Dependence

Dependence as a Defense

Though development models develop over time, not fully formed, but trying to reach a new way of doing (Silvia, 68), it seems aid doesn’t work to create financing, because things fall apart. Easterly points to collapsing business dreams because of on-going managerial and mechanical failure. The gears in the machines simply couldn’t be maintained (Easterly, 27) in the new environments old methods were develop for (Easterly, 68). Silvia points to rising social pressures, inflation, and as a result,a dependency on international financing to keep on track (68). This failure to create repeatable methods of production, amounts to a requirement for context specific solutions, so that people using the investment get to the right place: a better life for everyone. The important point is the direction of that investment, what was it intended to do? For me its like a vegetable garden, merely pouring fertilizer on, will create growth, but if left untended weed and pest growth is more likely than ‘intended’ outputs — namely vegetables. But of course, aid investment can include gardeners (“technological expertise” 68, or more simply a skilled workforce, Silvia 75), to keep the garden producing the intended output.  Gardeners direct the fertilizing in order to stimulate a specifically desirable form of growth. This was termed aid to investment growth, but the financing gap approach created artificial growth rates that would only continue as long as fertilizer was applied (Easterly 29) correctly by the gardeners. The Gardeners were all trained in the west.  Likewise, under import substitution, periodic stabilization efforts were required to keep Latin American industrializations on track (Silvia 75).

(Attempt to prepare garden spots, import substitutions were applied in order to rapidly grow industrial capacity,  first in Chile, but later in many South American countries (Siliva 70).

These unique financing attempts created a treadmill situation: countries needed the aid to merely pay back the aid investment (Bauer, 1972, Silvia 73). RMSM were created with the understanding that aid could create this dependency cycle (Easterly 35).  This dependency cycle seems a given when aid investment to make up a financing gap, is short hand for money to buy machines to replace labour, where the means to maintain the machines are all held by the donors, and thus the continued supply of these essential ingredients in production require the continued well-wishes of those donors. How could Entrepreneurial  dreams ‘take-off’ (Rostow) when the means of production are locked away in Western durable goods manufacturers? How could transplants be expected to be as vibrant as native species of plants, co-evolved with their environment? The implementation of innovative growth solutions through labour saving technology (Solow 1956-57) are guarded by Western spare parts manufacturers: the supporting industrial services developed to support mechanization, are much slower growing (Silvia, 67-87) than mere machines that stamp aluminum (Easterly, 68). In short access to growth ingredients, machines, and people able to invent new  more labour efficient machines (be they Focaultian or mechanical), limits  Rostowian take-off dramatically.

Given the Communist scare in the West at the time, the question for me is, was this dependence the desired result? The West provides machines and loans, that countries cannot service themselves, so that they have to come-back when it breaks and ask for more aid to fix it, so that communism wont spread. This conspiratorial line of reasoning becomes all too likely in the face of Kennedy’s assertion: “In our time these new nations need help… to reach the stage of self sustaining growth… for a special reason. Without exception they are all under Communist pressure” (33). So then financing the gap, was deploying western capital to the front lines in order to keep back the soviet boogie-man. The soviets were scary because they created a foil to the creation of monetarily dependent states arrayed under the banner of Western capital flows, for a time they seemed to “produce more” from the “centralized character of the operation.” Seems almost laughable given how spectacularly the USSR imploded, but given Easterly’s triumphant language at the Union’s fall — “I wondered how the Soviets managed to fool us for so long” (33) — this boogie man seems to have been a real specter that formed real policy. These policies created an array of dependent ‘allies’ (Rio Conference 1947) in the containment of the USSR. Given Global Souths intended purpose, is it any wonder that these nations did not become self-sustaining? ”The Third World, far from being peripherl, was central to superpower rivalry and the possibility of nuclear confrontation. The system that generates conflict and instability and the system that generates underdevelopment are inextricably bound” (Escobar 1995). In short, The Third World was built as a bulwark, a wall. Walls protect communities, they are not meant to be communities, merely buffers. Not places where community, culture and monetary life thrive, but a protection against intrusion into the Western community, culture and monetary life by the Reds.

The truly ironic part, as easterly points out (37), is these same holding measures, financial and technical dependency on the West, were instituted in the former Soviet republics. The truly scary thing is even without the USSR, the aid policy continued to build dependent walls, even without a clear enemy to protect against.

Is this a case of preparing for the last war, the cold war, while the next one comes? Are dependent countries the Maginot Line (1929-1936) writ large on the Cold War nuclear global battlefield (Escobar, 34)?

A way to explore this idea – that dependency was intended – would be to explore The USSR : they likely employed this technocracy to maintain its territory as well.

Also, it would be good to compare contested Cold war battlefields, to non, that is control for the battle field nations, and see if the remaining Global South did have a more positive experience.

Easterly, William. The Elusive Quest

Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the Third World

Silvia, Eduardo. The Import-Substitution Model: Chile in Comparative Perspective

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