Two Sides of the Same Coin A Synthesis of Economic and Ecological Unequal Exchange

Capitalism perpetuates injustices by appropriating vast amounts of human effort and natural wealth across regions and populations, all under the guise of economic cooperation and mutual benefit. Marxist and ecological approaches to unequal exchange (UE) both seek to expose these transfers. Yet without theoretical integration, they fail to support crucial alliances between social and environmental justice movements. This paper therefore approaches UE as the convergence of labour, material, monetary, and currency imbalances. While individual imbalances may indicate asymmetry, their combined effect reveals deeper, systemic injustices. In 2022, after excluding productivity gaps, UE (expressed in monetary terms) amounted to a gain of US$ 3.1 trillion for the economies of the centre (equivalent to 27% of their combined Domestic Value Added, DVA) and a loss of US$ 1.7 trillion for the periphery (108%). When productivity gaps are included, the centre's gain rises to US$ 8.8 trillion (76%), while the periphery loses US$ 6.9 trillion–equivalent to a staggering 440% of DVA. These imbalances reflect not a deviation from some “true” or “fair” monetary value of nature or labour, but rather expose a system sustained by extraction and exploitation. Balance cannot be restored within such a system; it must be transformed.