The Global Accumulation of Capital and Ground-Rent in Recourse Rich Countries

Abstract

This chapter provides fresh insight into the ´old´ international division of labour and into the development of capitalism in ´resource rich´ countries whose longstanding historical role in the world market has been to produce ground rent bearing commodities. Following Chapter One, this chapter builds upon the notion of capital accumulation as being global in content and national in form. From this perspective the chapter challenges the dominant perspective that explains the functioning of a national economy as the result of domestic politics (e.g. ´national developmentalism´), and another that explains it as a consequence of foreign influence and domination (e.g. ´(neo)imperialism´). It instead presents an original approach that explains the specific characteristics of the national process of accumulation in countries specialised in the production of ground rent‐bearing commodities within the CIDL, and in doing so substantiates the argument that ground rent is essentially constituted by the surplus value resulting from the valorisation of industrial capitals abroad and which flows into the former type of national space of accumulation. The chapter therefore further advances the critique outlined in Chapter One of those IPE approaches that attempt to explain such characteristics through theories and analyses of unequal exchange with advanced capitalist countries. Although the chapter does not provide a case study, as such, it does use empirical evidence from the example of capitalist development in Argentina a paradigmatic case of a ´resource rich´ country within the CIDL, and, as we will see in Chapter Seven a case which today demonstrates the complementarities of ground rent based accumulation and industrial production within the NIDL.