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of these trends take as their point of departure the dependency problematique, and the article concludes that the questions raised by the dependency
school were and still are relevant, although the answers and remedies
Introduction
The process of societal change has always attracted 'social scientists' of various
persuasions, even before the social sciences, as we know them, were born. Modern
social science in fact emerged as European society transformed from 'tradition' to
'modernity' and this gave a distinct mark to classical social science. In the 20th
century, as the industrial system became consolidated, the evolutionist perspective
took over from functionalism and equilibrium theories, and the tradition of Grand
discussed and, in particular, we shall see how they relate to the dependence
problematique, a major concern for development theorists in the 1970's. The
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were seen as potential allies by the two super powers who held up their own
experiences as the paradigm of development. There was, however, very little
concrete knowledge about the problem of 'backwardness'.
The dominant paradigm in development economics is summarized by Nugent
and Yotopoulos as follows:
The ruling paradigm of the economics of development rests on the classical-neoclassical
view of a world in which change is gradual, marginalist, non-disruptive, equilibrating,
and largely painless. Incentives are the bedrock of economic growth. Once initiated,
growth becomes automatic and all-pervasive, spreading among nations and trickling
down among classes so that everybody benefits from the process. (Nugent-Yotopoulos
1979:542)
The neo-classical growth paradigm was thus an optimistic one in comparison with
not only the classical economists but also with Schumpeter and Keynes who in
different ways worried about and came up with all kinds of gravediggers of progress
(Singer 1978:2). Although neo-classicism provided the dominant outlook, all these
traditions merged into development economics in a not always consistent manner.
Since the problems of underdevelopment are radically different from those of
depression, Keynes did not directly contribute to the theory of economic development. Those long-term aspects, which Keynes intentionally disregarded, were
instead developed by other economists. In the famous Harrod-Domar model, for
example, each increase in output provides the basis for further growth because
part of the increased output is reinvested. At higher income levels the marginal
propensity to save increases, and therefore economic growth, once the process has
started, will be self-sustaining. Thus the problem of development was how to break
loose from the fetters that prevented the underdeveloped countries from marching
along the growth path, mathematically symbolized in the Harrod-Domar model.
Before Rostow's famous aeronautic metaphor of 'take-off into 'self-sustained
growth' carried the day, there were several models illuminating various 'traps' and
'vicious circles' which these countries were struggling with. Population growth was,
Paul Rosenstein-Rodan (1943 and 1961) and Ragnar Nurkse (1953) made the
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labour' (Lewis 1954). Lewis combined ideas derived from classical economics,
where the number of unemployed was high and the absorption capacity of agriculture nil. The way out of this impasse was industrialization, financed by foreign
capital (Industrialization by Invitation, as Lewis's critics later termed it). The
process of industrialization would continue with a fixed level of labour cost, so
long as there existed labour with zero marginal productivity in the traditional
sector.
It may appear as if the idea of dualism implied that the unilinear, evolutio
framework, had been abandoned, but this is really not the case. Rather t
sectors, the traditional and the modern, were conceived of as two sta
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in Western social thought: evolutionism. This implies among other things that
modernization is a basically endogenous process, the realization of a potential that
lay dormant in all societies. Often there is a need for external factors such as war,
colonialism or environmental change in order to initiate the process, but the process
process, and (3) a certain set of development policies (Smith, op. cit., p. 61).
Possibly it was the mixture of these three meanings that made modernization theory
From the point of view of intellectual history, modernization theory grew out
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modern idea of progress which was a novel emergent in the Western mind (Bury
1955 [1932]). Growth in Greek and Roman civilization was a cyclical process,
whereas medieval authorities conceived growth in terms of degeneration, decay,
and with a sense of doom; The moder idea of progress, in contrast, implied that
'civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction' (Bury
1955:2). The most explicit expression of this idea may be found in the works of
Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Comte, Spencer and Marx. Certainly different dimensions
of 'progress' were emphasized by different social thinkers. To Condorcet and
Comte the knowledge of Man was in focus, whereas Marx, in contrast, stressed
the progressive movement of the productive forces and stated that new 'higher'
relations of production (i.e. socialism) could not appear 'before the material
conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society'. The
notion of 'underdevelopment' did not therefore exist in the classic Marxist system,
where the more developed country showed to the less developed the image of its
own future. If backward countries suffered from anything it was incompleteness of
capitalist development.
The intellectual climate after World War II was confident and optimistic and
therefore theories of social change with their roots in the Victorian age appeared.
Modernization Theory can thus in a way be seen as a revival of Western Development Thinking as described above, only more optimistic. After all, the classical
preoccupation with the transition was fraught with misgivings about future progress.
In the 1930's and 1940's social scientists were predominantly pessimistic and the
idea of growth was tainted with ancient and medieval interpretation of growth as
cyclical change and decay. It is significant that theories of decay and decline were
again revived in the late 70's and early 80's.
Mainstream development thinking can be analysed along a continuum running
between two ideological antipoles, socialism versus capitalism.
Much of the political debate in the West has been concerned with State versus
Market, and the relative merits of these antagonistic institutions, in the context of
economic development. Along the horizontal dimension it is possible to identify
Mainstream
/'\
Counterpoint
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strategies are varieties of the basic paradigm, expressing different historical possibilities and constraints. They differ mainly with regard to means (i.e. the relative
role of state and market) but as far as the ends (the Western conception of
modernity) are concerned, they are all basically similar. The differences as regards
means can largely be explained by the specific circumstances in which the strategies
emerged.
The liberal model is a model sui generis and constitutes, in generalized form, the
English development experience in the era of industrial revolution. The repetition
of this development path became increasingly difficult with the emergence of a
capitalist world economy and the structured division of labour between the participating countries. To become like England was still the goal, but the means had
to be reconsidered in the light of England's superiority as the 'workshop of the
world'.
The state capitalist strategy thus belongs to an early phase of industrial development in continental Europe. It was typically an attempt at enforced development
in primarily agrarian economies, the prime example being the policies of count
Witte in Tsarist Russia. Witte was influenced by the German economist Friedrich
List, who saw industrialization as necessary for nationalist and security reasons
(the 'modernization imperative').
Keynesianism, in contrast, is a manifestation of mature capitalism. Its departure
from the basic liberal model consisted in granting to the state a responsibility for
the stability and continuous growth of capitalist systems. Since the 1930's Keynesianism has been the dominant development ideology in the industrialized capitalist
world, particularly in countries with strong social-democratic parties, eager to
replace their original socialist doctrine with the supposedly more 'scientific'
Keynesianism.
The Soviet model was to a large extent a continuation of the state capitalist policy
of pre-revolutionary Russia, although the ideological inspiration and the political
context differed. Granted that Stalinism, upon which moder Soviet state and
society were built, can be seen as a variety of Marxism, fundamentally corresponding
to the Western tradition of materialism and growthmanship, there should be no
controversy about looking at both the liberal and the Soviet development strategies
as expressions of the Western paradigm of development.
What is striking when one compares the Western development strategies is the
important role given to the state in all cases, except for the pure liberal strategies.
The state-capitalist strategy made the state responsible for capital formation and
Keynesian strategy the controlling agency in the process of economic growth has
been the state rather than the market. In the Soviet model the state completely
replaced the market mechanism and later experiences with profits and prices have
not substantially altered this picture. The more state-oriented strategies turned out
to be more attractive for the 'modern elite' in the Third World, since the elite,
with very few exceptions, has fostered an anti-commercial bias. In practice the
three strategies merged into the development ideology of the ruling class in most
underdeveloped countries. Whether the revival of the long forgotten ideal model
of liberal capitalist development will have the same impact on the Third World
remains to be seen.
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countries which provided the rationale for the import substitution strategy
recommended by CEPAL in the 1950's. The emergence of the 'new dependence'
in the mid 1960's must be understood against the background of this strategy having
internal.
importance.
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- Due to the fact that the periphery was deprived of its surplus, development in
the centre somehow implied underdevelopment in the periphery. Thus development and underdevelopment could be described as two aspects of a single
global process. All regions participating in the process were capitalist, but a
distinction between central and peripheral capitalism was made.
- Since the periphery was doomed to underdevelopment because of its linkage to
the centre it was considered necessary for a peripheral country to disassociate
itself from the world market and strive for self-reliance.
development and as far as development is concerned one gets the impression that
the approach was fairly conventional.
The Latin Americans are thus the ones to be praised or blamed for having given
us - the rest of the world - the dependency approach. But how uniquely Latin
American was this phenomenon? Were not the other Third World countries also
dependent, and did not this dependence affect their intellectual production? In
fact there was a strikingly similar discussion in India as far back as the end of the
19th century. I'm referring to the famous 'drain theory' of Dadabhai Naoroji (1969
[1901]). The thrust of his argument was that Britain secured a yearly 'tribute' of
enormous proportions from India. This unjust transfer of capital robbed India of
her development potential in terms of infrastructure, education, etc. In fact Indian
economists have stressed the similarity between the 'drain theory' of Naoroji and
the Prebisch thesis (Minocha 1970:37). But parallels do not end here.
The dependency perspective can, as we have seen, be derived from Baran. Since
his major example was India, one is tempted to think that the 'drain theory' could
have been a source of inspiration. Baran did not refer directly to Naoroji, but
quoted contemporaries such as R. Palme Dutt and William Digby who had expressed
a very similar position, obviously under his influence. Thus, to formulate a daring
hypothesis, the Indian debate on dependency could have had an impact on the
Latin American debate through Paul Baran!
At present, however, the dependency approach is less popular in India, which
probably has something to do with the fact that many Indian intellectuals now feel
that India's economic problems constitute much more the external exploitation.
This is in contrast to other parts of the Third World, e.g. Africa and the Caribbean.
It has been asserted that the dependency concept in the latter area was an autonomous theoretical development (Girvan 1973). This, however, has been questioned
by others who stress the Latin American impact (Cumper 1974). It is not possible
to prove any of these positions, since both external influences and internal factors,
by themselves sufficient for a theory of dependency to develop, did play a part.
Among the latter one could mention: (1) a history of extreme dependence resulting
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New World Group in 1962 in Georgetown, Guyana and to its journal the New
World Quarterly (NWQ) which later moved to Kingston, Jamaica. Among radical
economists associated with NWQ were Lloyd Best, George Beckford, Havelock
Brewster, Alister McIntyre, Clive Thomas, and of course the two editors: Norman
Girvan and Owen Jefferson. Certainly their writings on dependency and underdevelopment are in terms of theoretical strength quite comparable to what the
Latin Americans produced. In one respect they differ though. The non-European
cultural elements seem to be stronger and so also the emphasis on indigenous forms
of development (Nettleford 1978). Beckford considers phenomenon such as Ras-
interest to the current crisis in the world economy, which in his view is different
from the past crises of post-World War II. A new situation calls for new theoretical
approaches and the abandonment of old.
The preceding discussion dealt with theoretical attempts at coming to grips with
remedy would therefore be to transcend this dichotomy and find the synthesis. In
the real world no countries are self-reliant, nor do they develop merely as a
reflection of what goes on beyond the national borders. All countries are dependent
on each other and on the system of which they form part, but there are of course
different forms of dependence, both in kind and in degree.
This is often described in terms of 'interdependence', a concept that lends itself
to different interpretations. To some it is a refined form of dependency theory,
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the rivalry within the 'centre' (Western Europe being more dependent than the
U.S., Eastern Europe more than the Soviet Union), the industrialization of the
centre (as exemplified by the NICs and Great Britain), and the emergence of new
regional powers (Brazil, Mexico, India, Nigeria). To others the idea of interdependence suggests a common predicament for the peoples of the world ('We are
all in the same boat'). The latter interpretation of interdependence thus fulfils an
ideological purpose, commonly disregarding the fact that the passengers in the boat
(if we may continue the marine metaphor) do not travel in the same class, nor do
they have equal access to the insufficient lifeboats. For this reason the concept of
'interdependence' must be regarded as an.ambiguous innovation. It may nevertheless serve the purpose of underlining the fact that most theoretical departures
beyond dependency tend to assume the existence of one strongly integrated world.
During the 1970's several manifestations of a new global consciousness could be
noted. Theories of the 'world system' were developed, 'global modelling' became
popular, 'world order models' were again considered a legitime academic concern.
On a more diplomatic level, a New International Economic Order and later the
Brandt report were intensely discussed. Obviously the problem of development
now has to be seen in a world context.
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experiences have been similar. For some reason this has not reduced the popularity
of monetarism as much as one would have expected. Perhaps monetarism serves
strong ideological interests?
As an example of what has been called neo-classical Marxism one first of all
thinks of Bill Warren's brave effort to revive the original Marxian idea of imperialism
as the pioneer of capitalism (Warren 1980). This perspective not only contradicts
the whole dependency and underdevelopment tradition, but also much of what
Lenin wrote about imperialism. Warren in straight Marxian terms restated the
conventional wisdom of the 1950's and 60's, namely that the industrialization of
the West initiated and accelerated modem development in the rest of the world.
Thus the least industrialized countries of today can see in the so-called newly
industrialized countries an image of their own future.
This argument was supported by statistical data on industrialization in Third
World countries, which completely destroyed the stagnationist thesis of some
dependency writers. Whether these data also support what has been known as 'the
Warren thesis' is open to debate. Dudley Seers has pointed out that a number of
assumptions are common to both the neo-classical school and 'the Warren thesis',
for example the treatment of economic growth as development, the emphasis on
capital accumulation, and the lack of interest in social, political and cultural - not
to speak of ecological - factors. It is interesting that both schools also enthusiastically
look for empirical support in countries which during the 1970's defied the
recommendations of the dependency school and opted for export-industrialization
and enforced modernization.
This urge for modernization along rather conventional lines (a revival of the
modernization paradigm) is most intensely felt in the capitalist miracles of East
and South East Asia. First of all Japan, secondly the 'four little dragons': South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, thirdly the more doubtful cases of
Malaysia, the Phillippines and Indonesia. They are doubtful because the contradictions of the capitalist path are more obvious and the bright future of that path
less certain.
It is true that the development policy of these countries seems quite unconcerned
about the problem of blocked development supposedly associated with a dependent
position. As is well known, they have been referred to as cases contradicting the
basic thesis proposed by the dependency school. A closer look at them, however,
suggests that their experiences are not easily generalizable, and that, furthermore,
they differ quite substantially among themselves. Hong Kong and Singapore are
city-states, and therefore completely atypical. Hong Kong derives is prosperity
from being the key to the Chinese market, but the uncertainty of its political status
after 1997 is already affecting the confidence of the business community. Regardless
of the outcome of the British-Chinese negotiations, Hong Kong illustrates the
development. Much the same can be said about Singapore, although the political
situation of this city-state is more secure. In spite of this, the military component
in the Singapore miracle is becoming more and more conspicuous, and the future
progress of this city-state is becoming dependent on arms exports. Again not a
solution open to every country.
South Korea and Taiwan must be taken more seriously as possible models of
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development, although the non-repeatable features come out quite clearly on closer
scrutiny. For example, both countries have been favoured by strategic considerations as 'free world' bastions in a highly sensitive area. Furthermore, their closeness
to Japan has made them participants in the Japanese growth process, although it
would be an exaggeration to say that South Korean development merely reflects
the Japanese miracle. However, the South Korean control of the situation is of
course not unrelated to its political system - a repressive military regime whose
popularity among the proponents of free market forces is hard to understand.
When one turns to the 'emulators', as distinct from the 'prototypes', the question
marks multiply. Countries like Malaysia, the Phillippines and Indonesia are very
far from repeating the NIC-model, which basically reflects a structural change in
the world-economy - a re-location or out-location of industrial production. The
success stories are to a large extent only an indication of the fact that some countries
have been the chosen ones because of their geographical location, hospitality and
stability. This underlines the fact that the NIC-phenomenon must be analysed in
the context of the changing world-economy. Was this not the problematique that
the dependency school brought to the fore?
between industrial capital and merchant capital. Merchant capital was provided a
sanctuary in the periphery and at the same time was subordinated to industrial
capital in the centre. According to Kay this was the reason for the persistence of
underdevelopment. Thus the distinction between the two forms of capital roughly
corresponds to the polarization between development and underdevelopment in
dependency theory. Other Marxists use the recently discovered Marxian distinction
between real versus formal subsumption of labour to capital, a terminology that
also contains the old dependency problem, but in more Marxian dress.
A different example of the process of cooptation is represented by current
developments in the structural tradition originally initiated by Myrdal, Seers, Singer
to a transnational structure with the transnational corporations as the most significant actors. Turning to the other side of this dual global structure, the national
societies, as a consequence of the transnationalization process, undergo a process
of disintegration, implying a disruption of indigenous economic societies and a
concentration of property and income.
New directions in Marxism
Both the previous categories contain Marxist contributions of some sort, but to the
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third category we refer to genuinely new Marxist theorizing, for example the mode
of production analysis. The relevance of this approach for the problem of underdevelopment was indicated as early as in Laclau's 1971 criticism of dependency
theory for being 'circulationist'. The mode of production analysis, by contrast,
takes the point of departure in production. By identifying various modes of production at the abstract level it claims to give a theoretical explanation of the
coexistence of different modes, such as capitalism and feudalism, and how they
together form a specific economic system. It is obvious, however, that the assumption of blocked development is retained in this approach, since imperialism rather
than pioneering capitalism could preserve archaic modes of production.
If the mode of production analysis starts from the national economy and puts
emphasis on internal factors, another major Marxist alternative has a more global
scope. This approach could be called the internationalization of capital. The task
of political economy today should be to explain the emergence of the total international capitalist economy, rather than the backwardness of one particular part of
the world. This approach differs from mode of production analysis in stating that
the dynamics of the world capitalist economy cannot be understood with reference
to a single nation.
Somewhere between these two Marxist approaches we could perhaps place the
one that takes the state as its principal focus as mediator between local level and
global forces. Since the state has been a rather neglected phenomenon in earlier
Marxist theorizing, we may regard also this as a new departure. Of course the
importance of the state was also stressed by some dependentistas, but the Marxist
approach would put the study of the state more firmly in the context of class
analysis. The role of the state in developing countries is ambiguous since it cooperates with transnational corporations while at the same time tries to maintain a
certain autonomy. In analysing this contradictory process, dependency theory and
Marxist theory certainly have a meeting-ground where old frontiers may be
transcended.
India (mainly in Economic and Political Weekly) and in Kenya (mainly in the
The fourth category contains approaches that have a strong continuity back to the
dependency school and could be seen as elaborations. Both Frank and Amin for
example have moved from the analysis of dependency to the analysis of global
accumulation or world-accumulation. The most well-known example of this type
of world system analysis today, however, is that of Immanuel Wallerstein. This
approach maintains some of the dependency thesis, for example that the world is
capitalist and that part of it has been so since the sixteenth century. From this time
onwards there emerged a world-system incorporating a growing number of previously more or less isolated and self-sufficient societies into a complex system of
functional relations (Wallerstein 1974, 1980). The result of this expansion was that
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First it should be noted that the various ideas contained in the concept of Another
Development (e.g. Basic Needs, Self-Reliance, Ecodevelopment) are not completely new. The idea of Self-Reliance, for example, is closely associated with
prominent Third World thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong and Julius
Nyerere. The Basic Needs Strategy in various forms has been incorporated in an
even wider range of national development plans, both socialist and non-socialist.
In terms of practical results, however, these efforts have been less successful in
most cases. Ecodevelopment is a later concept which, according to Ignacy Sachs
(1974), calls for specific solutions to particular problems in particular regions in the
endogenism.
At present, the appeal of Another Development in the Third World (never very
great) seems to be on the decline. The NICs have quite different development
plans in mind. China has started the Long March towards Modernization and away
from Self-Reliance. In India the Gandhian strategy of the 1978 Janata Government
(perhaps the last opportunity of implementing Gandhism) was a complete failure
(Hettne 1981a).
A paradox to be explained here is, therefore, why the concept of Another
Development, implying small-scale solutions, ecological concerns, popular participation, etc., has met with some enthusiasm in the rich countries, while is more
or less rejected in the poor. The reasons for the latter part of the paradox are not
far to seek. Small may be beautiful, but it does not entail power (social power,
state power, military power). The masses in the Third World will never reach the
standard of living at present maintained in the West (and by Third World elites)
but the urban middle classes in some areas may, at least theoretically, achieve this.
Furthermore, the ruling elites in the more industrialized countries in Latin America,
Asia and Africa are growing increasingly antagonistic in their competition, and
therefore strongly feel the need for continued modernization. In this they are of
course supported by the military as a political group. Another Development does
not seem to be on the agenda in Third World countries today.
Why then this interest for Another Development in the West? My answer to this
would be the suggestion that the collective consciousness of the industrially advanced
countries is now going through a process of transformation. I have elsewhere
analysed Western development thinking as a dialectical process between a Mainstream (or Dominant Development Paradigm) and its Counterpoint (Hettne 1981b).
In terms of this framework the Counterpoint is now gaining ground, whereas
spokesmen for the Mainstream are desperately looking for a solution consistent
with the worldview of automatic growth and progress. Some elaboration is perhaps
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historical contexts. The Counterpoint protest has more and more become an
ideological phenomenon as the moder complex was institutionalized in structures
such as the state and the bureaucracy, the industrial system, the urban system, the
professional elite, the techno-scientific system, the military-industrial complex, etc.
These structures dominate the industrial societies, whether socialist or capitalist,
and the vested interests in them are of course immense. What the Counterpoint
position can hope for is therefore a gradual weakening of the moder complex as
its maintenance costs increase and the economic growth it is supposed to guarantee
fails to come about. The Counterpoint position is hard to describe and as soon as
one tries it tends to get dissolved in abstractions or trivialities. However, taking
our point of departure in a negation of the modern complex, a society organized
according to Counterpoint ideals would be physiocratic in the sense that the earth
and the natural resources constitute the ultimate preconditions for human existence,
ultrademocratic in the sense that people exercise control over their own situation,
and structurally undifferentiated in the sense that the division of labour is within
man rather than among men.
This Counterpoint may be traced back to pre-modern structures, but should not
be interpreted simply as nostalgic conservatism, even if this is one of its manifestations. We may find typical expressions in romanticism, anarchism, utopian socialism and other ideologies reacting against 'modernity', i.e. industrialism, urbanism,
centralism, professionalism, etc. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of the Counterpoint is the populist tradition.
In fact Russian populism, Third World populism and the present upsurge of
neo-populism in the West may be seen as an example of a constructive intellectual
interaction between 'developed' and 'developing' societies. Regardless of how one
feels about the often misunderstood concept of populism, it is a most significant
fact that there exists one intellectual trend which is rooted both in Western and
Conclusion
One thing that comes out clearly from this review is that it has taken a long tim
to realize that development in different parts of the world is strongly influence
by the dynamics of the total world economy. This has subsequently led to a fairl
widespread understanding of the fact that each country has its own, unique deve
opment problems that are dictated by both external and internal conditions. Anothe
observation is that the discipline of economics initially assumed a dominant position
vis-A-vis the other social sciences in so far as theories about the problems of
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from classical social science and its concern for 'the original transition' in Europe
- except for its gradually becoming less Euro-centric.
The dependency school was the first real Third World contribution to the social
sciences, and as such it strengthened the latter in many ways. This increased the
self-confidence of the Third World social scientists who, until then, had been
imitating the social science of the Western World. Western dominance in the field
of development research has thus declined noticeably. This is not only a result of
the rise of the dependency school, but it did play an important role in the intellectual
change which has been outlined here.
Furthermore, it has had a lasting effect on the theoretical debate on development.
The mechanical evolutionism which, in a way, was characteristic of not only the
conventional, but also the orthodox Marxist theory of development was practically
exaggerated the importance of the external factors the questions raised were
relevant and will remain so, even though the answers and remedies were sometimes
less than adequate.
It is therefore quite easy to trace the effects of the dependency school in several
contemporary development theoretical currents. The world system approach is of
course the,most obvious heir to the dependency school, since its analysis is also
based on the centre-periphery model. However, attempts are made to circumvent
the traps into which many dependency theorists were lured, such as the theoretical
difficulty of operating with two kinds of capitalism (one 'central' and one
'peripheral'), as well as the similarly awkward attempts to analytically explain the
'external' and the 'internal' factors affecting the process of development. It is
obvious that Marxist development theorists now struggle with problems which the
dependency school brought to the surface - problems which a euro-centric and
basically evolutionist Marxism, whose interest in the concrete development problems of the Third World long had been minimal, saw as a challenge. The situation
is somehow different today. There are several important Marxist contributions
which analyse the problems of development in a less biased fashion, although their
theoretical emphases differ. However, they all have in common their use of the
rejection of Neo-Marxism. The new approaches are, nevertheless, far from unproblematic, and a long critical debate should be expected.
More distant from the dependence problematique are both what I have called
the fundamentalist reactions and the normative trend summarized in the concept
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countries can follow, since the ecological and social limits to growth in no way
have disappeared. Furthermore, world system analysis tells us that the structure
of the world-economy will permit only a limited number of countries to advance.
The lesson of Iran illuminates the social and political reactions provoked by
excessive modernization, and a number of countries, such as the Philippines,
Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Chile (after Allende), Jamaica (after Manley), Puerto-Rico,
are now learning the unrepeatability of the NIC-strategy. Thus, the relevance of
self-reliance (as a well thought-out strategy rather than as a nationalist ideology),
implied in the dependency approach and elaborated by the Another Development
School, is not reduced by the setbacks of this strategy in the 1970's. What has been
demonstrated, however, is the need for a development theory that accounts for
both varying internal preconditions (size of the country, endowments with natural
resources, social and political forces, etc.) and different positions in the world
system hierarchy.
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