The overarching argument presented in this book is that the Global South suffers from systematic dispossession at the hands of the Global North. This dispossession occurs in three main ways: through trade relations, capital flows, and migration. It happens through trade relations in the sense that the already developed centres have become increasingly powerful, locking underdeveloped countries and regions within their orbit as consumers or suppliers. Globalisation has not led to equal opportunities, primarily due to cheap labour and economies of agglomeration. Additionally, because of the extractive behaviour by Northern corporations (but also increasingly those corporations from emerging or resurgent economies), ‘natural resource curses’ sometimes contribute to cyclical instability within some of the poorest countries on earth.
Capital is also flowing out of the South facilitating the further uneven integration of these economies into the world economy. Capital inflows in the form of foreign investment are viewed as needed by the South to finance their infrastructure projects, spur on growth, and generally uplift basic human developmental conditions. However, a perennial lack of confidence in these economies tends to undercut their best efforts to attract such capital. The South has also experienced dispossession through the loss of skilled workers to the North.
The argument put forward in the book is therefore also a spatial one. It is about locking value into the Global South and especially Africa, and not letting it be frittered away to offshore accounts. Aid (much like other interventions including military operations, laws and statutes, or trade reform) is viewed as an important intervention used by the North to alleviate the plight of the developing world.
It is argued that the way dispossession occurs globally between the Global North and South is via, what may be called, the government-business-media (GBM) complex (see definition below). To understand how value is moved from the South in these processes, one would have to follow the trail of natural resources in the Global South to stock exchanges in the North. Following the trail between extraction and value creation would demonstrate that the Global South is still the main supplier of raw materials, while the higher-order, value-adding processes are happening outside of its territories. The GBM complex essentially steals wealth from the Global South and this is roughly consistent with what Harvey (2005) would call “accumulation by dispossession.” Harvey’s reformulation of Marx’s primitive accumulation is instructive as he identified the inherently predatory nature of capital accumulation, something that is hardwired into the system’s very logic.
To reverse these trends, the Global South hopes to secure financial inputs in ways that reduce the likelihood of uneven development. Instead, it would have to inculcate a type of development that reduces the likelihood of subsequent impoverishment, especially in vulnerable economies where rent-seeking and capital flight occur. The goal is to create country-level conditions where aid, trade, and investment revenues are transformed into infrastructure, human capital, and productive capacity for subsequent growth cycles.
How can conventional growth and revenue be harnessed for development? How can the inherent technologies—and those forces created because of the synergies between government, business, and media—be directed towards development?
What Is the GBM Complex?
Synthesising the concepts of ‘accumulation’ and ‘hegemony,’ the GBM complex attempts to capture the complementary relationship between capital accumulation and discourse within a unified analytical framework. Applying historical-geographical materialism, the analysis draws from Harvey ’s (2005) concept of “accumulation by dispossession” and Gramsci ’s (1971) notion of hegemony. The framework reconciles some of the classical theories on development economics with the ideational power underpinning material production (Van der Merwe, 2014, 2016a, 2016b).
In the GBM, the state is understood to work in tandem with the private sector in efforts to expand accumulation over space. Class formations further reinforce these patterns of accumulation driving the interests of the dominant elite. The state elite and politicians play a role in how business configures itself across space, thereby enabling, facilitating, and guiding expansion. Business benefits, at least tacitly, from state discourse, if not directly through infrastructure creation or public-private partnerships. Information and knowledge transfers further support their expansion over space. Occasionally a disjuncture (at least on the surface) emerges between business and state discourses, such as when business is accused of unscrupulous behaviour which runs contrary to the state’s otherwise developmental rhetoric. In such a case, the subtly concealed business motives of the state are laid bare. The media, referring more broadly to information and knowledge exchanges over space, would then, in turn, play a role in buttressing accumulation through a type of cultural imperialism and hegemonic practice. The mainstream media can be said to have a privileged role as it can be critical of either sector, or side with one sector against the other, largely stemming from allegiances related to ownership. News networks might criticise government policies directly, or be seen to be cooperating with business, particularly when the capitalist interests of the state are under threat. A potentially significant contribution of the GBM complex is the manner in which the constructivist turn (media) has been incorporated into more deterministic economic interactions. This orientation is further influenced by neo-Gramscian scholars such as Cox (1983). If one accepts Gramsci’s notion that assent to capitalism is maintained through persuasion or making capitalism seem necessary, even virtuous, then the media plays a central role in dispossession (Aune, 1990). It gives subjects the sense of being stakeholders and creates a false sense of agency. The media facilitates dispossession through hegemonic practice which further reinforces asymmetrical accumulation.
The GBM uses a dichotomous classification of the ‘labour’ of elites and ‘workers’ within the state, capital, and, broadly, knowledge and information systems, to describe processes of uneven development. The labour dichotomy comprises ‘affective’ and ‘infrastructural’ components, where the affective component describes discourse and consent-forming processes, and the infrastructural component describes transactional processes which facilitate asymmetrical accumulation. In the GBM complex, affective labour is manifested in policy documents, speeches, summits, corporate social responsibility initiatives, aid, and publications across commercial research, academia, and the mainstream media. These channels are used to project a benign, if not overwhelmingly positive, image of the state and its involvement in new spaces. On the other hand, the infrastructural component of the complex goes about facilitating capital accumulation, embedding means of extraction within targeted spaces. This could take physical form through large-scale infrastructure development within these spaces but could also be effected through the signing of contracts, securing of intellectual property, trade agreements, or other binding transactional arrangements. Increasingly, these are financial in nature.
The relationship between the state, business, and civil society is a complex and dynamic one. Civil society serves to unpack and unravel much of the collusion between government and business and is therefore not always welcomed or appreciated. The same applies to labour organisations and trade unions. However, partnerships between the state and these organisations create the illusion of serious political contestation and a possible co-opting of the left wing if they are not so powerful as to threaten investment or control by the elite. These organisations often need support from the state to survive. They can, however, offer resistance as they typically reside outside the material production of the state and may have the freedom to construct counter-narratives and assertions.
It will be argued that two heuristic applications of the GBM concept exist: the first is in structural analysis (presenting a broader, more macro-level, picture of how power works and how wealth accumulation occurs across space), and the other is in the descriptive analysis (within blocs and between blocs within a state but not necessarily fixed to the state boundaries).
Structural analysis transcends countries and could be more appropriate for global- and regional-level inquiries, with a preference for sectoral system approaches instead of country analysis. However, one could also say that countries have dominant GBM complexes with their own ‘modus operandi’ and variations of capitalist development (Arkhangelskaya & Dodd, 2016; Taylor, Van der Merwe, & Dodd, 2016; Van der Merwe, 2014).
Therefore, it can be said that exchanges (valorisation and devalorisation) between sectors and elites happen between and within blocs. The reason the GBM is useful is that it helps to explain the spatial dynamics of accumulation and underdevelopment. When there is a crisis of over-accumulation, capital can be moved across time and space, or it can be moved via trickery such as accumulation by dispossession (Harvey , 2005). When a country is underdeveloped, other blocs and established powers will take advantage of spatial asymmetries, employing exploitative practices and building alliances with elites within the country. However, under such circumstances, revenue is unlikely to ‘stick’ within the territory. Interventions such as aid are also unlikely to be successful under such circumstances. Usually, accumulation by dispossession or complicity within the capitalist system is almost imperceptible because the system itself is robust enough to withstand a certain amount of unobtrusive rent-seeking behaviour by the elite. However, in vulnerable, underdeveloped, disaster- or conflict-ridden environments, these behaviours are more evident.
To sum up, the GBM can operate between blocs—when a capitalist bloc moves into a space, using it for exploitative purposes—or it can happen within a bloc (space). When income enters a state or region, it may be translated into development inefficiently because of the dynamic of the GBM within that space. It is easier to think of a network of actors instead of thinking of it purely as a siloed and insular phenomenon linked to physical territory (i.e. the nation-state). But, at the same time, the effects are usually seen along set lines because outputs such as aid, investment, and trade are measured along state lines. So, it is still useful to measure the effects of the GBM according to state lines.
Harnessing the GBM As a Force for Good
Once the analytical framework describing capitalist accumulation has been introduced, this book will then focus on using the insights gained to boost development at the ‘sharp end’ of accumulation. Moving beyond the model’s utility as an analytical framework, the book explores the model’s application in mapping a way out of this situation. Such a response could be more conventionally helpful as opposed to radical resistance to capitalist accumulation; that is, if we concede that the rules of the capitalist ‘game’ are not likely to be altered in a wholesale manner, what might healthy development look like? How are we to hold elite members in government and business to account? This book will not argue apologetically in favour of capitalist accumulation but does suggest that pragmatic solutions need to be found within the Global South.
The overarching question, therefore, becomes: how does the GBM facilitate or impede the translation of income into development? Answering this question would require a brief discussion concerning our basic assumptions of how the technologies within the GBM can be harnessed for development.
As income enters a country (e.g. as export revenue or aid) the elite play a role in how these revenues are invested (or not) and distributed within society. Aid is often siphoned off for personal accumulation or investment into sectors which are likely to support oligarchical structures or state-link...