Viewing a World in Conflict

...Furthermore, the situation in these "backward" countries is aggravated by the coalition of native feudal lords with Western imperialists...

...It is a running discourse on "what to think on current problems," not a search for the measure of these problems...

...The first is present in Russia, its satellites and China...

...except that here the industrial revolution provided employment for the displaced peasants forced off the land by the spread of commercial farming —for there were no serious obstacles to capital accumuation...

...Under feudalism, capital accumulation is hindered since surplus funds flow into luxury consumption...

...Lens adduces numerous specific examples, set into a briefly sketched historical background, to demonstrate the insidious effects and the terrible sharpening of social contradictions to which they give rise...

...The countries with which Lens is concerned do not have the social strata whose very existence is staked on the type of representative institutions which have evolved in Western Europe and the U.S...

...They have no bourgeoisie, no industrial hierarchy of weight, their traditional institutions are in a state of dissolution, their political and economic objectives are unclarified and in dispute...

...The resultant economic stagnation has been and is creating problems to which feudalism offers no answers but which the peoples are impatient to solve...

...The reader is left without an adequate appreciation of the profoundly problematical character of the issues discussed...

...It introduces historical associations of doubtful relevancy...

...Lens reduces the answer to this question to variations in the tempo of capital accumulation...

...Aside from objections one may register to Lens's terminology—and such objections, it should be clear, are not just semantic quibbling—his rather too simplified treatment of a number of key issues may be questioned...

...But in the long run it undermined capitalism itself by preventing the expansion of the world market...

...He implicitly accepts the frequent comparison of the present state of the countries in question with that of the U.S...

...the second in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan and, to a lesser degree, Italy and France...

...He does not attempt to analyze these forces and only rarely identifies them (Naguib, Mossadegh, U Nu...

...This coalition, by effectively preventing the rise of a native bourgeoisie, may have been in the shortrun interest of Western capitalism...

...It is Sidney Lens's contention that not two but three socio-economic systems confront each other in the world today...

...THE SECOND PART of the book deals with the "how" of the economic deveopment of backward countries...

...They are communism, capitalism and feudalism...

...The military approach which today characterizes American foreign policy, argues Lens, is self-defeating...

...the inhibitory effects of feudalism upon economic development extend from France—where productivity gains are stifled by measures which prevent the elimination of the many marginal producers—to Austria, Iran, South America and India where the state is not energetic enough to undertake radical land reform...

...in more or less covert form...

...The problem of the underdeveloped countries, he says, is not one of poverty, i.e., it is not primarily economic, but social and political...

...This is what makes reading it a somewhat frustrating experience...

...These factors account to some extent for the difficulties faced by the U.S...

...He does not doubt that such forces exist everywhere in these countries and that they can without great difficulty be raised to a level of maturity by means of selective American aid...

...Perhaps it is this which accounts for much oversimplification and schematization...

...For, while "feudalism" is not totalitarian in form, it plays a profoundly reactionary role and, unless eliminated by internal and external democratic forces, it will give way to Communism...

...The area of a freely functioning capitalism, i.e., the area in which the problems of industrialization have been solved, is still quite small...

...Since the nature and tasks of economic development form one of the chief subjects of Lens's book, it is unfortunate that he ignores a discussion of such central importance...

...By repeated emphasis on the term "feudalism" as denoting the system of large landholdings prevalent in most of Asia and South America, and on "capitalism" as the highly resilient social structure of Western countries, Lens seeks sharply to delineate the essential irreconcilability of the two...

...He takes for granted that heavy and rapid investments in capital goods are a prerequisite for a high standard of living...

...The final part of Lens's book is devoted to a discussion of policies open to the U.S...

...It is determined with a high degree of government responsiveness to the needs and desires of the people...

...Rather, conditions should be attached to aid in order to help the repressed democratic forces in the countries concerned...

...INTO A BOOK of 250 pages Lens has compressed a discussion of virtually all the problems which have arisen on the social, political and economic plane in the past 50 years (only those central to his basic thesis have been summarized above...

...The last prevails throughout the greater part of the globe—its existence gives the lie to all facile references to a "free world...

...The upheavals in Asia, Africa and South America arise from social problems of which the Russians through their Commmunist agents may take advantage but which they do not create...

...Only by America's active support of impending or actual revolutions can the Soviet Union be check mated...

...The concept of "capitalism," for example, should not have been used in a book of this kind as if it were not itself subject to reevaluation, particularly at a time when its distinction from other growing economic systems has become fluid and when its relationship to "socialism"—also a concept in a state of redefinition—cannot be thought of simply in 19th century terms...

...Its application to countries like France, Italy, Turkey, etc., though qualified, blinds the reader to the existence of an altogether autonomous set of problems typical of national development...

...it tends to exaggerate the opposition of interest between landlordism and capitalism and to slur over the fact that the "feudal" landlords are involved in the network of the world market...

...yet if countries like India or Indonesia were to attempt to base themselves on such experience, the results would probably be as catastrophic as they have been in Russia...

...Feudalism is identified with the first, while totalitarian regimes characterize the third...

...in 1776...

...in formulating its policies towards these countries, just as the pres ence in Europe of an industrialism based on a fairly viable bourgeois state made possible the policies embodied in the Marshall Plan...

...Another basic question discussed by Lens is that of democracy in the, underdeveloped countries, and the forces sustaining it...

...Lens's very terminology is open to question...

...These problems—we are still following Lens—are analogous to those faced by the West 100-200 years ago...

...The optimum rate of capital accumulation is to Lens a social and political rather than a narrowly economic question...

...There is a good deal of discussion in Asia centering around this problem, that is, whether economic development is to be labor-intensive rather than concentrate on capital (see the articles by Asoka Mehta in DISSENT, Spring and Summer 1955...

...What capital accumulation there is proceeds too slowly...

...This is not the case in feudal countries today...

...Historical experience would seem to bear this out...

...Lens's wide use of "feudalism" also obscures more than it clarifies...

...This would, to be sure, constitute "intervention" in the affairs of other peoples but such intervention is alreday practiced by the U.S...

...Three tempos—slow, optimum and rapid—are conceived by him, each relating to a specific social structure...

...A legal code lacking guarantees against arbitrary state action is preserved, hence private investment is without the juridical protection it needs in order to function...

...Lens's book provides a welcome contrast to the usual "human interest" reportage as well as to the specialist's work on backward economies...

...Such a comparison, however, ignores decisive peculiarities which held only for the American revolution...

...America can contribute to solving them, but mere financial and technical aid cannot change anything and may strengthen existing reactionary governments—such as is the case already in Spain, Iran, Guatemala, etc...

...However, Lens tends to formulate ready answers to questions which, in the light of the experiences of the past decades, are open or shoud be reopened...