The Global Development Crisis
The Global Development Crisis
ISBN: 978-0-745-66014-1 March 2014 Polity 224 Pages
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Description
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.
Table of contents
Figures 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
Reviews
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