Dependency, Imperialism, and the Super-Exploitation of Labour-Power and Nature in the Global South

This paper explores the continuing and deepening theoretical and political relevance of the
work of Ruy Mauro Marini on dependency and imperialism (Marini 2022) to the issue of
super-exploitation of labour-power and nature in the Global South (and more specifically
Latin America), a process of neo-extractivism in which 'land-grabbing' plays a key role.
Contemporary dependency and imperialism, embodied in neo-extractivism, takes place, it is
argued, through three mechanisms: the super-exploitation of labour-power (Surplus
Extraction 1) and the super-exploitation of nature (Surplus Extraction 2), and on the
disproportionate claim by the imperium and sub-imperium upon ecological sinks differentially
located in the Global South (Surplus Extraction 3). In relation to Surplus Extraction 1 and 2,
the main focus of the paper, what we appear to be witnessing is 'disarticulated' accumulation
through two principal, juxtaposed mechanisms: Surplus Extraction 1 comprises superexploitation 'within' the capital-labour relation, comprising selective zones of
industrialisation, and labour-intensive plantation production, and reliant upon the labour
force's continued status as a semi-proletariat, affording capital a 'subsidy' by remunerating
labour-power below its value; Surplus Extraction 2 takes place through 'accumulation by
dispossession', whereby land cleared of its previous inhabitants through 'land grabbing'
affords, through the accumulated labour of those prior inhabitants embodied 'nature', a
massive boost to surplus value production by capital-intensive agro-extractive activity. These
surplus extractive mechanisms, it is argued, may be understood on the basis of Marini's highly
innovative development of the Marxian labour-theory of value, which the paper seeks to
further develop in relation to the labour-power/nature nexus of contemporary extractivism