This slideshow accompanies two papers on the topic, which I variously entitled ‘explaining international inequality’ and ‘the modernity of backwardness’ (the first of these titles emphasised the importance of value theory and the second focussed on the empirical facts of international inequality. The papers were given at the 2007 ICAPE conference and the 2007 International Socialist Journal conference. The second of these was also presented to the 2007 Historical Materialism conference.