The 21st century began with capitalism apparently victorious: the free market and globalization was generating profits, and everyone was certain that expansion and growth would continue without end. The end of the previous century in the capitalist world was marked by a steady shift from long-term concerns like developing technology and investments in product development to simply making money from money—in effect, the focus was on short-term financial returns. As manufacturing declined (perhaps in part as a result in this shift), the financial industry played a bigger and bigger role. Along with this was a steady erosion of regulatory constraints on what banks and other financial institutions could do. Capitalists saw that making money from money was preferred to making money from products. Two main consequences emerged: on one hand, there was a shift towards shareholder value, corporate restructuring favoring outsourcing and increasing compensation to senior officers; on the other hand, it resulted in greater inequality, neoliberal policies that undermined social protections, and in general fostered broader global connectivity and potential for instability. This led to a financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, brought on by the unrestrained creation of private credit and money by a financial system that was out of control and short-sighted. As the capitalist world struggled with the fallout of the collapse, the financial press and investment firm reports increasingly asked whether Marx was right after all, and warned about the danger of an ever-growing inequality and concentration of wealth.

Lost among all of this, at least from the perspective of the centers of capitalist power and wealth, is how to understand what was happening in the rest of the world, in what is increasingly referred to as the Global South. Marx’s own views on the Global South emerging during his lifetime highlights the usefulness of some of his core concepts in efforts to understand contemporary developments in those regions.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative If, at the time of Marx’s writing, 90 percent of industrial production occurred in England, the contrast with today could not be greater. By some estimates, Europe now accounts for only about 12 percent of global industrial production, and the US about 24 % on the other hand Asia accounts for 64 percent and China, alone, accounts for about 32 percent of all global industrial activity. A case might be made that 21st century capitalism in the Global North does not look like 19th century capitalism. Financialization, making money from money, creating wealth through social and intellectual capital (how else to explain the value of companies like Apple, Google, and others) dominates over industrial production. Capitalists no longer depend primarily on making things for wealth and profit. That task has shifted elsewhere. However, with that shift, many of the same problems once faced by workers in the Global North are now inflicted on workers in the Global South. The questions arise as to where that places China, as it grows to become a major economy on a world scale? Clearly, its organizing principle for society differs from traditional countries outside of the sphere of most post-colonial countries of the Global South. While the production processes are like those found under industrial capitalism, the social relations of production in China may be thought of as different. Clearly this is the view taken in China as it pursues “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Rather than appropriation and exploitation of workers, a case might be made that the surplus generated in China is being used by society to alleviate poverty in the rural areas, and most visibly to build an advanced infrastructure and more generally serve its citizens. One need only look at the rapid expansion of the high-speed rail system connecting this large country, the rapid expansion of mass transit in its largest cities, and major bridge and tunnels linking disparate parts of the country. In comparison, the US with its great but concentrated wealth permits the decades long decline in the quality of rail systems, bridges and roads, and mass transit in major cities. The creation of surplus does not necessarily require appropriation by individuals leading to the kind of concentrated wealth and poverty if social institutions and economic activities are not designed for the perpetuation and reproduction of capitalist social relations, as outlined by Marx. China has embarked on an historic program of participation in global development called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Taking a longer view of history, this project relates back to its earlier Silk Road, which provided access to goods from all over the known world and brought China’s goods to that world. By investing in infrastructure like roads, ports, railroads, and transshipment nodes, China is creating a global network that potentially will not reproduce the exploitive relationships found historically in the expansion of European capitalism, and in the colonial and post-colonial relationships between the Global South and North. In partnerships with countries in the Global South, informed by the goal of mutual benefit and applying the lessons of past mistakes all the while avoiding the exploitive nature of European expansion, the BRI seeks to create new pathways to bring the results of China’s productive capacity to the rest of the world while opening China’s market to partner countries. Marxism has allowed us to understand the nature of capitalism and has detailed how capitalism has resulted in the underdevelopment of the Global South. Guided by these principles, is it possible to imagine new social relationships and opportunities for mutual growth and development because of the BRI? Given China’s initiative, it is timely to ask whether, after centuries of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation, the writing and lessons from Marx have any role to play in understanding and directing future developments in the Global South? Furthermore, how can we understand the shift away from traditional capitalist centers of economic activities in the Global North, built upon the strength of manufacturing to Asian economies that have taken on the mantel of manufacturers to the world? Should we consider Marx a writer whose focus was primarily on Europe and the rise of industrial capitalism, arguing his work is not useful in the contemporary context? Alternatively, how relevant are his ideas to the contemporary Global South, where most of the world’s population lives now and which is economically much less developed than Europe? And how should we understand the usefulness of Marx’s writings and ideas as the global economy undergoes major changes in the locus of economic relationships, exemplified by China’s BRI? Marx’s 19th century work continues to offer us a critical understanding of the historical and on-going relationship between the Global South and the neo-imperial North. His work provides insights into the “unique” ways in which capitalism develops and impacts specific world-regions. Taken together, Marx’s essential concepts and ideas have the potential to offer us a guide on how to avoid, in the 21st century, the exploitation and harm created by the forces and relations of 19th century global capitalism, something about which Marx was so critical. By placing Marx’s writings into that context, one can argue that his work is still important from the perspective of the Global South.

Reflections on Marx1 I focus here on two of his contributions as they inform current developments. The first is his method. Risking great oversimplification, one can reduce his method to paying attention to, and the identification of, irreversible changes in how people function in their daily lives. He does this through examining the historical path taken to the present: how things are produced and the role of technological changes in production (what is called the forces of production), and also how changes in production were provoked by, and by turn provoked, changes in the direction and control of the results of human activity (what is called the relations of production). This historical materialist method enables scholars to study the inevitable and highly specific tension and interdependence between the political and economic dimensions of income and wealth creation. Arguably, it is the extent of this tension, and how the interdependence is balanced and structured, that renders the resulting system stable or unstable. In this way Marx’s method encourages scholars to get to grips with the historical and cultural specificity of the Global South including its on-going links to developments in the North. Marx functions as a bridge to research over the past century (the various strands of 20th and 21st century Marxism) that i) capture the unique ways in which capitalism develops in, and impacts, specific world-regions and ii) demonstrate how the different world-regions of the Global South are developing unevenly relative to one another and relative to the imperialist countries, within the framework capitalist imperialism. The second contribution is the detail with which he established the interpersonal, social, and environmental hazards posed by unfettered commodification. Capitalism is the production of ever more things by any means necessary. The hazards arise because, he wrote, the wealth of the nation appears to be the vast array of stuff we buy and sell. That is what productivity measures—the production of more stuff by any means necessary. The environmental costs are now becoming clear—locally in poor air quality; globally in climate change that threatens coastal cities. We find in the wealthiest nations of the world sundry dilemmas that arise when the social space that is not commodified is reduced so that even privacy is something that can be bought and sold. This outcome, in part, reflects the controversy over how Facebook and other information companies in the United States (and presumably elsewhere) collect personal data in return for use of a suite of internet applications. Applying the lens of commodification allows us to notice that the network effects and personal data have been produced by the unpaid work of consumers engaging in social interactions, much as humanity had done for millennia in all parts of the world, activities that are part of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities that go by the familiar names of family, tribe, and community. What is new, what the forces of production have now made possible, is the commodification of such pre-capitalist networks and information provision by their technological removal and insertion into directly capitalist relations of production. These are but two of the ways that Marx’s writings can helps us understand the on-going development of any part of the world, in the context of the challenges countries of the Global South face in an increasingly interconnected world economic system dominated by capitalist firms. In so doing, it can also be a guide on how to create a global political economic settlement not governed entirely by capitalist social and production relations.

Marx in Global Context At the time of Marx’s writings, 90 percent of the world’s industrial production was situated in England, mainly around Manchester. His contributions were, broadly stated, on the nature of production (with his explanations on the forces and relations of production, and how they shaped society) and the role of history in understanding the development of economies and societies. While his writings mainly focused on the economy, Marx was also active politically with a goal of greater emancipation through political practices. His focus was on the potential for political change, and so very little of his writings dealt with non-European societies beyond journalistic works dealing with India, China and the Ottoman Empire from the standpoint of Britain’s domestic policies. Post-colonial and post-modern theorists argue that regions of the Global South are very different from Europe, so his ideas have no or limited relevance to them. A counter to these post-colonialist arguments reminds us that it was in Europe where capitalism first emerged, and little in what Marx wrote indicates he believed there was anything inherently superior about European society. It is in the periphery (Lenin’s land, Mao’s villages) that Marx’s work had its greatest impact on social change. There is a need to avoid two dangers in assessing Marx’s relevance to the Global South: on one hand there is world-regional exceptionalism that absolutizes the specificity of the regions of the Global South, and on the other there is Euro-centrist universalism that mechanically applies Marx’s ideas as they are expressed about Europe to other areas, as if regions of the Global South are merely a tropical or warmer Europe, a late-Europe as it were. Marx’s ideas explore all forms of class society leading up to advanced forms of capitalism. While generally abstract, these ideas are applicable to the Global South even if his ideas focused on the Europe of his day, the heartland of capitalism. For example, he writes about the enclosures that displace agricultural workers to increase wool production for the textile mills of England, while the colonies of Europe become the locus of food production to replace lost agricultural production in England. To the extent that capitalist social and productive relations increasingly develop in the Global South Marx’s ideas specific to the advance of capitalism in. Europe of the 19th century has some relevance to events in the Global South today. Consider the displacement of people from the land, the growth of industrial development in cities, and the emerging class society in market economies based on uneven ownership and control over the means of production. Although Marx’s empirical examples primarily came from Britain, his approach to capitalism was global or internationalist. World commerce was the presupposition of capitalism, he argues, through the development of commerce as the foundation from which capitalism emerged. The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market. Thus, trade is what made capitalism a global phenomenon. The development of capitalism in its heartland was crucially dependent on its interaction with the colonies. The international division of labor was imposed by the on-going process of imperialism In other words, the development of European capitalism depended on conquest, genocide and slavery in the Global South. The relationship between the Global North and South means that the surplus from colonies, in the context of already-existing capital-labor relations, was converted into capital, and this capital was invested in English industry and Scottish agriculture. Imperialism deprived the colonies of its surplus, and so blocked economic development in the Global South of the type that occurred in Europe. Marx identifies external rather than internal causes for the absence of industrial capitalist development in these countries. Marx’s ideas and methods have underpinned the analysis of development in the Global South more broadly to reflect local conditions and historical contexts, in opposition to a Eurocentric and somewhat singular understanding of social change and resistance to capitalism. The results are iterations we can call African Marxism, Asian Marxism, Latin American Marxism, Indian Marxism, and Chinese Marxism (which is being promoted in China’s various Schools of Marxism) as well as Marxist studies on international development, imperialism, agrarian change, and more. All of which point to Marx’s continued relevance in examining and dealing with the issues that concern the Global South. There are at least four aspects of the relevance of Marx’s ideas to the Global South. Firstly, his more abstract ideas about society (political economy, natural history of society, and social theory) are widely relevant, both to the North and the Global South in terms of how people earn their living and how societies evolve in a crisis-ridden manner. Secondly, to the extent that capitalist relations develop in the Global South, Marx’s ideas about how advanced capitalism in Europe had a global (i.e., North-South) character may be applicable to the contemporary Global South in the temporal-geographical context. Thirdly, many of his ideas that are specifically about the Global South at the time of his writing have some relevance to the contemporary Global South. Finally, his philosophical ideas are widely relevant to the Global South. Many of those who deny Marx’s relevance to the South influenced by a range of post-isms also have a dim view of both materialism and dialectics, central to the ideas developed by Marx. We now live in a time of rapid changes in the global economy. The United States seems to be following an ever more isolationist posture with respect to international trade and the expansion of investments outside its borders. At the same time, China’s growing economy, the need to export its productive capacities (in infrastructure and construction), and its desire to accelerate a turn to markets to improve the lives of its citizens, has resulted in a major investment in a global economy through its BRI. What now faces us is how we are going to understand those changes. In the end, Marx helps us understand the development of capitalism, the way it will change, and resulting relationships that emerge globally. His work and ideas can help us understand the challenges countries of the Global South will face in a capitalist global economy. And perhaps it can serve as a guide to how to avoid the exploitation and harm created in seeking a new global economy not ruled by capitalist social and productive relations.

Author’s Note

These comments reflect a longer paper, “Marx, the Global South and China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” presented by David Fasenfest and Raju Das at the Second World Congress of Marxism, Peking University, May 5–6, 2018. Earlier reflections are available in Global Dialogues, Magazine of the International Sociology Association, 2018 Vol. 8 Issue 1 (http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/marx-and-the-global-south/). An expanded version of these ideas are in process.