Elimination of Dependency by Warren

In the previous articles we have
discussed development researchers whose prime aim has been to adjust, elaborate
or supplement the classical dependency theories. Other researchers within the
Neo-Marxist tradition, however, have rejected the whole body of dependency
theories and attempted to replace them with totally different approaches. This
applies to, among others, the American social scientist Bill Warren.

Warren’s
main point was; certainly imperialism has led to the creation of a system
characterised by inequality and exploitation, but at the same time this
imperialism has created the conditions for the spreading of capitalism to the
Third World. And not only that. Warren went further by claiming that he was
able to prove that capitalism, since the Second World War, had actually
developed both in depth and width in the Third World. 

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p style=”line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;”>Although the capitalist
mode of production was originally grafted on to the peripheral economies from
outside, by the industrialised countries, Warren argued that in the long run it
would lead to elimination of dependency or to a development out of dependency.
Imperialism has, in other words, laid the foundations of its own dissolution.

Warren
saw the situation in the 1960s and 1970s as especially conducive to national
capitalist development in the Third World. He referred in this connection to
the conflict between East and West, which he believed the dependent countries
in general could derive considerable benefits from. He also pointed to the
competition between the different industrialised countries, and between the
many transnational corporations, and argued that these forms of competition
could also be exploited with a view to promoting more independent national
development. 

The difficulties were chiefly the internal conditions in these
countries, including a very widespread tendency to pursue totally misconceived
agricultural policies, which neither brought about the necessary land reforms
nor linked the rural economies to the dynamic capitalist urban economies.

Warren’s
theory is essentially the classical dependency theory turned on its head. To
him imperialism and the world market were in no way obstacles to economic
growth and progress, understood as capitalist development. On the contrary, it
was from these global systems that the whole process of development would be
set in motion. The fact that progress reserved for the few meant less to
Warren; in contrast to Soviet Marxism, he regarded the development of
capitalism — for good or evil — as an unavoidable necessity, as a stage all
underdeveloped countries had to go through to reach socialism.

Warren must be
credited for drawing attention, at an early stage, to the actual growth of
industry and other capitalist sector sin the Third World within the framework
of Marxist theory. But he did it with the eagerness and intensity that has his
theory became one sided and biased, and therefore make itself most useful as a
closing marginal note to the main body of Marxist theory regarding
underdevelopment and dependency. On the other hand, there is, within this
tradition, a pressing need for a better theory which can explain both
underdevelopment and development.