Crisis and Contradiction

Susan J. Spronk, Ph.D. (2007), York University, is Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is a researcher with the Municipal Services Project, a project that focuses on alternatives to privatization.Jeffery R. Webber, Ph.D. (2009), University of Toronto, is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. He is author of Red October (Brill, 2011) and From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia (Haymarket, 2011).

• List of Figures and TablesAcknowledgementsNote on Contributors1. Introduction – Systemic Logics and Historical Specificity: Renewing Historical Materialism in Latin American Political EconomySusan Spronk and Jeffery R. WebberPART I: THE ‘NEW’ WORKING CLASS: DECOMPOSITION AND RE-COMPOSITION UNDER NEOLIBERALISM 2. Roots of Resistance to Urban Water Privatisation in Bolivia: The ‘New Working Class’, the Crisis of Neoliberalism, and Public Services, Susan Spronk3. The Neo-Developmentalist Alternative: Capitalist Crisis, Popular Movements, and Economic Development in Argentina since the 1990s, Mariano Féliz4. The Reproduction of Democratic Neoliberalism in Argentina: Kirchner’s ‘Solution’ to the Crisis of 2001, Emilia Castorina5. Doubly Marginalised? Women Workers in Northeast Brazilian Export Horticulture, Ben Selwyn6. Emergent Socialist Hegemony in Bolivarian Venezuela: The Role of the Party, Gabriel Hetland7. Venezuela’s Social Transformation and Growing Class Struggle, Dario Azzellini8. Socialist Management and Natural Resource Based Industrial Production: A Critique of Cogestión in Venezuela, Thomas F. PurcellPART II: STATE AND MARKET IN LATE CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT9. Conspicuous silences: State and Class in Structuralist and Neo-structuralist Thought, Juan Grigera10. Sugarcane Ethanol: the Hen of the Golden Eggs? Agribusiness and the State in Lula’s Brazil, Leandro Vergara-Camus11. From Global Capital Accumulation to Varieties of Centre-Leftism in South America: The Cases of Brazil and Argentina, Nicolas Grinberg and Guido Starosta12. The Three Dimensions of the Crisis, Claudio Katz13. Revolution against ‘Progress’: Neo-Extractivism, the Compensatory State, and the TIPNIS Conflict in Bolivia, Jeffery R. WebberReferencesIndex

This book will define new debates on Latin American political economy. It superbly delivers fine-grained empirical commentary on the composition of working class politics across the region (in Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil), as well as theoretical exposure of the specificities of states and markets within the uneven and combined development of capitalism shaping Latin America. With leading political economists at the helm, this whopper of a book truly brings fresh radical perspectives to bear on the struggles against capitalist power within Latin America. Ignore it at your peril.− Adam David Morton, University of Sydney and author of Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development Crisis and Contradiction: Marxist Perspectives on Latin America in the Global Economy is the indispensable source for students, academics and activists interested in the transition to neoliberalism in Latin America. If Latin America is the region in which, perhaps more than any other, the left needs urgently to take an interest, the contributors to this volume have taken up the challenge. They offer a vast, detailed and richly informative survey of recent political and economic developments in Bolivia, Venezuala, Argentina, and elsewhere, and have produced a volume which will serve both as a testament to the vitality of the left in Latin America, and a proof of the excellence of Marxist scholarship on the region. Susan Spronk's and Jeffery R. Webber's book is the finest example of its kind to date. − Alfredo Saad-Filho, SOAS, University of London and author of The Value of Marx