Trade in Structuralist Perspective

Students already discussed about three main perpectives in international trade. In your opinion, which perspective is the best to explain the international trade nowadays? Determine your position between Mercantilist, Liberalist, or Structuralist and give a strong proposition of it towards international trade pattern.

In my opinion, the best perspective to explain the international trade nowadays is Structuralist perspective. I chose it because of the present world economic system. Other people might say that the world economic system belongs to liberalist perpective because we all are liberalists. I don’t agree with that statement. I have some compatible reasons for the chosen perspective.

Structuralism was proposed by Karl Marx (18^th century) and Lenin (19^th century), it develops the idea from the below (proletariat). Here’s the graphic of structuralist perspective about world economic.

Marxist stop at capitalism and the Leninist stop at imperialism. But, the point is that the structuralists are conflicting social classes, the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat. Class also means the ownership of capital. For structuralist, state is very weak. It’s only used as a tool by capitalist. There’s a system called dialectics. Dialectics always create new arguments by missing links.

Why is it not Mercantilist perspective? First, mercantilist says that state is the only main actor. If it’s true, then state would be able to control everything related to its national economy. But the fact is the state is not that powerful. There are private companies which control a national economic system, even world economic system. Then why is it not Liberalist perspective? I know that there’s a cooperation between countries, they build international trade and free trade. But do you realize if it’s similar to capitalist perspective?

I’m not saying that liberalist perspective same as capitalist’s. Formerly, liberalism and capitalism was far from similar, they’re totally different. Liberalist concerned about cooperations, mutual benefits and liberty, besides capitalist concerned about modals and their own (bourgeoisie) benefits. But currently, they look similar because there’s an ideological manipulation. Capitalism legitimacy as false consciousness in liberalism is considered as ideological manipulation. It seems capitalists rule the world. But for structuralist, it’s not only capitalism which influents the world economic, colonialism is also take a role in it, for examples of MNCs and TNCs. Without any direct purpose, the colonialist practice colonialism which always exploits. It’s very smooth until we don’t realize it exploits.

There are 2 theories relate to current world economic. First is Dependency Theory which was  proposed by Johan Galtung. It is divided into 2 categories, core (developed countries) and periphery (developing countries). Based on http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Dependency_theory.html,  the core will always exploit the periphery. The forms of exploitation are cheap labor and resources and the core return it by giving technologies to the periphery. That’s why the periphery will always depend on the core. Next theory comes from Immanuel Wallerstein called Modern World System Theory. Based on The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1976, pp. 229-233., this theory is divided into 3 categories, core, semi-periphery and periphery. The core will always exploit the semi-periphery and periphery while semi-periphery and periphery depend on the core. The periphery also depends on semi-periphery. He doesn’t have a clear explanation about each category, which country categorized as the core, semi-periphery and periphery is because each country has different level of development.

The conclusion of these explanations is that capitalism and colonialism are dominate the current world economic and there’s no solution of it as the structuralist predicted. The developed countries exploit the developing countries and the developing countries depend on developed countries. It makes the developed countries getting richer while the developing countries are just staying in the same place. Of course it also makes a different social class between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Free trade is the form of hidden capitalism in the name of liberalism.

Athilla Meidictine Johanita

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