In Dependency, Neoliberalism and Globalization in Latin America, Carlos Eduardo Martins takes three highly topical concepts at the centre of contemporary social thought and unpacks them with exemplary theoretical rigour. His analysis is framed around an in-depth discussion of the crisis of the modern world system. Taking Immanuel Wallerstein’s study of historical capitalism as a starting point, the author shows that we cannot fully understand capitalism by defining it purely as a mode of production. Marx did so in an earlier era, successfully, because its historical constitution largely determines key elements of the social, economic and political system that make up its very essence.

The modern world system is one such historical element. It was first established in the 16th century when Spanish and Portuguese navigators financed by Genoa incorporated the Americas into global trade circuits and opened up hitherto Arab-controlled trade with the East. But the system was only properly consolidated by the European balance of power ushered in by Holland in the 17th century and subsequently by British global hegemony. The Industrial Revolution played its part too, helping to integrate the capitalist mode of production with the material base that would furnish the modern world system with the means to conquer the entire planet.

Each of these periods was characterised by a cyclical movement rigorously studied by Fernand Braudel and by Wallerstein over the four volumes of The Modern World-System. This cyclical movement would become a single world system. This notwithstanding, there has yet to be a proper examination of the new world cycle that emerged after World War ii under the hegemony of the global financial, monetary and geopolitical system set up by a victorious United States and its allies.

In the present work, Martins provides a well-documented overview of the analyses of long cycles proposed by both Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi, each of whom describes how a hegemonic power establishes itself in the peripheral and semi-peripheral zones of the world system. Crucially, the approach taken by Martins highlights the need for a secular perspective to explain current conjunctures and their powerful consequences. We can thus see how the globalization process takes on a far more concrete meaning when situated within the broader context of the formation of the modern world-system.

Martins further brings a key explanatory device to his understanding of globalization: the role of the techno-scientific revolution in the qualitative changes that produced the different phenomena encapsulated by such a broad concept. His work examines various approaches to globalization, notably the following:

1. –The globalist interpretation that sees globalization as a completely new reality and object of analysis for the social sciences involving new actors (global businesses and the global market) which subjugate national states, and a new technological paradigm that could provide the basis for a deterritorialised world system.
2. –Theories of shared hegemony, which assert that whilst the microelectronic revolution has produced a greater degree of internationalisation it has not stopped national states from playing a core role.
3. –The neo-developmentalist approach that views globalization as an essentially financial phenomenon rooted in the global integration of financial markets which impose themselves on production. The real problem according to this theory is that financial capital will have to free productive capital in order to revive economic development and national states, which are uniquely capable of concentrating the formidable resources required to guide development over the course of the techno-scientific revolution.
4. –World-system theorists that identify a single global system. Some take the view that there is a secular continuity to this single system whilst others emphasise its discontinuities as it evolves over long-term cycles.
5. –Dependency theory that despite its historical relationship with world-systems theory sees globalization as a period of crisis of a capitalist mode of production which has paradoxically incorporated the techno-scientific revolution at the same time as driving the law of value towards the limits of its global development and its supersession.

The detailed description of these currents alone represents a major contribution towards a systematic understanding of an issue hitherto mired in confusion. But the author goes much further and provides a painstaking analysis of the nature of the crisis afflicting the world system and US hegemony – a crisis which is so often called into question but is so evident when studied from a historical perspective.

His conclusions regarding the issue of hegemony and what the 21st Century holds then allows Martins to open up a whole new chapter in the history of social ideas by looking at the connections between dependency theory and world-systems theory. This is an area that I myself have examined in A teoría da dependência: balanço e perspectivas (Dependency Theory: Balance and Perspectives) and in my contribution to the unesco e-book dedicated to Immanuel Wallerstein. However, Martins brings new elements to this theoretical and analytical continuity that can be found in Los retos de la globalizacion: ensayos en homenaje a Theotonio Dos Santos (The Challenges of Globalization: Essays in Honour of Theotonio Dos Santos).

I believe that readers of the present book will agree that this is a vital work that stands to become a classic of Latin American social sciences, especially as the region is now crying out for a solid theoretical basis for its increasingly popular progressive policies.