Abstract: Since the era of the Second International, Marxist economics has been developing the theory of international unequal exchange. In the 1960s, Emmanuel published Unequal Exchange, in which he proposed a novel theory based on the theory of price of production. Premised on the international immobility of labor, his work explored the formation mechanism of international production prices and the resulting international transfer of value. Emmanuel’s theory has sparked extensive debates and given rise to some new research. So far, the study of unequal exchange based on production prices has become the mainstream in the literature. Despite their respective contributions, these theories have the following weaknesses. First, they tend to equate unequal exchange with value transfer, while neglecting the exploration of the differences between them. Second, they interpret unequal exchange merely on the basis of production price, without deeply exploring the intrinsic connection between unequal exchange and monopoly which is a structural feature of modern capitalist economies. Further development of the theory of unequal exchange requires reflection on what unequal exchange is, and a clear definition of the criteria for identifying unequal exchange.

Key words: unequal exchange, Emmanuel, price of production, value transfer, monopoly