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Dependency theory: for week 5

Adapted from an article in Workers' Liberty 28 'Dependency theory' 'Dependency' theory dates back to Paul Baran's book The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1957). Third World countries were underdeveloped, argued Baran, mainly because of parasitism within the Third World countries and a drain of surplus to the advanced countries. The answer was for those forces seeking development in Third World countries to follow the model provided by the USSR - expropriate the parasitic old property-owning classes, centralise resources in the hands of the state, cut down economic relations with the...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 9

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 9 Development? Whose, and who pays? South Korea represented the showcase of capitalism in the Third World. Cuba still calls itself communist. Nasser proclaimed Egypt's policy as a third way between capitalism and communism. Yet many factors were common to all three models: the overwhelming role of the state in development; a very high rate of investment; a gearing of resources to education and health; and radical land reform. Colonialism imposed an alien state power on Third World countries; drained their wealth away to the metropolis...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 8

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 8 Three variants The political and industrial revolutions in the Third World after 1945 were not automatic processes. Their shape, form and extent were set by class struggle. Three examples of "success stories" in the Third World cast light on the many "failure stories" - and on the questions: Success for whom? At what cost? The examples are Egypt, South Korea and Cuba. Egypt before its revolution was ruled by a triple alliance of big landowners, wealthy merchants and bankers (along with a few industrialists) and British imperialism. The...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 7

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 7 The grey revolution The capitalist world economy was created not by free trade but by colonialism. The process had very different consequences for the colonised and for the colonisers, for the oppressed peoples and for the oppressors. Colonial imperialism brought some of the elements of capitalist development to the Third World. But such features of capitalism as mark it out as an advance on previous societies - literacy, education, scientific health care, individual liberty and dignity - did not reach the mass of the people in the...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 6

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 6 Levelling and uneven development There were great world empires before capitalism. But capitalism was the first social system to create an integrated world economy - a world knitted together by a dense network of international trade. Also, capitalism has a drive towards expansion which far exceeds that of any previous economy. In Imperial China, in Mughal India, in ancient Egypt or in early medieval Europe, economic advance meant only an increase in the luxury and religious or military display of the ruling class. It was thus...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 5

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 5 The spoils of the Sultanates For centuries, indeed for thousands of years, before the capitalist era, the east Mediterranean was more developed, more civilised and richer than western Europe. Egypt, Babylon (Iraq) and Greece were the greatest centres of ancient civilisation. Although the Roman Empire had its political centre in the West, its eastern regions were richer, with far bigger cities. In the 7th century, nomad warriors from desert Arabia conquered most of the east and south Mediterranean under the banner of a new religion...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 4

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 4 Looting El Dorado In 1519-21 Spain conquered Mexico, and over the following decades it rapidly built up in America the first great colonial empire of the capitalist era. In India and Africa and the Middle East, as we have seen, the colonial regimes acted as a sort of funnel, strapped onto a modified local pre-capitalist economy, pumping out wealth into the channels of European capitalism. Spanish America was not quite the same. Nor, generally, did it follow the other example of European colonialism, in North America and Australia...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 3

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 3 How Britain ruined India When black Africa was put under colonial rule in the late 19th century, it had already been shattered and devastated by four centuries of the slave trade. But the India conquered by the British from the mid-18th century was a great and splendid empire. European trading bases had existed in India since the early 16th century, but they had exported manufactured goods from India - for India "had an industrial sector producing luxury goods which Europe could not match" (Angus Maddison). Now Britain imposed...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 2

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 2 The white man as cannibal The decisive turning point in producing the present pattern of the world came in the 16th century. A new economic system - capitalism, the system of wage labour and of continuous accumulation and reinvestment of profits - emerged decisively from the neo-feudal societies of Western Europe. As yet, it was not industrial capitalism. The Industrial Revolution and large-scale factory production were still in the future. But this earlier capitalism - commercial capitalism - had its own technological revolution, with...

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 1

From Workers' Liberty 63 Imperialism yesterday and today 1 Countries which are today stricken by poverty - Egypt, for example - were once the world's greatest centres of civilisation. When Britain first took control of India, in the 18th century, the country was thought of not as a sea of poverty, but as a fabulous treasure house. The ordinary people were somewhat poorer than in Britain, but by a factor of perhaps 2:3 rather than the 1:20 of today. The luxury of the ruling classes was probably greater than that of Europe's wealthy. Of China, the Frenchman Francois Quesnay wrote in 1767: "No...

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