9_Law and State_Volume 17

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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
48 Johann Hellwege were bound up with great hopes, is still not an adequate reason for calling into question the general feasibility or the model function of western variations of modernization or industrialization, of which there have been and are many, and many different ones - quite apart from the fact that the development discussion itself, even in negation, remains dependent upon the horizon of experience of the world of the capitalist industrial state. To reject the universal-historical claim of the western model certainly does not mean that the western industrial state model cannot provide usable examples for present-day developing countries. In this context, precisely the set-backs and breakdowns which the West experienced as it modernized into industrial states would be of particular interest. Of course, due to the simultaneity of the processes of modern development and underdevelopment, today’s underdeveloped countries cannot simply follow the same road as today’s developed economies have done. Indeed, it is highly questionable whether autonomous industrialization is possible or even desirable under present international relationships of dependency and their effects on the economic backwardness of the developing countries3. However if today the possibility of a “dependent development“ (desarrollo dependiente) under a changed Brazilian industrialization strategy is already being discussed, as in Cardoso’s works, this demonstrates that among the dependencistas certain trends are at work toward a revision of the initial hard line. And the introduction of the concept of “Brazilian sub-imperialism” is rather more an expression of helplessness vis 4 vis an actual historical phenomenon which cannot be made to fit a theoretical postulate; such concept constructs hardly increase our possibilities for analysis. Whether or not such approaches can still meaningfully be included in the dependencia school is a question worth discussing. Like earlier theories of modernization, dependencia theories claim to provide a universal explanation, and for this reason are no more historical than the former. Though the basic characteristics of these dependencia theories cannot be traced here, they do display many weaknesses and inconsistencies alongside some not inconsiderable advantages. Without any doubt, the dependencia theory —here used as a collective concept - does contain a large element of truth, if - as, e. g., according to Theotonio Dos Santos — dependencia is defined as a “situation” in which the economy of a certain group of countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy which is subordinate to t e first, and if dependencia involves a “historical condition” which a ects a given structure of the world economy in such a way that a few countries can derive advantages to the detriment of other countries, and
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