Capitalism And Underdevelopment In Latin America

Originally published: Monthly Review Press, 1967.

In his second book, Andre Gunder Frank expands on the theme presented in his influential study Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. It is the colonial structure of world capitalism, in his view, which produced and maintains the underdevelopment characteristic of Latin America and the rest of the Third World. This colonial structure penetrates everywhere in Latin America, forming and transforming all its features in obedience to its own imperatives and thereby imposing upon the region those characteristic features of poverty and backwardness which are not primarily the remnants of an ancient "feudal" past but the direct products of capitalism. This development of underdevelopment will persist, Frank argues, until the people of Latin America free themselves from world capitalism by means of revolution.

In his second book, Andre Gunder Frank expands on the theme presented in his influential study Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. It is the colonial structure of world capitalism, in his view, which produced and maintains the underdevelopment characteristic of Latin America and the rest of the Third World. This colonial structure penetrates everywhere in Latin America, forming and transforming all its features in obedience to its own imperatives and thereby imposing upon the region those characteristic features of poverty and backwardness which are not primarily the remnants of an ancient "feudal" past but the direct products of capitalism. This development of underdevelopment will persist, Frank argues, until the people of Latin America free themselves from world capitalism by means of revolution.

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Monograph comprising an essay on a theory relating capitalism to underdevelopment, with particular reference to Latin America - discusses historical and sociological aspects of capitalist development with respect to internal colonialism, exploitation, social class, socialism, national liberation movements, etc. Bibliography pp. 111 to 113.