Development or Underdevelopment in the "Third World"?

[RedSonRising]

Hello everyone. I was hoping to foster discussion around the mainstream conversations had around "development" and "growth" by economists. Apologists for capitalism have, in recent years, been popularizing the concept that eventually, capitalism accelerating and reaching into every corner of the third world will continue to improve it, and that peripheral countries will soon join the industrial west in living standards, by which point a global community will be able to tackle problems with a more even distribution of wealth and power. Trending studies that show consistently climbing data with respect to global income distribution, child survival rate, disposable income, etc. are used a shield against those who attempt to advocate for an alternative to capitalist globalization. "The world is getting better", they say, which is an incredibly easy tool to turn around and say "so stop complaining/agitating/organizing/promoting an alternative".

However, we know this does not tell the complete picture. Aside from the fact that this data is somewhat irrelevant to our claims and goals (given that capitalism can be a superior mode of living to that of pre-existing feudal institutions and I expect we all share the opinion that capitalism does little that authentic socialism could not do better), we also know that capitalism as a predatory system has also purposefully under-developed areas of the world in order to subjugate labor, commodify land, extract natural resources, and destroy local markets to pave way for the consumption of imports.

Some of the more stark examples of this are the widespread examples of multinationals completely undermining the autonomy of states like Jamaica and supplanting local agriculture through destructive free trade agreements; a similar dynamic exists with Mexico & NAFTA, as well as commercial interests in Africa, resource commodification in rural India, etc.


I suppose my question/thread prompt is, what accounts for some of the disconnects between what we see in the many paralleled examples of impoverishment & exploitation and the global trends of growing income distribution? What are the specific weaknesses of these indicators? Where is the data honest about positive (if imperfect) development, and where is it obscuring a more holistic picture of exploitation and subjugation?

I suppose an example as a reference point for the purposes of discussion would be a good idea. Take this talk from 2006.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen #t-597617

Similar contributions would be appreciated.

(Mods, if this belongs in theory or whatever, do what you gotta do.)

[RedSonRising]

Quite pertinent to the topic, the new Oxfam report just came out. The principal concern voiced is rising inequality; "by next year, 1% of the world’s population will own more wealth than the other 99%."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/19/global-wealth-oxfam-inequality-davos-economic-summit-switzerland

And on cue, the apologist response:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/01/what-oxfam-doesnt-want-you-to-know-global-capitalism-means-theres-less-poverty-than-ever/

"We are, right now, living through the golden age of poverty reduction. Anyone serious about tackling global poverty (and I’m afraid we have to exclude Oxfam from this category) has to accept that whatever we’re doing now, it’s working – so we should keep doing it. We are literally on the road to an incredible goal: the abolition of poverty, as we know it, within our lifetime. Those who care more about helping the poor than hurting the rich will celebrate the fact – and make sure free trade and global capitalism keep spreading so as to finish the job."

[jullia]

Interesting topic.
To be honest i ignore that the global poverty decrease like this.
It's nice but it doesn't change the fact that there are a deep gap between rich and poor and those indegality increase.
And it's not because there are less very poor on earth that we must close our eyes on the rest.

[RedKobra]

The Spectator makes me gag. Its like being locked in an airtight room whilst car exhaust fumes are pumped in and creepy crawlies burrow into my nose and ears.

[Prof. Oblivion]

I would caution against a blanket approach. Attempts to systematize these tendencies have all fallen woefully short. I would even go so far as to say that "third world" as a category is a fundamentally flawed concept, especially today. It might be convenient to categorize such states as "third world" and it might be easier to lay out a semblance of a conceptual framework around it, but it's all nonsense. Each country is different, especially today, with regards to development/underdevelopment, and each country must be treated individually. Yes, these tendencies do exist, but they are tendencies, and not part of a systemic pattern.

[RedSonRising]

This post is years old but I would hope to revisit the topic.

[ckaihatsu]

[C]apitalism as a predatory system has also purposefully under-developed areas of the world in order to subjugate labor, commodify land, extract natural resources, and destroy local markets to pave way for the consumption of imports.


Just as a matter of detail / precision, capitalism as a *system* cannot 'purposefully [underdevelop] areas of the world...' -- this characteristic is simply a 'byproduct' of its inherent functioning, since not all areas of the world will be attractive to capital for humane-developmental kinds of ways, so those areas are simply *looted* for their natural resources by multinational corporations and imperialist countries in a colonialist way.

To tackle the main issue of your post here, I think we need to first come to some kind of shared understanding of what 'development' is, as a prerequisite: I'll proffer that it's primarily *industrialization* (for efficiencies of labor-effort, for mass production), and also *modernization* (up to already-existing technological potentials, at the individual / consumer level).

It's tough to define 'development' in a specific, *granular* way, since that necessitates some way of comparing the available *use-values* (through overall local infrastructure, and the market distribution of commodity-products) of 'underdeveloped' areas to those of 'developed' areas -- what can the people of industrialized, advanced economies do that the people of *underdeveloped* economies *not* do -- ?





I suppose my question/thread prompt is, what accounts for some of the disconnects between what we see in the many paralleled examples of impoverishment & exploitation and the global trends of growing income distribution? What are the specific weaknesses of these indicators? Where is the data honest about positive (if imperfect) development, and where is it obscuring a more holistic picture of exploitation and subjugation?


I'll suggest that the world / humanity may currently be experiencing something of a 'plateau' of available use-values, per the video. In other words, as technology (especially computers / smartphones / tablets, and cell networks and the Internet) becomes more powerful and more-available to more of the world's population, it becomes more *empowering*, giving the world a levelling effect, *upwards* (qualitatively).

Exploitation and subjugation are still the core dynamic of the global capitalist economic system, but the 'ticket' to the prevailing 'contemporary lifestyle' of technological empowerment has become much cheaper, and thus much more available to more people. (Tablets and smartphones started becoming commercially available in 2010-2012, only a few years after that Ted video was made.)