Underdevelopment and the law of value: a critique of Kay

The article provides a brief but useful summary of Kay's book, fully acknowledging the importance of its contribution to the current debate. Bernstein does not agree, though, with Kay's emphasis on the category of merchant capital as central to the development of underdevelopment, as he does not think that it explains the changes in the conditions and relations of production in the Third World. He also criticises Kay for omitting any discussion of the internationalisation of capital in the present period of large‐scale industrialisation in the Third World, and of the politics of oppression. The level of abstraction on which Kay's analysis operates is seen as both its strength and its weakness.