Abstract
The words that provide the title of this essay have acquired a new centrality and urgency in that dimension of contemporary history characterized by the emergence of the postcolonial “Third World.” At the same time the meanings attached to them, and the contro-versies surrounding them, cannot be pursued and understood un-less they are placed in the context of three further terms of unique significance in the history of the modern world: capitalism, socialism, and nationalism.
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Notes
Useful critical discussions of the international trade theory of “comparative costs” are to be found in F. Clairmonte, Economic Liberalism and Underdevelopment (New Delhi: 1960);
T. Szentes, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Budapest: 1971);
and A. Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).
In contrast to the 1950s, when the notion of an “Afro-Asian” bloc was more prevalent. On the character of dependency theory as a response to the crisis of “inner-directed” development in Latin America, see T. Dos Santos, “The Crisis of Development Theory and the Problem of Dependency in Latin America,” in H. Bernstein, ed., Underdevelopment and Development (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973);
D. Booth, “Andre Gunder Frank: An Introduction and Appreciation,” in I. Oxaal, A. Barnett, and D. Booth, eds., Beyond the Sociology of Development (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); and P. O’Brien, “A Critique of Latin American Theories of Dependency,” in ibid.
B. Warren, “Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialisation,” New Left Review 81 (1973): 3–4.
A. Emmanuel, “Myths of Development Versus Myths of Underdevelopment,” New Left Review 85 (1974);
P. McMichael, J. Petras, and R. Rhodes, “Imperialism and the Contradictions of Development,” New Left Review 85 (1974).
B. Sutcliffe, “Imperialism and Industrialisation in the Third World,” in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 174–76.
Samir Amin, Unequal Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), p. 189;
Hamza Alavi, “India and the Co-lonial Mode of Production,” in R. Miliband and J. Saville, eds., Socialist Register 1975 (London: Merlin Press, 1975), p. 192;
Hamza Alavi, “Imperialism Old and New,” in Miliband and Saville, eds., Socialist Register 1964 (London: Merlin Press, 1964)
H.W. Singer and J. Ansari, Rich Countries and Poor Countries [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977])
F.H. Cardoso, “Dependency and Development in Latin America,” New Left Review 74 [1972]
G. Kay, Development and Underdevelopment (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975)
Arghiri Emmanuel (Unequal Exchange [New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972])
Samir Amin in Unequal Development and Immanuel Wallerstein in The Capitalist World-Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
A. Phillips, “The Concept of Development,” Review of African Political Economy 8 (1977)
Colin Leys, “Underdevelopment and Dependency: Critical Notes,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 7, no. 1 (1977).
These comments summarize the conclusions of an attempt at a systematic critique of theories of underdevelopment and dependence in my “Sociology of Development vs. Sociology of Underdevelopment?” in D. Lehman, ed., Development Theory: Four Critical Essays (London: Frank Cass, 1979), which contains a wide range of references to the recent literature; see also Leys, “Underdevelopment,” and Phillips, “Concept of Development.”
A. Emmanuel, “White-Settler Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism,” New Left Review 73 (1972), and abridged in this volume.
There are critiques of unequal exchange theory by Charles Bettelheim (appendices to Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange), G. Pilling, “Imperialism, Trade, and ‘Unequal Exchange’: The Work of Arghiri Emmanuel,” Economy and Society 2, no. 2 (1973); and Kay, Development, pp. 107–19. Emmanuel’s own argument, with its skepticism about the “nationality” of capital and its insistence on imperialist “exploitation” through trade relations rather than capital exports, goes against the grain of much dependency theory, which does not prevent its assimilation by Amin in Unequal Development, an eclectic compendium of virtually every propo-sition put forward by Third Worldist political economy. No less striking is the reliance of Wallerstein’s “world-system” theory on the conclusions of Emmanuel’s economics, the theoretical structure of which Wallerstein gives no evidence of comprehending (just as he never refers to the controversy surrounding unequal exchange theory). The most powerful criticism of Emmanuel derives from the work of Wolfgang Schoeller, which denies the existence of an international process of value formation, or mediation of values through the formation of an international rate of profit (one of Emmanuel’s critical assumptions); see note 29 below. Ernest Mandel in his Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1975), chap. 11, follows the same logic as Schoeller in criticizing Emmanuel, then stops and abandons the argument pursued up to that point.
“The question here arises whether the problem does not already pronounce its own nonsensicality, and whether the impossibility of the solution is not already contained in the premises of the question.… Frequently the only possible answer is a critique of the question and the only solution is to negate the question”—Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 126–27. Marx’s comment is an apt one with respect to the way dependency theory has formulated the problem of “national” development; unfortunately, Warren sought to provide a different answer rather than negating the question.
Nicos Poulantzas, “Internalisation of Capitalist Relations and the Nation State,” Economy and Society 3, no. 2 (1974)
J. Friedman, “Crisis in Theory and Transformations of the World Economy,” Review 2, no. 2 (1978).
W. Olle and W. Schoeller, World Market, State, and Average National Conditions of Labour (Dar es Salaam: Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam, 1977).
The same point occupies a central place in the theoretical schema of Geoffrey Kay, although again it is mentioned briefly and without any elaboration; see H. Bernstein, “Underdevelopment and the Law of Value—A Critique of Kay,” Review of African Political Economy 6 (1976).
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Bernstein, H. (1982). Industrialization, Development, and Dependence. In: Alavi, H., Shanin, T. (eds) Introduction to the Sociology of “Developing Societies”. Sociology of “Developing Societies”. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16847-7_18
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