emerging from a Latin American haciendafind their way into other parts of
the international economy does not mean that they were produced through
capitalist relations of production. Economic relations may be highly feudal-
istic involving peasant production on tenancies closely controlled by land-
lords, a control that extends far beyond what is bought by the payment of a
wage. Neo-colonialism often sustained the production of goods through
feudalistic tenancies, bonded labour, controls over the movement of the
population, and other non-capitalist controls exercised at the point of pro-
duction. The penetration of foreign capital should not be confused with the
installation of capitalist relations of production or indeed the political forms
of the capitalist state (Brewer, 1980, pp. 160–72).
In addition to having a disarticulated economy and a fragmented bour-
geoisie many Third World societies had the remnants of pre-capitalist polit-
ical authority, particularly in the rural areas. Landed oligarchies dominated
the local peasantries in ways that are inconsistent with capitalist forms of
political authority. Political equality and the political freedoms that are the
necessary corollary of economic freedom are incompatible with the power
of such landed oligarchies. Feudalism was not the ‘myth’ that some
assumed it to be and the remnants of feudalism were among those factors
that made it difficult for democratic government to survive.
Dependency and class
A particular weakness of dependency theory is the over-generalized treat-
ment of social classes. The absence of a sound analysis of the class content
of the metropolitan–satellite ‘chain’ means that the qualities of the different
social relations within it are left unspecified. The analysis of class in
dependency theory is insufficiently dynamic. Dependency theorists did not
examine changes in class relationships within the periphery which could
influence relationships with external interests. Petras claims that ‘shifts in
peripheral economic activity and relations with the metropolis are in many
cases products of rising new class forces taking power’, as when metropol-
itan interests were ‘displaced’ from the agro-mineral sector by national
social forces such as peasant and industrial labour movements or the petty
bourgeoisie (Petras, 1975, p. 305). However, this line of criticism may
understate the importance of the transition from dependence on primary
products to dependence on multinational corporate investment.
Leys claims that Kenya is an example of the emergence of an independent,
indigenous, capital-accumulating bourgeoisie under conditions where,
Neo-colonialism and Dependency 103