Globalisation:
Globalisation:
Issues in World Change.
The Dependency Thesis
As I briefly indicated during the last few weeks, the modernisation thesis, despite it's dominance in the policy making and economic organisations which wield considerable power around the globe, is not the only analytical model used to make sense of the contemporary world.
I have also indicated that the elegant simplicity of the model is part of paucity of its adequacy as an explanatory paradigm. The rival perspective not surprisingly is considerably more conceptually complex and more often than not more obtusely written. This however is the key to its strength of illustrative power rather than a weakness.
Whilst the majority of the writers within the dependency school are modern, by which I mean post-war, the most influential text within the perspective was actually written in 1913 in response to the world wide economic crisis which preceded the first world war.
Lenin's "Imperialism -the Highest Stage of Capitalism" posits that that the brief period of voracious territorial imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century known today as the "Scramble for Africa" was in fact a response to the fundamental dynamics and conflicts within the rapidly internationalising capitalist economic system.
If Lenin provides the starting point for much of the work of dependency theorists it is to be expected that the underlying assumptions of the perspective bear some relation to the tradition of social theory which has drawn inspiration from the works of Karl Marx. Indeed one of the most commonplace criticisms of the Marxist traditions is that the broad sweep of Marxist thought is overtly Eurocentric.
Many of the origins of dependency theorists give an indication that particular point of critique is no longer applicable to their work- many influential writers are in fact citizens of the third world themselves. One of the most lucid and accessible of the theorists within the school is A G Frank who, although born in Berlin in 1929, has been directly responsible for translation and commentary on many important writers, notably from Latin America. In addition to his interpretive work Frank is also a considerable theorist in his own right.
Perhaps the best introduction to the dependency theory can be directly quoted from Frank's "Crisis In the World Economy" (Heinemann 1980). As with many others he attempts to locate the specificity of the current crisis within historical and socioeconomic circumstances, this is indeed almost a prerequisite for any theorist working within the Marxist tradition.
Since 1967 the industrial West (including Japan and Australasia) has entered into another long crisis of overaccumulation of Capital, analogous to the great crisis of 1873 to 1895, and to the long crisis from 1913 to the 1940s, which included the Great Depression of the 1930s, fascism, revolution and two world wars. The new economic crisis is marked by excess productive capacity and a decline in the rate of profit, which militate against new investment except to reduce costs of production by making workers redundant at home and moving production sites to cheap labour areas elsewhere. Major investments in technological innovations and new leading industries cannot take place again until the profit rate is raised again through political action. Recessions in 1967, 1969 to 1971, 1973 to 1975 and since 1979 have become more frequent, deeper and increasingly coordinated throughout the industrial capitalist countries, Unemployment in these countries has from 5 million in the first of these recessions to 10 million in the second and 15 million in the third...( A G Frank p20).
There are no allusions to value freedom in the dependency school: Samir Amin, Frank, Dos Santos make no attempt to disguise their analysis as anything other than a rallying call for revolutionary change in the International economic system. Indeed many writers and theorists who have been influential in the perspective have been actively involved in revolutionary struggle or armed movements for national liberation from colonial domination (for example F. Fanon, F Castro) Indeed dependency theory can be viewed as an extension of the Marxist theory of Imperialism- but approached from the point of view of the dependent nations rather than from the European metropoles. T Dos Santos ( in "Underdevelopment in Historical Perspective" T Dos Santos) probably provides us with the most comprehensive definition as to what is meant by the term dependence the practical outcome for all dependency theorists is problematic in the extreme.
In the first place dependence is a conditioning situation in which the economies of one group of countries are conditioned by the development and expansion of others. A relationship of interdependence between two or more economies or between such economies and the world trading system becomes a dependent relationship when some countries can expand through self- impulsion while others , being in a dependent position can only expand as a reflection of the expansion of the dominant countries which may have positive or negative effects on their immediate development. In either case, the basic situation of dependence causes these countries to be both backward and exploited. Dominant countries are endowed with technological, commercial, capital and sociopolitical predominance over dependent countries....Dependence then, is based upon an international division of labour which allows industrial development to takes place in some countries while restricting it in others, whose growth is conditioned by and subjected to the power centres of the world.(Dos Santos p77)
I have placed some emphasis on the term conditioning situation as this term really requires considerable clarification. A conditioning situation is one in which the actions of men and women or collectives of men and women are limited by the constraints of that situation. We can either accept these limits and attempt to learn to operate within them - accepting a position of dependence and inferiority or we can make a concerted attempt to change the situation itself.
Frank, Dos Santos, and others all argue that it is only by global revolutionary change that the limits to action can be dismantled. To quote directly from Dos Santos again
"For if dependence defines the internal situation and is structurally linked to it, a country cannot simply break out of it by isolating herself from external influences; such action would simply provoke chaos in a society which is of its essence dependent. The only solution therefore would be to change its internal structure -a course which leads to confrontation with the existing international power groups."
