Freedom and/or Progress

...Also like most of the others, it is run in the familiar pattern of one-party rule, with dictatorship by a small, corrupt and caste-oriented oligarchy, out to perpetuate its rule by keeping the mass of peasants without education, legal rights or a democratic vote...

...By all means let us have libertarian and democratic governments, but don't let that delude us into thinking that economic prosperity will automatically follow...

...and where the Search for the Good Life is of far greater concern to the earnest young man from Washington than it is to anyone of those who are urged to enjoy it...

...The Federal government can in effect build a Southern society where poverty has finally been eradicated...

...However, I do not see how a "pluralistic" regime would have been so much more successful in the undeveloped countries...

...And McCord makes his point with serious, step-by-step analyses which neither fudge the economic gains of a China or a Cuba nor deny the troubles of a democratic regime in an India or a Nigeria...

...where politics is all pervasive and everyone, including the civil servant, is a politician...

...The form of government may be important-and I agree with McCord that it is-but it is not going to be as decisive in achieving economic miracles as McCord seems to think, simply because no miracles can be wrung out of emptiness, no water invented in a desert...

...Of course it is always worthwhile to take Ghana, Indonesia and China and show that what economic progress they have had (in some cases quite impressive) might very easily have been produced without centralized tyranny, and that in any event the cost in terms of misery and slavery just is not worth it...

...exerts its influence intelligently and does not simply dump money down an already unproductive hole, the land may prosper...

...His honesty is as impressive as his scholarship, and I for one am convinced by his demonstration that most economic decisions of dictatorships have nothing to do with the fact that they are dictatorships-that workable economic programs are not helped, and more often are hindered, by a controlled press, an uncritical single party, a glory-hungry and unheeding leader, and a general aura of fear in the citizenry...

...McCord does not seem to grasp the immense difficulties in putting happy theories into serious practice in nations where bribery is as honorable as Christmas giving and nepotism as noble as adoption...

...if not, it may linger on the fringes of the undeveloped world for decades...

...2]2 pp, $4.50...

...Then it tends to make the easy assumption that a small dose of common sense and a little bit of practical economics, if only they were tried, would bring the new dawn to the new nations...

...Government aid are necessary to spur "small rural industries" and "arouse genuine equality of opportunity...

...For all he would like to forget this unquestionably unpleasant state of things, it must be said to McCord's credit that he finally acknowledges it...

...I think McCord is too easily persuaded that half a loaf tastes better when coming from a Iatifundium than a commune...

...And, of course, its future health, political and social as well as economic, depends to a great degree on what steps the United States government is prepared to take to assist it...

...We no longer feel that massive jailings in Mississippi are acceptable if the right factories are being built or the right crops harvested-and we should not feel differently, he reminds us, where Africa and Asia are concerned...

...where personnel are guided by different standards than the Puritan ones of hard work and efficiency...

...Part of the difficulty may be that McCord has not quite done all his homework...

...If the U.S...

...The point is that Ghana-and all of the undeveloped countries-is poor, getting poorer and not about to get any richer...

...Like most of the others, it is small (48,000 square miles, only a fifth the size of Texas), poor (per capita income under $1,200), backward (dependent on agriculture, and 60 per cent of its area covered with forest), and in most ways, as they say, "unviable...

...But The Springtime of Freedom is less satisfactory when it moves from diagnosis to prescription...

...In both places he argues that massive doses of U.S...

...Reviewed by J. KIRK SALE Too many little foreign countries seem to be thrusting themselves on our already overburdened attention these days, but there is one that comes forward with a special claim...

...McCord's book is extremely valuable because it forces us to recognize this, to answer back those who say, from the safety of their democracies, that only a dictatorship seems to get things done...

...We no longer argue that the Mississippi government can have its dictatorship as long as it manages to keep order-and we should not accept the argument, McCord says, overseas...

...Its previous summer, longer and even hotter, is the subject of William McCord's Mississippi, a kind of academic casebook of the chaotic, gruelling work of the Council of Federated Organizations in pushing forward the Negro Revolution in that backward state...

...Two pages from the end he says bluntly: "The hard fact remains that only generous long-term aid from industrialized countries can provide the extra margin of capital and skills which emerging countries desperately need.' It may be Christ or the Devil running the country, but unless the West will pour its money in it hardly matters -or at least it hardly matters to the stomach, however it may to wrists and hearts...

...In both places he argues that a broadening of the base of political power-to the Negroes in Mississippi, to the peasant masses overseas-is the best way to insure a broadening of economic benefits...

...where statistics, even on the number of mouths to feed, are almost nonexistent and where they exist, unreliable...

...Then perhaps the long, hot summers will fade and Mississippi will enjoy a springtime of freedom...

...A Ghana endowed with liberty and justice for all would still be achingly poor...

...He makes one neon-lighted square into "some...

...It might...

...He seems to know India well (and often seems to assume that all countries should follow the Indian pattern), but his whirlwind experience in a country like Ghana has resulted in some unfortunate mistakes: He misspells the name of Tawia Adamafio, one of the country's major figures, throughout...

...He calls one avenue a "pointless" "superhighway" when in fact it is a most vital traffic artery, although unhappily only an ordinary two-laned road, and so 00...

...After Mississippi, why not the world...

...For the immediate future, its life will continue to be nasty, brutish, mean and short...

...The balance between freedom and progress is McCord's concern in both societies-freedom enough for the heart and mind (in 1ackson as in Peking) and progress enough for the stomach (in Hattiesburg as in Lagos...

...Again in McCord's words, this time from his book on Mississippi, "Only the entire American people, acting through the Federal government, can bring about the downfall of the Mississippi tyranny...

...It is a sound point...

...And this seems to be the solution, as far as there is one, not only for the undeveloped world but for that strange little land of Mississippi as well...

...This land is Mississippi, U.S.A., which has just completed another long, hot summer...

...Interestingly enough, it was published just after another McCord book, The Springtime of Freedom, an academic casebook of the chaotic, gruelling process of winning and keeping freedom in that other undeveloped world overseas...

...Ghana's Tema harbor could have been built without putting 1,000 political prisoners into jail, and its puppet press is not a necessary concomitant to the Volta Dam...

...In both contexts he argues against the notion that a centrally- directed dictatorship provides more jobs and more bread for its citizens than an ordinary, fumbling democracy...

...It probably would not even be inclined to give up such useless baubles as its empty jet flights to Ethiopia or its fancy $15-a-night hotels...

...The other part of McCord's difficulty is that while he can-s-and does-make a convincing case against the benefits of authoritarian rule, he has more difficulty putting the case for the advantages of what he chooses to call a "pluralistic" (roughly democratic, individualistic) rule...

...The Springtime of Freedom is an important attempt to face the problem in the undeveloped world that we have now begun to face in Mississippi...

...it is true, attract new Western industries now timorous about investing there, but this would be a small gain perhaps not balanced by giving up the few advantages of authoritarianism...

...It would still be getting pauper's prices for a bag of cocoa, and it would not suddenly find new minerals in the bush...