Understanding Comes First

...vented from arising...

...At all times people have gone hungry for governments that seemed to respect their feelings, and have rebelled against governments that merely tried to feed them...

...he has in fact been called a "colonialist" in a socialist magazine...

...That is more than most professional anti-colonialists can claim...

...In a bleak chapter McCord describes the heroic up-hill fight of men like Mehta, Betancourt, Busia, Awolowo who deny that bread and freedom are mutually exclusive, and that disorder can be overcome only by fascist-type governments...

...He also has shown, at least to this reviewer's satisfaction, that the problems of development will be even more formidable if the narrow-gauge devices should not work...

...It is true that without the militancy and restiveness of these destitute masses, the dictators could hardly pose as "revolutionary," and without threatening "revolution" (which at times means little more than the expropriation of foreign-owned factories) they might not be able to pressure Western governments into giving them steel mills, power dams and air lines—the new status symbols of dictators in underdeveloped countries...

...Too late they discovered that in the absence of public freedom no one was aware of the total real cost of this "efficiency...

...Where McCord is convincing, he speaks of something else: a villagebased, consumer-oriented development is more helpful to projects which the grand-scheme of the dictators tend to underrate, such as education...

...McCord uses to demonstrate the success of "village oriented" industry, certainly cannot at the same time be used to demonstrate democratic development...

...McCord himself cites Nasser's successes in this respect...

...In a climate where it is considered a sin to talk back to ill-advised nation alism, that requires courage...

...McCord has done an outstanding service to the "third world" by refusing to shove its real problems under a heap of revolutionary slogans...

...In fact the Swiss were then so poor they had to hire themselves out as mercenaries...

...McCord is quite aware of the difficulties that must be overcome and of the sacrifices that must be demanded of the population...

...his methods of progress are narrow-gauge projects...

...Retarded" is a relative term which makes no sense unless in comparisons...

...McCord nowhere claims that democracy in itself guarantees justice and well-being...

...But in return for a little restraint he promises a more certain success, and he holds out a hope which is not founded on desperation...

...McCord's projects are not grandiose and his predictions are not glamorous...

...this means that, along with much oppression, they also are to lose their security—a process that can only be painful...

...In his own words, he has shown the leaders of the emerging countries that their task is complex and their problems are manifold...

...The same country a hundred years hence...

...a Sukarno, a Nkrumah, a Nasser are popular dictators, and their success is not explained away by dismissing their followers as "emotional...

...He asks the highly relevant question: "Would Bolivian tin miners let their union become simply one more organ of an all-powerful party...

...McCord and the moderate leaders in some underdeveloped countries would found the democratic framework for a policy of balanced, consumer-oriented development...

...What people really like about Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno is not their economics but their style, their anti-Western, anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist, maybe even anti-materialistic rebellion against that nineteenth century which they are trying to skip...

...Retarded with respect to what...

...The Germans under Hitler, the Russians under Stalin and the Argentines under Peron also thought that the price of freedom was not too high for effectiveness in decision-making, speed in development, and the emotional gratification of a national renascence...

...These, too, are needed to guarantee a balanced, all-round development, and it cannot be stressed too often that development is not a question of investing capital and erecting giant industrial plants or of transferring Western equipment to the Southern Hemisphere...

...Moreover, no one can deny that a nation's creative powers are unleashed precisely by the type of revolutionary emotions to which the dictators appeal...

...The experience which he cites to this effect, however, so far has remained inconclusive...

...To the illusion of rapid, forced development under the dictatorial whip, some have opposed the other illusion that, perhaps with the aid of foreign investment, underdeveloped countries can sail into the modern age without major shocks and pain...

...McCord here might have quoted for support the greatest authority on development problems—Paul Hoffmann of the U.N...

...How does one teach birth control to a nation where the traditional salutation to the bride is "may you be blessed with 16 children...

...By present standards, all European countries were "retarded" precisely at the time when democracy there was on the march...

...The Favelados have a world to win —provided they lose their benefactors...

...How does one instill love of national political institutions in a village where people ask each other: is Congress a man or a woman...

...they acquire an airline before people can enjoy a bicycle ride...

...McCord is impatient with the perverted Western intellectual who first extols the ancient village democracy which colonialism destroyed, and then applauds the new dictators for abolishing the "parochial" relics of tribal control...

...He honestly relates the beneficial measures which Nkrumah or Nasser were able to accomplish because they could override local, tribal, traditionalist resistance...

...and, finally, that the more omniscient a dictator is reputed to be, the costlier his mistakes will prove in the final reckoning...

...McCord does not belong to those who think that white men's breast-beating over the sins of their colonialist fathers will help the backward nations very much...

...He denies that bread and freedom are alternatives, and he goes even further: he spells out the conditions under which such choice can be avoided, as well as the conditions which make such choice inevitable...

...He tries to talk economic sense while the masses are craving for economic nonsense...

...they want nuclear physicists before they train sorely needed schoolteachers...

...that under the umbrella of the dictatorship abuses and errors are as frequent as they are incapable of correction...

...Meanwhile, independent organizations are suppressed or pre...

...that many of the assumptions which inform their policy have little basis in reality...

...He does not believe that the fate of developing nations has been pre-ordained, that there is some fated necessity for them to emulate the Chinese...

...Transitional man" will either liberate himself from all kinds of thraldom, or he will fall back into the inertia which brought on his plight in the first place...

...This observation, however, brings up the one point where I differ with Mr...

...Yet he also mentions that many of these measures had been initiated by the preceding regimes...

...But those who resort to name-calling in the face of facts only betray their own lack of sensitivity...

...The book is full of horrid examples of backward ness...

...McCord himself relates the story of an Indonesian who told him: "All party leaders drive in Cadillacs, but the Communists ride bicycles...

...Among others, two contributors to DISSENT come in for attack: Stanley Diamond who asserted that "the [Ghana] revolution can hardly tolerate an opposition," and Sid Lens who opposed strikes for higher wages because they would divert money from Nkrumah's revolutionary white elephants, such as Russian jet planes ("which proudly cross Africa with two lonely passengers aboard"), a six million dollar remodelling of Christinaborg castle, a super highway leading nowhere, and, of course, a modern army...

...In Ghana, by the way, the charge of "parochialism" directed against the opposition is utterly false...

...Still, the burden of proof is on those who reject these suggestions...

...The twentieth century revolutions are puritan and nationalistic...

...But what an uphill fight...

...They boast of the increase in city population, but these new proletarians often turn out to be favelados who depend for all social support on the dictator and his machine...

...Of course, McCord is not blind to the advantages of authoritarian government in underdeveloped countries...

...He rather believes that "their rise and fall depends on the choices their leaders make at this point of extreme crisis...

...Yet, it is precisely on these old village institutions that Mr...

...Mr...

...he offers concrete advice, and he does not fear to call a dictator nefarious even if his skin happens to be brown or black...

...The American economy...

...McCord points out that these may be costly displays of power, for some primitive economies cannot yet support such heavy supra-structures which may thwart rather than promote the development of a balanced consume t market...

...If industrialization is not to lead to totalitarian dictatorships, or simply if it is to succeed, it must be accompanied by basic changes in the mode of life...

...All too many Western "liberals" are content to declare that these natives cannot be trusted to find their own road to salvation but must be guided by strong dictators who, moreover, should be thoroughly imbued with the "Western" spirit of efficiency...

...Other examples of village-based development are too scanty to be convincing, and this reviewer remains somewhat unim pressed by the assorted but undigested information which Mr...

...but he states that development may depend on a variety of factors, one of which is the availability of public controls, and that a dictator invariably forgets that justice is one of the factors defining well-being...

...It seems to this reviewer that such an approach is the only scientific one and that Mr...

...Favelados, the slum dwellers in Sao Paulo's shantytowns, are the subject of a moving autobiography, Child of the Dark, by Carolina de Jesus...

...In these institutions they find the natural organs of control and possibly also the natural instruments of execution...

...and of course, they build arms forges before they forge plows...

...these people must be yanked loose from their old orientations...

...In a book which—as university press books go—is no less moving, Professor McCord argues that to help the favelados, we must not merely urge our financial aid and political advice on them, but first must make an effort to understand them and respect their institutions and traditions...

...To be sure, Mr...

...What Professor McCord has done is both more and less than to engage in a dialogue with these forces...

...they are not proletarian and materialistic...

...He rejects the pseudo-Marxist theory that democracy is a product of abundance as milk is a product of the cow...

...He is pouring cold water on some of their cherished dreams, but he also shows them how to approach the problem of poverty on a realistic basis, how to plan what is within their reach and how to avoid the pitfalls of totalitarian illusions...

...How is democracy possible in countries where traditionally a hierarchy of patrons, caciques, chiefs or bosses wields influence...

...Ideology always has played a significant role in the modernization of a country...

...McCord provides on this very important point...

...they'll win...

...The meaning of justice here must be taken broadly, encompassing not only equality before the law and equal opportunity, but respect for the customs of the people and participation of the governed in the procedures of government...

...It simply is not true that the Dutch or the Swiss first grew prosperous and then developed democracy, as a sort of luxury which rich countries can afford...

...McCord for the first time holds out a hope that may be guarded and conditional, but which at least is based on a faith in man— free man...

...In his picture of underdevelopment, the traits of ideological hatred, of resentment and solidarity are missing...

...The dictator and his "realistic" Western advisers sacrifice human dignity to efficiency...

...abundance, on the other hand, never was among the conditions needed to assure democracy...

...Besides, these Western apologists for Nasser, Sukarno and Nkrumah assure us, the natives neither could make democracy work nor do they care for individual liberty...

...The dictatorships, after all, are not the invention of the dictators or of European intellectuals who advised them...

...The ancient village civilization is less ready for the modern age than most of us think, and an awesome gulf separates the more enlightened leaders from the masses...

...Nor, vice versa, is it true that "democracy cannot exist" in retarded countries as Potter and Kalman Silvert assert...

...He is all the more concerned to make the adjustment less painful and to spare the people unnecessary deprivations, particularly those which are caused not by the aims of development but by the particular policy aims of the dictators...

...the opposition of the commercial class seems cosmopolitan in comparison with Nkrumah, who deliberately revives tribal symbolism such as animal sacrifice and public incantations, not to speak of the cult of the osagye f o himself...

...No doubt, to become a modern nation...

...No one can deny that India is developing less rapidly than China, and the example of Japan, which Mr...

...How does one make a nation out of people who call "foreigner" anyone observing a different ritual...

...they uproot people from their traditional moorings without offering them new links of fraternity...

...that they cannot deal with them on a completely ad hoc basis...

...Some still try to speak the nineteenth century language of "efficiency," but paradoxically such claims often are mere "justifying ideologies...

...But Mr...

...He has seen these men, has inspected their work on three continents, has talked to people who benefited from their efforts or who have devoted themselves to carry their plans to fruition...

...He has been told so often that he cannot do it...

...Their political aim, having a nation of proletarians rather than consumers, coincides with their economic aim, which Bismarck expressed in the words: he who has iron also has bread...

...I am afraid they would, provided they felt that the government was theirs...

...but this necessarily is a comparatively slow process...

...Moreover, this lack of regard for people has an economic foundation: the dictators prefer big industry to the development of a consumers' market...

...But he chooses not to understand...

...McCord is not prepared to wait for the improvement of human resources until industrialization has increased the material resources...

...Special Fund, who certainly is impatient to see the backward nations take off as soon as possible, but for this very reason is putting more and more money into education and other phases of "human development" before industrial development...

...Much easier to prove than its contrary is the thesis that democracy as an ideology and as an institution preceded the rise of industrial wealth everywhere, and maybe was its condition...

...for it is impossible not to feel, behind the impressive mass of documentation Mr...

...McCord has marshalled in support of his thesis, a deep-felt, warm concern for the peoples of the Southern Hemisphere, not just in terms of their material wellbeing but in terms of respect for their individuality and tradition...

...McCord might easily be accused of being cold and rational where it is so much easier to be enthusiastic and thoughtless...