Global Development Crisis

Despite unprecedented global wealth, poverty remains widespread. Mainstream liberal thought treats poverty as exclusion from capitalism, so it prescribes bringing poorer people and countries into the market system's opportunities.

Selwyn tests this view against the ideas of seven major political economists: Friedrich List, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Schumpeter, Alexander Gerschenkron, Karl Polanyi and Amartya Sen. He contends that class relations are the root cause of poverty and inequality, both inside nations and between them.

Rather than presenting the poor as dependent on charity, the book proposes labour-centred development. In this model, the global working classes organise and struggle on their own behalf, forming the basis for a bottom-up alternative to elite-directed development.