1 Prof. Andreas Bieler School of Politics and IR University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk Dr. Adam David Morton School of Politics and IR University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD Adam.Morton@nottingham.ac.uk Uneven and combined development and unequal exchange: the second wind of neoliberal ‘free trade’?  Abstract With capitalist social relations emerging in a prior system of absolutist states in Europe, the outward expansion of capitalism through conditions of uneven and combined development became dependent on the existence of multiple political entities. States in turn are brought into relations of unequal exchange within the global economy. This paper analyses the way in which current neoliberal „free trade‟ policies are related to these fundamental capitalist dynamics, which further deepen processes of uneven and combined development as well as unequal exchange. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leon Trotsky observed the particular way Russia was integrated into the world economy. Responding to military pressures by Western countries, Russia, still based on feudal social relations within an overall context of uneven development, had embarked on a policy of industrialisation with a focus on production related to military needs. Financed mainly by foreign capital, small, highly concentrated pockets of advanced industry were combined with traditional social forms of organisation in feudal Russia. These were the conditions of „uneven and combined development‟. Trotsky‟s participant-observation analysis of Russia in the late-nineteenth and early- twentieth century, focused predominantly on the role of foreign lending and investment in the industrialisation of backward conditions. Since then, however, capitalist expansion through relations of uneven and combined development has  Paper presented at the workshop on „Trade Unions, Free Trade and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity‟ at the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ), University of Nottingham (2-3 December 2011) and at the Integrating Global Society (IGS) workshop „Globalisations: The Return of History or the End of the Future?‟, University of Nottingham (27 January 2012).