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It's only "natural" in the sense that this is what capitalist/market-oriented development inevitably causes. It would be just as natural for wealthier countries
by opportune 8y ago
It's only "natural" in the sense that this is what capitalist/market-oriented development inevitably causes. It would be just as natural for wealthier countries to simply give poorer countries capital, build infrastructure, teachers, etc. There is actually a lot of left-wing literature on political economics regarding whether capitalism is truly necessary to achieve the transition to an industrialized economy (and this was one of the biggest issues between the Trotskyist and Stalinist factions).
The only countries that have skipped this transition, to my knowledge, have been the wealthy oil producing gulf countries. But that is simply because they owned very valuable land
- rhizome 8y agoI think the silent downvotes mean you struck a nerve.
- cirgue 8y agoArguments about the moral qualities of capitalism v socialism are always an unproductive pissing contest, doubly so on the Internet.
- opportune 8y agoYes, but in this case I don't think it's unproductive or irrelevant to acknowledge that the problems from the article are rooted in the intersection of political and economic factors
- duxup 8y agoGenerally on the internet there is a lot of "that's just capitalism" and then the discussion degrades and it's just a bunch of "that's capitalism too" and you realize you are comparing real world capitalism to someone's theory that is bound by nothing and I'm not sure there is any point in that.
- throwawaymath 8y agoCan you cite some of that literature? I'd like to read it.
- opportune 8y agoArguments against stage theory: The Permanent Revolution, by Trotsky Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution, by Trotsky On New Democracy, by Mao Zedong Arguments for stage theory: On the Theory of Permanent Revolution, by Bukharin Excerpts from Das Kapital on Historical Materialism and the stages of development There are also a lot of less professional sources you can find about it online.
- wilsonnb2 8y agoIt looks like the newest of these was written around 1940 - is there anything more modern on the subject? Has the field of economics really progressed so little in the past 80 years that these writings are still the best available?
- opportune 8y agoThese aren’t really mainstream economics. Marxist economics don’t really get funding / studied in capitalist economies for obvious reasons The other reason these are all from around the same time period is that this was when all of the biggest successful communist revolutions took place. I’m sure there has been literature about the subject since then - these are just the most famous/influential because of who wrote them (so these are translated to English. Most of the other literature would be untranslated Russian/Chinese/etc.). Notably Deng Xiaoping instituted capitalist reforms in China as a departure from the traditional Maoist assertion that a period of capitalist development was unnecessary
- js8 8y agoYou can also read Ha-Joon Chang: Kicking Away the Ladder.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoOil countries have lots of slave labor.