Development: the radical alternative

Citation

Trainer, T. (2005), "Development: the radical alternative", European Business Review, Vol. 17 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2005.05417fab.002

Development: the radical alternative

Abstract Purpose–To present a clear and economically viable alternative to the development models accepted by “right” and “left”.Design/methodology/approach–A radical questioning of developmental norms, radical in the literal sense of examining from the roots upwards.Findings–Appropriate Development – whether in the west or the so-called Third World – is based on satisfactory standards of living for all and the protection of local cultures, economies and ecosystems, not on continuous growth or homogenising “progress”. In other words, it is about quality rather than quantity.Originality/value–Argues a case for Appropriate Development – satisfactory living standards for all people.Keywords Sustainable development, Standard of living, Economic growthPaper type Viewpoint

The vast development literature, at both academic and activist levels fails to attend to the distinction between the overwhelmingly dominant conventional conception of development, and what might be termed Appropriate Development. Indeed even critics of development theory and practice, notably among the NGOs and on the political left, unwittingly adhere firmly to the conventional, capitalist conception of development and show little sign of recognising that any other is possible.

The purpose of the following discussion is to make clear the enormous difference between these two conceptions, to argue that conventional or capitalist development causes and cannot solve the Third World's major problems, and that the alternative path could easily do so.

Following are some of the core taken-for-granted elements in the dominant conception of development (indented, in bold type), followed by critical comment and the alternative view.

Development, progress and improving human welfare are essentially about increasing the amount of goods and service people can buy. In other words economic growth is more or less equivalent to development, or at least its overwhelmingly important element.

Obviously development should be about improving all aspects of a society, not just indiscriminately increasing the volume of sale. The indiscriminate element in the conventional approach to development is seriously mistaken. It says, “Don't worry about what to develop – just free capitalists and markets to decide”. But a sensible discussion of development must begin with crucial questions such as, what do we want produced first, where should development resources be focused to do most good, what should we make sure is not developed, what kind of economy do we want to build, and when will we know we have a satisfactorily developed economy? Increasing the amount people can buy might be relevant, but it is far from the whole or the central point. Appropriate Development is not possible unless deliberate decisions are made about goals and means and deliberate action taken to develop what is socially desirable, and often this will require contradicting and preventing what owners of capital and free markets would do.

In other words, appropriate development focuses on developing what is needed, and that is totally different from development defined as facilitating whatever will maximise profits, business turnover or GDP. Many regions that have high rates of growth of GDP have had very little or no improvement in the conditions of the poor, and there are some remarkable cases where the “poorest” people have a high quality of life despite extremely low GDP per capita, such as Kerala and Ladakh.

In fact the relation between growth and Appropriate Development is in general strongly contradictory. If the goal is to maximise GDP this will actually prevent Appropriate Development, because development resources will go into producing what will maximise sales to people with money, not into what will most satisfy urgent needs.

To define development as increasing the GDP is precisely what suits the rich, because it puts top priority on the freedom to invest in developing what is most profitable and will result in most sales. It will prioritise freedom for those with more purchasing power to gear production to their demand, and on structuring Third World economies to supply goods to the rich countries.

Some of the most Appropriate Development initiatives would dramatically reduce the GDP. For example, if some of the land growing luxury crops like coffee to export to rich countries was transferred to the production of food by and for local people, the GDP would drop.

Thus the more that increasing the GDP is taken as the goal of development, the more inappropriate the resulting development will be. Increasing the GDP is not a goal of Appropriate Development; some of its elements may increase the production of some items for sale, but others will reduce it considerably.

^.Development results from the investment of capital. Therefore it is necessary to persuade people with capital to invest, or to borrow it.

^.What is developed is decided by those who own capital. Governments must attract owners of capital in to invest.

The concept of Appropriate Development recognises that there can be an important role for capital, and it is not opposed to foreign investment and loans. But it emphatically rejects “capitalist” development. There are two crucial points here. Firstly it is farcical to assume that if you allow the things to be developed in your country to be determined by what will most enrich a few already extremely rich investors living on the other side of the world then you will get development of things that are most likely to meet your most urgent needs!

What you will get of course is development of enterprises that will use your land, resources and labour to produce luxuries to export to rich world supermarkets, at the lowest possible return to you. And if you are one of the perhaps 50 countries where transnational corporations can not maximise their profits producing anything at all, then you will get no development at all.

This is absurd, morally repugnant, literally catastrophic, and totally avoidable. All those 50 countries have immense productive capacity and could have developed into very satisfactory societies without any poverty and with thriving economies and rich cultural systems and a good quality of life for all, if development had been conceived in terms of putting those resources into producing to meet needs.

Again, the crucial point here is that conventional capitalist development results in inappropriate development, i.e. it does not result in development of what is most needed. When we ask the basic question “What is being developed?” it is obvious that conventional capitalist development mostly develops things that will benefit the rich, the factory and plantation owners, and the overseas consumers.

But the second point is much more important. Appropriate Development rejects the assumption that capital is important or a necessary factor for development (note that even Marxists take capitalist development for granted; they assume that there can not be development without investment of capital, although they do not want the capital to be privately owned).

This is the fundamental contradiction between conventional and Appropriate Development. Little or no money capital is needed for the development that can meet basic needs and provide all with a good quality of life. All the resources necessary for this are there, in the land and labour of the people. All that is needed is the organisation that an Appropriate Development vision brings, so that people work together to devote the productive resources around them immediately and directly to producing what they need.

Hence the painfully tragic situation constantly visible wherein millions of people suffer malnutrition, poor housing, inadequate water supply, poverty, unemployment, depression, illness, etc while there are all around them abundant food producing resources, house building resources, etc.

Therefore, plunge into the market! In order to acquire things money must be earned by the production of something that can be sold. In order for the country to be able to pay for development and to acquire goods, it must earn from exporting.The process of development is best determined by market forces. Market forces maximise efficiency in the allocation of resources. Market forces must determine what is produced, who gets it and what is developed. Non-market exchanges must be eliminated. All productive items, including land, must be made into commodities for sale in a market. Productive activities which take the form of “subsistence” outside the market must be moved into it.

The market system could play a (minor) role in a satisfactory economy, but the market is directly responsible for most of the poverty, suffering, conflict, ecological destruction and underdevelopment in the world. This is because market forces ignore need and what is just or appropriate or ecologically necessary, and respond only to monetary bids. In a market system things go to those who can pay most. Market systems for allocating things or deciding what is to be developed are therefore precisely what rich people, corporations, banks and consumers want ... because market systems guarantee that they can take all the available resources while the poor get few if any. Thus each person in America gets about 26 barrels of the world's scarce oil every year while the poorest one billion people get almost none of it. Thus 600 million tonnes of grain, a third of world production, is fed to animals in rich countries every year while more than 1 billion people are malnourished. These crucial contradictions are direct and inevitable consequences of the fact that we have a global economy in which who gets resources is determined by market forces. That is the way of proceeding that obviously enables the richest few to take what the poor need.

Even worse, when market forces are allowed to determine what is developed the productive capacity of the Third World is devoted not to producing what Third World people need, but to what consumers in rich countries want. A glaring illustration is the fact that in some Third World countries more than half the best land grows luxury crops to export to rich countries. Similarly, most of the factories on their land produce goods to export, not things their people need.

Advocates of the market claim that it is the most “efficient” way of allocating things. But this is true only if “efficient” is defined merely in terms of what will make most profit. If on the other hand your goal is to meet human and ecological need, then obviously the market is the most appallingly inefficient system!

Consider the benefit that “trickles down” to the people from this arrangement. People in Bangladesh producing shirts are paid 15 cents an hour, part of which they must then spend buying from supermarkets owned by rich world corporations. They would be far better off if most of their work time could be going into the production of necessities in small local farms and firms they owned. But rich countries and their agencies such as the World Bank simply will not allow this – development is only allowed to take the form that suits corporations seeking to maximise profits according to market forces. The Banks Structural Adjustment Packages expressly prohibit anything else, and they dismantle any other arrangements governments might have had in place, especially “subsistence” systems, protection for local industry, and subsidies for poorer people. The only form of development they permit and enforce is development of precisely what suits corporations and rich world consumers.

Just think what would happen if markets were not allowed to determine allocation and governments decided what was to be developed and who was to get the things produced. Good governments would make sure that their people got the wealth the land produces. Bad governments would make sure that the local ruling elites got most of it. Either way rich world corporations and consumers would get less! So that is not acceptable to them – they want a system that enables them to get most of the available wealth.

Obviously the development of what is appropriate in view of the urgent needs of people, societies and ecosystems is not possible unless a great deal of production and distribution and investment takes place contrary to market forces, i.e. via regulation. Many things should be developed that are not very profitable and many things should be developed that can never pay. The general principle is that market forces prevent Appropriate Development. Yet again, conventional development theory totally rules out any “interference with market forces”, so governments must eliminate regulation, which literally means give up the power to control development.

Another serious fault with a market economy is that it pits us all against each other as individual competitors in the market place. But the best way for humans to do things is cooperatively. Most things work out much better if they are done by people working together, pooling their capacities, striving for the common good, and making sure that all are looked after and no one is dumped or trampled. But conventional economics all disqualifies all collective values. Again this suits the rich and powerful very nicely – they don not want people to get together to take control over their situation – they want everyone to compete as isolated individuals against them, the rich, in the market where the rich can win and take what they like.

Plunge into the global economy! Individuals and nations must find something to produce and sell, because they can't expect to be able to acquire anything unless they have been able to sell something, including labour. So, crank up export industries, and entice in foreign investment. Trade! That's crucial if you are to be able to accumulate capital, pay for imports, and for loans and infrastructure development.

Again the fundamental mistakes are the assumption that the only thing that matters is getting money and using it to buy things, and that you can not have anything unless you export into the global market and earn the money to buy it from the global market. These assumptions totally ignore the key to Appropriate Development, which is the immense capacity for self sufficiency outside the monetary economy. Conventional development theory and practice have no interest in the fact that households, communities, localities and nations can easily produce for themselves most of what they need independently of the monetary economy and with almost no dependence on capital or markets or corporations or banks.

Thus a core principle of Appropriate Development is, minimise economic connections with the rich countries and the global economy. Borrow very little if anything. Export only a few surpluses in order to be able to import only a few important items. Allow foreign investors into your nation only if they will agree to produce necessities on your terms. Maximise local and national self-sufficiency. This principle enables security from the devastation the global economy can instantly inflict if export prices fall or if capital moves out. No matter what happens to coffee prices or on Wall St you can continue to provide most if not all you need for a high quality of life.

Again consider the people in Bangladesh being paid 15cc an hour to make shirts for export. Compare the volume of necessities they could buy with their $5 weekly wage with the volume of food, furniture, clothing, etc they could be producing for themselves and their village if they could spend that week working in local cooperatives producing necessities. The real benefit to them would have to be something like one hundred times as great as they get now.

Clearly therefore, conventional development is a process of expropriation ... of taking wealth from others. Once Third World people had all the land and forests and fish ... now they have hardly any of these while these resources and the wealth the people produce mostly flows out to rich people far away. That is theft, but it is disguised because it mostly happens via the normal working of market system. Conventional development has developed the Third World into a state whereby it produces mostly for the benefit of the rich. Conventional development is therefore best described as a form of plunder.

The ultimate goal of development is to become like the rich countries, with high material “living standards” and GDP, and with predominantly “modern” or Western ways.

This is the most ignored element in the entire discussion of development. This goal of conventional development is totally impossible. There are nothing like enough resources on the planet for all people to rise to present rich world living standards and rates of resource use – let alone those the rich countries will have as they continue to pursue growth (the limits to growth analysis, www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/06b-limits-long.html)

Rich countries help poor countries to develop. They give aid, foreign investment and they trade with them.

Rich countries are certainly very keen to promote conventional-capitalist development in the Third World, i.e. development of the kind that enriches themselves. But they will not tolerate Appropriate Development, and they can not because it would mean their own demise. They cannot maintain their “living standards” or their economies unless they go on getting most of the world's wealth and Appropriate Development would mean the end of that situation.

The basic relationship between rich countries and poor ones for the last 500 years has been one of invasion, thuggery and looting. World history has been about the struggle among the strongest nations to get control of and dominate an empire. Thus beginning with Spain and Portugal a series of western powers has led the conquest, destruction and plunder of the Third World. In the last century the struggle to control and expand empires generated two world wars, in which the British were exhausted and the US surged into the dominant position. Since World War 2 the US has intervened in the Third World with military force about 60 times, killing more than 16 million people, in order to put down threats to its control. It now maintains the empire from which rich countries derive much of their wealth.

As is explained above, the empire is mostly kept in place by the normal working of the economic system. But from time to time poor Third World people object to what is happening and then force and fear are necessary to keep them in the plantations and factories. Rich countries have a very long and very extensive record of assisting Third World regimes to put down dissent. This includes financial and military assistance, subversion, assassination, arms supply, training of torturers and direct military destruction and invasion in order to get rid of regimes that will not rule in our interests, or install ones that will (for extensive documentation on the nature and functioning of your empire see www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/10-our-empire.html).

The high “living standards” we in rich countries have could not be maintained without the repression and violence required to maintain our empire. We cannot expect to go on getting far more than our fair share of world resources unless we keep in place the systems which deprive most people of a fair share.

Be very clear about the goal.

It is very important to accept that Appropriate Development is not a path to rich world living standards or “prosperity”, a consumer society, glamorous cities, high incomes or great national wealth, power and prestige. The aim is to guarantee materially simple but satisfactory living standards to all, and to preserve culture, traditions and ecosystems.

It is not that we must reluctantly abandon the goal of developing to rich world affluence and must accept the low “living standards” of Appropriate Development as a compromise. We are strenuously rejecting the conventional goal, firstly because it is impossible for all to achieve and therefore condemns the world to alarming problems of deprivation, environmental destruction and conflict. More importantly we are rejecting consumer society because the simpler way is far more satisfying.

(Ted Trainer is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Social Work, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia. He is the author of many books on sustainable living and alternatives to economic growth. Website: http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/).

Ted TrainerDepartment of Social Work, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia