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Planet Dialectics
Explorations in Environment and Development
By Wolfgang Sachs Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Wolfgang Sachs
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78360-342-8
CHAPTER 1
The Archaeology of the Development Idea
A Guide to the Ruins
Ruined buildings hide their secrets under piles of earth and rubble. Archaeologists, shovels in hand, work through layer upon layer to reveal underpinnings and thus discover the origins of a dilapidated monument. But ideas can also turn out to be ruins, with their foundations covered by years or even centuries of sand.
I believe that the idea of development stands today like a ruin in the intellectual landscape, its shadows obscuring our vision. It is high time we tackled the archaeology of this towering conceit, that we uncovered its foundations to see it for what it is: the outdated monument to an immodest era.
A world power in search of a mission Wind and snow stormed over Pennsylvania Avenue on 20 January 1949 when, in his inauguration speech before Congress, US President Harry Truman defined the largest part of the world as 'underdeveloped areas' (Truman 1950: 1366). There it was, suddenly a permanent feature of the landscape, a pivotal concept that crammed the immeasurable diversity of the globe's south into a single category: underdeveloped. For the first time, the new world view was announced: all the peoples of the earth were to move along the same track and aspire to only one goal – development. And the road to follow lay clearly before the president's eyes: 'Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace.' After all, was it not the USA that had already come closest to this Utopia? According to that yardstick, nations fall into place as stragglers or lead runners. And 'the United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques'. Clothing self-interest in generosity, Truman outlined a programme of technical assistance designed to 'relieve the suffering of these peoples' through 'industrial activities' and 'a higher standard of living'.
Looking back after 40 years, we recognize Truman's speech as the starting-gun in the race for the South to catch up with the North. But we also see that the field of runners has been dispersed, as some competitors have fallen by the wayside and others have begun to suspect that they are running in the wrong direction.
The idea of defining the world as an economic arena originated in Truman's time – it would have been completely alien to colonialism. True, colonial powers saw themselves as participating in an economic race, with their overseas territories a source of raw materials. But it was only after the Second World War that these territories had to stand on their own and compete in a global economic arena. For Britain and France during the colonial period, dominion over their colonies was first of all a cultural obligation that stemmed from their vocation to a civilizing mission. British imperial administrator Lord Lugard had formulated the doctrine of the 'double mandate': economic profit, of course, but above all the responsibility to elevate the 'coloured races' to a higher level of civilization. The colonialists came as masters to rule over the natives; they did not come as planners to start the spiral of supply and demand.
Development as imperative According to Truman's vision, the two commandments of the double mandate converge under the imperative of 'economic development'. A change in world view had thus taken place, allowing the concept of development to rise to a standard of universal rule. In the British Development Act of 1929, still influenced by colonial frameworks, 'development' applied only to the first duty of the double mandate: the economic exploitation of resources such as land, minerals and wood products; the second duty was defined as 'progress' or 'welfare'. At this time it was thought that only resources, not people or societies, could be developed (Arndt 1981). It was in the corridors of the State Department during the Second World War that 'cultural progress' was absorbed by 'economic mobilization' and development was enthroned as the crowning concept. A new world view had found its succinct definition: the degree of civilization in a country could be measured by the level of its production. There was no longer any reason to limit the domain of development to resources only. From now on, people and whole societies could, or even should, be seen as the objects of development.
Truman's imperative to develop meant that societies of the Third World were no longer seen as diverse and incomparable possibilities of human living arrangements but were rather placed on a single 'progressive track', judged more or less advanced according to the criteria of the Western industrial nations. Such a reinterpretation of global history was not only politically flattering but also unavoidable, since underdevelopment can be recognized only in looking back from a state of maturity. Development without predominance is like a race without direction. So the pervasive power and influence of the West was logically included in the proclamation of development. It is no coincidence that the preamble of the UN Charter ('We, the peoples of the United nations ...') echoes the Constitution of the USA ('We the people of the United states ...'). Development meant nothing less than projecting the American model of society onto the rest of the world.
Truman really needed such a reconceptualization of the world. The old colonial world had fallen apart. The United States, the strongest nation to emerge from the war, was obliged to act as the new world power. For this it needed a vision of a new global order. The concept of development provided the answer because it presented the world as a collection of homogeneous entities, held together not through the political dominion of colonial times, but through economic interdependence. It meant that the independence process of young countries could be allowed to proceed, because they automatically fell under the wing of the USA anyway when they proclaimed themselves to be subjects of economic development. Development was the conceptual vehicle that allowed the USA to behave as herald of national self-determination while at the same time founding a new type of worldwide domination: an anti-colonial imperialism.
Regimes in search of a raison d'etat The leaders of the newly founded nations – from Nehru to Nkrumah, Nasser to Sukarno – accepted the image that the North had of the South, and internalized it as their self-image. Underdevelopment became the cognitive foundation for the establishment of the nations throughout the Third World. The Indian leader Nehru (incidentally, in opposition to Gandhi) made the point in 1949: 'It is not a question of theory; be it communism, socialism or capitalism, whatever method is more successful, brings the necessary changes and gives satisfaction to the masses, will establish itself on its own ... Our problem today is to raise the standard of the masses.' Economic development as the primary aim of the state; the mobilization of the country to increase output: this beautifully suited the Western concept of the world as an economic arena.
As in all types of competition, this one rapidly produced its professional coaching staff. The World Bank sent off the first of its innumerable missions in July 1949. Upon their return from Colombia, the 14 experts wrote: 'piecemeal and sporadic efforts are apt to make little impression on the general picture. Only through a generalized attack throughout the whole economy on education, health, housing, food and productivity can the vicious circle of poverty, ignorance, ill health and low productivity be decisively broken' (IBRD 1950: xv). To increase production at a constant level, entire societies had to be overhauled. Had there ever existed a more zealous state objective? From then on, an unprecedented flowering of agencies and administrations came forth to address all aspects of life – to count, organize, mindlessly intervene and sacrifice, all in the name of 'development'. Today the scene appears more like collective hallucination. Traditions, hierarchies, mental habits – the whole texture of societies – have all been dissolved in the planner's mechanistic models. But in this way the experts were able to apply the same blueprint for institutional reform throughout the world, the outline of which was most often patterned on the American way of life. There is no longer any question of letting things 'mature for centuries', as in the colonial period. After the Second World War, engineers set out to develop whole societies, and to accomplish the job in a few years or at the most a couple of decades.
Shocks and erosion In the late 1960s, deep cracks began to appear in the building: the trumpeted promises of the development idea were built on sand! The international elite, which had been busy piling one development plan on another, knitted its collective brow. At the International Labour Office and the World Bank, experts suddenly realized that growth policies were not working. Poverty increased precisely in the shadow of wealth, unemployment proved resistant to growth, and the food situation could not be helped through building steel works. It became clear that the identification of social progress with economic growth was pure fiction.
In 1973, Robert McNamara, the president of the World Bank, summed up the state of affairs: 'Despite a decade of unprecedented increase in the gross national product ... the poorest segments of the population have received relatively little benefit ... The upper 40% of the population typically receive 75% of all income.' No sooner had he admitted the failure of Truman's strategy than he immediately proclaimed another development strategy with its new target group – rural development and small farmers. The logic of this conceptual operation is obvious enough: it meant that the idea of development did not have to be abandoned; indeed, its field of application was enlarged. Similarly, in rapid succession during the 1970s and 1980s, unemployment, injustice, the eradication of poverty, basic needs, women and the environment were turned into problems and became the object of special strategies.
The meaning of development exploded, increasingly covering a host of contradictory practices. The development business became self-propelling: whatever new crisis arose, a new strategy to resolve it could be devised. Furthermore, the background motive for development slowly shifted. A rising environmental chorus noted that development was meant not to promote growth, but to protect against it. Thus the semantic chaos was complete, and the concept torn to shreds.
A concept full of emptiness So development has become a shapeless amoeba-like word. It cannot express anything because its outlines are blurred. But it remains ineradicable because it appears so benign. They who pronounce the word denote nothing but claim the best of intentions. Development thus has no content but it does possess a function: it allows any intervention to be sanctified in the name of a higher evolutionary goal. Watch out! Truman's assumptions travel like blind passengers under its cover. However applied, the development idea always implies that there are lead runners who show the way to latecomers; it suggests that advancement is the result of planned action. Even without having economic growth in mind, whoever talks of development evokes notions of universality, progress and feasibility, showing him- or herself unable to escape Truman's influence.
This heritage is like a weight that keeps one treading in the same spot. It prevents people in Michoacan, Gujarat or Zanzibar from recognizing their own right to refuse to classify themselves as underdeveloped; it stops them rejoicing in their own diversity and wit. Development always entails looking at other worlds in terms of what they lack, and obstructs the wealth of indigenous alternatives.
Yet the contrary of development is not stagnation. From Gandhi's Swaraj to Zapata's Ejidos, we see that there are striking examples of change in every culture. Distinctions such as backward/advanced or traditional/modern have in any case become ridiculous given the dead end of progress in the North, from poisoned soil to the greenhouse effect. Truman's vision will thus fall in the face of history, not because the race was fought unfairly, but because it leads to abyss.
The idea of development was once a towering monument inspiring international enthusiasm. Today, the structure is falling apart and is in danger of total collapse. But its imposing ruins still linger over everything and block the way out. The task, then, is to push the rubble aside to open up new ground.
The Discovery of Poverty
I could have kicked myself afterwards. Yet my remark had seemed the most natural thing on earth at the time. It was six months after Mexico City's catastrophic earthquake in 1985 and I had spent the whole day walking around Tepito, a dilapidated quarter inhabited by ordinary people but threatened by land speculators. I had expected ruins and resignation, decay and squalor, but the visit had made me think again: I witnessed a proud neighbourly spirit, vigorous building activity and a flourishing shadow economy. But at the end of the day the remark slipped out: 'It's all very well but, when it comes down to it, these people are still terribly poor.' Promptly, one of my companions stiffened: 'No somos pobres, somos Tepiteños!' (We are not poor people, we are Tepitans). What a reprimand! Why had I made such an offensive remark? I had to admit to myself in embarrassment that, quite involuntarily, I had allowed the clichés of development philosophy to trigger my reaction.
Inventing the low-income bracket 'Poverty' on a global scale was discovered after the Second World War; before 1940 it was not an issue. In one of the first World Bank reports, dated 1948–49, the 'nature of the problem' is outlined:
Both the need and potential for development are plainly revealed by a single set of statistics. According to UN Bureau of Statistics, average income per head in the United States in 1947 was over $1400, and in another 14 countries ranged between $400 and $900. For more than half of the world's population, however the average income was less – and sometimes much less – than $100 per person. The magnitude of this discrepancy demonstrates not only the urgent need to raise the living standards in the underdeveloped countries, but also the enormous possibilities to do just this.
Whenever poverty was mentioned at all in the documents of the 1940s and 1950s, it took the form of a statistical measurement of per capita income whose significance rested on the fact that it lay ridiculously far below the US standard.
When size of income is thought to indicate social perfection, as it does in the economic model of society, one is inclined to interpret any other society that does not follow that model as 'low-income'. This way, the perception of poverty on a global scale was nothing more than the result of a comparative statistical operation, the first of which was carried out only in 1940 by the economist Colin Clark.
As soon as the scale of incomes had been established, order was imposed on a confused globe: horizontally, such different worlds as those of the Zapotec people of Mexico, the Tuareg of north Africa and Rajasthanis of India could be classed together, while a vertical comparison to 'rich' nations demanded relegating them to a position of almost immeasurable inferiority. In this way 'poverty' was used to define whole peoples, not according to what they are and want to be, but according to what they lack and are expected to become. Economic disdain had thus taken the place of colonial contempt.
Moreover, this conceptual operation provided a justification for intervention: wherever low income is the problem, the only answer can be 'economic development'. There was no mention of the idea that poverty might also result from oppression and thus demand liberation, or that a culture of sufficiency might be essential for long-term survival, or, even less, that a culture might direct its energies towards spheres other than the economic. No, as it was in the industrial nations so it was to be in all the others: poverty was diagnosed as a lack of spending power crying to be banished through economic growth. Under the banner of 'poverty' the enforced reorganization of many societies into money economies was subsequently conducted like a moral crusade. Who could be against it?
Descent to the biological minimum Towards the end of the 1960s, when it was no longer possible to close one's eyes to the fact that 'economic development' was patently failing to help most people achieve a higher standard of living, a new conception of 'poverty' was required. 'We should strive', Robert McNamara of the World Bank stated in 1973, 'to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of the century. That means, in practice, the elimination of malnutrition and illiteracy, the reduction of infant mortality and the raising of life expectancy standards to those of the developed nations.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Planet Dialectics by Wolfgang Sachs. Copyright © 2015 Wolfgang Sachs. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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