About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherPolity Press

ISBN-100745660150

ISBN-139780745660158

eBay Product ID (ePID)170215340

Product Key Features

Number of Pages224 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameGlobal Development Crisis

SubjectSocial Classes & Economic Disparity, Globalization, Sociology / General, Development / Economic Development

Publication Year2014

TypeTextbook

AuthorBenjamin Selwyn

Subject AreaPolitical Science, Social Science, Business & Economics

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight13.8 Oz

Item Length9.1 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2020-275354

Dewey Edition23

TitleLeadingThe

Reviews"Despite the rise of unprecedented inequalities in the global economy, the neoliberal assertion that the 'free market' is an unalloyed source of economic opportunity for all countries retains enormous power and influence. For the poor nations, it is market exclusion that is taken to be the central development problem. Selwyn takes these sorts of neoliberal nostrums head on, arguing that understanding patterns of immense wealth and mass poverty requires a deep and sustained theoretical and empirical scrutiny of capitalist processes of development. The Global Development Crisis provides a masterful analysis of key development thinkers who provide the framework for a 'labour-centred development'." Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley "Selwyn's The Global Development Crisis advances critical debate about the goals of social change and how they might be achieved. Selwyn's critical engagement with influential ideas makes this a fecund text for students, faculty and activists. By bringing class relations back to the centre of development discourse, and outlining how a labour-centred development might emerge, Selwyn is doing great service to the goals of equality and human development." Ben Crow, University of California, Santa Cruz

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal338.9

Table Of ContentFigures and Tables page vi Acknowledgements vii 1 The Global Development Crisis 1 2 Friedrich List and the Foundations of Statist Political Economy 29 3 Karl Marx, Class Struggle and Social Development 53 4 Trotsky, Gerschenkron and the Clash of Marxism and Statist Political Economy 76 5 Creative Destruction and Global Inequality: From Marx to Schumpeter, and Back 104 6 Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx, Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Socialism 135 7 Development Within or Against Capitalism? A Critique of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom 161 8 Towards a Labour-Centred Development 181 References and Further Reading 209 Index 233

SynopsisThe central paradox of the contemporary world is the simultaneous presence of wealth on an unprecedented scale, and mass poverty. Liberal theory explains the relationship between capitalism and poverty as one based around the dichotomy of inclusion (into capitalism) vs exclusion (from capitalism). Within this discourse, the global capitalist system is portrayed as a sphere of economic dynamism and as a source of developmental opportunities for less developed countries and their populations. Development policy should, therefore, seek to integrate the poor into the global capitalist system. The Global Development Crisis challenges this way of thinking. Through an interrogation of some of the most important political economists of the last two centuries Friedrich List, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Schumpeter, Alexander Gerschenkron, Karl Polanyi and Amarta Sen, Selwyn argues that class relations are the central cause of poverty and inequality, within and between countries. In contrast to much development thinking, which portrays 'the poor' as reliant upon benign assistance, this book advocates the concept of labour-centred development. Here 'the poor' are the global labouring classes, and their own collective actions and struggles constitute the basis of an alternative form of non-elitist, bottom-up human development., This book challenges the assumption that a free global market will afford the same opportunities to both rich andpoor states Drawing on a number of nineteenth- and twentieth-centurythinkers, Selwyn argues instead that class relations are thecentral cause of poverty and inequality, within and betweencountries.

LC Classification NumberHD82