Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism

Abstract

The book presents a proposition about the value chains as a form of economic drain, which is carefully constructed from the Marxian view of value added as essentially labour surplus. That seeks to reclaim the production function, tersely characterised as the interplay between capital and labour in the economics of technological change literature, as much as it seeks to liberate from it. The subjective narrative offered by the book explores how the division of labour appears as a form of social and economic exploitation of workers in low-wage countries by western multinationals. It posits the book in the lexicon of contemporary production relations i.e., foreign direct investment to emphasize the mobility of capital and the contingent compulsions of capital to reduce per-unit costs of labour and the increase of productivity.

Keywords: Marxian value theory; labour exploitation; global value chains; foreign direct investment