World Market, Patterns of Accumulation, and State Forms:

This paper provides a synoptic assessment of the political economy of the Left turn in Latin America in the twenty-first century. First, it charts the broad trajectory of Latin America’s political economy in relation to trends in the world market and the international division of labour between 1980 and 2017. Second, it shifts scales of analysis to characterise and periodise the specific patterns of accumulation in three countries of special importance within the wider Left turn: Brazil (2002-2017); Argentina (2003-2017); and Venezuela (1999-2017). Third, it characterises the particular changes in state form that accompanied the Left turn (and its present crisis) in each of these three cases, pointing to the structural limits of these experiments and the contradictions which are therefore coming to the fore as the great recession of 2008 makes its delayed landing on the shores of Latin America and the Right regains lost ground.

Jeffery R. Webber is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. Webber sits on the editorial board of Historical Materialism. His most recent books are The Last Day of Oppression, and the First Day of the Same: The Politics and Economics of the New Latin American Left (Pluto Press, 2017).