Route 1 locate Marxist strand inside political economy → politics read through economic structure + class → set against liberal market faith

Route 2 Marxist PE reads comparative development through mode of production, not markets → exploitation as the organising idea

historical materialism → mode of production = economic base shapes political-legal superstructure → state as instrument of bourgeoisie (not neutral) → applied to uneven development across nations → Frank’s dependency (core/metropole drains periphery/satellite → underdevelopment) → Wallerstein’s world-systems (single capitalist world economy → core extracts surplus from periphery)

economic determinism → reduces politics to bourgeoisie–proletariat struggle → ignores culture/ideational factors + understates agency → Kenworthy: ignores political-cultural context + India’s poverty fall through capitalism weakens the thesis

Route 1 strong tool for exposing exploitation + structural inequality → but limited unless balanced with agency + context

Route 2 valuable diagnosis of global inequality → needs agency, culture, and empirical variation to complete it