Critical Development Studies

Critical Development Studies: An Introduction

Critical Development Studies: An Introduction Henry Veltmeyer & Raúl Delgado Wise

critical development studies

Fernwood Publishing — Halifax & Winnipeg Practical Action Publishing

Copyright © 2018 Henry Veltmeyer and Raúl Delgado Wise All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Editing: Mark Rushton and Brenda Conroy Design: John van der Woude, jvdw Designs Printed and bound in Canada Published in North America by Fernwood Publishing 32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0 and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3 www.fernwoodpublishing.ca Published in the rest of the world by Practical Action Publishing Schumacher Centre, Bourton on Dunsmore, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV23 9QZ, UK Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Veltmeyer, Henry, author Critical development studies: an introduction / Henry Veltmeyer and Raúl Delgado Wise. (Critical development studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-77363-050-2 (softcover) 1. Economic development—Developing countries. 2. Capitalism. I. Delgado Wise, Raúl, 1950–, author II. Title. HC59.7.V45 2018 338.9’0091724 C2017-907909-3

Contents

Acronyms..................................................................................................viii Critical Development Studies Series........................................................ ix Series Editors ............................................................................................. xi Introduction................................................................................................1 1 Critical Development Studies...............................................................9 Launching the Development Project: Developmentalism in the 1950s and 1960s........................................10 Saving Capitalism from Itself: A Decade of Liberal Reform – the 1970s............................................12 The Conservative Counterrevolution of the 1980s................................14 Beyond Economics: The 1990s..................................................................14 Critical Counterpoints in Development Studies and an Agenda for the 21st Century....................................................15 2 Contradictions of Capitalism.............................................................26 The Fundamental Contradictions of Capitalism....................................26 Capitalist Development and the Agrarian Question.............................30 The Inequality Problematic.........................................................................32 New Developmentalism and the Post-Neoliberal State........................41 A New Development Model for the Post-Neoliberal State..................42 New Millennium Marxism: The Globalizing and Regional Dynamics of Capitalism Today....................................45 Conclusion.....................................................................................................49

3 Class and Development.......................................................................54 Different Forms of Class Analysis..............................................................55 Class as a Social Relation of Development in Latin America...............57 The Middle Class Conundrum: What and Where Is It?.......................58 The Super-Rich and All the Rest................................................................61 Class as the Politics of Struggle and Resistance......................................64 4 The Agrarian Question Today.............................................................67 The Global Land Grab.................................................................................67 Dynamics of Primitive Accumulation: Capitalist Development as Dispossession..........................................71 The New Geoeconomics of Capital and the Dynamics of Agrarian Change...............................................76 Food versus Energy: The Political Economy of Biofuels Capitalism..................................80 The Soy Model of Extractive Capitalism in Agriculture........................82 Conclusion.....................................................................................................90 5 Capitalism, Migration and Development..........................................94 Types of Migrants.........................................................................................94 Migration from a Political Economy Perspective...................................95 Theories of the Development Dynamics of Migration..........................97 Internal Migration Dynamics.....................................................................97 Development Pathways Out of Rural Poverty..................................... 100 The Migration-Development Nexus: Dynamics of International Migration............................................... 102 Dynamics of the International Migrant Labour Market.................... 103 The Neoliberal Policy Dynamics of the Migration-Development Nexus............................................. 104 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 106 6 Imperialism, Globalization and Development................................109 The New Imperialism: Morphology of Neoliberal Capitalism......... 110 The Labour Question Today.................................................................... 112 The Mushrooming of Unequal Development...................................... 113 Forced Migration within the New International Division of Labour............................................. 114 The Win-Win-Win Fiction....................................................................... 116 Towards an Alternative Agenda.............................................................. 117

7 Alternative Development and the Social Economy........................123 The Neoliberal Pivot of the Social Economy........................................ 124 The Social Economy and the Cooperative Movement in Latin America................................................................................... 127 Community-Based Local Development and the Social Economy... 132 The Social and Solidarity Economy in Venezuela............................... 134 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 137 8 Confronting the Capitalist Hydra....................................................141 Capitalism, Class Struggle and Resistance: Dynamics of Social Change................................................................ 141 Peasant Farmers and the Indigenous Communities in Resistance.. 143 Capitalism and Resistance on the Extractive Frontier....................... 145 Narco-Capitalism as a “War on the People”......................................... 148 Another Development, or an Alternative to Development?............. 152 What Is to Be Done: Confronting the Capitalist Hydra.................... 160 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 165 Index.........................................................................................................172 Acknowledgements.................................................................................178

Acronyms

anteag National Association of Workers in Self-Managed Companies (Brazil) bric Brazil, Russia, India, China carsi Central American Regional Security Initiative cbld community-based local development cds critical development studies cepr Centre for Economic Policy Research cides Post-Graduate Programme in Development Studies claes Latin American Centre on Social Ecology conaie Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador csos Community Social Organizations eclac Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean eps social production enterprises (Venezuela) erts enterprises recovered by their workers eu European Union ezln Zapatista Army of National Liberation fao Food and Agriculture Organization farc Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia fdi foreign direct investment flacso Latin American Social Sciences Institute gatt General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade gdp gross domestic product glca general law of capital accumulation gmos genetically modified organisms gnp gross national product ilo International Labour Organization imf International Monetary Fund iom International Organization for Migration

Acronyms ix

mdgs mncs mst nafta ngos nics ocmal oecd par prealc

Millennium Development Goals multinational corporations Movement of Landless Rural Workers North American Free Trade Agreement non-governmental organizations newly industrializing countries Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development participatory action research Regional Employment Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean prsps Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers r&d research and development saps structural adjustment programs sres socially responsible enterprises sse social and solidarity economy ssee social, solidarity and ecological economies unctad United Nations Conference on Trade and Development undesa United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs undp United Nations Development Programme unrisd United Nations Research Institute for Social Development usaid United States Agency for International Development wipo World Intellectual Property Organization wto World Trade Organization

Critical Development Studies Series

Three decades of uneven capitalist development and neoliberal globalization have devastated the economies, societies, livelihoods and lives of people around the world, especially those in societies of the global South. Now more than ever, there is a need for a more critical, proactive approach to the study of global and development studies. The challenge of advancing and disseminating such an approach — to provide global and development studies with a critical edge — is on the agenda of scholars and activists from across Canada and the world and those who share the concern and interest in effecting progressive change for a better world. This series provides a forum for the publication of small books in the interdisciplinary field of critical development studies — to generate knowledge and ideas about transformative change and alternative development. The editors of the series welcome the submission of original manuscripts that focus on issues of concern to the growing worldwide community of activist scholars in this field. Critical development studies (cds) encompasses a broad array of issues ranging from the sustainability of the environment and livelihoods, the political economy and sociology of social inequality, alternative models of local and community-based development, the land and resource-grabbing dynamics of extractive capital, the subnational and global dynamics of political and economic power, and the forces of social change and resistance, as well as the contours of contemporary struggles against the destructive operations and ravages of capitalism and imperialism in the twenty-first century. The books in the series are designed to be accessible to an activist readership as well as the academic community. The intent is to publish a series of small books (54,000 words, including bibliography, endnotes, index and front matter) on some of the biggest issues in the interdisciplinary field of critical development studies. To this end, activist scholars from across the

Critical Development Studies Series xi

world in the field of development studies and related academic disciplines are invited to submit a proposal or the draft of a book that conforms to the stated aim of the series. The editors will consider the submission of complete manuscripts within the 54,000-word limit. Potential authors are encouraged to submit a proposal that includes a rationale and short synopsis of the book, an outline of proposed chapters, one or two sample chapters, and a brief biography of the author(s).

Series Editors

Henry Veltmeyer is a research professor at Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas (Mexico) and professor emeritus of International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University (Canada), with a specialized interest in Latin American development. He is also co-chair of the Critical Development Studies Network and a co-editor of Fernwood’s Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies series. The cds Handbook: Tools for Change (Fernwood, 2011) was published in French by University of Ottawa Press as Des outils pour le changement : Une approche critique en études du développement and in Spanish as Herramientas para el Cambio, with funding from Oxfam UK by cides, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia. Annette Aurélie Desmarais is the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty at the University of Manitoba (Canada). She is the author of La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (Fernwood, 2007), which has been republished in French, Spanish, Korean, Italian and Portuguese. She is co-editor of Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (Fernwood, 2010); Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems (Fernwood, 2011), and Public Policies for Food Sovereignty: Social Movements and the State (Routledge, in press). Raúl Delgado Wise is a research professor and director of the PhD program in Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas (Mexico). He holds the prestigious unesco Chair on Migration and Development and is executive director of the International Migration and Development Network, as well as author and editor of some twenty books and more than a hundred essays. He is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and editor of the book series, Latin America and the New World Order, for Miguel Angel Porrúa publishers and chief editor of the journal Migración y Desarrollo. He is also a member of the international working group, People’s Global Action on Migration Development and Human Rights.

Introduction

W

elcome to the introductory volume of a new Fernwood series on critical development studies that provides an overview of some key development studies issues. This introductory volume provides an overview and focuses on what the authors regard as some of the key issues of development studies from a critical perspective. These and other issues of critical development studies (the study of development from a critical perspective) will be taken up and addressed in subsequent volumes in this series of small books. As for this volume, the first issue has to do with knowledge and development — different ways of thinking about development within both the mainstream of development thought and alternative currents of critical theory, as well as the role of ideas and knowledge in the development process. At the level of theory, the study of development in its origins was dominated by economics, a body of ideas advanced almost entirely within the intellectual culture of angloeconomics (works originally written in English by economists living predominantly in the UK)1 and by a series of so-called “development pioneers” (pioneers of development economics). These pioneers of economic development theory broke away from the dominant school of neoclassical economics, according to which the principles of economics were universally applicable. In contrast, they advanced the idea that the economic structure of the “economically backward” countries in what was then viewed as a “third world” (as opposed to the “first world” of advanced capitalist countries and the “second world” of socialist countries) was fundamentally different. The implication was that the “development” of these countries would require both substantive social change (modernization and institutional reform) — and international cooperation. In this post-war context (the 1950s and 1960s), it was increasingly recognized (even by some of these pioneering development economists) that

2 Critical Development Studies: An Introduction

the development process was multidimensional and far too complex for its dynamics to be grasped solely in economic terms. Soon enough, sociologists, political scientists and other social scientists entered the fray, contributing a multiplicity of ideas regarding the social, political and other (ecological, cultural) dimensions of the development process. By the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the multidisciplinary study of development had resulted in a solid body of working ideas and theories regarding the diverse dimensions of the development process, which became the subject matter of academic curricula in departments of economics, sociology, political science and other academic disciplines all over the English- and non-English-speaking world. But there was relatively little crossdisciplinary fertilization of these ideas, which led to calls for an interdisciplinary approach to development studies, followed by the growth of academic programs committed to an integrated interdisciplinary — and critical — approach to the study of development. Thus was born critical development studies (cds). Related to the question of how to think about development and the role of ideas in the development process are the form and content of development discourse — different ways of thinking about development within the mainstream of the development project. In recent years, much mainstream development discourse has sought to co-opt and neutralize such key concepts as empowerment, participation, gender, sustainability and inclusivity to serve a market-driven, neoliberal agenda. Critical development studies plays a crucial role in combatting this obfuscation of the actual agenda of the development profession and associated “industry” by analyzing the systemic changes needed to transform the current world order of capitalist development to an alternative system where economic and social justice and environmental integrity prevail. The second critical issue in the study of development is the nature and workings of the dominant system, namely capitalism, which some theorists describe as the “world capitalist system.” Within the mainstream of development thought and practice this system is so taken for granted that it is not the subject of scientific enquiry and never even appears in theoretical discourse. It is simply assumed that capitalism provides the system requirements for activating the development process, and that both the theory and practice of development can be constructed and reconstructed without any reference to an alternative system. Thus, development and capitalism are not only coterminous, but they are virtually synonymous. This is where cds plays an important role since it is founded on the the contrary idea that capitalism is the problem and that development, understood as progress in the direction of improving the social condition of an identified population — requires

Introduction 3

either transformative change (an overhaul of the system) or abandonment of capitalism in favour of an alternative system. With this understanding, the aim of cds is to unveil and deconstruct the ideology of capitalism and the supposed benefits of economic liberalization, comparative advantage, free markets, deregulation and privatization. Chapter 2 advances this idea by discussing the difference between the myth and the reality of capitalism. It identifies the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system, which lead to a propensity towards crisis and which undermine the concerted efforts of development agencies to eradicate poverty and improve the social condition of people all over the world. Although recognized, this failing of the capitalist system is usually ignored by theorists and architects of the development process in the mainstream of both academic study and development practice. One of the fundamental sources of this knowledge is a theory constructed by Karl Marx about capital and the workings of the system. As with all theories, it does not explain everything about capitalism; instead it aims to identify the dynamics that have unfolded in different historical and regional contexts. For cds, it provides a powerful analytical tool. In his famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1993 [1859]), Marx outlined a set of principles, collectively referred to as historical materialism, that serve as a framework for the scientific study of society. (Hitherto, the study of society was based on speculation and surmise rather than a disciplined study of the “facts.”2) The scientific study of society is predicated on the assumption that individuals do not choose to whom and where they are born and that as they grow and participate in society they enter into social relations that are generally given to them according to their economic and social position. The term that is normally used to define this position and location in the broader economic system, and to describe the associated social conditions, is social class. However, there are diverse conceptions of class and different ideas about the social and economic conditions associated with the social or class structure of society, and the resulting forces of resistance and struggle. To reflect this diversity, Chapter 3 distinguishes between four methods of class analysis, each with some analytical utility depending on the issue addressed and one’s theoretical perspective. The chapter elaborates on these points, considering a number of critical issues. The first relates to the question of method: what is the best method for an analysis of the dynamics associated with the development process? We make a case for the superior utility of a Marxist conception of class based on the relationship of different individuals in society to the social production process. Since it is the


capitalist system that underpins the different relationships to production in most societies today, we argue that the capital-labour relation and the classes defined by this relation are the most important factors in any class analysis of the fundamental dynamics of development. The second issue relates to the “middle class”: what is it and what role does it play in the development process? Third, we discuss the excessive inequalities generated by free market capitalism, and fourth, we examine the political response of different class groupings to these conditions and forces. Chapter 4 shifts to the “agrarian question,” which is central to capitalist development because society’s forces of production derive from a process of “primitive,” or original, accumulation of capital. This accumulation requires the separation of the direct producers — small landholding “peasant” farmers who produce for subsistence or local markets — from the land and their means of production. Under this condition, agriculture makes a vital contribution to capitalist development by providing the capitalist class a virtually unlimited supply of cheap, surplus rural labour, thereby fuelling industrialization based on the exploitation of the working class’s labour power. The agrarian question takes various forms and has evolved in different regional and historical contexts, but it essentially involves the social transformation of dispossessed peasant farmers and small-landholding agricultural producers into a working class. Individuals and families who have been dispossessed from their means of production are compelled to exchange their labour power for a living wage. Chapter 4 focuses on the contemporary dynamics of this process as they play out on the “periphery” — parts of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Chapter 5 expands on the capitalist development process in terms of the dynamics of the “migration-development nexus.” This nexus raises several questions relating to role of migration in the capitalist development process and, conversely, the role of development in the migration process. These dynamics are discussed at two levels: internal, rural-urban migration and the contemporary phenomenon of international or cross-border labour migration. Chapter 6 shifts the focus to the process of nation-building in societies on the periphery of the world capitalist system, and the role of the nation state in bringing about and advancing the capitalist development process, that is, “development” as understood in the mainstream of international development studies and institutions. The essential role of the state in the development process cannot be overemphasized. In mainstream development studies, the state is conceived and described as an agency of development, referring to a long and at times heated debate among economists and

Introduction 5

political scientists as to the relative role and weight of the market and the state. In the field of critical development studies, however, the discussion extends well beyond this question of institutional development to focus on the system dynamics of capitalism. Thus, the central focus is not on the role of the state in developing countries, but on the role of the state in the advanced capitalist states vis-à-vis developing countries. Theorists of critical development studies use the concept of imperialism, which is understood as the projection of the state’s powers to advance the interests of the capitalist class (presented as the “national interest”) in maintaining their hegemonic control over the world system and subjugating less developed societies on the periphery to their will and policies. The intimate relations of the state to capital and imperialism to capitalism are the objects of intense theoretical and political debates. The relationship between the imperialist state system and the development of nations that are subjected to the power of the imperial state is discussed in terms of the contemporary expansion of extractive capital, i.e., foreign investments in the acquisition of land and access to natural resource wealth of societies on the periphery for the purpose of extracting them to meet the demand for these resources on the world market. The advance and operations of this extractive capital in the contemporary context — its dynamics can be traced out in the five hundred years of European expansion and colonial history — are contingent on the active support provided by the states that make up the imperialist system. To reconstruct the history of capitalist development and decipher the role of the state, imperialism and the contemporary dynamics of this process, a theory of imperialism is particularly useful in the study of development from a critical perspective. The formulation of this theory within the framework of development studies can be traced back to the pioneering work of the eminent British scholar John A. Hobson, who, in 1902, published a controversial book titled Imperialism: A Study (Hobson, 1964 [1902]). A few years later, in 1916, relying in good part on Hobson’s insightful observations on British imperialism, as well as Marx’s historical analysis of the development of capitalism, Vladimir I. Lenin published a provocative exposé of global capitalism, titled Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, to explain the dynamics of monopoly capitalism operating on a global scale. Nearly a century later, we find ourselves in the midst of an intense debate on the relationship between capitalist imperialism, or imperialist capitalism, of the early to mid 20th century and neoliberal capitalist globalization of the late 20th and early 21st centuries (Berberoglu, 2005). Referencing a powerful critique of globalization and development stud-


ies published under the title Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism of the 21st Century (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001), sociologist Berch Berberoglu (2005) argues that such critiques of neoliberalization, together with a rise of activism among popular social movements protesting this development, have led to a new wave of debate and generated further study into the dynamics of global capitalism and imperialism today. With reference to some of these studies and within the framework of an updated theory of imperialism and extractive capitalist development, the main concern and central focus of Chapter 6 is on three issues: (1) the destructive operations of extractive capital in regard to the economy, society and the environment; (2) the development outcomes and implications of extractive capital as well as the economic model used by governments in both the global North and South to inform their policies and construct their national development plans; and (3) the forces of resistance generated in response to these impacts. Chapter 7 takes us to the dynamics of local development (within the capitalist system and the nation state). The main concern is to make sense of the emergence and proliferation of diverse experiments in the construction of a social and solidarity economy on the periphery of the system (Latin America in this case). Just as the Mexican Revolution in the 1930s gave rise to a local development movement based on cooperativism and workers’ self-management, the Zapatista uprising in 1994 stimulated a series of experiments across the region in the construction of a social and solidarity economy based on local development. The capitalist development process wherever it has unfolded — and today the system operates worldwide — has generated forces of resistance and proposals for alternative development (different pathways or “progress” within the institutional framework of the existing capitalist system) and alternatives to development (anti-systemic alternatives). This chapter entails a brief overview of the dynamics associated with these alternative proposals and conceptions of local development. The question regarding the nature and workings of the powerful forces of resistance to the advance of capital and capitalism in its current neoliberal form is left to the concluding chapter of this volume. Resistance to the predations of capitalism takes many different forms, including oppositional electoral politics, street protests, marches on public buildings (reflecting the concern with changing current policies) and above all, the formation of social movements designed to mobilize the forces of resistance. Over the years, diverse theories have been constructed and advanced regarding the dynamics of these movements, some of them concerned to bring about

Introduction 7

change within the system and others to change the system itself. Latin America is a veritable laboratory of experiments, with alternative models and different ways of thinking associated with the forces of resistance against neoliberalism and capitalism, extractivism and what we describe as drugwar capitalism, a system designed to push forward the expanding frontier of extractive capital. Chapter 8 deconstructs the thinking behind these diverse forces of resistance and associated proposals and political practice. More generally this chapter discusses the dynamics of this popular resistance movement, particularly the ideas the Zapatistas have advanced as to how to “confront the capitalist hydra.” Chapter 8 gives particular attention to one particular movement that was defeated in the 1980s, having succumbed to the double onslaught of state repression and “international cooperation” with development, but reemerged — literally exploded on the political landscape of Chiapas, Mexico, on January 1, 1994, the precise day when the governments of the US, Canada and Mexico implemented nafta, a free trade agreement encompassing the three North American countries. The movement in question is the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ezln, in its Spanish acronym), which mobilized the resistance of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples and communities to the advance and destructive operations of capital on their livelihoods and communities. nafta represented the death knell of their economy and way of life. As the Zapatistas saw it, the implementation of this agreement was a declaration of war, and in any war the option provided by the aggressor is surrender (give up on their livelihoods, communities and way of life) or resist. The Zapatistas chose to resist, although their resistance in the form of armed force was more symbolic than real (clearly, they had no expectation of defeating the forces of the state and empire ranged against them). In any case, the Zapatista uprising inspired several generations of Indigenous peoples and other objects and victims of the destructive operations of capitalism not only in Mexico and Latin America but all over the world. Notes

1. This anglocentric bias in the study and theories of economic development is understood by the editors of a handbook of development economics as follows: “[A] massive two-volume work on economic development edited by two World Bank economists, the 1988 Handbook of Development Economics, devoted a chapter to the history of ideas of economic development. With the exception of Irish-born Richard Cantillon, who wrote in French, the chapter in question — written by the celebrated development economist W. Arthur Lewis — only contains references to works originally written in English by people living in


the United Kingdom. It is written as if only authors who originally wrote in English, and were from England, have anything valuable to say about economic development” (Reinert, Ghosh and Kattel, 2016). 2. In this conception of historical materialism, Marx followed Auguste Comte, who, in The Course in Positive Philosophy (1853), fathered the discipline of sociology as the scientific study of the social facts. Comte and Marx fundamentally agreed as to the need for “objectivity” in the study of the world as it is rather than speculating on “what could or ought to be.” The difference between Comte’s “positivism” and historical materialism is in their basic assumptions — and general theory — regarding the structure and history of society. 3. On this development (the defeat of these revolutionary movements formed as armies of national liberation), see Veltmeyer (2005). References

Berberoglu, B. (2005). Globalization and Change: The Transformation of Global Capitalism. Lanham, md Lexington Books. Chenery, H., and T. Srinivasan.(1988). Handbook of Development Economics. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. Hobson, J.A. (1964 [1902]). Imperialism: A Study. Cosimo Inc. Comte, A. (1853). The Course in Positive Philosophy. . Lenin, V.I. (1948 [1916])). Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K. (1993 [1859]). “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” On-line version: Marx.org 1993 (Preface, 1993); Marxists.org 1999. Petras, J., and H. Veltmeyer. (2001). Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism of the 21st Century. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Reinert, E., J. Ghosh and R. Kattel (eds.). (2016). Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development. Cheltenham Glos: Edward Elgar Publishers. Veltmeyer, H. (2005). “Development and Globalization as Imperialism.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies, xxvi, 1: 89–106.

# 1 Critical Development Studies

I

t has been argued (Sachs, 1992) that the idea of “development” in the post-Second World War era was invented as a geopolitical project to rescue countries recently liberated from the yoke of colonial rule away from the lure of communism, and to steer them along a capitalist path. It was in this context that Tucker (1999) could write of development as a form of imperialism, the imposition of an idea advanced in the interests of imperial rule. This notion of development — the provision of overseas financial and technical assistance to the “economically backward” countries — as the product of an East-West ideological conflict and a process of decolonization is arguable. For one thing, the idea of development has been traced as far back as the idea of “progress” formulated by the philosophes and historians of the 18th-century Scottish and French Enlightenments, and to the associated projects to create a “better, more just and modern society” via processes of industrialization and democratization based on equality, freedom and associated ideologies (Cowen and Shenton, 1995). Nevertheless, certain specificities of the post-war era justify the notion of a launch of the development project during this period. In any case, it is possible to identify six “development decades,” from around 1948, when President Truman launched his Point Four Program of International Cooperation, to the 2008 global financial crisis, which marked the beginnings of a new post-neoliberal — and possibly post-development — era. Over the course of these six decades of developmentalism, three under the aegis of the development state and three under the aegis of the Washington Consensus regarding the virtues of free market capitalism, the theory and practice of “development” evolved in a series of paradigmatic shifts both in the mainstream of development thinking and in several alternative side streams. The history of what we term critical development studies — diverse


ideas of alternative development and alternatives to development — can be traced out over the course (or curse!) of these six decades. From an idealist perspective, history can be viewed as the outcome of a struggle between conflicting and competing ideas — the “the dialectic of the idea,” in Hegel’s formulation. Karl Marx, however, stood Hegel’s dialectic on its head, viewing it as no more than a reflection and an idealist inversion of the way history unfolded in the real world. In either case, it is possible to trace out this history at two levels — in the real world, as a process of (capitalist) development of the forces of production and the corresponding changes in the social relations of production; and at the level of development theory, which can be seen as either the driving force of this development process or as a series of efforts at social scientific explanation. What follows is a brief reconstruction of the genealogy and contours of the development idea in terms of its evolution in the mainstream and in critical development studies (Munck and O’Hearn, 1999). The evolution of the development idea can be traced virtually decade by decade as a series of strategic responses to changing conditions — either in an effort to advance the development project (bring about a desired set of improvements in the lives and social condition of a defined population) or to reflect on the development implications and outcomes of these changing conditions and strategic actions. Launching the Development Project: Developmentalism in the 1950s and 1960s

As an idea, a field of study, and as a geopolitical project taken up by governments and international organizations in the North, “development” can be traced back to the late 1940s, with particular reference to the pioneering ideas of development economists in the “structuralist” rather than the “liberal” tradition (Rostow, 1960; Meier and Seers, 1984). This tradition had two strands. Scholars seeking economic development within the capitalist system, such as Walter Rostow (1960) and W. Arthur Lewis (1963 [1954]), dominated development thinking and practice at the time. However, the writings of political economists such as Paul Baran (1957), while less influential in development circles, laid the groundwork for critiques that would emerge in the 1970s (see Kay, 1989). In addition to the anti-colonial movements and associated nationalisms, and the emergence of an East-West ideological struggle and cold war, the basic context for this evolution in development theory was provided by a secular path of unprecedented rapid economic growth within the institutional

Critical Development Studies 11

framework of the “world economic order” set up at Bretton Woods.1 French historians in this context wrote of the “thirty glorious years,” while others did so in terms of the “golden age of capitalism” (Marglin and Schor, 1990). Within this geopolitical context and institutional framework, “development” was conceived in conditional terms as relative progress in per capita economic growth and in structural terms as industrialization and modernization. So conceived, “development” was defined primarily in economic terms and seen to entail the following: (1) an increase in the rate of savings and investment — the accumulation of physical and financial capital; (2) investment of this capital in industry (each unit of capital invested in industry in theory generating up to five times the rate of return on investment in agriculture, with strong multiplier effects on both incomes and employment); (3) in the absence or weakness of an endogenous capitalist class, the state assumes the basic “functions of capital” — investment, entrepreneurship and management; (4) the nationalization of economic enterprises in strategic industries and sectors; (5) an inward orientation of production, which, together with an increase in wages and salaries, would expand the domestic market; (6) regulation of this and other markets and the protection (and subsidized support) of the firms that produce for the market, insulating them from the competitive pressures of the world economy; and (7) modernization of the production apparatus, the state and social institutions, reorienting them towards values and norms that are functional for economic growth. This approach assumed that economic growth would only happen with the adoption of Western cultural and institutional practices (i.e., Western modernity) and would be led by states and their functionaries in both the South and North. Some political economists at the time, oriented towards an alternative socialist system, argued for centrally planned political and economic structures and questioned the benefits of capitalism, but like exponents of the more orthodox approach, accepted the key role of the state in economic development and the equation between economic growth and industrial/technological progress or modernization (Hirshman, 1995). Together, these ideas constituted a theoretical model that was used to inform analysis and government policy for at least the first two development decades (the 1950s and 1960s). In the 1970s, orthodox structural economics came under attack from a number of directions. It is in this period that a number of different approaches to development began to take shape. We now turn to their emergence, interaction and debates — a process that has dominated development debates and practice(s) from the 1970s to the present.


Saving Capitalism from Itself: A Decade of Liberal Reform — the 1970s

In the 1970s, under conditions of a worldwide economic production crisis, the development project came under serious question, challenged from both the left, with proposals of revolutionary change, and the right, with proposals to halt and reverse the gains made by workers and smallholding producers at the expense of capital and the propertied class. The mainstream of development thinking was dominated by proponents of social reform who conceived of development in social rather than economic terms — as a policy and program of state-led social reforms to remedy situations of deprivation or poverty, the inability of people to meet their basic human needs (Adelman, 1986). At the same time, some of these scholars in the tradition of social liberalism began to call for a participatory, people-centred approach to development problems in the “third world” (Rahman, 1991). Thus, by the end of the decade the three schools of thought (economic modernization, social reformism and social liberalism) that defined and dominated the mainstream of development thinking and practice had taken form. On the left of the political spectrum a side stream of development thought emerged, oriented towards a belief in the need for radical or systemic change. These scholars turned towards both Marxism and Latin American “structuralism” to construct what came to be known as “dependency theory” (Kay, 1989; Palma, 1978). Within the framework of the centre-periphery model, constructed by the theorists of Latin American structuralism, dependency theorists such as Fernando Cardoso, Theotonio dos Santos and André Gunder Frank argued that development and underdevelopment were two sides of the same coin, and that socioeconomic conditions were inextricably linked to the position a country happened to occupy in the “world capitalist system.” Strictly speaking, “dependency” constituted a school of thought among likeminded scholars rather than a “theory.” It included Frank’s (1970) proposition that development in the metropole (the industrialized countries) was predicated on the “underdevelopment” of countries on the periphery — the “development of underdevelopment” in Frank’s controversial but popular formulation. Others argued that dependency was more a “situation” than a “structural condition,” a proposition encapsulated in the notion of a situation of “dependent associated capitalist development” (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979). According to this “reformist” notion — reformist because of its political and strategic implications — relations of dependency are neither inherently exploitative nor block the possibility of peripheral capitalist development;


it just creates a situation that favours a dependent or distorted pattern of capitalist development. In the 1970s, dependency theory in its neo-Marxist form (see the discussion in Chapter 4 in this volume) was widely circulated in academic, if not policy-making, circles. It achieved such a resonance in academe that Immanuel Wallerstein, addressing a large scholarly meeting in 1975, could declare without a murmur of dissent that its main rival — modernization theory — was dead. Yet, in policy-making circles no such consensus existed. Far from it. Voices of dissent from the political right questioned state-centred solutions to developmental problems and began to argue for global free trade as the engine of economic growth (Bauer, 1982; Lal, 1983). Pressure to consider the problems of the poor from a people-centred perspective intensified as well. A growing number of scholars and activists, particularly in the South, argued that development would only address the problems of the poor when it involved the poor themselves, particularly local community organizations. Proponents of participatory action research (par) called for more grounded, localized approaches to developmental problems, ones that would actively involve the poor rather than offering prescriptions from above (Cohen and Uphoff, 1980; Rahman, 1991). In the face of these conflicting pressures, the mainstream development project was reconstructed in the direction of liberal reform to stave off pressures for more radical change or social revolution as well as calls to abandon the field. The essential features of this reform were an enhanced role for the state (i.e., the government) in terms of (1) programs to establish the social conditions of development (education, health, social welfare); (2) a poverty-oriented strategy designed to meet the basic needs of the poor; (3) reforms designed to improve access to society’s productive resources (land reform, etc.); (4) redistributive “growth with equity” policies via taxation, etc., designed to redistribute more equitably market-generated incomes; and (5) an integrated program of rural development to correct for the urban bias of government policies as well as the neglect of agriculture. In the 1970s, this model (“growth with equity,” or the “basic human needs” approach) was advanced in the context of an extensive, at times heated and ongoing debate on the role of inequality in the growth and development process and the relevant policy option priorities and tradeoffs — “growth with efficiency,” “equity” or “growth with equity.” Simon Kuznets (1953), a pioneer of the theory of economic growth, maintained that inequalities in poor countries would inevitably widen with economic growth before levelling out. Another pioneer, the Caribbean economist W. Arthur Lewis, advanced a similar argument that widening inequality was


an unavoidable price poor countries would have to pay for the economic development and prosperity that would eventually ensue (1963 [1954]). The Conservative Counterrevolution of the 1980s

By 1980, the liberal reformers that had dominated the field of development practice in the 1970s had succumbed to the blows levelled against them from both the left and the right, leaving behind a theoretical space soon occupied by proponents of free market capitalism,2 who saw the state as the problem rather than as an agency of development and thus the solution. Until the 1980s, members of this neoliberal thought collective were lonely voices in the universe of structuralist thinking, but that changed under conditions of a conservative counterrevolution (Toye, 1987). This counterrevolution in development thought and practice swept away the ideas associated with the developmentalist state and brought to the fore the idea of a “new world order.” And it brought into play a new economic model geared to a program of structural reforms in macroeconomic policy. The first wave of neoliberal economic policies implemented under the Washington Consensus on the virtues of free market capitalism took the form of structural adjustment programs (saps) designed by economists at the World Bank. However, it did not eliminate competing approaches to development. Indeed, development theory and practice in the 1980s is best understood as a diverse world of competing ideas and practices, characterized by three main approaches and associated models: (1) a neoliberal model based on a belief in the efficacy of a market (and other “forces of economic freedom”) liberated from the regulative restrictions of the welfare-developmental state; (2) a wide-ranging search for an alternative form of development that is human in scale and form, people-centred and participatory, inclusive in terms of gender and the poor, and sustainable at the level of both the environment and livelihoods; and (3) a post-development mode of thinking based on a critique and rejection of both liberal and structural lines of development thought and the strategies and practices based on them (Burkey, 1993; Chambers, 1987; Goulet, 1989; Korten and Klauss, 1984). Beyond Economics: The 1990s

In the context of what David Harvey (2003) described as the “neoliberal era,” new development issues for study emerged at the level of academe. The key issue had been the respective roles and the relative weight that should be assigned to the market and the state. The neoliberal doctrine of


free market capitalism now tilted the balance towards the market. But the academic debate and development studies went beyond this issue, turning to a concern for such issues as sustainability, first in regard to the environment and then livelihoods (Brown, 1981; Redclift, 1987; undp, 1997). Other issues included a concern for equity and equality, especially as regards the incorporation and increased participation of women in the development process (Parpart et al., 2000, 2002) — as well as other excluded groups, such as Indigenous peoples and their communities (Stiefel and Wolfe, 1994). At the academic level, frameworks for the integration of women into the development process were formulated while at the level of policy it would become a matter of principle and priority (Moser, 1993; World Bank Group, 2015).3 Other concepts, such as “civil society,” “empowerment” and “globalization,” also entered the development lexicon. In the whirlwind of the search for alternative forms of development it was also possible to discern a pronounced trend towards interdisciplinarity at the level of development studies. This trend involved the institution of academic programs in international development studies (ids), particularly in the UK but also in other European countries as well as Canada.4 See, for example, casid’s white paper on the state of International Development Studies in Canada, commissioned by the idrc (casid, 2003). Critical Counterpoints in Development Studies and an Agenda for the 21st Century

The history of development can be reconstructed in terms of different forms of analysis and schools of thought found in the mainstream of development theory, together with a series of critical counterpoints to this body of ideas. Both the mainstream of development thought and these critical counterpoints need to be contextualized in terms of changing conditions in the real world as opposed to the imaginaries of academic rethinking. The first critical counterpoint to mainstream approaches to development studies (modernization theory of economic growth, Latin American structuralism, the basic needs paradigm regarding the social dimension of development, understood as the reduction of poverty) occurred in the late 1960s. It took the form of a neo-Marxist dependency theory, constructed within the framework of an alternative political economy paradigm based on the premise that capitalism was unable to provide the necessary conditions for development, understood as emancipation from structures of economic exploitation and oppression. However, the success in the late 1970s and the 1980s of several tiers of newly industrializing countries (nics) in East Asia


led to the involution (and near death) of dependency theory in the form of world systems theory, although it was reformulated two decades later in the Latin American context (Katz, 2018; López Hernández, 2005; Martins, 2011; Sotelo, 2000, 2005, 2009). Dependency theory has been revived in recent years in response to a new relation of dependency associated with the advance in the process of capitalist development in the form of extractivism and globalization (Borón, 2008; Martins, 2011; Sotelo, 2000, 2005). The renewed dependency of governments and economies in Latin America on both the export of the social product in primary commodity form and large-scale foreign direct investments has generated a vibrant and heated debate. The new form taken by dependency theory in Latin America today is described by Borón (2008) and Katz (2018) in the following terms: In the 21st century, under conditions of a major reconfiguration of economic power in the global economy and the advance of capitalism at the dusk of the neoliberal era, a new current of post-dependency thought postulated the emergence in Latin America of another industrialization process. This is based on a new industrial policy designed to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the region’s integration into the global economy (see also Dos Santos, 1998; Guillen, 2007; Paunovic and Moreno-Brid, 2007). But some scholars (for example, Sunkel, 2016) are not at all sanguine, indeed they are pessimistic, about the opportunities for national development provided by the global economy and Latin America’s integration into it on the basis of the rules governing the current world order. Others, oriented towards neo-Marxist dependency theory, reformulated by some in the form of world systems theory and by others along the lines of a reconstructed Marxist theory of monopoly capitalism, reject this idea. They reference a neo-colonial system of global production in which countries on the (Latin American) periphery are forced into a new dependency on the export of primary commodities and the influx of “resource seeking” capital (Sotelo, 2009). A second critical counterpoint to mainstream development thought was constructed within the developmentalist project. By 1989, just six years into the structural adjustment programs based on the new economic model of neoliberal globalization, it was evident — even to the guardians of the new world order — that free market capitalism was economically dysfunctional. Rather than activating a capital accumulation and economic growth process, the 1980s were “lost to development” (no growth over the course of the decade), resulting in increased poverty and a deepening of social inequalities and politically destabilizing, generating protests and powerful forces


of resistance. Thus, the theoreticians and architects of developmentalism came to a new consensus on the need to establish a better balance between the market and the state and bring about a more inclusive form of development by means of a new social policy targeting extreme poverty (Craig and Porter, 2006). Several economists at eclac (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) led the push to modify the developmentalist project — basically to save capitalism from itself (Sunkel, 1993). But several un agencies (unicef, for example) also got into the act with the promotion of “structural adjustment with a human face” (Cornia, Jolly and Stewart, 1987), and the World Bank took the lead in constructing a development strategy based on a new post-Washington Consensus on the need to bring the state back into development after a short six years’ experience with free market capitalism (World Bank, 2007; also see Elisa Van der Wayenberge 2018). Towards the end of the 1990s, the World Bank established a “comprehensive framework” for the delivery of development assistance and a new conditionality in the form of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsps), which would both replace the ill-fated one-size-fit-all structural adjustment programs (saps) and allow developing countries to “take ownership of their own development.” The new consensus was described as the “new developmentalism” by one of its leading architects, the eclac-affiliated Brazilian economist Bresser-Pereira (2007, 2009). This neostructuralist approach towards national development was translated into policy by the new “progressive” (centre-left) regimes formed in the first decade of the new millennium in conditions of widespread disenchantment and rejection of the neoliberal model (Veltmeyer and Petras, 2014: Chapter 1). A third critical counterpoint to mainstream development thinking involves several Marxist theories of uneven capitalist development and imperialism. These theories are constructed within the framework of historical materialism, a set of fundamental principles established by Marx for scientific analysis — what in the subsequent Marxist tradition we might label “Marxist political economy.” The first principle of this materialist conception of political economy is that in the process of production people enter relations that are independent of their will, i.e., objective in their effects; and the structure of these relations corresponds to changes and diverse phases in the development of the forces of production. Variations on and contributions to this body of Marxist theory have been constructed over the course of the six developmental decades. From this critical perspective, the development project of international cooperation is


little more than a form of imperialism — the velvet glove within which was hidden the iron fist of armed force, namely, the deployment of the repressive apparatus of the state against the forces of popular resistance against the incessant and seemingly irresistible advance of capitalism (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001; Veltmeyer, 2005). Marxist critical thinking about development — viewed as a process (the growth of the forces of development and corresponding changes in the social relations of production) — has taken two other forms. One is a metatheory of long-term, large-scale capitalist development focused on the transformation of an agrarian society based on pre-capitalist relations of production (a peasant economy of independent producers and smalllandholding farmers) and a traditional communalist culture into a capitalist system based on the extension of the capital-labour relation into all areas of production. The ideas associated with this metatheory regarding the fundamental dynamics of capitalist development are brought into focus and briefly discussed by Raúl Delgado Wise (2018). As he reconstructs the theory (see Delgado Wise and Veltmeyer, 2016, for a more extended exposition of the theory), the capitalist development process hinges on the exploitation of the “unlimited supply of surplus agricultural labour” associated with the transition towards capitalism. Another contribution by Marxist social science to international development studies relates to the theory of imperialism as a bearer of capitalism, an agency of capitalist development. Petras and Veltmeyer, in the Routledge Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies, critically review the debates that surrounded this development question. However, they do not discuss here the theory and debates that surround the dynamics of resistance to imperialism, which raises a political rather than development question. In other words, what is the connection between the politics of anti-imperialism and the resistance to the expansion and advance of capital in the current context of a transition towards what is evidently a new form of capitalism and a new phase of capitalist development? Petras and Veltmeyer address this question in another study of the political dynamics of social change in the neoliberal era (2001). Here, they advance the theory that development as a project of international cooperation — at least in the Latin American context — is part of a strategy designed to turn the rural poor away from the peasant and Indigenous movements mounted against the neoliberal policy agenda of many governments in the region. The unstated but evident goal of the strategy was to divide the social movement and provide the rural poor a less confrontational alternative path towards social change. A fourth counterpoint to orthodox development thought takes a more


radical form than the thinking associated with critical development theory. Whereas this school of thought has been concerned with the search for an alternative form of development, its theorists and advocates argue that the entire development project and associated enterprise is misbegotten, basically a way of colonizing the minds of people in so-called developing or poor societies as a mechanism of control, another form of neocolonial subjugation (Escobar, 1998; Sachs, 1992). Eduardo Gudynas (2014; 2017a, b), founder and a senior researcher at the Latin American Centre on Social Ecology (claes) and a prominent critic of extractivism as a development model, deconstructs the theoretical discourse associated with this school of thought as post-development. Gudynas views post-development as based on a post-structuralist form of discourse analysis, which is to say, on the presumption that social science does not have a privileged access to the “truth” (a means of grasping and being able to explain what is happening in the real world of development). As Nietzsche has been quoted, “there are no facts; only interpretations” — different ways of seeing, different interpretations, different worlds — all from the perspective of the beholder or the subject of a particular action and all with equal validity. A fifth counterpoint of critical thinking in the study of international development can be found in the ideas associated with diverse experiments in constructing a social and solidarity economy (sse). This notion of alternative development emerged in the early 1980s as an economic model for combatting poverty and inequality, and as a vision of social transformation (Razeto, 1988). In the 1990s, however, it turned into a “new development paradigm” designed to expand a third sector of the economy based on social capital and a culture of social solidarity, and supported by decentralized governance and a new social policy oriented towards poverty reduction and empowerment of the poor (Narayan, 2002; Rao, 2002). Some researchers, however, conceptualized sse from a local development angle and the perspective of grassroots, community-based social organizations as a form of “inclusive and sustainable development” (Vieta, 2014). Here, reference is made to a concept advanced by Peter Utting at unrisd and a reader edited by a team brought together by the Social and Solidarity Economy Academy at Campinas, Brazil, and published by the International Training Centre of the ilo. Both publications focus on exploring the conditions for scaling-up the social and solidarity economy and point to spaces and strategies for capacity building, institutional innovation and social change in the context of existing internal constraints or oppositional forces.5 David Barkin (2018) reviews several practical experiences with this


model, which he calls social, solidarity and ecological economies (ssee). Barkin argues that across Latin America, campesinos and Indigenous groups are organizing collectively in rural areas in important attempts to construct a theoretical model and forge a social and solidarity economy, which, according to Gudynas, takes a post-development form. The paradigmatic case of this model is the social and solidarity economy under construction on the margins of the capitalist system and out of reach of the Mexican state in Chiapas (ezln, Sexta Comisión, 2015). But the proliferation of these initiatives reflects a shared commitment to the idea of living well in social solidarity and harmony with nature. This counterpoint of critical thinking is also associated with the Indigenous Quechua concept of sumak kawsay, translated in Spanish as “buen vivir” (Ecuador) or “vivir bien” (Bolivia). This concept is notoriously difficult to render into English but it is taken by Eduardo Gudynas to describe a condition of living in social solidarity and in harmony with nature (see also Acosta, 2012; Dávalos, 2010). As Gudynas sees it, buen vivir is a form of post-development thought constructed within a “non-capitalist paradigm” (also see Albó, 2011; Farah and Vasapollo, 2011). And Gudynas is not alone in this understanding. His interpretation of buen vivir as the practical application of post-development, an alternative to both capitalism and socialism,6 echoes the understanding held by Alberto Acosta (2010), an Ecuadorian leftist economist who once was very close to the government in its efforts to institutionalize the concept,7 but who became one of President Correa’s major and loudest critics. Notes

1. Bretton Woods, Maryland, was the location of a meeting by representatives of the Western countries, particularly the US and Great Britain, that were victorious in the war against Nazi Germany and Japan and that were concerned to create the institutional framework of a new world order, a set of rules and institutions that could secure both world peace and international development. Apart from an arrangement to use the US dollar as the currency of international exchange, set against a gold standard ($38 an ounce), this Bretton Woods system was constituted by three major institutions, the so-called Bretton Woods sisters: the Bank of Economic Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the International Monetary Fund (imf) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt), which functioned as a negotiating forum in the direction of free trade until it was replaced fifty years later by the World Trade Organization (wto). 2. These proponents of free market capitalism constituted a neoliberal thought collective associated with the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by Von Hayek and


like-minded economists (see Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009). 3. The World Bank insists that it has promoted gender equality and the inclusion of women and girls in the development process since 1977, and in the 1980s the Bank recognized and established the inclusion and participation of women as a matter of principle and condition of development project funding (Blaikie, 1985). But it was not until 2015 that it formulated a systematic strategy to promote gender equality in the context of a strategy of inclusive development. 4. The first academic program in international development studies was established in The Hague in the Netherlands in the form of the iss, but similar interdisciplinary development studies programs were instituted in the UK and elsewhere. In Canada, the first such program was established in 1985 as a consortium between Saint Mary’s University and Dalhousie University in Halifax. In 1989 Saint Mary’s established a graduate program leading to the master’s degree in ids, and by 2004 similar programs were established at over twenty universities across the country. In the same year, an interdisciplinary program of international development studies was established in Zacatecas, Mexico, as well as in La Paz, Bolivia, and several other Latin American countries. 5. Notwithstanding this and other attempts to construct a social and solidarity economy within the institutional framework of capitalism as a form of human development, the concept and principle of “social solidarity” is antithetical to capitalism in that it expresses a fundamentally socialist conception of the individual as a social being, as someone who realizes their human nature and full human potential in their relation of equality and community with others. Capitalism, on the other hand, is predicated on an individualist conception of an individual qua individual who realizes their human nature in a relation of possessive individualism and competition with others in the search for advantage and a rational calculation of self-interest. 6. On this see Gudynas (2017b), who argues that the current debates on politics and ecology in South America offer lessons not only on the controversy concerning eco-socialism and de-growth, but on the relation between capitalism and socialism as alternative systems for the development of both the forces of production and human beings. He points to recent experiments by the political left in South America that displayed a strong emphasis on socialism while deploying conventional developmentalism, rooted in a search for a more humane form of capitalism. In his perspective on buen vivir as a radical critique of development, Gudynas points to alternatives that are at the same time postcapitalist and post-socialist, alternatives in which the recognition of the intrinsic value of the non-human is a core component. 7. In fact, Acosta was part of the government — albeit for only five months in early 2007 — as minister of energy. He also was responsible for overseeing the process of constitutional reform that not only gave official recognition and legal identity to the country’s Indigenous nationalities but enshrined the rights of “Mother Earth.”

22 Critical Development Studies: An Introduction References

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