal exchange" and "dependency" are often criticized as vague and immeasurable. Wallerstein's treatment of large economies like Ming-Qing China as "external" to the early modern world-system is seen as Eurocentric, ignoring substantial bidirectional trade. The postulated long-term deterioration of peripheral terms of trade is empirically disputed. Furthermore, the rapid growth of several non-Western economies since the late 20th century and the frequent failure of autarkic "de-linking" policies challenge dependency theory's predictions.

From a European historical angle, critics argue that the economic importance of the periphery is often overstated for most of the core's developmental history. Simultaneously, Asianists note the limited duration and intensity of Western impact in many regions, highlighting the theory's uneven applicability. Ultimately, dependency and world-systems analyses are critiqued for portraying a dynamic West and a passive "Rest," thus inheriting a form of Eurocentrism.

Despite these critiques, these paradigms have permanently challenged neoclassical economics by forcing serious engagement with why global economic integration has not led to convergence. They have spurred sophisticated historical research into slave economies, colonial extraction, global commodity chains, and the political structures of unequal exchange, ensuring that the question of global structural inequality remains central to the field of economic history.