TY  - BOOK
AU  - Suwandi, Intan
TI  - Value chains: the new economic imperialism
SN  - 9781583677810
U1  - 331.1091724 
PY  - 2019///
CY  - New York
PB  - Monthly Review Press
KW  - Developing countries
KW  - Commerce
KW  - Economic development
KW  - Imperialism
KW  - International trade
KW  - Labor
KW  - Labor market
N1  - Table of Contents

1.The Hidden Abode of Global Production
2.Labor-Value Commodity Chains: Power and Class Relations in the World Economy
3.Flexibility and Systemic Rationalization: Control in Labor-Value Commodity Chains
4."We're Just a Seamstress": Case Studies of Two Indonesian Companies
5.The New Economic Imperialism: Looking through the Eyes of the Global South
N2  - Winner of the 2018 Paul A. Baran—Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism, Intan Suwandi’s Value Chains examines the exploitation of labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within global value chains—vast networks of people, tools, and activities needed to deliver goods and services to the market and controlled by multinationals—Suwandi offers a deft empirical analysis of unit labor costs that is closely related to Marx’s own theory of exploitation.

Value Chains uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce “economical” and “flexible” production, including labor management methods, aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily financial interests with vast economic and political power—the power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate itself. Suwandi’s book depicts in concrete detail the relations of unequal exchange that structure today’s world economy. This study, up-to-date and richly documented, puts labor and class back at the center of our understanding of the world capitalist system.

https://monthlyreview.org/product/value-chains
ER  -