Abstract
Starosta outlines a thoroughly revised ‘new international division of labour (NIDL) thesis that explains global transformation and uneven development on the basis of the progress of the automation of capitalist large-scale industry, and its impact on the individual and collective productive subjectivity of the working class. Today, in an ever more complex constellation of the NIDL, capital searches worldwide for the most profitable combinations of relative cost and qualities/disciplines resulting from the variegated past histories of the different national fragments of the working class. Each country therefore tends to concentrate a certain type of labour-power of distinctive ‘material and moral’ productive attributes of a determinate complexity, which are spatially dispersed but collectively exploited by capital as a whole in the least costly possible manner.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
This, however, begs the question of why one or the other form of the international division of labour tends to prevail in a particular country or region. I think that neither Fröbel, Heinrichs and Kreye nor their critics offered a convincing answer. As Grinberg and Starosta (2009) argue, the existence and reproduction of those protected domestic markets have historically required the continuous inflow of an extraordinary mass of social wealth which complemented the surplus-value extracted from the domestic working class to the point of marking the very specificity of the accumulation process in those national spaces (see also Chaps. 2 and 3). The availability in some countries of an abundant mass of ground-rent, deriving from the presence of exceptional non-reproducible natural conditions in agriculture, mining and/or energy-production, has provided such an additional source of social wealth.
- 2.
Besides, it should be noted that the ‘relocation back north’ line of reasoning relied on what has been convincingly shown to be a mythical story about the effects of new flexible technologies on the productive attributes of direct workers (Tomaney 1994).
- 3.
This was grasped by Fröbel, Heinrichs and Kreye to a certain extent, although mentioned mainly in passing (see, for instance, Fröbel 1982: 538). In a subsequent study on export processing zones, they explicitly considered the debates on the effects of new technologies on the NIDL and correctly recognised that ‘innovations in process technologies have not led firms to turn their backs on low-cost sites in the world-wide organization of their production’, since the ‘wage-differential’ between ‘North’ and ‘South’ for the more skilled work often required could be even greater than that between wages for unskilled workers (Fröbel et al. 1987: 15).
- 4.
As we shall see in Chap. 6, these dynamics of relative simplification and a subsequent international relocation of intellectual labour are also at the basis of the Celtic Tiger phenomenon, with software development as one of its emblematic sectors.
- 5.
- 6.
In this sense, data on FDI cannot empirically settle the question about the validity of the NIDL thesis, as some authors argue (for example, Kiely 1995: 94).
- 7.
See Jacobson et al. (1979), Walker (1989) and Liokadis (1990), for diverse critiques of the world-system/dependency theory leanings of Fröbel, Heinrichs and Kreye’s account.
- 8.
For further elaboration of the determination of capital as the alienated total social subject of the movement of modern society (and hence the inverted social existence of human beings as its personifications), see Starosta (2016).
- 9.
This mistaken focus on manufacture instead of machino facture was accurately picked up by Jenkins (1984) in his early critique of the NIDL thesis, although he did not explore the implications of this confusion any further.
- 10.
See Balconi (2002) on this twofold effect of new technologies on the skills of direct labourers. This general contradictory development of the particular and universal dimensions of labour-power subsumed to large-scale industry had already been identified by Marx as its characteristic form of motion. See his discussion of education clauses of the Factory Acts in Capital (1976: Chap. 15), and also Starosta (2011).
- 11.
As for the, so-called, polyvalent worker, it has been amply demonstrated that its development might not entail any vertical expansion of skills. Instead, it has involved in most cases the horizontal incorporation of additional, quite simple tasks, that is the sheer intensification of labour (Elger 1990). Rather than being an obstacle, the generally weaker and more compliant working class in certain ‘peripheral’ countries might have been even more suitable for the greater labour intensity allowed by flexible production methods. This has been noted to be true of Japan as well, one of the hidden secrets behind its competitiveness vis-à-vis American and Western European capitals in the 1980s (Dohse et al. 1985).
- 12.
Strictly speaking, the multiplication of the surplus population relative to the needs of the accumulation process has also constituted a transformation of productive subjectivity produced by the automation of large-scale industry (see Marx 1976: 553–75).
- 13.
As Grinberg (2014: 2) points out, wet-rice cultivation has, among others, the following two characteristics. First, it is highly labour-intensive, notably during planting and harvest periods. Secondly, whatever their extent and complexity and, consequently, degree of centralisation, all irrigation systems have required the ‘cooperation at various levels between the farmers in a single water control unit’ (Bray 1986: 67).
- 14.
It is this difference in timing that largely explains the divergence in the patterns of industrial development (that is, the extent of the deepening process) between the first generation East Asian Tigers and their ‘followers’ in South East Asia. Also, many of those later followers had a comparatively greater mass of ground-rent for capital to recover through protected domestic markets before being turned into sources of cheap and compliant labour power for world market production. Thus, it was generally after the collapse of raw material prices (hence of ground-rent) in the early 1980s that these countries changed their mode of integration into the international division of labour (this also applies to the case of Mexico in Latin America). This, of course, does not mean that the industrialisation process in East Asia simply responded to the dynamics captured by the ‘flying geese’ thesis (cf. Kasahara 2004). Indeed, the NIDL has taken shape in a hierarchical structure (Bernard and Ravenhill 1995) which, due to global-scale requirements of different types of labour-power, narrows at the top and widens at the bottom. Moreover, the advent of China, with its ‘unlimited’ supply of relatively cheap and disciplined labour-power, has strongly restricted the upgrading possibilities of the rest of the followers.
- 15.
As Grinberg (2011: 35) points out, the ‘flying geese’ theory reflects only the second of these factors. Moreover, this theory does not explain why industrial production for world markets using a relatively cheap and disciplined unskilled of labour force could develop in Japan in the first instance.
References
Alcorta, L. 1999. Flexible Automation and Location of Production in Developing Countries. European Journal of Development Research 11(1): 147–75.
Amsden, A. 1989. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press.
Balconi, M. 2002. Tacitness, Codification of Technological Knowledge and the Organisation of Industry. Research Policy 31: 357–79.
Balconi, M., A. Pozzali, and R. Viale. 2007. The ‘Codification Debate’ Revisited: A Conceptual Framework to Analyze the Role of Tacit Knowledge in Economics. Industrial and Corporate Change 16(5): 1–27.
Bernard, M., and J. Ravenhill. 1995. Beyond Product Cycles and Flying Geese: Regionalization, Hierarchy, and the Industrialization of East Asia. World Politics 47(2): 171–209.
Bray, F. 1986. The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Burnham, P. 1994. Open Marxism and Vulgar International Political Economy. Review of International Political Economy 1(2): 221–31.
Ceceña, A.E., and A.A. Peña. 1995. En torno al estatuto de la fuerza de trabajo en la reproducción hegemónica del capital. In Producción Estratégica y Hegemonía Mundial, ed. A.E. Ceceña and A. Barreda Marín. Mexico City: Siglo XXI.
Cho, S.K. 1985. The Labor Process and Capital Mobility: The Limits of the New International Division of Labor. Politics and Society 14(1): 185–222.
Clarke, S. 1988. Keynesianism, Monetarism and the State. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Clarke, S. 2001. Class Struggle and Global Overaccumulation. In Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalization, ed. R. Albritton, M. Itoh, R. Westra, and A. Zuege. London: Macmillan.
Cohen, R. 1987. The “New” International Division of Labour: A Conceptual, Historical and Empirical Critique. Migration 1(1): 22–40.
Coriat, B. 1992. El taller y el robot. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Deyo, F. 1989. Beneath the Miracle: Labor Subordination in the New Asian Industrialisation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dohse, K., U. Jürgens, and T. Nialsch. 1985. From “Fordism” to “Toyotism”? The Social Organization of the Labor Process in the Japanese Automobile Industry. Politics & Society 14(2): 115–46.
Elger, T. 1990. Technical Innovation and Work Reorganisation in British Manufacturing in the 1980s: Continuity, Intensification or Transformation? Work, Employment & Society 4(5): 67–101.
Ernst, D. 2005. Complexity and Internationalisation Of Innovation: Why is Chip Design Moving to Asia? International Journal of Innovation Management 9(1): 47–73.
Fagan, R.H., and M. Webber. 1999. Global Restructuring: The Australian Experience, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fröbel, F. 1982. The Current Development of the World-Economy: Reproduction of Labor and Accumulation of Capital on a World Scale. Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 4: 507–55.
Fröbel, F., J. Heinrichs, and O. Kreye. 1980. The New International Division of Labour: Structural Unemployment in Industrialised Countries and Industrialisation in Developing Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fröbel, F., J. Heinrichs, and O. Kreye. 1987. Export Processing Zones in Developing Countries: Results of a New Survey. Multinational Enterprises Programme Working Paper 43, International Labour Organisation, Geneva.
Grinberg, N. 2008. From the “Miracle” to the “Lost Decade”: Intersectoral Transfers and External Credit in the Brazilian Economy. Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 28(2): 291–311.
Grinberg, N. 2011. Transformations in the Korean and Brazilian Processes of Capitalist Development between the mid-1950s and the mid-2000s: The Political Economy of Late Industrialisation. Unpublished PhD diss. London School of Economics and Political Science.
Grinberg, N. 2014. From the Miracle to Crisis and Back: The Political Economy of Korean Long-term Development. Journal of Contemporary Asia 44(4): 711–34.
Grinberg, N., and G. Starosta. 2009. The Limits of Studies in Comparative Development of East Asia and Latin America: The Case of Land Reform and Agrarian Policies. Third World Quarterly 30(4): 761–77.
Grinberg, N., and G. Starosta. 2014. From Global Capital Accumulation to Varieties of Centre-Leftism in South America: The Cases of Brazil and Argentina. In Crisis and Contradiction: Marxist Perspectives on Latin American in the Global Economy, ed. S. Spronk and J.R. Webber. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.
Hart-Landsberg, M., and P. Burkett. 1998. Contradictions of Capitalist Industrialization in East Asia: A Critique of “Flying Geese” Theories of Development. Economic Geography 74(2): 87–110.
Henderson, J. 1989. The Globalisation of High Technology Production. London: Routledge.
Hirschhorn, L., and J. Mokray. 1992. Automation and Competency Requirements in Manufacturing: A Case Study. In Technology and the Future of Work, ed. P.S. Adler. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howe, G.N. 1981. Dependency Theory, Imperialism, and the Production of Surplus Value On a World Scale. Latin American Perspectives 8(3–4): 82–102.
Huws, U. (ed.). 2006. The Transformation of Work in a Global Knowledge Economy: Towards a Conceptual Framework. Leuven: HIVA-K. U. Leuven.
Huws, U. 2014. Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Iñigo Carrera, J. 2007. La formación económica de la sociedad argentina. Volumen I, Renta agraria, ganancia industrial y deuda externa. 1882–2004. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi.
Iñigo Carrera, J. 2013. El capital: razón historica, sujecto revolucionario y conciencia, 2nd ed. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi.
Jacobson, D., A. Wickham, and J. Wickham. 1979. Die Neue Internationale Arbeitsteilung (The New International Division of Labour). Capital & Class 3(1): 122–30.
Jenkins, R. 1984. Divisions over the International Division of Labour. Capital & Class 8(1): 28–57.
Kasahara, S. 2004. The Flying Geese Paradigm: A Critical Study of its Application to East Asian Regional Development. Discussion Papers 169, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, São Paolo, 13–18 June.
Kiely, R. 1995. Sociology and Development: The Impasse and Beyond. London: UCL Press.
Liokadis, G. 1990. International Division of Labor and Uneven Development: A Review of the Theory and Evidence’. Review of Radical Political Economics 22(2): 189–213.
Marx, K. 1976. Capital, vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Marx, K. 1978. The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850. In Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 10, ed. K. Marx and F. Engels. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Marx, K. 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Nanda, M. 2000. Post-Fordist Technology and the Changing Geography of Production: Challenges for Third World Women. Gender Technology and Development 4(1): 25–60.
Oberhauser, A.M. 1990. Social and Spatial Patterns under Fordism and Flexible Accumulation. Antipode 22(3): 211–32.
Ramioul, M. 2006. Organisational Change and the Demand of Skills. In The Transformation of Work in a Global Knowledge Economy: Towards a Conceptual Framework, ed. U. Huws. Leuven: HIVA-K. U. Leuven.
Sassen, S. 1988. The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sayer, A. 1986. Industrial Location on a World Scale: The Case of the Semiconductor Industry. In Production, Work, Territory, ed. M. Storper and A.J. Scott. Boston: Allen and Unwin.
Schoenberger, E. 1988. From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation: Technology, Competitive Strategies, and International Location. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6(3): 245–62.
Schoenberger, E. 1989. Multinational Corporations and the New International Division of Labour: A Critical Appraisal. In The Transformation of Work? Skill, Flexibility and the Labour Process, ed. S. Wood. London: Unwin Hyman.
Silver, B. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalisation since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, T. 2006. Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account. Leiden: Brill.
Starosta, G. 2011. Machinery, Productive Subjectivity and the Limits to Capitalism in Capital and the Grundrisse. Science and Society 75(1): 42–58.
Starosta, G. 2016. Marx’s Capital, Method and Revolutionary Subjectivity. Leiden: Brill.
Tomaney, J. 1994. A New Paradigm of Work Organization and Technology? In Post-Fordism: A Reader, ed. A. Amin. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wade, R. 1990. Industrial Policy in East Asia: Does It Lead or Follow the Market? In Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialization in Latin America and East Asia, ed. G. Gereffi and D.I. Wyman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Walker, R.A. 1989. Machinery, Labour and Location. In The Transformation of Work? Skill, Flexibility and the Labour Process, ed. S. Wood. London: Unwin Hyman.
Wallerstein, I. 1991. World-system. In A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. T. Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Starosta, G. (2016). Revisiting the New International Division of Labour Thesis. In: Charnock, G., Starosta, G. (eds) The New International Division of Labour. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53871-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53872-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)