Unequal Exchange in Debate: Placing Superexploitation at the Centre of the Analysis

Drawing upon the contributions of Latin American Marxist Ruy Mauro Marini, this article argues that labour superexploitation in the Global South is fundamental to understanding unequal exchange and the polarized productive structures of peripheral capitalism. The systematic violation of the value of labour power in dependent economies causes hypertrophy of capital formation in export-oriented sectors, while simultaneously weakening those aimed at the domestic market. This heterogeneous productive formation has been largely overlooked in Marxist analyses of unequal exchange. Unlike core economies, where productivity growth strengthened domestic markets through workers’ consumption, high productivity in export-oriented sectors in peripheral economies intensifies surplus-value production by disregarding labour power, deepening mechanisms of relative and absolute surplus extraction. By shaping a productive structure grounded in superexploitation, technological change enables capitalists to extend the working day, intensify labour, raise productivity, and maintain the tendency to remunerate labour below its value.