Labor, development and nationalism: Current challenges from the structural periphery of the system

Abstract

A century and a half after the first international experiences between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ nations, as they have been called in accordance with the level of capital accumulation observed in each category, we may conclude that the cult of progress and “useful” science will never be able to obtain truly universal results nor reverse a scenario that is much worse for some than for others. Quite to the contrary, inequalities initially taken as “accidental detours” or passing phenonena that can be overcome by the ‘merchants of equality’ are in fact social contradictions that are an inherently structural element of the hierarchical functioning of the system. Keywords: labor, nationalism, development, structural crisis, socialist transition.