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СКАЧАТЬ although demonstrating, and indeed greatly clarifying, the vicious and portentous nature of this impasse, none of the writers just mentioned has stated what is an inescapable conclusion of their own investigations—that socialist economic planning represents the only rational solution of the problem. To be sure, it may be held that there is no need for explicit statements of what necessarily emerges from the logic of a rigorous argument. However, even self-evident truths must be communicated if they are to be recognized as such by those whom they may otherwise escape. Nothing is perhaps more characteristic of the intellectual atmosphere surrounding the present discussion of economic growth—a discussion in which truisms and trivia abound—than that it is this self-evident truth that is strictly taboo even to the most enlightened writers on the subject.

      Matters are still worse when it comes to economic development in underdeveloped countries. There a maze of pretense, hypocrisy, and make-believe confuse the discussion, and a major effort is required to penetrate the smoke screen obscuring the main issue. What is decisive is that economic development in underdeveloped countries is profoundly inimical to the dominant interests in the advanced capitalist countries. Supplying many important raw materials to the industrialized countries, providing their corporations with vast profits and investment outlets, the backward world has always represented the indispensable hinterland of the highly developed capitalist West. Thus the ruling class in the United States (and elsewhere) is bitterly opposed to the industrialization of the so-called “source countries” and to the emergence of integrated processing economies in the colonial and semi-colonial areas. This opposition appears regardless of the nature of the regime in the underdeveloped country that seeks to reduce the foreign grip on its economy and to provide for a measure of independent development. Whether it is a democratically elected government in Venezuela, in Guatemala, or in British Guiana, an indigenous popular movement (as in Kenya, in the Philippines, or in Indo-China), a nationalist administration (as in Iran, Egypt, or Argentina) that undertakes to oppose the foreign domination of its country—all leverages of diplomatic intrigue, economic pressure, and political subversion are set into motion to overthrow the recalcitrant national government and to replace it with politicians who are willing to serve the interests of the capitalist countries.

      The resistance of imperialist powers to economic and social development in colonial and dependent territories becomes even more desperate when the popular aspirations to national and social liberation express themselves in a revolutionary movement that, internationally connected and supported, threatens to overthrow the entire economic and social order of capitalism and imperialism. Under such circumstances, the resistance hardens into a counter-revolutionary alliance of all imperialist countries (and their reliable retainers) and assumes the form of a systematic crusade against national and social revolutions.

      The requirements of this crusade have molded decisively the attitude toward the development of underdeveloped countries prevailing at the present time in the Western world. As the Prussian Junkers presented the continuation of serfdom on their estates as indispensable for the defense of Christianity against the onslaught of liberal godlessness, so the drive of the Western ruling classes to maintain the economic, social, and political status quo in underdeveloped countries is proclaimed as the defense of democracy and freedom. As the Prussian 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 СКАЧАТЬ