Accumulation and growth to what end?: Reassessing the modern faith in progress in the "age of development"

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 16, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 57-76

  Andreasson, Stefan ^a  

^a QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BELFAST   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ACCUMULATION; GROWTH; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT;

EID: 32144443029     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: 15483290     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455750500376016     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Volume 1: Inferno (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 98.
2. For example, Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs In the West and Fails Everywhere Else (London: Black Swan, 2001).
3. Cobden, quoted in Eric Helleiner, "Economic Liberalism and its Critics: The Past as Prologue?" Review of International Political Economy, 10, 4, 2003, p. 687.
4. This characterization of poor people's circumstances is a classic case of blaming the victim that is illustrative of how many influential commentators - e.g., Western standard bearers of neoliberalism like The Economist and the Financial Times - lament the ignorance of those who doubt the blessings that markets can bestow upon them. Poverty refers to a lack of material goods required to maintain life, basic health and some degree of life options. Other aspects of poverty, such as poverty of the soul or mind, may as well afflict people living in materially wealthy conditions - as suggested by the notion of "affluenza."
5. Dante and his Divine Comedy are a precursor to the modern era and its faith in progress. For a literary commentary on Dante as a "gateway" to a modern world view, see Erich Auerbach, Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1929).
6. On these problems in Africa, see William I. Zartman (ed.), Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995)
7. George B. N. Ayittey, Africa in Chaos (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998)
8. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
9. For a discussion of the religious overtones in development studies, see Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (London: Zed Books, 2002).
10. On "economic fundamentalism" in Africa, see John Mihevc, The Market Tells Them So: The World Bank and Economic Fundamentalism in Africa (Accra: Third World Network, 1995).
11. In the context of Southern African austerity programs and on structural adjustment in Zimbabwe as "Eternal Suffering for the African People" (ESAP), see Patrick Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe: A Study of Finance, Development, and Underdevelopment (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1998), pp. 379-421.
12. Robert J. Barro and Rachel M. McCleary, "Religion and Economic Growth," National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper No. 9682, May 2003, online at: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w9682.pdf.
13. Sally Matthews, "Post-development Theory and the Question of Alternatives: A View from Africa," Third World Quarterly, 25, 2, 2004.
14. Robert Gilpin, Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)
15. Nicolas van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
16. Patrick Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2001)
17. Samir Amin, "Africa: Living on the Fringe," Monthly Review, 53, 10, 2002.
18. Rist, op. cit., pp. 9-10.
19. Ibid., p. 13.
20. United States White House, "President Announces Clear Skies & Global Climate Change Initiatives," February 14, 2002, online at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/20020214-5.html.
21. Serge Latouche, "Would the West Actually Be Happier With Less?" Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2003, online at: http://www.mondediplo.com.
22. Rist, op. cit., p. 16.
23. Ellen Meiksins Wood, "Globalization and the State: Where is the Power of Capital?" in A. Saad-Filho (ed.), Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2003), p. 131.
24. Mark Blyth and Hendrik Spruyt, "Our Past as Prologue: Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Issue of the Review of International Political Economy," Review of International Political Economy, 10, 4, 2003.
25. Ibid., pp. 614-15.
26. For African examples, see The World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (Washington: World Bank, 1981)
27. Adjustment in Africa: Reforms, Results, and the Road Ahead (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
28. The World Bank, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century (Washington: World Bank, 2000).
29. Stefan Andreasson, "Economic Reforms and 'Virtual Democracy' in South Africa and Zimbabwe: The Incompatibility of Liberalization, Inclusion and Development," Journal of Comparative African Studies, 21, 3, 2003.
30. Ibid., pp. 387-88.
31. Martin Ravallion, "Growth, Inequality and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages," World Development, 29, 11, 2001, p. 1812.
32. Truman, quoted in Rist, op. cit., p. 71.
33. Ibid., p. 76.
34. John Winthrop's sermon "City Upon a Hill" (1630) and Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) constitute early articulations of America's destiny for greatness. For current articulations of these grandiose ideas, see almost any speech by the current president regarding the U.S. and its role in the world.
35. Eric Heilbroner, The Great Ascent: The Struggle for Economic Development in Our Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 9, emphasis added. As in Dante's Comedy, the notion of descent and ascent is quite important.
36. Ibid., p. 156.
37. UNDP, "International Day for the Eradication of Poverty: Message by Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator," October 17, 2003, online at: http://www.undp.org/dpa/statements/administ/2003/october/17oct03.html.
38. Rist, op. cit., p. 121.
39. Ibid.
40. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Verso, 1998 [1848]), pp. 37-41.
41. Emphasis on Marx's earlier (oftentimes journalistic) work at the expense of his (and Engels') subsequent, more mature work neglects Marx's emphasis on how the spread of capitalism would also produce and perpetuate poverty and "backwardness." Branwen Gruffydd Jones, "The Civilized Horrors of Over-work: Marxism, Imperialism & Development of Africa," Review of African Political Economy, 30, 95, 2003, pp. 35-38.
42. The confrontation is counterproductive because both liberals and ("really existing") socialists pursued the best strategy for exploiting labor and the environment. Neither liberals nor these socialists were overly, or at all, concerned with the long-term costs - human and ecological - of their preferred strategies.
43. Bond, 2001, op. cit., chapter 11.
44. Roger Murray, "Second Thoughts on Ghana," New Left Review, 42, March/April, 1967, p. 39.
45. John Saul, "Africa: The Next Liberation Struggle?" Review of African Political Economy, 30, 96, 2003, p. 187.
46. For example, James O'Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York: Guilford, 1998)
47. Wolfgang Sachs, Reinhard Loske and Manfred Linz (eds.), Greening the North: A Post-Industrial Blueprint for Ecology & Equity (London: Zed Books, 1998)
48. Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (New York: St. Martin's, 1999)
49. Joel Kovel The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (London: Zed Books, 2002)
50. and Saad-Filho, op. cit.
51. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944)
52. John G. Ruggie, "International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order," International Organization, 36, 1982.
53. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Heidegger et "les juifs" (Paris: Galilleé, 1988).
54. Rist, op. cit.
55. Michael Perelman, "The History of Capitalism," in Saad-Filho, op. cit.
56. Wood, in Saad-Filho, op. cit.
57. and Stefan Andreasson, "Stand and Deliver: Private Property and the Politics of Global Dispossession," Political Studies, 54, 1, 2006 (forthcoming).
58. Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Smith, "The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China," Monthly Review, 51, 9, 2000.
59. For vivid accounts of the violence associated with capitalist expansion in early industrial England and beyond, see Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990 [1867])
60. and E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968).
61. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington: Howard University Press, 1972). For all its manifest anachronisms - e.g., Hoxha's Albania as a great example of progress and development - Rodney's book remains a lucid statement of how, under capitalism, development for some generates underdevelopment for others.
62. Robert Biel, The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradictions in North/ South Relations (London: Zed Books, 2000).
63. Biel, quoted in Saul, op. cit., p. 194. Whereas mass consumption is an integral part of more or less all people's lives in the North, mass consumption in the South is relegated to a relatively small segment of the population or, where it extends beyond wealthy elites, to somewhat frequent consumption of a lesser selection of cheaper/inferior goods.
64. Kenneth Waltz, "Globalization and American Power," The National Interest, 59, Spring, 2000, p. 56.
65. Crawford Young, "The End of the Post-colonial State in Africa? Reflections on Changing African Political Dynamics," African Affairs, 103, 410, 2004, p. 27.
66. See also Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) on the reproduction of the colonial in the post-colonial African state.
67. Young, op. cit., p. 30.
68. Ibid., p. 37.
69. Ibid., p. 48.
70. Ian Taylor, "Globalization and Regionalization in Africa: Reactions to Attempts at Neoliberal Regionalism," Review of International Political Economy, 10, 2, 2003, p. 312.
71. On increasing conditionalities in Western policy prescriptions for the South, see Andreasson, 2003, op. cit., pp. 388-89.
72. Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Report on Africa 2002: Tracking Performance and Progress (Addis Ababa: Economic Commission for Africa, 2002), p. 29.
73. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2003 Development Co-operation Report (OECD, 2003).
74. OECD, "OECD Report Shows Rising Aid Flows but More Effort Needed to Reach Monterrey Goals," January 28, 2004 online at: http://www.oecd.org/document/19/ 0,2340,en_2649_34487_25612371_1_1_1_37413,00.html.
75. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet, February 2005, online at: http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/Fact-Sheet- U-S-Federal-Funding-for-HIV-AIDS-The-FY-2006-Budget-Request.pdf
76. On using increasingly elaborate international regulation of trade and property rights to restrict the options for countries in the South to pursue effective development strategies, see Robert Hunter Wade, "What Strategies are Viable for Developing Countries Today? The World Trade Organization and the Shrinking of 'Development Space,'" Review of International Political Economy, 10, 4, 2003.
77. On the goals of Cancun, see James D. Wolfensohn, "A Good 'Pro-Poor' Cancun Could Help Rich as Well," Financial Times, September 8, 2003.
78. The demand for better access to Western markets is a stopgap measure to deal with problems in the global economy as currently constituted. It does not address the more fundamental question of whether any free trade environment can foster broad-based development in countries that have already fallen so far behind in the capitalist era.
79. "Africa at Large: EU Farm Chief Slams Poor Nations' Demands," Mail & Guardian, September 5, 2003.
80. Ibid.
81. For example, Niall Fergusson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2003).
82. R. W. Johnson, "Sooner or Later Africa Must Face Some Form of Recolonization," The Daily Telegraph, May 22, 2002.
83. On the perpetuation of underdevelopment during the 1990s across most of the Global South, see Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, "How Did the World's Poorest Fare in the 1990s?" in Development Research Group (ed.), Capitalisme (Karthala: The World Bank, 2000)
84. and Ravallion, op. cit.
85. de Soto, op. cit.
86. Amin, cited in John Loxley, "Imperialism & Economic Reform in Africa: What's New About the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)?" Review of African Political Economy, 30, 95, 2003, p. 119.
87. Rist, op. cit., pp. 44-45.
88. Ibid., p. 240.
89. World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report 2002, online at: http://www.panda.org/downloads/general/LPR2002Summary.pdf.
90. Ibid.
91. United States Census Bureau, World Population Profile: 1998 (Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 1998)
92. United Nations Population Information Network (UNPOPIN), World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision (New York: UNPOPIN, 2002).
93. Bush, quoted in Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 2.
94. Dudley Seers, "The Limitations of the Special Case," Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics Bulletin, 25, 2, 1963.
95. In this case of ignoring the obviously disastrous impact of human activities on the environment, the "Emperor" - best symbolized by the current President Bush giving the imperial thumbs down to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change - really has no clothes.
96. For a perspective on ecological limits from the early industrial age, see Thomas Malthus, An Essay On the Principle of Population and A Summary View of the Principle of Population (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970).
97. For more recent concerns, see UNDP "World Summit on Sustainable Development: Political Declaration," September 4, 2002, online at: http://basd.free.fr/docs/pol_dec.pdf.
98. Saul, op. cit., p. 200.
99. Constructive, and guardedly optimistic, (socialist/communist) frameworks for change are provided by Michael Lebowitz, "Transcending Capitalism: The Adequacy of Marx's Recipe," and Paresh Chattopadhyay, "Towards a Society of Free and Associated Individuals: Communism," in Saad-Filho, op. cit.
100. On "fascist relations" immanent in global capitalism today, see Rajeev Patel and Philip McMichael, "Third Worldism and the Lineages of Global Fascism: The Regrouping of the Global South in the Neoliberal Era," Third World Quarterly, 25, 1, 2004.
101. For example, see Project for a New American Century, "Statement of Principles," June 3, 1997, online at: http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm.
102. Maxine Frith, "Global Trade Keeps a Billion Children in Poverty, says Unicef," The Independent, October 22, 2003.
103. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 585
104. Saul, op. cit., p. 190.