More on the Tricontinental Institute’s call for a New Development Theory that does not keep the poor in poverty

INTRODUCTION

Today’s column continues consideration of the circular communication sent to me by the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research, a network of research bodies in the Global South which, urges my contribution towards the construction of “a new development theory that did not leave the poor trapped in their poverty”.

In last week’s presentation I referred to the theory known as the “non-capitalist path of development”, NCD, which was the original and leading development paradigm of the Tricontinental Institute. I shall expand on the NCD in what follows.

More on the Institute’s Appeal

The Institute posits that a fair reading of the United Nations, along with leading Western academic literature on development theory and practice, is depressing. This is because, ultimately, their “conversation” is trapped within the strictures of an intractable and permanent debt crisis. Whether, the issue of debt is highlighted or ignored, its existence forecloses the possibility of any genuine advance for the world’s poor. For such reasons reports on the present predicament often end with a moral call. By this is meant, what should happen, rather than a rigorous assessment based on the neo-colonial structure of the world economy.

In that structure developing countries endowed with rich holdings of resources find themselves unable to earn just prices for their exports. Consequently, they do not accumulate sufficient wealth to industrialize with their own population’s well-being in mind. Further they cannot finance the social goods required for their population. Due to this suffocation from debt, and due also to the impoverishment of academic development theory, no effective general theoretical orientation has been provided to guide realistic and holistic development agendas, and no outlines seem readily available for an exit from the permanent debt-austerity cycle.

The Institute states it is eager to open a wider discussion about the need for a new socialist development theory – one that is built from the projects being pursued by peoples’ movements and progressive governments. As part of such a fuller discussion the Institute published a dossier entitled, The World Needs a New Socialist Development Theory, which it argues would survey the terrain of development theory from 1945 to the present and offer a new development paradigm.

Starting with the facts would require an acknowledgement of the problems of debt and deindustrialization, the reliance upon primary product exports, the reality of transfer pricing and other instruments employed by multinational corporations to squeeze the royalties from the exporting states, the difficulties of implementing new and comprehensive industrial strategies, and the need to build the technological, scientific, and bureaucratic capacities of populations in most of the world.

These facts have been hard to overcome by governments in the Global South, although now – with the emergence of the new South-South institutions and China’s global initiatives – these governments have more choices than in decades past and are no longer as dependent on the Western-controlled financial and trade institutions. These new realities demand the formulation of new development theories, new assessments of the possibilities of and pathways to transcending the obstinate facts of social despair. In other words, what has been put back on the table is the necessity for national planning and regional cooperation as well as the fight to produce a better external environment for finance and trade.

Non-capitalist Path of Development

In this section I offer a few comments on the “non-capitalist path of development” (NCD). This was proposed by development theorists from socialist bloc countries as a political economy alternative to capitalist and populist development strategies. The Institute posits that NCD theory and strategy, as well as its practitioners offer a conception of development that goes beyond the prevailing socio -economic determinism to include politics and class struggle as part of the development process in those least developed Third World countries where the “revolutionary democrats” hold state power. The NCD strategy argues that if this leadership is “vigorously” supported by the parties of the working classes and by the socialist countries, it can bring about a non-capitalist transformation of the socioeconomic formation, as a result of which the objective and/or subjective conditions for a socialist revolution would be prepared.

I find the NCD strategy more radical than its rivals with respect to its treatment of such issues as imperialism, internal politics and socioeconomic transformation. However, it suffers from a number of misconceptions, particularly about the nature of the impact of imperialism on the Third World, the class structure and conflict in these societies, the nature of the state.

The general understanding of NCD was that post-colonial societies could circumvent capitalism and advance through a national-democratic process to socialism. NCD theory, which was developed at international conferences of communist and workers’ parties and elaborated upon by Soviet scholars such as Rostislav A. Ulyanovsky and Sergei Tiulpanov in journals like the World Marxist Review, was centred on three transformations:

Agrarian reform, to lift the peasantry out of its condition of destitution and to break the power of landlords.

The nationalisation of key economic sectors, such as industry and trade, to restrict the power of foreign monopolies.

The democratisation of political structures, education, and healthcare to lay the socio-political foundations for socialism.

Compared to the import-substitution industrialisation policy advanced by institutions such as the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, NCD theory had a much firmer understanding of the need to democratise society rather than to merely turn around the terms of trade.

Conclusion

Readers would recall, last week I indicated that I would] circulate the main propositions advanced in the Tricontinental Institute’s circular and 2] revisit issues related to cash transfers, considered priority in this extended column series on Guyana’s emerging oil and gas sector. The second task will be addressed next week.