9_Law and State_Volume 17

66 Johann Hellwege
ably most differentiated instrument of analysis to comprehend social
change as a whole. The modernization discussion, which began with such
facile optimism, is currently rather more filled with scepticism about the
possibility of being able to explain and comprehensively to plan social
change in its entirety, and to include all its causes. If it is the task of the
Latin American social sciences to investigate the possibilities of development
under the historical conditions and within the concrete constellations
of Latin American countries, then without bias they should attack,
analyse and improve the instruments of analysis which have been produced
in the course of the modem theoretical discussion of recent years.
Concrete policies which aim at reducing dependencia are only possible in
development policy practice if strategies grounded in and deduced from
modernization theory are developed. If one were to resort to the socialist-
Marxist variation of development policy, one would have to work just as
hard for the “treasure of the western experience” as one might find it
difficult to prove that socialist development theory, in so far as it leads
back to Marx, does not stand in the traditional context of modernization
theories33.
The possibilities of a policy directed toward reducing dependencia have
grown as a result of the world political development in the postwar
period, particularly in the most recent past. The radical rejection of the
concept of modernization can hardly be politically justified any longer.
The strategy of the O.P.E.C. countries has shown how income from raw
materials exports increases, and facilitates a more just world economic
balance without involving sudden expropriations which previously have
always been “shots that went off in the wrong direction”. The Andes Pact
is an example of how foreign direct investments can be channelled into
forms and directions which one may assume to be more conducive to
national developmental autonomy.
Of course one must warn against undue optimism bound up with the
control of the much maligned multinational concerns34. With the increasing
strength of the socialist economic bloc, the Latin American countries1
scope for negotiation has become greater. An outward looking strategy in
trade and industrialization is opening up new opportunities precisely in
the present period in which insight into the necessity of world economic
co-operation is growing. Political reason demands that we pay heed to
the experiences of the western model, without at the same time making it
into a norm for future development.