Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics

Is it true that Global Value Chains (GVCs) ’boost incomes, create better jobs, and reduce poverty’, as commonly claimed? In this compelling book, Selwyn and Bernhold show how the mainstream notion of GVCs obscures their capitalist character. To transcend this shortcoming, the authors introduce the concept of Capitalist Value Chains (CVCs). They explore how and why CVCs generate many highly exploitative jobs, new forms of poverty, are stunting real human development, and are destroying the world’s environment.

CVCs are a historically-specific configuration of capitalist class relations that have been restructured and bolstered through geopolitics. The authors argue that rather than waiting for the elusive benefits of ’economic, social, and environmental upgrading’ as promoted in mainstream GVC scholarship, workers’ collective actions can improve their pay and conditions-under historically and geographically specific conditions of uneven development. The authors clearly explain how, instead of striving to make CVCs more ’resilient’, progressive political economists need to envision a world beyond these capitalist relations of generalized exploitation and appropriation.

Benjamin Selwyn, Professor of International Relations and International Development, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Christin Bernhold, Professor of Economic and Political Geography, with a focus on Bioeconomy and Sustainability, University of Hamburg, Dara Leyden, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Queen Mary University of London

Benjamin Selwyn is Professor of International Relations and International Development, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex. He researches, writes, and teaches about international political economy and development from the vantage point of capitalist value chains, food and agriculture, and labour.

Christin Bernhold is a Junior Professor of Economic and Political Geography, with a focus on Bioeconomy and Sustainability, at the University of Hamburg. She leads the research group ’Meat The Bioeconomy’ which examines corporate strategies in the German meat industry. Her broader research interests include capitalist value chains and international class relations.

Dara Leyden is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary University of London, where he researches labour in the global photovoltaic industry. His PhD analyses industrial upgrading and labour regimes in electronics capitalist value chains. His research interests lie at the intersection of globalization, technology, and labour regimes.