ifda dossier 74 - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

which the individual human being is developing a sense of global citizcnry, albeit
in a chaotic, uneven manner, is also the result of the ongoing scientific and
technological revolution, especially in the field of informaties. Man is acquiring a
qualitatively greater ability to store, retrieve and process information. Break-
throughs in technology include bioteehnology and genetic engineering which bolster
the status of the more industrial societies, side by side with a growing ability to
create substitutes to raw materials with improved specifications, which diminished
the role of the South and makes its societies more dependent on the North.
A heated debate arose among the participants over whether independence is
basically motivated by external or iniernnl factors. The neo-liberal economist Said
Naggar upheld the thesis that interdependence is primarily a function of external
factors, notably, the degree of exposure and vulnerability of a given economy to
external shocks. According to Naggar, interdependence will therefore depend on
factors such as the degree of economic openness of a given society, on the ratio
of its exports to the national product, on the range of its export commodities, on
export flexibility in response to the needs of foreign markets, on the size of its
external deficit with respect to its GNP, etc. '13e marxist econon~ist Fouad Morsi
upheld the opposite viewpoint, namely, that interdependence is primarily a function
of internal factors, mainly of the social division of labor inside a given economy.
Rxternal relations i.e., interdependence with the external world, are a reflection of
internal social relations. It is in terms of internal needs th;it choices concerning
exchange and interrelations with the external world are made. "I'he distinction
between the two standpoints is essential. If we accept the proposition that
interdependence derives exclusively from external factors. it follows [hiit no
national economy can withstand the onslaught of the transnationals, that national
sovereignty is of no relevance when it comes to protecting economic independence
and that no development is possible according to a national design.
If Fouad Morsi stressed that economic n~echanisms of a national economy are
capable by their very nature of putting effective constraints on extra-national
interdependence and therefore of resisting the phenomenon of economic
dependency, Samir Amin, with his famous theory of 'delinking', put the accent
more on political will. Globalism, acknowledged Amin, is an irreversible process,
but, contrary to nco-liberal thinking, it deepens rather than levels worldwide
economic unevenness and disbalances and increases polarization, thus making
'delinking' unavoidable. 'Delinking', clarified Amin, does not mean autarky or
isolation, but cnsuringlhat national interests determine the forms and modalities
by which national economic?! contribute to the international division of labour.
If, on the one hand, interdependence reflects a growing need for forms of global
authority to cope with an increasing number of problems which have no solution
within the context of a world order based on national sovereignty and the nation-