ILPC 2026

In this paper we defend that the study of flexibilization of labour in Latin America (LA) is better explained by the Marxist Dependency Theory (MDT) than by concepts created in other realities, such as the precarization of labour (PL). MDT studies the singularities of capitalism in LA. Based on the comprehension that development only exists because of underdevelopment, MDT explains why dependent countries will never reach developed levels within capitalism. This approach is considered one of the most creative appropriations of the Marxism and its method to a singular historical analysis, withstanding the test of time due to its capacity to provide key concepts to understand contemporary issues (Misoczky, 2011). To reinforce our position, we analyze data concerning outsourcing in Brazil, contrasting PL and MDT. We argue that, in dependent countries, the PL theory lacks historical adherence, since it was originated as contradictory trends against the social state in “advanced” economies, implementing flexibility and “the rule of the markets over the welfare state” (Appay, 2010, p. 25). For Pereira (2012), to talk about social state in LA is an anachronism, since all attempts to produce social development in the region were always subordinated to the international capital, generating more profits to the financial capital than benefits for the workers. When military dictatorships came to an end in LA region, mainly during the 1980s, the re-democratization processes occurred in the dawn of the neoliberal stage of capitalism, a capitalist class project aimed to maintain historical privileges (Puello-Socarrás, 2015), preventing the universalization of social rights in the new civilian constitutions. In this sense, generalization of outsourcing, as recently approved by law in Brazil, is not a form of PL, but a deepening of dependency in response to the renewed capitalism crisis context, marked by the fall of commodities prices. Marini (2000) argues that dependency was historically produced by an uneven trade system based on the international division of labour, in which dependent countries export products of extractive activities while import industrial and technological goods, creating a structural unbalance. That results in a mechanism called overexploitation of labour, through which LA capitalists compensate their losses over exploring workers, generating an extraordinary surplus value at the expanse of workers health. It operates through three mechanisms: constant payment of the worker below workforce value; and increasing of work journey or labour intensity without increasing salary. Data about outsourcing in Brazil indicates that outsourced workers are less payed, work longer, have more turnover, suffer from more occupational diseases and the do the worse and heavier activities (Dieese, 2017). Even if it is tempting to analyze this process as PL, the fact is that overexploited workers never get enough payment or rest in any condition. Also, the social protection system that once supported them was only a limited form of counterbalance to the capitalist compensation, not a social advance of labour over capital. We conclude that outsourcing of labour in LA is a renewal of the overexploitation of labour in the neoliberal stage of dependent capitalism.