Towards a new dialectics of dependency

Abstract

Dependency theory is arguably the most important theoretical tradition to emerge from Latin America. Functioning as a vital source of counter-representation and contestation, it challenged the prevailing developmental orthodoxies of the time. During its heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s it served simultaneously to critique prevailing power relations within the global political economy and as a political programme for domestic and regional transformation, defined in terms of self-determination and political autonomy. However, with the broader crisis of developmentalism in the 1970s, a counter movement to the radicalism of dependency analysis was provided by authoritarian populism. The victory of authoritarian populism helped contribute to the death of Third Worldism as a political project and with it, dependency theory fell into decline. In the current conjuncture, this paper calls for a new dialectics of dependency. A reinvigorated dependency critique is needed to address the prevailing developmentalism of the left in Latin America that has remained in thrall to extractivism and thus continues the region’s peripheral role as a commodity exporter to the Global North, built on the foundations of cheap nature and cheap labour. Furthermore, dependency analysis is required to challenge contemporary modes of authoritarian populism and statism that are being celebrated geopolitically in the form of the BRICS grouping. This paper thus argues that dependency theory remains both an unfinished yet urgently required intellectual proposal.