Latin America: Class Struggle and Resistance in the Age of Extractive Capitalism

08-26-2013 • http://www.globalresearch.ca, Prof. James Petras

Especially in the era of imperialist globalization, the class struggle takes on an international character, as multi-national corporations, international financial organizations and imperial states directly intervene, or act through proxy collaborator states, in ‘the class struggle between labor and capital’. This is especially evident in Latin America with the ascendancy of extractive capital: giant agro-mineral corporations play a major role in shaping state economic policies, to the detriment of labor, communities and indigenous peoples.

Classes in struggle vary over time and place, depending on their social-economic and political conditions, organization, past trajectory, the distribution of income and the locus of economic exploitation and dispossession.