Is ‘economic co-operation’ between rich and poor countries truly mutually beneficial, or does it mainly widen the inequalities? How does the expansion of global trade and commerce fuel violence, pillage, and deeper exploitation in less wealthy countries?​

Contemporary corporations and their owners - equipped with wealth, influence, and empowered by dominant states and global institutions - embody old-style colonial ruthlessness in new forms. Violence riddles global production, through routinised sweatshop labour, environmental degradation, resource grabs, lost livelihoods - behind a veil of 'development' and 'civilised' progress. ​

Strip away overt violence, and contemporary trade is still plunder, just neatly commodified and concealed – a phenomenon we call ‘unequal exchange’. Lengthy and complex supply chains obscure the conditions in which products are made. Few of us would steal food from a starving three-year-old or abduct a mother to exploit her, and yet our everyday participation in the economy has the same effect. ​

This books explains unequal exchange through basic Marxist concepts and concrete attempts to measure the phenomenon. It seeks to be a resource for scholars and activists - accessible while preserving depth, serious but not opaque. It has a simple message: This system does not end well unless we end it.​

Contents: 1. General Introduction; 2. Value; 3. Surplus Value; 4. Price and Profit; 5. Uneven Development; 6. Unequal Exchange; 7. Ecologically Unequal Exchange; 8. General Conclusions.​

MEET THE AUTHOR: https://youtu.be/1AMMyYiyXcE?si=O-mHtHuQXCNpD-eR

About the Author Dr Crelis Rammelt is an associate professor in environmental geography and development studies at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. His research and teaching focus on forging links across disciplinary divides – mostly in the areas of political ecology, post-development, and systems science. He has also been involved in establishing the Dutch degrowth platform Ontgroei and in leading an action research and social justice programme in Bangladesh.​

We are able to offer this title with free access. To see the PDF please visit https://crelis.nl/commodifying-plunder/