The Current Impasse in Development Thinking: The Metaphysic of Power

See the remark of Golley F. B. , ‘If there is one attitude that unites mankind today, it is the desire for directional change'. See ‘Ecology and Development’, in Furtado J.L. (ed.), Tropical Ecology and Development (Kuala Lumpur: International Society of Tropical Ecology, 1980). At the same time, it is also noteworthy that like most Western thinkers on this subject Golley also holds that ‘development in the international, political world has come to mean economic and material change in the direction of the societies of Europe and North America.’ The juxtaposition of these two views in a leading study provides an appropriate setting for a consideration of this vexed issue.

The author regards the following works as highly relevant for his purpose of explicating the dialogue on development: Birou A. Henery P.M. Schlegal J.P. (eds.), Towards a Re-definition of Development (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1977); A. M. M. Hoogvelt, The Sociology of Developing Societies (London: The Macmillan Press, 1976); and P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development (London: Widenfeld and-Nicholson, 1976).

According to Goldthorpe J. E. , The Sociology of the Third World (Cambridge University Press, 1986) there were, until the 1970s, just two mutually incompatible ways of looking at the process of social and economic change in the Third World, viz., the orthodox mainstream view and the dependency theory. But in the 1980s this dichotomy appears too simple and modifications have been made by the neoinstitutional school of European development theorists. In my classification I have included the proponents of the orthodox mainstream view among the statusquoists and both the dependency theorists and the neo-institutionalists among the non-statusquoists, further characterizing the latter as quasi-bourgeois.

Thompson's W. S. (ed.), The Third World: Premises of U.S. Policy (California: ICS Press, 1983); contains a selection of articles by the hardline statusquoists of the mainstream view.

According to Thompson the Third World is neither analytically nor politically a coherent reality, ibid., p. 5. Likewise Bauer, op. cit., note 2, p. 49, holds that the people of the world outside the highly industrialized nations are not all much of a muchness.

Bauer , op. cit., note 2, p. 24.

Needham J. , ‘Poverties and Triumphs of the Chinese Scientific Tradition’, in Crombie A.C. (ed.), Scientific Change (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1963) p. 139.

Ibid.

The case for the West's claim to superiority has been supported, inter alia, by Gillispie (The Edge of Objectivity), Mendelshon (Science and Western Domination) and de Solle (Science since Babylon).

Austin D. , ‘Prospero's Island’, in Thomspon, op. cit., note 4, p. 57.

Beloff M. , ‘The Third World and the Conflict of Ideologies’, in Thomspon, op. cit., note 4.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ward Barbara , ‘On the Nature of Development’, in Birou, op. cit., note 2, p. 323.

Bissell R. E. , ‘The Political Origins of the New International Economic Order’, in Thompson, op. cit., note 4, p. 237.

Stevens C. (ed.), E.E.C. and the Third World: A Survey 2 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982).

As quoted by Stevens C. , ibid., p. 8.

These views are expressed by Van Themaat J. V. in E.E.C. and the Third World, Chapter 8, op. cit., note 16, pp. 120–23.

See the report of Roberto Suro in the International Herald Tribune as reproduced in Times of India, 7 March 1988.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Such inability has been expressed by D. Austin, in Thompson, op. cit., note 4, p. 65.

Rodney Walter , How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle L’ Ouverture, 1973), pp. 21–22 as quoted by Tony Smith in Thompson, op. cit., note 4, p. 207.

Hoogvelt, op. cit., note 2, pp. 1–6.

Stockwell E. G. Laidlaw K. A. , Third World Development: Problems and Prospects (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), pp. 6–18.

Ibid.

Hoogvelt, note 2, Ibid., pp. 1–6. For Hoogvelt, development as action is a consciously planned and monitored process of growth and change.

Ibid., p. 2.

Ibid., p. 2.

This problem has been considered in some detail in Birou, op. cit., note 2, pp. 149.

Hoogvelt, op. cit., note 2, p. 5.

The term ‘philosophical anthroplogy', though current for some time, still lacks any precise meaning and can be confusing. I propose to use it for marking the upper reaches of an open-ended general epistemology. In that case philosophical anthropology will denote that level of philosophical enquiry (pertaining to both facts and values), and the conditions of truth pertaining to it, as are attained as well as attainable by man. But it does so without giving the whole enterprise its hitherto usual anthropocentric slant which makes man not only the bearer but the sole proprietor and arbiter of the cognitive apparatus operative in him, thus setting him up as a uniquely privileged subject. In short, the point of orientation for philosophical anthropology is not just ‘man’ but ‘man-in-the-universe'.

Dominique Durable's comments in Birou, op. cit., note 2, p. 56.

Michel Cepedes in Birou, note 2, p. 170.

Leopoldo Zea in Birou, note 2, p. 47.

Dayakrishna, Political Development, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979). The overall tenor of his remarks remains sceptical or even pessimistic.

This conjecture is based on data available in such works as Richard Symonds (ed.), International Targets for Development (London: Faber and Faber, 1970); and Harvey McMains and Lyle Wilcox, Alternatives for Growth (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1978).

Dayakrishna in ‘Surplus Value, Profit and Exploitation’ The Review of Economic Studies 1955, argues that socialist development of weak economies involves the same basic mechanism of creation, appropriation and investment of surplus as capitalism, and socialist policy and economy are imitative rather than creative. Hence exploitation continues in socialism as before, (p. 102). But M. Morishima and G. Catephores in Value, Exploitation and Growth (London: McGraw-Hill, 1978), while admitting such similarities still argue that after some form of a common ownership is established, no exploitation of the capitalist type can take place. But they too admit that some other type of phenomena similar or analogous to exploitation may yet emerge (p. 61).

This point is underlined by Narain Harsh , The Discovery of Marx (Lucknow: Lucknow Academy, 1982) as also by Dominique Durable, in Birou, note 2, p. 56, and also pp. 213–14. According to Harsh Narain (p. 131), Marx's delineation of the successive stages of society is limited to the experience of Western Europe.

Ward Barbara , in Birou, op. cit., note 2, pp. 321–22.

Adiseshiah S. , ‘The Conditions for the Economic and Political Independence of the Third World, in Birou, op. cit., note 2, pp. 265–270.

Birou , note 2, p. 147.

Galtung in Birou, note 2, p. 122.

Adiseshiah S. in Birou, note 2.

Schlegel , in Birou , op. cit., note 2, p. IX.

Ibid., p. 137 f.

Ibid., p. 117.

Ghabbour Samir , Ibid., p. 106.

I am referring to religious and moral zealots and high-profile TV evangelists proliferating everywhere.

Birou , op. cit., note 2, p. 136.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 200.

See Stephen Jay Gould's remark in Ever Since Darwin (London: Penguin Books, 1986) pp. 237–38, that ‘. we are. deluged by resurgent biological determinism ranging from “pop ethology” to outright racism'.

As suggested, for example, by S. Radhakrishnan in Kalki (pp. 6–9) that Ptolemic ethnocentric approach to civilization has got to be replaced with a Copernican universalistic approach.

Ellul Jacques , ‘Development Principles and Practices: Right and Wrong Meaning of Development’ in Birou, op. cit., note 2, p. 284.

Michel Cepede in Birou, note 2, p. 33.

Ibid., p. 34.

As reported in Times of India, 24 March 1988.

Heilbroner R. , The Nature and Logic of Capitalism (New York: Norton and Co., 1985) pp. 23–24.

Leopoldo Zea in Birou, op. cit., note 2, p. 163.

Jackson H. Merril in Birou, note 2, p. 40.

Nasr Hossein , in Birou, note 2, p. 193.

Ibid., p. 205. This view of Nasr goes well with Joan Violet Robinson's remark that ‘technology is developed under capitalism. There is no possibility of using it for “mankind” as long as the capitalist organization exists'.