Prevailing narratives in international development hold that poorer countries can and will “catch-up” with richer countries through the process of capitalist growth. But catch-up development is an illusion and is impossible for several reasons having to do with the structure of the capitalist world economy. Capitalism in the core states relies on patterns of net appropriation from the periphery in order to stabilize growth and accumulation. This dynamic produces global inequality and precludes the possibility of catch-up development. Furthermore, the levels of resource use and energy use in the core states are not universalizable, and are incompatible with a habitable Earth-system. In reality, achieving convergence in the world economy – and real progress in human development – requires fundamental changes to the balance of power in international trade and finance, with an emphasis on economic sovereignty and socialist policy in the global South. Such transformation will require an anti-colonial movement for the 21st century.

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