Political Econ of Growth. Paul A. Baran
Junkers’ interest in high tariffs on grains was announced to be dictated solely by their deep concern with the preservation of German food supplies under conditions of war, so the anxiety of dominant Western corporations to safeguard their investments abroad and to remain assured of the accustomed flow of raw materials from the backward world is publicized as patriotic solicitude for the “free world’s” supply of indispensable strategic materials.
The arsenal of “united action” against the independent development of underdeveloped countries comprises an entire gamut of political and ideological stratagems. There are in the first place the widely broadcast statements of Western statesmen that appear to favor economic development in the underdeveloped world. Indeed, much is being made at the present time of the advanced countries’ aid and support for the economic advancement of the backward areas. This advancement is conceived of as a slow, gradual improvement of the living standards of the native populations, and it is expected to lessen popular pressure for industrialization, to weaken the movement for economic and social progress.
However, this scheme of “bribing” the peoples of the underdeveloped countries to refrain from overthrowing the existing system and from entering the road to rapid economic growth is beset by a host of insuperable contradictions. The logic of economic growth is such that a slow and gradual improvement of living standards in little-developed countries is an extremely difficult if not altogether impossible project. Whatever small increases in national output might be attained with the help of such Western investment and charity as may be forthcoming are swamped by the rapid growth of the population, by the corruption of the local governments, by squandering of resources by the underdeveloped countries’ ruling classes, and by profit withdrawals on the part of foreign investors.
For, where far-reaching structural changes in the economy are required if the economic development of a country is to shift into high gear and is to outstrip the growth of population, where technological indivisibilities render growth dependent on large investments and long-run planning, where tradition-bound patterns of thought and work obstruct the introduction of new methods and means of production—then only a sweeping reorganization of society, only an all-out mobilization of all its creative potentialities, can move the economy off dead center. As mentioned before, the mere notions of “development” and “growth” suggest a transition to something that is new from something that is old, that has outlived itself. It can only be achieved through a determined struggle against the conservative, retrograde forces, through a change in the social, political, and economic structure of a backward, stagnant society. Since a social organization, however inadequate, never disappears by itself, since a ruling class, however parasitic, never yields power unless compelled to do so by overwhelming pressure, development and progress can only be attained if all the energies and abilities of a people that was politically, socially, and economically disfranchised under the old system are thrown into battle against the fortresses of the ancien régime.
But the crusade against national and social revolutions conducted at the present time by the Western powers relies upon a mobilization of altogether different social strata. It cements an international entente of precisely those social groups and economic interests that are, and are bound to be, bitterly antagonistic to genuine economic and social progress, and it subordinates considerations of economic development to the purpose of strengthening this alliance. It provides economic and military aid to regimes in underdeveloped countries that are manifestly inimical to economic development, and it maintains in power governments that would have been otherwise swept aside by the popular drive for a more rational and more progressive economic and social order.
It is as part of the same effort to bribe the peoples of the underdeveloped countries while avoiding the appearance of old-fashioned imperialism that political independence has been recently granted to a number of dependent nations and that native politicians have been allowed to rise to high offices. There is hardly any need to stress that such independence and autonomy are little more than sham as long as the countries in question remain economic appendages of the advanced capitalist countries and as long as their governments depend for survival on the pleasure of their foreign patrons.
What is more, the attainment of political independence by colonial peoples yields results under the conditions of imperialism that are frequently quite different from those hoped for by these peoples themselves. Their newly won political independence often precipitates merely a change in their Western masters, with the younger, more enterprising, more resourceful imperialist power seizing the controls that have slipped out of the hands of the old, now weakened imperialist countries. Thus where it is politically no longer possible to operate through the medium of the old-fashioned and compromised colonial administrations and to impose its control merely by means of economic infiltration, American imperialism sponsors (or tolerates) political independence of colonial countries, becoming subsequently the dominant power in the newly “liberated” regions. Both methods of expansion of American influence can be studied in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Near East.
III
A considerable ideological campaign is being undertaken in order to “sell” to the public this modern, more subtle and less transparent policy of imperialism. As an astute economist recently remarked, “‘development’ as compared with ‘civilization’ … [has become] an intellectual quid pro quo for international domination by a major country.”5 And social sciences provide, as usual, the requisite rationalization for the systematic effort of the ruling class of the advanced capitalist countries to prevent, or at least to retard, the political and economic liberation of the colonial and dependent nations. Stimulated by lavish support on the part of various government agencies and private foundations, economists, anthropologists, social psychologists, and other social scientists in the West have been directing an ever-increasing amount of attention to the development of underdeveloped countries.
In the field of economic research, much energy is now given to an attempt to demonstrate that the advanced capitalist countries themselves have reached their present level of development by a process of spontaneous, slow growth—within the framework of the capitalist order and without major shocks and revolutionary upheavals. It is argued that it was, in fact, the relative absence of political disturbance and the continuity and stability of social institutions that provided the “climate” essential for the emergence and prosperity of the capitalist entrepreneur, who in turn is credited with having played a decisive role in promoting economic progress. Accordingly, large resources are being devoted to an extensive campaign of rewriting the history of capitalism. Its purpose is the rehabilitation of the “robber baron” and his glorification as the hero and prime mover of economic and social progress, and its related task is the minimization of the suffering and privations that were associated with the beginning and the growth of capitalist enterprise.
Thus the historically minded members of the economics profession seek to prove that by relying on the forces of the free market and of private initiative economic development was achieved in the past without excessive sacrifices—with the obvious moral that this method still represents the most commendable avenue to economic progress. Little mention, if any, is accorded by these historians to the role that the exploitation of the now underdeveloped countries has played in the evolution of Western capitalism; little attention, if any, is given to the fact that the colonial and dependent countries today have no recourse to such sources of primary accumulation of capital as were available to the now advanced capitalist countries, that economic development in the age of monopoly capitalism and imperialism faces obstacles that have little in common with those encountered two or three hundred years ago, and that what was possible in a certain historical setting is unrealistic in another.
The more theoretically inclined economists follow a different tack. Dwelling on the technical aspects of economic development, they discover a host of insuperable difficulties preventing the formulation of a coherent theory of economic and social change. They list with obvious relish all and sundry matters more or less germane to the problem of economic development about which “we do not know enough,” they stress the lack of unambiguous criteria for a rational allocation of resources under dynamic conditions, they elaborate on the obstacles to industrialization stemming from the character of the labor force in underdeveloped countries, from the scarcity of native managerial talent, from likely balances