Mass financialization and super-exploitation as key dimensions of peripheral urbanization

Keywords: peripheral urbanization, financialization, superexploitation, Latin America
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

With its inclusion in the world market through imperialism, an accumulation structure was created in Latin America based on the super-exploitation of labor, i.e. on the remuneration of labor below the cost of its reproduction (Marini 1973). During Import-Substituting Industrialization, this accumulation model in the periphery led to the emergence of the social class of the “marginalized”, i.e. a segment of the population that was urban, but decoupled from the industrial production system (Lomnitz 1975). One of the central transformations brought about by finance capitalism in the periphery is the inclusion of these formerly “marginalized” into mass consumption. At the same time, the number of those excluded from formal work has steadily grown since the 1980s, and the majority of the population in Latin America is now active in the so-called survival economy. The paper addresses the question of how working classes reproduce themselves under the conditions of super-exploitation in finance capitalism and what implications this has for understanding Latin American societies and the specific characteristics of peripheral urbanization.