DEVELOPMENT: THE RADICALLY ALTERNATIVE VIEW.

Ted Trainer,

27.2.2013

The vast development literature fails to attend to the distinction between the overwhelmingly dominant conventional conception of development, and what might be termed Appropriate Development. 

Following are some of the core taken-for-granted elements in the dominant conception of development (indented, in bold type), followed by critical comment and the alternative view.

Development, progress and improving human welfare are essentially about increasing the amount of goods and service people can buy.  In other words development is more or less equivalent to economic growth, or at least growth is its overwhelmingly important element.

Appropriate development focuses on developing what is needed, and that is totally different from development defined as facilitating whatever will most increase the volume of sales, and therefore maximise profits, business turnover and GDP.

 In fact the relation between growth and Appropriate Development is in general strongly contradictory.  If the goal is to maximise GDP this will actually prevent appropriate development, because development resources will go into producing what will maximise sales to people with most money to spend and profits to corporations, not into what will most satisfy urgent needs.

To define development as increasing the GDP is precisely what suits the rich, because it puts top priority on the freedom to invest in developing what is most profitable and will result in most sales. 

The most appropriate development initiatives would dramatically reduce the GDP.  For example if some of the land growing luxury crops like coffee to export to rich countries was transferred to the production of food by and for local people, the GDP would drop.

Development results from the investment of capital.  Therefore it is necessary to persuade people with capital to invest, or to borrow it.What is developed is decided by those who own capital.

Firstly it is farcical to assume that if you allow the things to be developed in your country to be determined by what will most enrich a few already extremely rich investors living on the other side of the world then you will get development of things that are most likely to meet your most urgent needs! 

What you will get of course is development of enterprises that will use your land, resources and labour to produce luxuries to export to rich world supermarkets, at the lowest possible return to you.  And if you are one of the perhaps 50 countries where transnational corporations can't maximise their profits producing anything at all, then you will get no development at all.

This is absurd, morally repugnant, literally catastrophic, and totally avoidable.  All those fifty countries have immense productive capacity and could have developed into very satisfactory societies without any poverty and with thriving economies and rich cultural systems and a good quality of life for all, if development had been conceived in terms of putting those resources into producing to meet needs.

Even more importantly, appropriate Development rejects the assumption that capital is important or a necessary factor for development. This is the fundamental contradiction between conventional and Appropriate Development.  Little or no money capital is needed for the development that can meet basic needs and provide all with a good quality of life.  All the resources necessary for this are there, in the land and labour of the people.  All that is needed is the organisation that an Appropriate Development vision brings, so that people can work together to devote the productive resources around them immediately and directly to producing what they need. 

Hence the painfully tragic situation constantly visible wherein millions of people suffer malnutrition, poor housing, inadequate water supply, poverty, unemployment, depression, illness etc., while there are all around them abundant food producing resources, house building resources, etc.

Therefore, plunge into the market! In order to acquire things money must be earned by the production of something that can be sold.  In order for the country to be able to pay for development and to acquire goods, it must earn from exporting.   The process of development is best determined by market forces, because these maximise efficiency in the allocation of resources.

The market system could play a (minor) role in a satisfactory economy, but the market is directly responsible for most of the poverty, suffering, conflict, ecological destruction and underdevelopment in the world.  This is because market forces ignore need and what is just or appropriate or ecologically necessary, and respond only to monetary bids.  In a market system things go to those who can pay most.  Market systems for allocating things or deciding what is to be developed are therefore precisely what rich people, corporations, banks and consumers wantÉbecause market systems guarantee that they can take all the available resources while the poor get few if any.

Even worse, when market forces are allowed to determine what is developed the productive capacity of the Third World is devoted not to producing what Third World people need, but to what consumers in rich countries want. A glaring illustration is the fact that in some Third World countries more than half the best land grows luxury crops to export to rich countries.  Similarly, most of the factories on their land produce goods to export, not things their people need.

Advocates of the market claim that it is the most ÒefficientÓ way of allocating things.  But this is true only if ÒefficientÓ is defined merely in terms of what will make most profit.  If on the other hand your goal is to meet human and ecological need, then obviously the market is the most appallingly inefficient system!

Consider the benefit that "trickles down" to the people from this arrangement. People in Bangladesh producing shirts are paid 15 c an hour, part of which they must then spend buying from supermarkets owned by rich world corporations.  They would be far better off if most of their work time could be going into the production of necessities in small local farms and firms they owned.  But rich countries and their agencies such as the World Bank simply will not allow this -- development is only allowed to take the form that suits corporations seeking to maximise profits according to market forces.  The Banks Structural Adjustment Packages expressly prohibit anything else, and they dismantle any other arrangements governments might have had in place, especially ÒsubsistenceÓ systems, protection for local industry, and subsidies for poorer people. The only form of development they permit and enforce is development of precisely what suits corporations and rich world consumers.

Obviously the development of what is appropriate in view of the urgent needs of people, societies and ecosystems is not possible unless a great deal of production and distribution and investment takes place contrary to market forces, i .e., via regulation.  The general principle is that market forces prevent appropriate development, but conventional development theory totally rules out any "interference with market forces", so governments must eliminate regulation, which literally means give up the power to control development.

Plunge into the global economy! Individuals and nations must find something to produce and sell, because they canÕt expect to be able to acquire anything unless they have been able to sell something, including labour.  So, crank up export industries, and entice in foreign investment.  Trade! 

The key to Appropriate Development is the immense capacity for self sufficiency outside the monetary economy.  Conventional development theory and practice have no interest in the fact that households, communities, localities and nations can easily produce for themselves most of the basic things they need independently of the monetary economy and with almost no dependence on capital or markets or corporations or banks.

Thus a core principle of Appropriate Development is, minimise economic connections with the rich countries and the global economy. Borrow very little if anything. Export only a few surpluses in order to be able to import only a few important items. Allow foreign investors into your nation only if they will agree to produce necessities on your terms. Maximise local and national self-sufficiency.

Clearly conventional development is a process of expropriationÉof taking wealth from others.  Once Third World people had all the land and forests and fishÉnow they have hardly any of these while these resources and the wealth the people produce mostly flows out to rich people far away.  That is theft, but it is disguised because it mostly happens via the normal working of the market system. Conventional development has developed the Third World into a state whereby it produces mostly for the benefit of the rich.  Conventional development is therefore best described as a form of plunder.

The ultimate goal of development is to become like the rich countries, with high material  "living standards" and GDP, and with predominantly "modern" or Western ways. 

This is the most ignored element in the entire discussion of development.  This goal of conventional development is totally impossible.  There are nothing like enough resources on the planet for all people to rise to present rich world living standardsÓ and rates of resource use – let alone those the rich countries will have as they continue to pursue growth.

Rich countries help poor countries to develop.  They give aid, foreign investment and they trade with them.

Rich countries will not tolerate Appropriate Development, and they canÕt because it would mean their own demise.  They cannot maintain their Òliving standardsÓ or their economies unless they go on getting most of the worldÕs wealth, and Appropriate Development would mean the end of that process.

The high Òliving standardsÓ we in rich countries have could not be maintained without the repression and violence required to maintain our empire.  We cannot expect to go on getting far more than our fair share of world resources unless we keep in place the systems and regimes which deprive most people of a fair share.

            The wider context.

The tragedy that is Third World ÒdevelopmentÓ is only one element in the alarming global predicament we now face, also involving environmental breakdown, conflict over scarce resources, shortages of land, water, fish, and especially petroleum, and social breakdown.  These problems cannot be solved within the consumer- capitalist society that inevitably creates them; they can only be solved by transition to The Simpler Way. (For the detail see