Political Econ of Growth. Paul A. Baran
to 1,000 loaves, productivity would appear to have gone up by 400 percent rather than by 525 percent as was actually the case. To be sure, a careful “sorting out” of the labor force denominator used for the computation, with a view to limiting it to productive workers only, could remedy this deficiency, but the statistical information which is usually supplied renders such an adjustment impossible. Secondly, statistics commonly compiled would show that wages have increased in exactly the same proportion as productivity (from one to five loaves), while in reality the wages of the productive workers lagged considerably behind the rise of their productivity. That the official statistics convey such garbled impressions is obviously not fortuitous; it is due to the concepts which govern their organization. With the notion “economic surplus” denied official recognition, and with the all but meaningless distinction between “production” and “non-production” workers substituted for the all-important difference between productive and unproductive workers, available statistics hide rather than illuminate a most important aspect of capitalist reality.
19 An extension of this discussion can be found in Paul A. Baran, “Reflections on Underconsumption” in Moses Abramovitz and others, The Allocation of Economic Resources (Stanford, California, 1959); reprinted also in Shigeto Tsuru, ed., Has Capitalism Changed? An International Symposium on the Nature of Contemporary Capitalism (Tokyo, 1961).
20 American Capitalism: the Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston, 1952), p. 103.
21 Slums and Suburbs: a Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (New York, Toronto, London, 1961), pp. 33 f.
22 This is not the place to go into a more detailed description and analysis of the quality of the monopoly capitalist society; for this the interested reader is referred to Sweezy’s and my forthcoming book, and in the meanwhile to Monthly Review, July-August, 1962, where some parts of that book are scheduled to be published in advance.
23 Cf. Paul M. Sweezy, “Has Capitalism Changed?” in Shigeto Tsuru, ed., op. cit., pp. 83 ff.
24 Since this book was first published, Latin America has joined the regions of socialist beginnings.
25 Cf. pp. 167 ff. as well as pp. 262 ff.
26 A comprehensive account of the developments in Cuba will be found in Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution (2nd ed., New York, 1961), and an elaboration of the remarks above in my Reflections on the Cuban Revolution (2nd ed., New York, 1961).
27 This is not the place for a survey of the relevant literature; suffice it to mention the writings of H. B. Chenery, E. S. Mason, T. Scitovsky, and J. Tinbergen, the principal burden of which is the demonstration of the necessity of coordination and synchronization of investment if the rapid economic development of underdeveloped (or, for that matter, developed) countries is to be effectively advanced.
28 The grave harm done to the magnificent revolutionary effort of the Cuban people by the “starving out” strategy of American imperialism is the most striking and the most distressing case in point.
29 Those who are so influenced by the mendacious propaganda of imperialism as to believe that the vast armaments buildup in the United States is governed by the fear of aggression on the part of the socialist countries must read the monumental work of Professor D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, 2 vols. (New York, 1961), as well as the revealing account of the actual course of disarmament negotiations in recent years by Professor J. P. Morray, From Yalta to Disarmament: Cold War Debate (New York, 1961). It is hard to believe that anyone who is willing to recognize the truth can fail to be impressed by the incontrovertible evidence assembled in these extraordinary studies.
30 The situation is obviously somewhat different in parts of the world where the underemployment of manpower in agriculture is matched by underutilization of arable land—as in the case of Cuba. Under such circumstances, aggregate agricultural output can be, at any rate in the early stages, rapidly increased by taking into cultivation previously uncultivated areas, although even in such cases major difficulties are caused by lack of agricultural implements, fertilizers, and livestock.
31 After World War II, the situation in the Soviet Union in particular was seriously aggravated by the casualties suffered by the agricultural male population to a larger extent than by the industrial proletariat who were more frequently exempted from military service.
32 The Soviet experience during the last decade provides an excellent illustration of this development.
33 In Albania, and possibly elsewhere, it was apparently also held that Soviet grants and credits to nonsocialist underdeveloped countries reflect nothing but an illusion that the nonsocialist governments of those countries could be genuinely won over to the cause of peace and socialism. In a decisive moment, regardless of what benefits they may derive from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, these governments would betray their benefactors and join the imperialist camp. Therefore—it was argued—all resources allocated to such uncertain friends are wasted and could and should be more usefully employed in helping socialist countries. This is reported in an article by F. Konstantinov, the editor-in-chief of the official theoretical organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Kommunist: “Raskolnicheskaya, antimarksistskaya deyatelnost albanskikh rukovoditeley.” (“The divisive, anti-Marxian activity of the Albanian leaders.”) Kommunist, November, 1961, p. 48.
34 Albania has apparently fared even worse, although there, according to some reports, the fault lies chiefly with highly inefficient management on the part of the party leadership.
Contents
TWO: The Concept of the Economic Surplus
THREE: Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, I
FOUR: Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, II
FIVE: On the Roots of Backwardness
SIX: Towards a Morphology of Backwardness, I
SEVEN: Towards a Morphology of Backwardness, II
What social science needs is less use of elaborate techniques and more courage to tackle, rather than dodge, the central issues. But to demand that is to ignore the social reasons that have made social science what it is.
J. D. Bernal, Science in History
ONE
A General View
THE question why social and economic development has recently moved into the forefront of economic discussion—particularly in the United States—may appear to be a recondite and tedious issue in the history of knowledge only tenuously related to the subject matter itself. This