Challenging mainstream nation-centred theories of economic development, Nicols Grinberg examines the capitalist development in Brazil and South Korea.

Starting from their modes of participation in the international division of labour and its production of surplus value on a global scale, he does not consider these as resulting simply from the economic policies of nation states and their associated political institutions; nor from local class-struggle dynamics or geopolitical developments. Rather, drawing on key insights from Marx's critique of political economy, he begins by recognising that capitalist development is global in terms of its economic dynamics and historical trends, and national only in its political and institutional forms of realisation. State-mediated patterns of economic development and institutional change in Brazil and Korea, as well as the intra- and inter-state political processes through which these have come about, are then considered mediations in the conformation and reproduction of the nationally differentiated, uneven process of capital's valorisation on a global scale.