Towards Dynamic Barbarism
Coser, Lewis
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GROWTH, by Paul A. Baran. Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1957. $5.00. Professor Baran, says the dust jacket, "is probably the only Marxian social scientist teaching...
...Hence there is no need to really concern oneself with, even to become aware of, the recent products of Western thought...
...Baran's main thesis is easy to summarize: monopoly capital, controlling the destiny of imperialist countries, is hostile to economic developments in underdeveloped countries, and the ruling classes in the United States and elsewhere are bitterly opposed to the industrialization of the colonial and semi-colonial world...
...What the Monthly Review calls Marxism is only a very special version of Stalinoid obscurantism...
...Neither the Congress Party nor the Indian Socialists are willing to sacrifice the peasants on the altar of industrialization...
...Just soak the rich, he seems to be saying, and things will get moving along...
...There may indeed be a measure of truth in it for such oil producing countries as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but it is nonsense if applied to, say, Libya or India, Ghana or Nigeria or for that matter Puerto Rico...
...In reading this book one acquires a sense of claustrophobia...
...Or science...
...No doubt a fair number of pro-imperialist apologists operate in the groves of academe, but only a self-induced paranoia can seriously maintain that there are only apologists...
...Quoting from a study by Professor Mason of Harvard in which the author makes the point that extraordinarily rapid rates of increase of national income can be attained by totalitarian regimes "exercising the weapons of terror...
...they have discussed social obstacles to rapid industrialization as well as those obstacles that are rooted in cultural tradition...
...that no democratic state could possibly accomplish," Baran objects that such terror, though deplora ble, represents the inevitable birth pangs of a new society, and that such squeezing of living standards has affected "primarily, if not solely" the ruling classes...
...but that the Monthly Review editors should believe it is quite revealing...
...Baran shows supreme disregard for all of this...
...Professor Bert Hoselitz of the University of Chicago, one of the best American experts in the area and certainly no apologist for imperialism, is likewise not mentioned...
...they have considered relations between increasing birthrates, increasing consumption and economic growth...
...a journal he edits that is especially devoted to problems of underdeveloped areas has escaped Prof...
...Baran isn't really so naive as to assume that "tomorrows that sing" can be reached simply by soaking the rich...
...It ain't necessarily so...
...Or almost—for there is one supremely revealing admission in the book...
...Professor Baran, says the dust jacket, "is probably the only Marxian social scientist teaching at a large American University...
...Hence the only chance for underdeveloped countries is to join the "socialist countries" which will give them economic assistance and will teach them the techniques of rapid industrialization that have been applied in Russia, China and the European satellites...
...Now this is an utterly absurd notion, especially if it is applied indiscriminately to all underdeveloped countries...
...A vast specialized literature has grown up...
...Specialists in the field have attempted in recent years to distinguish between the very dissimilar social and economic structures of various underdeveloped regions...
...It is in light of this that we understand his criticism of the slowness of economic growth in India today...
...In recent years a number of study centers have been established both here and abroad for the special purpose of investigating underdeveloped countries...
...Were it not, he claims, for the excessive consumption of the upper classes, unproductive hoardings, and the maintenance of a vast bureaucracy and military establishment, as well as the withdrawals of foreign capital, the underdeveloped countries could attain high, indeed very high, rates of growth...
...Terror will be needed, other social strata will have to be put through the wringer, especially the peasants...
...they have distinguished between underpopulated and overpopulated countries, between countries with poor natural resources and richly endowed countries...
...yet one looks in vain for any evidence that Professor Baran has ever consulted it...
...squeezing standards of living...
...In his preface, written after the 20th Congress of the Russian CP and the Polish and Hungarian events, Baran suddenly discovers that "socialism in backward and underdeveloped countries has a powerful tendency to become a backward and underdeveloped socialism...
...Baran lives in a Manichean universe in which there are only Bourgeois Science— Bad, and Marxist (really Stalinoid) science—Good...
...Baran's notice...
...The book purports to be a Marxist analysis of the conditions of economic growth in modern capitalist and underdeveloped countries...
...This may be good demonology, but is it Marxism...
...Professor Baran contends that most observers to the contrary notwithstanding, the main obstacle to the development of underdeveloped countries is not a shortage of capital, but the way in which potential economic surplus is utilized...
...So tremendous is the gap between this book and the careful scholarship of Marxian writers of an earlier generation—the Bauers, Hilferdings, Luxemburgs, and Bukharins, all of whom attempted to extend the range of Marxian analysis through a theoretical mastery of new facts and developments which had not been considered by Marx and his immediate disciples—that one might indeed believe, were one to take the blurb seriously, that we have come to the end of Marxian scholarship, its final decay into a lifeless Byzantinism...
...WITHIN THE SPAN OF A BRIEF review one can hardly discuss adequately the many fantastic assertions of Professor Baran's book...
...Quite an admission, but clearly only an afterthought...
...This lets the cat out of the bag...
...Industrialization ueber Alles...
...To mention a few examples: the foremost British expert in this area, W. Arthur Lewis, whose Theory of Economic Growth and other books have become minor classics, happens to be an active member of the British Labor Party, yet he isn't even mentioned by Baran...
...Such disregard for the lives, the cultures, the traditions, the moral conditions of the majority of mankind who live today in underdeveloped countries is indeed the mark of the totalitarian spirit...
...In this closed universe of discourse one again and again reads quotations from the Fathers, one hears the pious mumblings of the True Believer as he reels off the beads of the Marxist rosary, but one finds no sense of reality, nor awareness, moreover, of the vast nonMarxist literature on the subject...
...But this, of course, is not really so...
...Yet this is really not surprising...
...Had he had the intellectual and moral courage to pursue this train of thought, Baran might have arrived at the conclusion that the applications of his program must lead not to a backward socialism in underdeveloped countries but to a dynamic barbarism...
...they accept slower rates of growth so as not to be forced to employ the weapons of terror...
...A single example will suffice...
...For Baran and his kind, they are merely petty bourgeois reactionary dreamers...
...but in fact it is a crude propagandist's brief for the "Russian way...
...Mr...
Vol. 4 • September 1957 • No. 4
