WWR & mysteries of the organism

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[was: Re: [PEN-L:3106] Re: Re: Re: Where are the economists?]

Brad writes:
> Where Rostow went most wrong, I think, is in his naive and optimistic
> belief that "take off" was irreversible--that once it had started, you
> would grow rapidly essentially forever (and he was wrong: look at
> Argentina, Uruguay, or Chile). Where Rostow went almost as badly wrong, I
> think, is in his naive belief that pretty much the only thing you need to
> achieve in order to reach "take off" is to raise your national savings and
> investment rate: it's much harder than that. And where Rostow went third
> most wrong, I think, is in his failure to distinguish between processes of
> integration into the world economy that aided development (encouraged
> investment and transferred technology) from "enclave" integration that
> hobbled development (encouraged elite consumption and corruption, and
> transferred no technology).

One of the problems with WWR was that he defined "development" in terms of
capitalist standards -- e.g., growth of GDP per capita -- rather than in
human and natural terms. Unlike the fellow whose efforts he aped (Marx), he
was quite unconscious of the environmental impact of development. He was
also unconscious of the human dimension of growth, paying attention only to
"mass consumption" (market-purchased products). He judged "development" in
terms of GDP, so that policies specifically aimed at shifting people and
products from non-market to market situations automatically caused
"development," even if it was merely a mess of pottage. It's not a virtuous
circle as much as circular reasoning.

> But the stress on the virtuous circles that accelerate growth once it is
> well underway, on the importance of export commodity terms-of-trade in
> generating the long waves that accelerated or retarded development, the
> focus on growth as structural change rather than just more "output," and
> on the links between capital accumulation and access to technology--all of
> these seem to be good and powerful insights that we owe in part at least
> to Rostow.

I am not convinced that promoting exports promotes even capitalist
development unless its organized in a statist way, as in Japan or Taiwan or
South Korea (until recently). This is a fact that WWR missed and
Gershenkron saw.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine