9_Law and State_Volume 17

Underdevelopment, Dcpcndcncia, and Modernization Theory 47
mistic ray of hope for a development which would be as autonomous as
possible, but instead was considered an element which functionally complemented
the so-called “traditional sectors” within the process of the underdevelopment
of a society dependent upon the western industrial metropolises.
The interaction of traditional oligarchies and new middle classes
as client classes of the western industrial states was conceived as a manifestation
of how dependencia had been internalized. Underdevelopment
and development were understood as necessary and as structurally allied
opposite poles within the scope of a world-wide process, namely the formation
and further evolution of western industrial capitalism under the
conditions of establishing and entrenching underdevelopment in the socalled
developing countries1.
Two observations appear to vindicate this radical rejection of previous
notions about development.
1. Modernization, understood as industrialization, appeared in the mid-
1960’s to have entered into a fatal dead-end street. Industrialization via
the road of import substitution had not reduced dependency. National
industrialization policies had not been able to halt penetration by multinational
concerns, but on the contrary promoted it. Foreign investors remained
in leading positions in the national industrialization process. Inequality
of income distribution, the problem of marginalization and unemployment
had grown even further.
2. The middle classes, the beneficaries hitherto of industrialization
strategy “hacia adentro”, again turned their backs on the lower classes
about this time and, fearing revolutionary changes and a revolution from
below”, entered into a coalition with the traditional dominant classes of
Latin American societies. In many states in Latin America the military s
accession to power put paid to aspirations of political democratization ,
aspirations which had been nourished by the expectation, as expressed in
modernization theory, that industrialization necessarily presupposed and
would be accompanied by developments toward a democratic society. If
one were inclined to ideological simplification, one could express the
“suspicion” that the dependencia theories, which arose as an answer and
reaction to these theories, were propounded by Latin American social
scientists who, wanting to compensate for their disappointment at the
failure of the classes from which they originated, radically called into
question their hitherto accepted roles and functions, as well as the basis of
their thought and action previously recognized as valid. Thus ^ they
also ultimately exonerated themselves from guilt and responsibility“. To
be sure, it must be emphatically noted that this thoroughly understandable
disillusionment at the failure of developmental strategies, which