This year, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Dialectics of Dependency, Monthly Review Press released the first-ever English translation of Ruy Mauro Marini’s classic – one of the most important texts in the field of Latin American Dependency Theory.

Please join us in person on September 14th at The People’s Forum for a discussion between activists and writers from Mexico, South Africa, Venezuela, the UK, Canada and the United States, as they discuss the influence of Marxist Dependency Theory.

Considered one of the most important intellectuals in Latin American social thought, the Brazilian writer Ruy Mauro Marini showed that underdevelopment and development are the result of relations between economies in the world market, and the class relations they engender.  In particular, Marini developed the concept of labor super-exploitation, a phenomenon generated by the very role that Latin America plays in the international division of labor – and one now seen the world over.

Written during an upsurge of class struggle in the region in the 1970s, and published by Monthly Review Press for the first time in English, this foundational essay is proving more relevant than ever. The Dialectics of Dependency is an internationalist contribution from one Latin American Marxist to dispossessed and oppressed people struggling the world over, and a gift to those who struggle from within the recesses of present-day imperialist centers—nourishing today’s efforts to think through the definition of “revolution” on a global scale.

Together with Jaime Osorio, Amanda Latimer co-edited and translated The Dialectics of Dependency (Monthly Review Press, 2022).  She teaches politics and sociology at Kingston University (UK).  Her research examines how Brazilian workers and social movements cut across lines of difference, nation and region to combat the race to the bottom facing workers everywhere in struggles against neoliberal trade deals.

Joseph Mullen (chair) is a member of the Cadre Journal, an anti-imperialist network that supports struggles in the Global South.  He is also involved with the Arghiri Emmanuel Association, dedicated to theoretical discussion of unequal exchange and imperialism.

Cristóbal Reyes is a Mexican economist.  He is a professor at the School of Economics of the National Polytechnic Institute (Mexico).  He is currently pursuing a PhD in Latin American Studies, and is co-author of two books on Marxist dependency theory.  Together with Jaime Osorio, he maintains the online archive of works by Ruy Mauro Marini at Marini Escritos.

Chris Gilbert is a professor of political studies at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela and creator and co-host of Escuela de Cuadros, a Marxist educational television program and podcast. Gilbert is the author of Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project(Monthly Review Press, 2023).

Phethani Madzivhandila is a Pan Africanist Marxist Historian and an activist based in Azania (South Africa). If not reading historical literature or thinking about the Revolution, he spends most of his time missing Walter Rodney and imagining a world without capitalism. His research interests draw from the historical and current development of racial capitalism in Africa and how it influences the social relations of agrarian change in rural areas.

Andy Higginbottom supports movements fighting extractivism, neocolonialism and oppression in Latin America, South Africa and the Eelam Tamils. His most recent publication is “Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini’s ‘Dialectics of Dependency’ Goes beyond Marx’s ‘Capital’” (Monthly Review 74(11), April 2023).  He is a retired Associate Professor at Kingston University (UK).